Pokemon Go

I believe Silph Road checked that and found that the rate of at least one Sinnoh Stone was a flat 1/8 (it's possible to get two Stones or even two Rare Candy, but the chances of either case can generally be summarized as "LOLNO"). You're just getting hit with slightly worse than expected RNG.

The problem is that including Fire Blast into Palkia's possible Charge Move rotation made it basically impossible to hard counter it (for example, compare it to Heatran, which was hard countered by Swampert). The only one that comes close to a proper hard counter is Rock Smash/Play Rough Azumarill (well, okay, in the theoretical far future, Tapu Fini as well, but that's definitely cart-before-horse thinking in Pokemon Go), and Azumarill is severely hampered by the lack of abilities (or CP adjustments based on them) or stat-changing moves (if I had access to either Pure Power or Belly Drum, Azumarill would totally be my choice).

I mean, we can easily make counters to one or two Palkia sets (any Dragon-type outside of Alolan Exeggutor or Flygon or any Water-type with non-Water offense for Fire Blast and Hydro Pump, any Fairy-type for Draco Meteor sets), but this time, we sadly lack any absolute go-tos for the raid. Plus, Palkia is going to hit hard, so I feel like we're all about to burn a lot of revival items.

We can save multiple raid teams in advance now. I have one team of 6 Dragonite for Water and Fire Palkia, and another of Gyarados, Gardevoir and Togekiss (and a Ditto) for Dragon Palkia.

Honestly, I generally don't save teams, in large part because I have ample time before the raid starts generally to pick one out.

Honestly, my problem is more that, due to encounters, my team is a bit more specialized. I'm honestly just not equipped to field out a team of solid Fairy users because I just haven't found many. I'm only marginally better at Dragon users. This is why I'm mostly just looking towards neutral powerhouses for the most part (I figure I'm going to get a lot of work out of my Solar Beam Groudon and the aforementioned Swamperts).

Just confirmed that you can in fact get Sinnoh stones from fighting team leaders. Got one from dumping on Spark yesterday.

Most of the Gen 4 evolutions are now live, plus some other Sinnoh mons like the Gen 4 fossilmons.

Edited by kablammin45 on Jan 31st 2019 at 10:08:32 AM

How do Leafeon and Glaceon work?

Wait, shoot, I forgot about them. Most of the Gen 4 evolutions are in the game now.

The missing ones are location-based ones. Glaceon, Leafeon, Magnezone and Probopass.

There was a theory that this would tie into the nest changes which were announced but never implemented. The theory was that nests would change to work like the biomes at Go Fest 2, places where Pokemon of a certain type would spawn instead of just one species, to alleviate the problem of generation creep making things more difficult for new players. In addition, the new type nests would count as the locations for those evolutions, so for a Glaceon you wait until your local park becomes an ice nest then evolve your Eevee there.

good lord no, that's RIP for me since I live in the tropics :<

Also I guess I figured it's better to stick to great league then, extra 200 dust isn't really worth it for the length

Well, if it was like Go Fest 2, then it wouldn't matter that you live in the tropics. It'd just be an ice nest completely regardless of what the current local weather is.

Hmm... so far, the only new addition I've seen to the spawns is that I saw a Combee spawn when I was on my way home yesterday (sadly, out of my way, so I haven't caught one yet).

Wow, what's up with Palkia's catch model? Why is it so far away! Snover meanwhile is so zoomed in.

Every Combee is female at the moment. I don't imagine this will be permanent.

Also, is it me or do Pokémon now start appearing while you're a passenger of a vehicle again? Like we're definitely going above 20mph, in the range of 40-50mph and I still see Pokémon spawn around me when they'd normally just not happen in the past. It's been this way for several weeks now. I still can't spin stops going at higher speeds, but I can now catch Pokémon. I don't know if this is a bug or a feature, but I hope it is the latter because that would mean so much for passengers!

I swear, Palkia is the biggest troll. It's a bit easier to bring down than I expected with its CP (A team of 6 brought it down in my sole Palkia raid so far with around half the timer remaining), but its far placement on the catch screen is ridiculous. Also, in an ultimate troll move, my very first throw was an Excellent and it broke out in two shakes (though luckily, my penultimate ball caught him, and it was windy out, so he was weather boosted... though said weather boost was absolutely brutal during the raid, since it was a Draco Meteor user).

Going back to a previous note of mine, I finally got my second research shiny - a breakthrough Lugia! I will now no longer be allowed to bring the subject up.

Finally, since I don't think we've brought it up before - there was a move rebalancing in PVP. I know other places have discussed it (and those who talk about the game elsewhere are probably already aware), but here's the basic rundown. Across the board, all fast moves are weaker in PVP - somewhere around 25-45% weaker depending on the move. For charged moves, several moves have changed just how many bars they have (which also affects how quickly they charge) - some standouts are Outrage (PVP 1 bar), Icy Wind (PVP 2 bars), Play Rough (PVP 1 bar), Dazzling Gleam (PVP 1 bar), and Ice Beam (PVP 1 bar).

In addition a couple of charged moves were weakened, but for the most part, only the ridiculously powerful ones - Solar Beam, for example, is now power 150 during PVP. There's also one that increased power - Focus Blast is now power 150 in PVP. Note that this rebalancing only affects PVP - gyms and raids still use the old numbers.

I've been meaning to bring up the same thing because it's something I've noticed too. Still can't use Pokéstops, though.

Apparently the charge bar changes are largely cosmetic, and the actual energy requirements haven't changed that much. The game is just rounding to the nearest size bar because Niantic wont show the energy cost in actual numbers for some reason.

Also a bunch of Pokemon have new moves. No moves have been lost, so these Pokemon now have more than the standard number of moves. Which makes TMs more of a headache to use.

Huh. Typical - I mean, look how long it took before Nintendo started even obliquely referencing EVs and IVs in the main games.

As for the new move list... hmm... I see some interesting additions. Clefable could be fun as an anti-Fairy breaker for lower cups, I love the idea of putting Rock Slide on Machamps, it's great that Aerodactyl is also finally getting the move, Donphan is now a solid budget double Ground fighter, and Grass Knot Roserade obviously rises head and shoulders above Solar Beam on the same.

Hidden Power makes Ho-oh usable at long last if you manage to roll Flying or Fire. Most of it seems to be coverage for PvP though.

Edited by Anura on Feb 4th 2019 at 7:04:11 PM

Palkia doesn't seem all that far away to me. At least, I feel like it's just the standard distance, since I'm using the exact same throw I used for Mewtwo and the million other raid bosses that sit thereabouts.

Eh, I find Extrasensory is more than enough for 99% of what I use Ho-oh on (mostly, bulky Grass types in gym battles). Yes, I know I'm not getting STAB, but given that it's the fast move, it's not that high of a priority for me. Also, it's gambling on the two-in-seventeen chance that you're going to get a useful one (that said, given how many fast TMs I have to spare, no sense in not checking). I guess the chance of HP Fire or HP Flying is a boost, but not enough of one that I'm excited over it.

For Palkia's distance, my biggest problem with it is that there's very little wiggle room for your aim if you're shooting to hit it with a curveball. I didn't miss any of my throws, but I found it was very easy to miss the bonus target if I was even a hair off on my aim. In comparison, something like Groudon is very forgiving when it comes to throwing curves.

Yeah, I'm just going to check Hidden Power because I'd be throwing the Fast TMs away down the line, anyway. Definitely don't expect to get anything out of it and I don't think it's really a big selling points its favour. I certainly wouldn't care to go out and hunt them during another raid rerun.

Groudon's really not a fair comparison. It's ridiculously close—like, Ursaring-level "curved Excellent gimme" close. There's very, very few Pokemon that fall under that category. Palkia's more in line with the standard distance—and thus the standard throw—for 90% of raid bosses, to the point where I can just take for granted that I'll land a curved Great on it.

Lunar New Year event!

• Starts now, ends on the 13th.
• Rattata, Ekans, Mankey, Ponyta, Electabuzz, Dratini, Mareep, Miltank, Torchic, Poochyena, Spoink, and Buneary will appear more frequently in the wild.
• Shiny Spoink!
• Double XP for catching and evolving!
• Increased odds of a Pokemon turning Lucky when traded!

Edited by Anura on Feb 4th 2019 at 9:44:48 AM

I guess Electabuzz is a tiger now?