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The fun of flying Rayquaza

For me, the event is over. I won't have another shot at legendary raids until next week some time, so I went ahead and raised my personal Ray.

I had 2 worth raising. 1 was 14/15/13, and the other... 15/10/13. The lower stat total on the later makes it worse, right? Well... I put these two in Pokebattler and found some odd results. The 14 atk was generally better, but the 10 df was never more than 1-2 seconds behind at lv40... This was also true when compared to a 100%. In fact, there were several raids where the 10 df ray had better clear-times than both the 14 atk and the 100% that I tested against. And yes, I understand that this is due to higher energy gains.

So I went with the 15/10/13. TRIED to change its moveset, but ended on dual flying every time. Meh, still raised it to 33.5 with a goal of 37 for Machamp breakpoints.

Well, today a Machamp raid appeared with Counter/HS. Before this guy I had no real chance. But with him, I figured I'd try. Led with my Gardevoir and did solid dmg, then in comes Rayquaza.

....he only lasted like 10 seconds, but those seconds were glorious. Thanks to its minimum defense, this thing spat out a constant torrent of arial aces and ate like 1/4 of the Machamp's life away. Seriously, I only had to airslash like 3x because just taking counters and dodging heavy slams was enough to keep it charged. I took it with 35 seconds on the clock.

In short: I took a subpar Rayquaza and have a subpar moveset on it (which I might keep for a while as I like being able to take EVERY Machamp variant now), and found something beautiful. Seriously, dodging around and spitting out arial aces left and right was the most fun that I've had at a raid so far =P

Asked by Raven87 years 1 month ago

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But seriously, who needs Rayquaza? I´ve got 7 lvl 30+ Dragonites plus a couple of low level 100%, 98% etc that I haven´t bothered to spend dust on.

And regarding Machamp, most people have solid teams now to beat a Machamp in any weather. Hardly worth 80 k dust to put in a Rayquaza. Plus that you don´t need to raid anymore, because I find solid level 35 Machops as soon as it´s cloudy (almost always...)

Now I´ve got a 93%, 15 attack Rayquaza so I won´t hunt anymore and will wait a while before powering up.

Have a 100% lv39 DT/OR Dragonite, a lv37 95% DT/DM Dragonite, and a 95% Bagon waiting in the wings. I'm good on dragon types, which is also why I don't care too much about getting dual dragon on my Ray. However, Ray will eventually be absolutely fantastic due to its sheer offensive power combined with the fact that every generation past gen 2 has had AT LEAST one dragon legend to date.

Honestly though, I am happy with my choice.

I know what you are talking about having 10 Dragonite at 3100 CP plus. Still even then Rayquaza can be usefull. For dps it is the best generalist in the game due to his enormous attack stat. He trades bulk for damage when comparing to Dragonite but his pure flying typ attacks and his easy accessability make him interesting. I will power up two with one as my go to Dragon in my Dragon lineup (followed by 5 Dragonite, kicking my legacy DP Dragonite out of the top 6) and one leading my flying team with 4 Dragonite and Lugia following.

Rick, obviously I don't live in your biome.

I doubt most players have 7 level 30+ Dragonites, plus others they are waiting to power up.

I almost never see Machops here. Before the Dragonite community day, I had more Dratini catches than Machop catches, and almost all the Machop catches were eggs. Machamp as a raid boss has made all the difference for me, and almost every serious player in my biome.

Oh, and the serious players here are turning in their 93% Rayquazas for candy to power up their 100s and 98s. I'm not quite that active, and will likely end up powering up my 93 when the Latis come out.

Not to belittle or dispute the way you play, but please understand that everyone's game is different. People in desert biomes don't have tons of Gyaradoses to take out Groudon with, etc. I'd love to be able to find level 35 Machops in the wild, evolve them and be set. But that's not my reality.

> I doubt most players have 7 level 30+ Dragonites
Why don't they, if they need it? During community day I was in not that span dense area and still got about 100 dratinis. In good areas I guess 150-200 was real, it's 1-1,4k candies = 5-7 evolved hatches powered up to 31.

What do you spend your dust on if not 100% dragonite and not rayquaza? If you raid several t5 every day and barely catch wild mons then yes, you could spend all dust on legendaries, but with 0-1 per day I don't get enough rc to spend noticeable part of my dust on legendaries.

Recently on 1 Groudon, 1 Kyogre and 1 Mewtwo. My point is that with 2 or 3 decent Dragonites a Rayquaza won´t add that much. Then it´s much more efficient to add another Kyogre to your team.

Do you also have over 15 Ttar above level 30 and several other larvs and pups ready to be evolved at any moment with over 2k candies gathering dust? Cuz I do. I'm not bragging even, I only have 3 Dragonite and they were caught before c-day. My point is, not everyone lives in a Dratini-rich biome and none of the ones I caught during community day were decent enough to spend dust on them. What I do have is a couple of 96IV rayquaza that I might end up maxing unless any better ones show up. Who needs Rayquaza you ask? People who have zero access to frequent Dratini spawns and that have only hatched 2 from eggs above 90%. That is certainly my case anyways.

Too bad for you, but participation on Community Day could have changed that. If you have 600 Dratini candies and a couple of decent Dratinis (everyone joining that day would easily get that), then using rare candies on Rayquaza is not efficient. Might be that DPS is slightly higher for Rayquaza, but that´s lika arguing whether Espeon or Alakazam is the preferred glass cannon against Machamp.

Last weekend I got invited to my first Ex-raid. Have 4 level 30+ Ttars and hesitated whether to evolve another one. Luckily I didn´t, since Mewtwo went down in 62 seconds, using 1,5 Tttar in my team. Still got 10 balls, maximizing everything might have given me 11 balls but it wouldn´t be to maximize my resources.

I DID participate on c-day. Best I got was an 86% and you're missing the point completely but whatever. You just sound like a dust hoarder with no sound or purpose in the game. Just reading that reply made me want to facepalm myself so hard I'd fix my bad vision by implanting my glasses onto my face.

>there were several raids where the 10 df ray had better clear-times than both the 14 atk and the 100% that I tested against.
>And yes, I understand that this is due to higher energy gains.
I doubt that it's because of energy gain. I guess it's rather because of fainting right after releasing a charge move, while higher def faint right before next charge, so in endless cycle of the same pokemon dps is higher for lower def.
I could be wrong, if somebody know common reason causing this glitch, please correct.
If you have access to step by step simulation you should be able to figure out real reason.

Glad to hear that flying Ray is useful, I'll be powering up one for my Machamp team. Looking forward to trying that.

Also, one of the tricks to handling Heavy Slam Machamp is to have a Ho-Oh with ES/BB. Ho-Oh single resists fight and steel, so every Machamp attack is resisted. The closest thing you can get to Lugia for opposing BP or HS. Not sure if Latias will be better than Ho-Oh or not; I don't think the Latis resist steel.

I have to correct your false assumption that your Ray's 10 defense somehow mattered for firing off Aerial Aces. Compared to a 15 defense Ray, yours is taking the same damage from Counter, same damage from dodged Heavy Slam and 1 more damage from undodged Heavy Slam. It is getting 1 more energy per undodged Heavy Slam, but since it can only tank 2 of those before going down, your Ray will at most generate 2 more energy during its lifetime against a Heavy Slam Machamp. I don't need to tell you that 2 energy is in most cases completely irrelevant.

I'm glad you had fun and was able to solo a moveset you couldn't before though! Against Machamp, AS/AA Rayquaza is pretty much like having an Espeon that's 25% tankier and with the advantage of a 3-bar charge move.

EDIT: And as for HS Machamp, Ho-Oh is the obvious tank for steel moves, but Kyogre is another extremely good one that can stay even with the clock and tank like a champion already at level 30. Other good tanks include Metagross (which also has great DPS), Moltres, Charizard, Raikou, Entei, Flareon and Groudon.

Had not done a Machamp in awhile, so hit up a boosted C/DP yesterday using some of the new attackers. Finished easily with 42 seconds left.
level 35 Gardevoir C/DG(boosted)
level 35 Gardevoir C/DG(boosted)
level 37 Espeon C/FS
level 36 Espeon C/FS
level 40 Mewtwo C/FB (yup)
level 40 Kyogre WF/HP

Kyogre may be boring as heck to attack with, but those Waterfalls carve off a big chunk every hit, and he's a tank for sure.

Really? Huh, didn't run the calcs. Makes me think even less of IV-elitism now.

Either way though, it was a blast to go full-on glass cannon for once. Seems like I have WAY too many 1-bar 'mons at this point.

IV-elitism is fairly pointless. It's of course preferable to have as close to 100% IV as possible but usually the difference in performance to an 82% one is unnoticeable.

Your story actually made me want to try AS/AA Ray in a Machamp raid lol. Going to do it after Friday when I power up my best Ray.

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