Has anyone else seen bizarre raid counters that make your question everything?
I went to a Lapras raid last night. As my Jolteon was hopelessly hopping around the screen trying not to be 2-shot by back to back ice beams, I saw one of my fellow battlers using a Cloyster. I mean, really? Is there a worse choice against Lapras? Is the autoselect even that bad? How much more knowledgeable am i than the average pogo player?
And all this is after I took on a Croconaw (for the candies). I planned on going solo, but to my surprise, a level 34 and level 37 player joined the lobby. Awesome! This will go even faster than I thought! I bring my maxed for my level (33) BS/SoB Exxegutor and the battle ends quickly. And despite both other players being instinct and I mystic, I got the damage bonus. I'm not complaining, but it just makes me question things.
Anyone else have experiences like this?
Answers
Yup. But it has to be said that in my town, I am the only raid player so far above level 31 (I'm 35). Most are in the 20's. Some are totally clueless, so I try to teach them a few things. Others have some grasp of the fact that for instance Exeggutors are good against Vaporeons, but will miss that it depends on the moveset.
So the result is that before every battle I make some general suggestions to the group about which mons would be most effective. I keep it short and simple. Some players are so low level that it is simply a matter of picking their few decent mons almost irrespective of typing and movesets.
I was at a Jolteon raid today where one of the players attacked with a Gyarados. I'm sure he was proud of his Gyara and we were plenty of people so the Jolteon died very fast, but yeah, that's the level of insight we're dealing with! Either that or he figured that Gyara should finally have his revenge on Jolteon!
Same as your experience and JHVS. Most players are clueless, or at the very least, don't know the basic counters. Remember all of the arguments about defenders only being as good as their worst matchup? Turns out that may not be the case, as the average player really doesn't have a clue. And this includes high level players...
Yup. I remember someone on the net actually studied which pokemon real life players used to attack a variety of defenders with and it made very little sense. I think most people just use their highest cp pokemon for attacking regardless of typing.
Another thing that is puzzling is how many people are placing good attackers in gyms these days. I have heard many people at raids complain that they can't use their TTar/Dragonite/Eggy/Rhydon/Espeon because it is stuck in a gym. People just shouldn't put their strong attackers in gyms, period. Tyranitars, Machamps, Alakazams and Gengars in gyms? C'mon. Gyms are for Blissey and Snorlax if you are in a high activity area and for whatever non-attackers you get a kick out of showing off if you are in a slow area.
Usually, if the gyms are already stacked, I've started putting "rare" mons in gyms so people like to give them berries (me included)...Stuff like Ampharos, Porygon, Corsola, Unown, Machamp (Bp/Hs), etc...
Helps team get 1% chance for candies...course, do a raid and get 0-8 candies (in multiples of 2 it looks like).
This is completely true...Even high level (37+) players are totally clueless...
Wife and me were in a raid with 3 others...all were rival teams, after barely winning the battle, me and wife (the damage bar) did pretty much the full damage bar. The 2 that were on the same team did less damage than the solo guy. I have no clue how that is even possible...
They were also the highest level players and looking at their profile, they had more battles than me even.
In short, 2 players did near triple the damage of 3 players of equal/higher levels.
In all fairness, the game loves to preselect Blissey for raids making people think that it is a great counter to whatever raid mon they're facing.
Another good reason for keeping Blissey busy watching over a gym.
EDIT: Doesn't always work, as the game will happily choose Chansey as well, if it is looking for psychic attackers.
Some people don't know that there is such a thing as a charge move and more people don't know that you can dodge. I had a level 29 player ask me yesterday what dodging was when somebody mentioned it.
In all fairness, many of the early PoGo articles didn't mention either charge move or dodging and said that battling was all about tapping the screen as fast as you can, which is nonsense. I remember being confused about those articles when I started playing the game in february.
In the first month or so of the game, most quick moves had better DPS than a lot of charge moves. The big example, Vaporeon with either Water Pulse or Aqua Tail was better off just spamming Water Gun. A lot of the spreadsheets have columns comparing damage using just quick move and damage weaving quick and charge moves just for this comparison.
It looks like there are many new players that know little about the game the other day i was trying to solo a muk but someone sneaked in and threw his venomoth in there and the other day somebody was using a scyther against drago while fighting a gym. I knda like to see that there are other players at least trying because id rather see an actual player that knows little than a spoofer that knows a lot.
Oh my god I took part in a level 4 raid which had blastoise. There were 4 other trainers and 3 of them were using gyarados and vaporeons! Of course it wouldn't be successful and so we tried a total of 5 times but they still kept using water types!
I was so frustrated. Totally a waste of my raid pass.
I think a good number of people just take whatever the game autoselects good or bad.
The wife and I did a raid against a Bayleef and for both of us the game selected 6 Rhydons despite having a max level DT/H draggy and many flareons. No idea why it would pick the Rhydons unless it was because some had megahorn?
