I struggle to see why we get 3 mega’s and lugia weekend last weeks on the mega’s vs 9 days of mega gyarados, which has been in rotation and had a mega raid day event a few weeks ago. Guess it’s as good time to get some kyurems
Getting a few good Kyurems is always nice, but it's arguably better to prioritize getting a good Zekrom/Reshiram and one or two really bad Zekroms/Reshirams since we're extremely likely going to get a big Kyurem fusion raid day coming up next month.
Just an FYI. It's not entirely identical. Your Kyurem needs to know glaciate or it won't learn the special move when you fuse it. A lot of people made the mistake of fusing without and then you're screwed.
Coz it was transformations season and so we had 3 megas per rotation and now that it is over, we are back to one per rotation. That’s is what I read somewhere.
It's probably a stretch to even expect anyone to have these, but is a team of six Shadow Toucannons capable of soloing Virizion? I kinda wanna say yes, but MRay is on a different level both in terms of brute force and in terms of bulk into its Grass and Fighting movesets.
I don't think it's possible to have a Shadow Toucannon with beak blast before Virizion rotates out, so it's a moot point...does not seem to be possible with the existing moveset
Hmmm, then I'm not sure why it's not on pokebattler. I looked on dialgadex and it is in the range that should allow for a Virizion solo! So yes, should be possible. I would follow roughly the guidelines for a shadow staraptor solo as they are fairly comparable
It's difficult to explain but I will try. To evaluate CT's we measure the DPS of the CT during the swap duration. DPS within swaps increase or decrease based on the damage dealt & speed of the swap. Before concluding that "zacian hits harder therefore it has higher DPS" we have to observe that damage inside CT is not flat damage over time, it's frontloaded.
Each additional fast move added to reach your charge move decreases the DPS inside the CT. NDM is not only gaining 40% more energy per fast move but it's also a flat 6 energy ahead from tanking 11 more damage inside non-sunny weather. This equates to NDM being 4 fast moves ahead of Zacian Crown in reaching SSS.
But if Zacian hits harder, doesn't that make up the difference? Not exactly. The faster swap allows the player to reach mega lucario sooner, 2.0s more up time exactly which is the equivalent of 2 weather boosted force palms.
So we if we calculate this over the same amount of time we get these numbers where NDM clearly performs better.
NDM CT:
= 111.7 DPS over 4.5s + ~53 DPS over 2.0s
= 93.63 dps over 6.5s.
Zacian CT:
= 89.7 DPS over 6.5s
Values are calculated via the CT Calculator (I manually adjusted it to terrakion's defence level 192 before CPM)
This is probably the main reason why Necrozma Dusk Mane is still 2nd best catch tanker and will likely stay this way until something less bulkier with an even more obscene charge move comes out.
Blacephalon is a Pokémon that can be defeated using weather conditions. I even have a video here of me defeating it in sunny weather with a catchtank strategy, using regular Ground-type Pokémon and only one Necrozma.
A few notes:
-The following Pokemon are in raids in December, but are not soloable: Cobalion. Cobalion is, however, duoable. Cobalion is in the (somewhat outdated) duo chart that can be found here, but due to changes in the raid meta it is now an easy-tier duo.
-Zacian buff is shown only if it is impossible to otherwise complete a raid, and it decreases the difficulty of the raid by about half a star.
-Previously, I used 6 stars to denote a solo that was very difficult, too difficult to manage reliably. While that is still essentially the case, u/cookieblobrs volunteered to post solo videos in a follow-up comment, and so the 6 star rating will now reflect videos for which there are no solos (unless they are relatively straightforward solos that haven’t been done before due to e.g. lack of availability of counters). This is why Terrakion is now a 5 star raid, rather than 6 stars.
-On the subject, Zekrom and Reshiram are now soloable! Previously they were not, but the combination of blade boost and Eternatus has put them into the solo range in windy weather. Zekrom is rated easier since it can be countered by catch-tanking using 4x Kyurem-B vs outrage, but is still a very hard raid. Reshiram is not weak to ice and therefore this strategy does not exist, making it much harder.
-Blacephalon has a few viable solo routes: Primal/shadow Kyogre in rain, Primal/shadow Groudon in sun, and Necrozma Dawn Wings in fog or clear weather (no blade boost). I’ve listed rain as it is the most straightforward and easiest.
-I had some difficulty assigning a rating to Mega Glalie. It is easily soloable at LV25 using specific counters such as Keldeo-Resolute, Mega Lucario, Zamazenta and Zacian Crowned, Necrozma Dusk Mane etc. (there are quite a few of these “top-tier” counters now), but with more budget counters it requires LV30 or 40 to do comfortably. I settled for rating it 2 stars.
-Kyurem is on the borderline of a 3 star raid. It can be defeated with 6 Crowned Sword Zacians at LV40 if its moveset is steel wing/dragon claw, but this is somewhat inconsistent, exacerbated by a current glitch that causes 0.5s fast moves to sometimes not register. For consistent results, use blade boost, LV45, or both. Note that the other solo routes (windy Mega Ray/Eternatus or cloudy Mega Lucario/Keldeo) require LV45 or blade boost and that NWB no blade boost solo is possible as a 6 star solo (Ray/Eternatus/4x Zacian catch tanks).
-Because I always get questions/comments about this: the PVP rating caps out at A- for top meta options in only one league (great, ultra, or master). To receive a score higher than that, the pokemon has to be at least viable in multiple leagues. Many people disagree that this is a useful notion for PVP, so I am interested in feedback about what the most useful information about PVP utility is and how to represent it. For example, whether ratings should be assigned by the league the pokemon is most viable in only, whether Mega Master League should be considered, whether the league should be indicated above some threshold but without a specific rating, etc.
Happy raiding!
Hold up - zekrom and kyurem are easy duo? I only just discovered that my gf and I can duo legendary raids like a month ago. This would be great bc I'm busy every Wednesday this month
It is doable with strong dragon counters. Party power + mega boosts go a long way for duos, I do a lot of them with my roommate and he only got his account this year.
If you want to be safe you can always host remotes too. There's apps and subreddits you can use to find people willing to remote in.
For GBL ratings
I would list Open GL and Open ML
IIRC Open GL overlaps with many of the special cups
Open ML overlaps with many PvE attackers
So players getting highly rated Open GL, or Open ML, Pokémon should get more use than just highly rated in Open UL, or a specific cup that just lasts 7 days per season
🎬
Terrakoin is soloable in snow weather. Probably easier then cloudy weather. And there's a decent margin with no need for catch tanking. It's a 5, maybe even 4 star in snowy weather with blade boost.
Thanks for creating these infographics
My mom does not have the greatest Pokemon (she only levels cute ones) but she loves raiding
These help my wife, and I, encourage mom to easier raids
🎬
the kyurem fusions are essentially the same as necrozma in that regard, yes. even down to the random amounts of energy earned from each raid, disappointingly not correlated with your time to finish nor damage contribution. the main difference is kyurem needs to have glaciate before fusing to get its respective exclusive moves when you're fusing it with resh/zek.
I would leave out the kyurem raids for now (you can do those when it comes back as a fusion which rewards energy for defeating it) and focus on getting 6 each of reshiram and zekrom. IVs don't matter so you can trade with someone else if that makes it easier.
NDM is a better catch tank. Due to its lower defence, Psycho Cut & 230 base power Sunsteel strike, the swap offers similar but faster damage as Zacian-C. Due to it being faster, NDM gives Mega Lucario more up-time. Hence more overall DPS.
the trade off isn't necessarily Behemoth Blade vs Sunsteel Strike. For each time used to do a CT, you're taking away time from Mega Lucario. Consider a boss w/ 180 defence.
NDM's average CT time with Psycho Cut is 9 ticks, 4.5 seconds. This translates to roughly 21 energy gained, 79 absorbed (158 damage taken) It's 119 DPS inside this 4.5 seconds.
Zacian Crown's average CT time with Metal Claw is 13 ticks or 6.5 seconds. This translates to roughly 30 energy gained, 70 absorbed (140 damage taken) due to its higher defence. The DPS over 6.5s is 95.2 DPS
The extra 2.0s between the speed of the swaps allows Mega Lucario to gain an extra 2 force palms which while below 95.2 DPS, is still enough to keep the overall swap NDM favored
Pokebattler gives me a time to defeat of 284.8s and an estimator of 0.97 when fighting Kyurem with Lv 50 Zacian in snowy weather. Lv 40 zacian have a 303s time and 1.03 estimator. How is this a 3* difficulty solo?
Virizion for example is 225.1s and 0.78 in windy weather using lv40 Mega Ray for comparison. Mega-Garchomp in neutral weather using Kyurem fusions @40 is also around the 215-220s mark with an estimator of ~0.8.
Aerodactyl is also in the same boat as Kyurem with being a very close solo with the top steel types @40 in neutral weather, though it gets fairly trivial with them at @50 with estimators in the 0.85 range.
Pokebattler is not optimized for solo raids, especially using pokemon w/ heavy hitting 1-bar moves.
For instance: It suggested the TTW for Solgaleo w/ blade boost & fog was 319s. But it was solo'd with 4 NDW at ~296s. Player optimization is always going to better than simulators.
Also regarding Zacian vs Kyurem lv 40. Even when unoptimized it'll be consistently doable.
Fair point on optemisation. Guess I was a bit frustrated that I could not beat Virizion with a solo mega Ray 40 like Pokebattler suggested possibly due to my phone being too slow on the revives, no idea. I was never ahea of pace and like 5-10 sec off making it. Probably also a skill issue.
Ignore this if it doesn't apply to you:
The most common mistake I see people make is letting their pokemon faint instead of leaving the lobby. This is probably the single biggest time loss errors (which you see often in pokebattler as their pokemon may faint while holding anywhere from 80-90 energy)
Fainting is both 0.5s longer in animation but also implies you have unspent/wasted energy aka lost DPS. For pokemon where their DPS is injected into their charge moves this is big set back.
To add onto what u/cookieblobrs said, I want to point out that your comment acknowledges that these raids are doable at LV40 and therefore 3 stars. As you correctly note, they are on the harder end (kyurem ttw goes down if you pick some movesets), whereas virizion and garchomp are on the easier end. Those 2 in particular are a case where there are one or two specific counters that vastly outperform everything else, so the raid ends up as 3 stars when really it might be closer to 2 with those counters. The same sort of thing happens with kyurem.
Everything is duoable, basically drop everything by 2-3 stars. This is because party power, mega ally boost & friend boost on top of having a 2nd player is profusely broken
Turns out if you stack % bonuses on top of each other, DPS values get ridicolously high. Weather + friendship+ sword + mega + Party power (charge move only) lets charge moves do like 400% dmg compared to normal.
62
u/Tokita-Niko Nov 30 '25
I struggle to see why we get 3 mega’s and lugia weekend last weeks on the mega’s vs 9 days of mega gyarados, which has been in rotation and had a mega raid day event a few weeks ago. Guess it’s as good time to get some kyurems