I completely skipped over you...sorry.


Raid. The only shiny minus one Lugia I've received from them.


Sidenote: Finally got a Hippowdon. Love it. AND FINALLY GOT A RIOLU! Hatched it with 24 candy. I'm rare candying it today for Lucario!

I've been trying so hard for the shiny Riolu. I've hatched at least 30 7K eggs and at least half of them have been buizels and male combees. I feel SO CHEATED out of my incubators. It's not that I feel OWED the shiny, but dammit that kind of crap shouldn't even be AVAILABLE in 7K eggs.

I'm sure that most of you will find this to be old hat, but it was a new one for me.
I don't get out to play much...maybe a little before work, a bit on lunch, etc.
I definitely don't do anything with groups. Heck, I don't even know anyone local. I have been and will be sitting on the trade three task for a long time.
Anyway, when I hit a raid it is always solo....usually * or **. I've tried some *** before and have managed a couple of them, but generally get beaten down.
This morning I decided to go ahead and try to hit a Machamp raid....and won! (I had recently done some work on my Lugia and thought I might have a shot.)
I was rewarded with a crappy ** Machamp for this, but I was still happy. Plus I now know that I can handle him, so I can maybe get more if I see them.

On the plus side, I did get a Fast TM thingy. I used it on my Hundo Magnezone and got him Spark to go with his Wild Charge. It seems that is the combo you want, so at least there's that.

I am not terribly social either. I am in the local Discord channel, but I mostly check it to see if there's interest in fivestar raids. I have done two out of the Three trades, but only because locals became Lucky friends with me. I have a third local Lucky friend now so I will probably get it done when I run into him.
It was very nice when they introduced PvP online though, I got the battle tasks done in no time.

I liked it because I was able to earn a bunch of Charged TMs and fix up some of my guys who had good CP but not the best movesets.

I have Hundos of Snorlax, Golem, and Magnezone who are all now rocking what I'm told* are the best combos. (Lick/Hyperbeam, Rock Throw/Stone Edge, and Spark/Wild Charge respectively.)

Speaking of that, can anyone explain to me briefly why/how certain combos are better than others. Like, on Magnezone I went from an electric power (Charge Beam) marked as 8 to an electric power (Spark) marked as 6, yet the new one is supposedly the better one to have. Is it a speed thing or something? Like with the 6 I can charge the big attack faster maybe?

Also, now that this Battle League is around and I can earn some cool stuff with that, is it a smart idea to keep some guys at lower levels to compete in that rather than buff them up for raids and such?
Example, a field research task (defeat three grunts, maybe?) got me a 15/15/13 Espeon. That's a pretty nice build, so part of me wants to pump him up to be beefy, but I took him to 1486 and stopped, figuring that he might be good in Great League battles (the 1500 capped one).
FWIW, I also have a 15/11/15 Espeon sitting at 1075, so I *could* bring him up to 1500ish.
I kinda like having higher CP eevee things as they seem to get a good bang for the buck.




* - looking at a site called pokemon dot gameinfo dot io.

Hmm...looks like I'm now only given Ultra league as an option, so the 1,500 point cap is now kinda moot.

But I suppose the same question applies. Do people hold back characters to <2,500 for the Ultra league?

BTW, got a shiny Skarmory with decent IV from today's fights, so that's nice.

Been a while since my last visit here. I've actually been playing more because of the on-game pvp, even though pvp hadn't appealed to me previously. In any case...some things I wanted to comment on:

1. Someone had mentioned their buddy not getting a heart for being on the raid team. I'm not sure if that has changed, but fyi, you can put it in the line-up for a battle with any of the team leaders and it will count. You don't even have to finish the battle, you can just leave the battle as soon as it loads.

2. Tier 3 raids are the limit for solo play. All of them except Shuckle (who isn't around in raids right now) can be done solo. Its just a matter of finding the right counters, giving them the right move-sets and powering them up to the appropriate levels. If you're running out of time, it usually means that you need to level a couple (or more) of them up a little bit.

3. In PVP, for the most part, you actually want bad IV's for your Pokemon. More specifically, you usually want low attack, high def and/or stamina ones. This is because the attack stat is weighted more heavily in calculating the Pokemon's CP and thus a lower attack stat will have a lesser effect on the CP, which in turn means you can power the Pokemon to a slightly higher level. There are a few exceptions like Bastidon, but that's because those Pokemon max out at a certain cp (just over 1500 in Bstidons case), so having high IV's would actually be desireable in those cases.

3a. The league type for the in-game league, from what I understand will switch between the 3 available in the game (great, ultra, maser). So you will want to have Pokemon for each league. Also, because of the CP cap, Pokemon that are never used become kings of battle. For instance Azumerill is one of the best in great league, but you would never see it in raids, or as serious gym defenders.

4. "Ideal" move-sets are usually thought of as such because of a combination of dmg over time, and how quickly/often you can use your charge move. However, a key thing to note is that "ideal" for raids/gym battles usually is not the same as "ideal for PVP. And that even when referring to gym battles, the "ideal" set could vary depending on if you are the attacker or defender.

I've been using a sight called gamepress for my pvp info and its helped soooo much. For the most part I'm almost always coming out of the 5 battle match with a positive w/l record and I've had a couple times where I've actually won all 5 matches. Of course its just in the free battle arena (the one that doesn't require a premium pass), but I'm really happy with my results even if my rare candy supply has almost all been used up.
I've also been using GoStadium to check the IV's before powering any of them up. Unfortunately I've been only collecting high IV Pokemon, so I'm working with the best I have, which should be just fine unless you are planning to be ultra-competitive in PVP. And if you want to learn more about PVP, there's a guy called PoGoKeing I've heard has some of the best videos on Youtube. Again, I wasn't interested much in PVP prior to this, so I never watched his vids. But now that I'm actually battling, I can appreciate the intricacies and strategies involved. It might look like just a lot of mindless tapping with some fruit ninja mixed in, but it goes deeper than that.

And in non-PoGo gaming news, I've been playing a lot of Legends of Runeterra and Battletech also.

Apologies for the text wall. :D

All good information.

Because I don't do a ton of raids, I don't generally earn many of the TMs to switch around powers willy nilly, so I'll probably go with what is ideal for raids. (Yeah, that seems to be contradictory, but I don't plan to go hog wild with PVP, so most of the fighting I'll do will still be raids.)

Went out for raid hour last night and finally got a Thundurus. Four of them to be exact. Could have stopped after the first one, though. It was a 98% and it only got worse from there! (Not that there was much room for improvement)

Community day! In the dead of winter it is probably the one time most of us go out to do anything in this game. I don't know about you guys but I am "Excited" for this CD just because it is a more loved pokemon than some of the others and Niantic is giving it as a community day instead of some special weekend event like they did with Machop.

SLVRSR4: I hope you don't have to work today and get to enjoy some of it.

Safari Zone Philadelphia in May.
That is close to many of us. Anyone going? Anyone want to go but probably can't?

Despite being only a 3 hour drive for me I am sure I cannot go. #2 is going to be a few weeks old and the wife would probably look at me cockeyed just for suggesting it.

Realized that it was Community Day, so I checked my phone, saw a Rhyhorn in my front yard, and it turns out to be a near-max CP hundo. Of course, I grabbed it for the kid, too, but we only got a single shiny between us for the whole day. Kinda hard to *not* go downhill from there, though.

Nice! Getting anything about 90% on Community Day is hard unless the pokemon is a reward for a field research.

I was able to get out for an hour and got 6 shinies. I dig the copper color and how hte Rhyperior looks like Mr.T.

Managed to beat Giovanni. Now I guess I get to start the whole thing over?

Your guess is as good as mine. I have not been paying a lot of attention to the game though I still play daily and get out for community day.