Pokemon Go

For Virizion, Honchkrow is the surprise contender. Turns out it's the best Flying attacker, since Rayray has a terrible moveset.

Huh... Honchkrow? Huh... guess it does edge out Dragon Tail/Hurricane Dragonite based on the STAB from its fast move making up for Dragonite's power edge. That said, Dragonite might be the more solid choice against Virizion - while the 'krow can pull ahead on DPS, Dragonite handily has the defensive edge to win out on TDO (Honchkrow has a bit better HP, but Dragonite's defenses and typing more than make up for it). And for all that Rayquaza's Flying moves aren't ideal, the fact that it'll be doing quad damage on Virizion when the time comes does suggest that it'll probably do just fine when that rolls around, even if it isn't the ideal counter.

For my Fire types... as it happened, I got some excellent Heatran back when they were out, in addition to a couple solid Moltres and Ho-ohs (actually better stats on the latter, FWIW). And yeah, one decent CD Charizard, but paling before the others previously mentioned. And for Steel types... well, some of those Heatran were Iron Head users, plus my previous discussion of my CD Metagross and my army of dual Steel Aggron shows that I'm not really lacking there. Huh... for all that I can easily do a double-charge Gengar, there is precious little reason to do so. The only reason I could possibly want to do so would be to potentially throw out Focus Blast in gym battles, but nearly every foe I might want to hit with that is going to hit Gengar with a super effective move and take it out immediately (I think Aggron is the only exception, and even then, Shadow Ball still does the job nearly as well). I guess I can always wait to see if they add new moves and just burn the candy/dust then.

...

So, I had a premium pass for a raid 5 minutes away from my flat, but, at 4 PM, I had to work and thus wouldn't be able to go. Therefore, I completely forgot about that, and, even getting a free day out of the blue, I only remembered I could have gone for the Deoxys once the raid was over (and, knowing my local group, anything past 4 PM would had been too late anyway).

Oh well, at least I already have a Deoxys. An attack one with a 10 attack IV, but hey, there are only 5 potentially more damaging individual Pokemon in the game anyway.

And this, the week I finally got a 10 km egg reward for walking 50 km, only to hatch a Shinx.

Edited by Eriorguez on Mar 28th 2019 at 7:20:28 PM

Yeah, the one and only rare time I get a 10km egg and it hatches into a Drifloon. I don't care about no DAMN Drifloon. Game, pls!!!

Getting 10 km eggs out of stops is quite easy in cities and the like. Reward eggs have guaranteed rare hatches, but, all in all, Shinx is easier to come by than Riolu, as a level 1 raid just takes 40 seconds or so.

Well, I wouldn't say easy per se. Just that, between the walking, the fact that the bus frequently moves slow enough to count as walking for the game's purposes, and the number of stops, I do hatch a lot and have lots of chances to spin for eggs.

Ironically, though, I'm trying to hoard 7 km eggs to finally get a Nincada (because, for whatever reason, I have never run into a quest that gives one). Only for the game to decide that actually, I really need a bunch of Happiny. Though if those are as rare as I suspect, I should be able to set up a trade easily.

My 10k eggs have been constantly giving me Larvitars lately. I probably have nearly 400 Larvitar candies at this point. 😅

Dark Tyranitar is gonna be quite useful against many of the upcoming T5s, so that's a good thing.

I also got to be disappointed by my 50km Adventure Sync 10km egg. Was aiming for either of Shinx or Rioulu. Hell, even one of the dragons would have been a decent consolation because it's hard to ever have too many dragons. Instead, got Beldum. Granted, I don't mind the candy, but that one's kind of the absolute consolation of the consolation hatches in that pool.

Nincada quests haven't been around for a while now. The bug event might bring them back.

Why are they making these Nincadas and Riolu so damn hard to get? It's not even logical that they'd be this difficult.

Classic artificial scarcity to get people to play more or fork out money, where applicable.

Ugh, shiny rate was god awful on Lotad. I played for six hours and my one and only came seven minutes before the cut-off time. This makes me not particularly want to do these days anymore.

Huh. I got four shinies from about three hours of play. But I agree that the shiny rate on Lotad and Castform should have been swapped.

Yeah, I haven't finished the Lotad Research quests I got to know if any of the Lotads I could catch are Shiny yet, but I was finding Shiny Castform after Shiny Castform. Eventually I started to run out of storage space so I just stopped clicking on them just so I wouldn't feel obligated to catch one if it was shiny. I still have three with me.

Also, I finally got Smeargle-bombed while taking a picture of one of my Buizels last night.

Starting after midnight local, Ash or Ash cap Pikachu will photobomb you in Snapshot mode; this also spawns Ash cap Pikachu.

Guess I should consider myself lucky I did get photobombed by the Smeargle last night then if it's about to be phased out for a while. 😅

Edited by kablammin45 on Mar 31st 2019 at 12:30:56 PM

Ash-Hat Pikachu can be shiny for the first time ever, but you’ll only get five shots at it. I didn’t get a winning draw. The photobomb rate seems to have increased to 100%, since I only needed to take five photos to get all my Pikashus.

It's not 100%, but still something really high. I had take two pictures (starting a new session for each photo) for three of the five.

I was comparatively lucky on Lotad, in that I got two, and the first research I got was shiny. But yeah, considering that shiny Castform really is just for bragging rights, having shiny Lotad come up more would have been nice. On the bright side, among the non-shiny Lotad I got was a 100% (okay, sure, Ludicolo isn't worth much outside of the sub-1500 cup, but still).

While I know that Nincada quests have been gone for a while, I had heard rumors that they were possible 7 km egg hatches, so I have been trying to load up on those. That may have been a false rumor, but I do now have a few Happiny and Munchlax I can trade, so I suppose it's not all bad.

Five more Hatachus available. No guarantee that it'll last past quest changeover, so get them in while you can.

Bug event has started, and you can indeed get Nincada again from "Evolve 3 Bug-types".

EDIT: Shiny Scyther! Scyther is also dropped from a quest, "Catch 10 Bug-types".

Also, according to a leak, "GO Fest Dortmund" is a thing this year. Whether the whole event is being moved or if they're doing what they do for Ingress events and holding the event in multiple locations, we're not sure yet.

Edited by Anura on Apr 2nd 2019 at 9:49:04 AM

Ninjask is a Tier 4 raid that can apparently be soloed. I'm just about capable of doing it myself as long as it doesn't have Bug Buzz, according to the simulator.

Edited by Anura on Apr 3rd 2019 at 6:42:56 PM

In terms of something that's somewhere between minorly and majorly annoying, depending on your local spawns, Yanma has a chance of being Ditto (locally, very annoying, as they basically never spawn around here outside of nests or events).

EDIT: Also, for those interested, not only did Origin Giratina come around, but they gave it Shadow Ball as one of its fast moves (replacing Altered Giratina's Shadow Sneak, with Ominous Wind replacing Ancient Power). This puts it at arguably the best Ghost-type attacker in the meta (with the usual DPS vs. TDO issue between it and Gengar... I'm leaning towards Giratina-O, because its potential TDO is nearly twice of Gengar's, and that has to mean something). It's also got a passable dual Dragon set with Dragon Breath/Dragon Claw, but between Rayquaza, Dragonite, Dialga, Palkia, Latios, and somehow even Alolan Exeggutor (I have to admit, I didn't see that dual Dragon set being comparable to Giratina-O), plus the upcoming Salamence that's coming in a week and a half, nobody probably needs that.

Edited by 32_Footsteps on Apr 4th 2019 at 12:46:56 PM

Yeah, same problem with Yanma here. I see a non-event spawn of it maybe once every 2 or so weeks. Funny you should mention that, too, as I got surprised by a Yanma Ditto on my way to Deoxys-D yesterday.

As to the ghost attacker situation, Gengar is still going to be the one wanted for the absolute lowest trainer count, highest DPS is usually the only relevant factor there. Giratina-O will certainly be viable in other scenarios, though. Of course, that also discounts the resource cost difference with the comparatively easier to get Gastly candy versus large quantities of legendary/Rare Candy. I suppose this does assume access to Lick Gengars, though, since Hex Gengar sure won't be competitive.

Meanwhile, the Summer Events have been announced:

• Three GO Fests, each lasting four days:
  • Chicago, June 13-16
  • Dortmund, July 4-7
  • Somewhere in Asia TBA
• The next few Community Days have been announced in advance as well:
  • May 19th (Sunday)
  • June 8th (Saturday)
  • July 21st (Sunday)
  • August 3rd (Saturday)

The last day of GO Fest Dortmund also happens to be Tanabata, which is basically Jirachi Day to Pokemon fans that aren't Japanese.

Edited by Anura on Apr 4th 2019 at 8:28:28 PM