Pokemon Go

That's funny, because Alolan Vulpix is the rarest Alolan pull from the 7kms.

Really? They seem to be popping up the wazoo for me. I have like 20 Aloalan Vulpix, want to trade?

Yeah. The rate's a little better now, but initially, Alolan Vulpix was considered the darling of the 7km eggs, so Niantic had the hatch rate for it at a measly 4%.

Huh... we sometimes see wild spawns on Alolan Geodudes around here, but typically only in partly cloudy weather (which, to be fair, seems to be very common locally). I don't know if it's a biome issue or not (we also get regular Geodude spawns on a semi-common basis, though again mostly when weather boosts favor them). If you're really lacking Alolan Geodude spawns, it might be worth checking out where nearby you might see more of the standard Geodudes spawn.

Niantic used Cool New Idea. It was super defective!

In all seriousness, Legendary Lunch went pretty decently, though it definitely needs refining. The biggest obstacle was that we had a walking route planned out through our downtown area (stuff is very sparsely distributed, so there's a sort of optimal path to hit as many as possible), but stupid non-Dialga eggs were allowed to spawn right before the lunch, so we had random Absols and Magikarps popping up in the middle of the paths we wanted to take. It still more or less worked out, but damn, Niantic, you had this worked out with an hour of dead space before the birds/Gengar 3-hour runs—how did you miss the mark on this one?

Wow, I didn't even realize this was a thing and had already come and gone. That's how abysmal the event really was.

I've been mulling it over, and I think the Legendary Lunch event was a very unlikely candidate for success. I see three major reasons.

First and foremost, the timeframe for it was very specific. If you weren't available for any reason between noon and 1, you weren't taking part. I fell into this category; I have no flexibility in my lunch hour, which starts at 1 PM.

Second, you pretty much had to have a gym nearby. People have generally somewhere between 30 minutes to an hour (and increasingly, closer to the former than the latter) for lunch. If you didn't have a gym nearby (particularly if you wanted to, y'know, eat on your lunch hour), you weren't taking part.

Finally, putting everything (or nearly everything, when you exclude gyms that had normal raids pop up in that timeframe) at a tier 5 raid meant that, at best, you needed at least 3 other people hitting that raid at the same time (presuming you were all level 40 and had a maxed-out weather boosted team). Even if the first two items were in your favor, if there weren't enough people who also fell into the first two camps nearby, you weren't taking part. This in particular felt like a "screw you, non-urban dwellers!" issue, which isn't good considering how much Pokemon Go already has issues with that.

I'm inevitably comparing this to the number of Community Days we've had, where each of those issues were mitigated if not completely absent. You put it at a weekend date where people have more time in general, and a three-hour window such that even people who are otherwise preoccupied can probably find at least some time to squeeze it in (which described me during Swinub Day - even though I was mostly pressed for time, I still got about 15 minutes in to attempt to find a shiny). Community days just require spawn points, which are way more available than gyms (and even if you're in a nigh-barren place, you can still use incense to make yourself a mobile spawn point). Finally, being spawn-based, you're not dependent on other people being available (despite, of course, the other points meaning that you are more likely to find available people).

I could see doing a "Mid-day raid" extravaganza in the future, but I'd base it more around lower tier raids (like, if they released Burmy by suddenly having every gym pop up with a tier 1 Burmy raid for one lunch period, with some scattered tier 3 raids having Wormadam and Mothim), and having the window be two or three hours (probably noon to 2 or 11 to 2) to give people a little more wiggle room.

Dialga can be beaten with 4 people at level 30 without weather boost as long as you have decent counters (i.e. Machamp). You only need to start optimising for trios and duos.

Of course, the hardest part is getting those people. In the very least, my community has a tendency to spam the recommended line-up.

Yeah... in fact, yesterday I ended up losing out on a Dialga raid because we could only get four, and only three of us were effectively built for said raid (the fourth guy admitted to using Mr. Mime in the raid because it was among his recommended). It admittedly didn't help that it was a Draco Meteor user (thus forcing us into revive/recover mode much faster).

Sounds close to my experience with my first Dialga, though we still won through sheer numbers. We had 7 at the raid, but only me and one other guy were using full Machamp teams. The other 5 were fielding level 20 Heatrans. Despite Draco Meteor, a trainer count like that should have made the fight a free sweep, but instead we took so long I'm pretty sure we had to relobby the Machamps an extra time. Getting 3 damage balls for catching is cool and all, but something is very wrong when a single 7-trainer raid takes 18 Max Revives.

Of course, this is usually the kind of scenario that happens, which prompts me to end up building level 40 teams (or rather, because the dust cost is so prohibitive, usually 4x 40 and 2x ~35, with the ~35s being the best high-level weather-boosted spawns I can just find on the field—assuming that's possible for that Mon) to try to help hard carry.

I have enough good players around that boosting to 30 is usually enough. Though I spend a lot of stardust preparing for Silph tournaments now...

At least Rayquaza will be easy. You can apparently duo it at level 25 with a full Mamoswine team, and at 30 you can throw in others like Weavile, Jynx, Cloyster, even Piloswine works if you don't have the candy to fully evolve it.

Edited by Anura on Mar 15th 2019 at 5:08:04 PM

Yeah, double weakness is crippling, even for T5 bosses. Way back during the bird rerun, we were able to win a 4-trainer Moltres raid where I was the only one who brought Smackdown Tyranitars and the other trainers had maybe one Golem.

I'm debating whether or not to spend my extra Sinnoh Stones on a few more Mamoswine; I still have quite a few Piloswine from back when I was first prepping for Zapdos raids (hey, they're common locally, it was an easy build), and it'd be a sure winner. That said, I'm not short on good Sneasels, and I do still need at least one Weavile for the 'dex (not to mention several others that I haven't gotten yet). Not only that, but I do have a nice 100% Alolan Sandslash with a double Ice set (maybe not the most impressive attacker, but it can take hits) as well as a decent enough Alolan Ninetails (plus, of course, the usual plethora of Rock attackers if I want to settle for hitting a single weakness). I probably can get by with a Mamoswine, a Weavile, and my army of Rock users (Tyranitar, Rhyperior... hell, even Stone Edge Aggron isn't a bad choice).

You know, the Aggron meme is a good indicator of Attack and Defense being stuff that should be displayed.

I think the bigger problem is typing and move sets. If not Aggron, it'd be something else dumb that the recommended listing is bringing up. People need to be taught to choose stuff that's both super effective. Even a Mewtwo, with its 300 base Atk, will pale compared to a mediocre super effective attacker if misused and attacking into resistance. The problem that then stems from that is that the Pokemon typing system is convoluted, borderline irredeemable mess. Like, I make a conscious effort to remember this stuff and I still need to go back and look at a table more often than I want to. Can you imagine trying to get people who play casually to figure this stuff out? It's not even a reasonable ask in the slightest.

Ingress has a minigame you can play when hacking a portal to get extra items. Since it and PoGo run on the same codebase now, it wouldn't be hard to implement one for stops and gyms. If said minigame displayed a current raid boss and its types, gave you a list of attacks and their types and were asked to choose a super-effective one, that could go a long way.

Edited by Anura on Mar 15th 2019 at 10:16:24 AM

Do not insult the Pokemon type chart.

Equinox event!

• Starts Tuesday the 19th and lasts for one week.
• Grass-types in raids and tasks.
• Two new moves: Acid Spray and Leaf Tornado.
• Lunatone and Solrock will swap regions again.
• No new shinies mentioned.

Hmmm, I could get behind the added quiz idea. Only thing is, the extra items would probably have to be really good (or maybe allow the extra item(s) to be a guaranteed choice: a Gift, a Max Revive or 2x Pinap or the like), otherwise people would likely just skip over it.

I mean, honestly, Aggron I think is underrated as an attacker in the gym meta. It's actually my favorite Blissey breaker if you aren't in a rush, because it'll tank everything Blissey can do like a champ and be able to easily win by attrition. The thing is, it's guaranteed to take 50-80 seconds (depending on levels) unless the motivation is nearly gone, so it can be dull to people (as opposed to Machamp, and we all know how that works). Plus, it's very cheap to give it a second move, so you can easily get a decent amount of work out of Iron Tail/Heavy Slam/Stone Edge. Yeah, it has a bad habit of getting recommended for raids due to its resistance spread, and generally is a situational choice in the raid meta, but when it works, it works great.

Also, kind of funny to note the Aggron raid meme when we just had a weekend where Aggron legit was a solid choice for the raid. DPS can suffer if you are regularly forced to switch, and Aggron can tank enough Outrages and Aerial Aces (especially AA) that it can make up for its relatively unimpressive attack with lots of Stone Edges. There's a reason I was able to get enough balls to catch four Rayquaza (in four raids) on Saturday (the only day I was able to make it out to raids this weekend). Gotta earn that damage/team damage bonus.

I'll grant that part of it is that I've worked on my best Aggrons (my best one is only about 100 CP below my best Machamp), but hey, use what you have.

That long time fighting can matter if the gym's being actively Golden Razzed. Machamp can run the berrier out of their ten uses rather quickly.

That double Ice weakness is crippling for Rayquaza, though, and if everyone else is using Mamoswine, Aggron ain't going to be earning much for personal damage balls, since Ray just utterly melts. I did a bunch of raids over the weekend, bouncing between groups and it was very noticeable who was using what. I got into a couple smaller groups where we were all using optimal counters and Ray died about twice as fast (such that I wouldn't have maxed damage balls if we had more people using optimal counters) as when I got into the 10-person groups where it was just me and one or two other people using Ice attackers while everyone else was spamming Aggron. I should really not be getting 3 personal damage balls in 10+-person groups, but it happens. The overall faster speed allowed me to do 12 Rays and catch 11 of them during a 4-hours period on Sat, despite our gym layout being awful.

I will grant that Stone Edge Aggron (assuming it does have Stone Edge, since I know a lot of people won't bother TMing over to it) is still better than the usual Aggron scenario and will be more helpful than straight-up misuse of damage types (like if someone decides to bring Ground Mamoswine to Ray...).

Eh... Machamp can do it comparatively quickly, but even it still needs a decent amount of time, and in my experience people actively tending their gyms will have plenty of time to golden razz up a Blissey even with Machamp doing the pounding. Meanwhile, the durability of an Aggron means that I don't have to spend nearly as many potions/revives after the fact getting my attacking team back into the swing of things. With patience, I have the time, items, and power to take way more gyms with effective use of Aggron.

As for Rayquaza... I think it depends on just how many people are in the raid. I had it both ways this weekend. My first raid was one with just eight people, and I was able to abuse the fact that I needed to swap way less often. The second, though, was a full 20, and in that one I needed to blitz with my heaviest attackers to get even one damage bonus ball. On the flip side, if I was in a three or four person raid, I'd again want the blitz team on the theory that I'd need to hit that hard that fast.

I'll admit that Aggron is seldom your best choice (though I posit that, against an untended Blissey, it is a top 3 choice)... but that said, it's frequently a much more decent choice than a lot of people give it credit for. Yeah, it takes a bit of investment (you probably want to buy the second charge move... but it is in the cheapest category for that), but it's by far the Com Mon that has the biggest upside in general use.

All of that said, it was really annoying when the game recommended it for Palkia raids. The AI clearly was only evaluating for defensive presence there, and even a Dragon Tail/Stone Edge set would be a poor choice against that (to be kind).

Yes, active berriers will have enough time to generally get the GR in, though they do really need to be paying attention because Machamp will chunk an injured Blissey (have taking the first knockout) super fast. I've actually wrecked Blisseys who were being berried because the person was only berrying after two knockouts and underestimated just how fast I can murder the final stage. Beyond that, if the person is really on the ball, Machamp puts them in danger of hitting the 10-berry limited within the half hour, which few Mons can really force.

I'm not sure if I'd call Aggron a Com Mon. I mean, I've got a 96% one sitting around and a decent chunk of candy, but that's 95% thanks to Adventure Week last year. I haven't seen a lot for random wild spawns of them and I was in a few different cities over the past year. It was kinda funny to be starting around then because people were making a big deal about the fossils being more available and I was just plain sick of them being all I ever caught for that week. Looking back, I can appreciate how much of a boon it was, though.

Hrm... Aron may just be a biome-based Com Mon then, and I had erroneously assumed it was a general one. According to my 'dex, I've seen 376 of them, which is a rather large number for a Gen III 'mon (that's roughly the same number of Oddish - 382 - I've seen, for comparison). Consequently, I've run into several very good Aron that I've been able to convert into excellent Aggron for attack purposes (I occasionally leave the shiny one in gym defense, but not often because, well, between the number of good Fighting, Ground, and Water types, they never last long when a dedicated attacker comes by). Of course, come to think of it, we also still tend to get fossil spawns locally on an uncommon basis (collectively, I'd say I see them once a day, leaning towards Omanyte and Anorith popping up more frequently than the others). So... yeah, probably a biome issue.

As for active berriers, I guess it depends... in part, because a bottomed out Blissey is still a fairly fast win with Aggron, and in part because I've found that people will mis-time when to use berries because they expect you to use Machamp and pace for that instead. It's a bit of mind games, yes, but that's my style in general.