Building a team

It's really unfortunate but you won't easily find people to do T4 raids. I believe T3 raids right now are irrelevant, only noteworthy is Jynx cause she holds the best Ice dps right now (surpassed by Mewtwo but that's a legendary and needs rare candies). It's a soloable raid but even if you can't there's a chance you will convince someone else to help you. There's also Alakazam who is harder than Jynx but is also obviously outclassed by Mewtwo as a Psychic attacker
T4 raids on the other hand will need 3 people at least since you just returned and you don't have the supreme counters to 2-man them. The most important T4 raid is Tyranitar. Absol and Houndoum probably have some use but are far less important. Your best bet is to propose a Tyranitar raid a day that there are only a few people from your group available and you might not be able to defeat a Mewtwo. Generally everyone is doing Mewtwo raids and he has been a T5 raid for two weeks. Perhaps late October people will be bored of Mewtwo raids and you'll find more people to do T4

Raid boss list now is Psychic-heavy with the exception of T4 Dark types. Gengar has the best dps against psychic types but he is fragile and dies very quickly if the boss has Confusion. Tyranitar is excellent. If they are available in your area, Houndooms are a budget choice until you get the former two.
Meanwhile you should have some fighting types to beat the dark bosses, Machamp is the fighting king, Hariyama is a bulky alternative.
Ultimate goal should be level 30+ Mewtwos, Tyranitars and Machamps. If you find someone willing to trade with you legacy SC Gengar or SB Mewtwo add them to the ultimate team.

Hope this helps!

Building up towards soloing tier 3 is one of the main goals of the current game.

Tier 4 is more problematic. You need at least a second attacker; duoing is the goal for this tier. But Tyranitar was about the only boss people went for in this tier. And after months of raiding and one community day about everyone has all the Tyranitars and candy he will ever want. I guess you will need to find a second new or returned player for this. Or create a second account and become a duo team by yourself; I do not like this, but many players are doing it nowadays.

The key to duo Tyranitar is fighters, with Machamp in first place. You will need at least a few of them in both teams. Besides catching them, which depends on biome and events, Machamp is obtained from tier 3 raids. In order to solo those, you need Psychics and Psycho-Fairies: Mewto, Psiana, Alakazam, Gardevoir.

Exeggutor is an easy and useful tier 2 [fixed typo] solo. It is the best currently available Grass attacker (since you can no longer get Venusaur with Frenzy Plant), a decent Psychic attacker (though Espeon is also easy to acquire and Alakazam is strictly better) and even a decent gym defender (if the gym already has a Blissey).

If Magikarp is common in your area, get a Gyarados (with Waterfall + Hydro Pump) as soon as possible.

Eventually you want a Blissey (best gym defender), a few Machamps (most important gym attacker), a few Tyranitars (most useful raid attacker), a Dragonite or two, relevant legendaries and the resources (stardust, Rare Candy and TMs) to make them great.

In addition to what has already been said, eeveelutions are still very good and very accessible attackers. A great step to better pokemon.

Also, trading is a thing now. When trading, there is a small chance than your pokemon get lucky, meaning they will cost half the stardust to power up. The great thing is, while you have less than 10 luckies, every pokemon caught in july or august 2016 is a guaranteed lucky when traded! And when a traded pokemon gets lucky, the other one as well. Hold on to your old pokemon and find people to get great trades! Tyranitar with smack down is legacy (was only available during community day) so it's a must have.

Also, get ready for october 21st: Beldum community day!

Another way to help build your in-game team is to build your community team.

I know you said you found a Whats App group. Try asking directly "hey, I could use some stronger counters, are people able to help me?"

They will absolutely have 'Mons they are willing to trade you (either starters like Gastly or Machop, or fully evolved Gengar, machamp, etc,) and since you are just coming back, you will get luckys with high stats that can be powered up with less stardust.

Plus, they can give advice on useful counters, and these are the people who can help you raid for more useful additions. They may even be up for helping you with raids you can't solo yet. I would gladly help a newbie or returning player do Machamp raids, etc.

Welcome back and good luck!

There is a very easy way to build a team: Trading. You have just come back, you have pokemon from 2016 = you have 10 guaranteed lucky pokemon. You only need friends willing to get rid of their spare pokemon. What to aim for?
- Machamp
- Machamp
- Machamp
- Tyranitar
- Tyranitar
- Tyranitar
At this point you are basically set. You may trade also double rock golem as a very useful counter for legendary birds, etc.

The other way (if trading is not an option). Complete as many Mewtwo raids as you can. When you have 6 Mewtwo with psychic wait for machamp to come back to T3 raids. Start soloing machamps with you 6 level 20 mewtwo and build a team of 6 good machamp. When you have achieved this, find a partner to duo tyranitar raids whit your 6 level 30 machamps. At this point you are basically set.

It depends on what you like. If you're a collector, just go for rare stuff and trade with other people for the stuff you missed.

If you like raiding, then you need teams for the raid bosses you want to fight. Most of it was covered above, so I'll suggest that you read the game press pages for the boss you want to fight. For example, best counters for Mewtwo are:

Gengar with Shadow Ball (SB). Fragile, but high damage output. Shadow claw attack (legacy now, great if you have it) is best, and also has very high trade value. Hex and Sucker Punch both work too.

Mewtwo with SB. Now legacy, since you can't get or CTM to SB. If you have some (doubt it), then you can power them up with the candy you earn on raids. Very effective against Mewtwo that doesn't have SB (which is all of them, now).

Tyranitar with Bite/Crunch. Very effective against Mewtwo that don't have Focus Blast. Otherwise very tough option for Mewtwo raids.

Houndoom with Snarl/Foul Play. Similar to Tyranitar, but a slight downgrade in damage and toughness.

etc. Decide what raids you want to do, and get a team for them. It's partly a bootstrap problem.

Also, as was mentioned above, you can trade pokemon for each other, and if the one you trade away is from July or August of 2016, the trade is guaranteed to go lucky until you have 10 lucky pokemon. Lucky pokemon have a minimum IVs of 12, and take half the dust to power up. Very easy to get them high level quickly, and the worst possible lucky is 12/12/12, which while it isn't great, is certainly serviceable. Average is closer to 13/13/14, which is quite strong.

Quests are also helpful. You'll especially want to focus on certain encounter quests. Hatch 5 eggs for a Chansey is very good, you can evolve it into a Blissey and defend gyms, etc.

The game has added many more features since you left. Have fun with it, and figure out what you like.

Easy to get pokemon depend largely on biome, so heres a list
Machop, magikarp, makuhita, eevee (espeon,flareon,jolteon), abra, geodude, exeggcute, houndour (only consider using dark type moves on houndoom), gastly (if you could get your hands on a shadow claw gengar it would be ideal), ralts (okay kinda rare, but mostly used on machamp solos and that isnt too big)
You can get Exeggutors and Magikarps from raids and also dratini from the quest evolve 10 water pokemon, so start pinaping every water mon you see. Machop quest is battle in a gym 5 times, magikarp quest is catch 10 pokemon, there should be quests for a couple of others too.

What you should be aiming for
Kyogre, Dark Tyranitar (legacy Gengar too), Smack down Tyranitar (legacy) (Golem can fill in), Machamp (Hariyama too), Dragons (Rayquaza, Dragonite, Salamence), Groudon and Exeggutors/Venusaur(legacy c.day), earthquake Groudon for heatran too but that's what TMs are for, Raikou, Moltres- Entei (Charizard c.day and Flareon), Ice beam Mewtwo in case Rayquaza returns (other options are Lapras, Jynx, Warlein Cloyster and Piloswine, none all that good).

Mons to start collecting candy now in preparation for gen 4 (meta relevant ones)
Rhydon, swinub, electabuzz, magnemite, togepi, tangela, eevee, sneasel, murkrow

Community day hopefuls
Beldum (fixed day already, get organised), torchic, treecko, mudkip.

Also what others said about trading and guaranted luckies.

You've got really good advice here. I was 1 year off, but felt the same back then. So this is my contribution:

- Join a raid group. Search in FB, Discord, whatsapp groups, notice people around you, they're somewhere there. It's ok, in the beginning you will only do T5 raids, but hey, It's Mewtwo. With just about 2-3x L30 good Mewtwo you already have a 1-size-fits-all pokemon (Psychic master, Ice top attacker and good Electric).
- Once packed with Mewtwo, you can build up a team to beat Machamp on your own (he'll be back, I'm telling you). Today the Psychic event starts, get a squad of good Alakazam.
- Once you have a squad of Machamps, everything gets easier. Short-men T4 like Tyranitar and Absol, wipe gyms for coins, etc.
- Take advantage of your 2016 guaranteed luckies, trade with someone a beefy CD mon like FP Venusaur or BB Charizard. In my community this is the sort of "gift" we give newcomers or returning players for joining us.

One final note: alt accounts. It violates the terms of service, but god it makes building teams faster. If you help yourself, then T3's are a piece of cake, and you'll manage a good team to face them on your own quickly.