Don't get ridiculous with this please
* 3 Months of Regis (Garbage)
* 1 month of dud mewtwo (No shadow ball, dud)
* 2 months of dex fillers and going (Giratina, Cresselia)
This is just outright filth. Did they just want to destroy raid pass sales or something? Also to put a coup de grace on the already bad situation the new Tier 2-4 pokemon are barely worth raiding, they are more likely related and associated with back alley trash cans.
I wouldn't even spend any passes past the first 3 days at this point. This isn't a raid rotation, it's just filth and despair and that's it.
If they have to make us stop raiding anything or making us fall into despair like Junko did to Hope's Peak High they had done an excellent job, but for a marketing policy it is as effective as trying to sell rotten fish in a market.
Answers
Devil's advocate, having a complete turd of a T5 boss is going to keep people indoors, i.e. not playing. Last year we had Ho-Oh and the weather trio for the winter months which kept people active in the game despite the frigidity of winter. It's gonna be a long winter with sunken profits for Niantic if the boss after Cresselia isn't a total banger.
I agree a lot. Last year, just before Kyogre came out, weather in Poland went bonkers, and clear weather coupled with mild temperatures turned into Arctic Circle. The first day was an awful blizzard, and guess what? During an one-hour home return I've met three different groups of around 10 people in completely random places convinced to drop out of the bus/subway into the snow, because there was a great raid to do. I've only had similiar luck during Mewtwo raids.
Don’t know what country but try raiding in -15 degrees Celsius combined with 3h light a day. Add to that that Phones regullary shuts down due to the low temperature below -10 and you get the picture. Your only real options is using multiple accounts at gyms accessible from indoors.
Most players did catch a ho-oh first 3 days and didn’t bother after that; ho-oh was really a pain in the ass.
At least you have sunlight. The sun is below the horizon here, and will be like that for the next two months.
It is possible to play in cold and windy weather. Use heating elements inside wool mittens (cut or knit a hole to take out the fingers in the palm, and use fingertipless wool gloves inside the mittens. Heating elements are also great inside your boots if you are outside 8-10 hours playing non stop. Of course proper warm clothes otherwise also.
Worst weather in my opinion is the combination of windy and heavy rain just above freezing.
Defensive Legendaries wouldn't be seen as garbage if this game had proper balance between attack & defence & you could use their strength to your advantage. Everything is about attack, the one decent defender you could put in a gym gets nerfed badly, everyone is swimming in top class attacking mons with little to do with them and we have all these top defensive Legendaries that are completely useless. No other game I know has such little thought to balancing, no wonder trainers are getting bored.
While there's too much whining in this post (Mewtwo w/o SB a dud? You had a month to get the single most powerful Psychic attacker without hopping on a lottery every week to MAYBE get a pass for 45 minutes and that's bad?) I kinda agree, that current rotation is especially boring.
Giratina wasn't exciting, and Cress simply looks like a weak Lugia, which, especially considering the competition in Psychic department which can make a 30-minute walk more rewarding, AND the weather, means the Regi scenario (too hard to take down with 3-5 random people, too useless to drag out a good squad after more than a week)
I would just move to soloing tier 3's, but there's nothing meta-relevant or just cool, except an easy Scyther (maybe Jolteon, but it's too easy to get a much better one considering the difficulty of the raid) There always used to be at least one Pokemon (Machamp, Alakazam, Gengar, heck, even Porygon considering it's evolution right now) worth and possible for soloing, and I hope it's going to come back after the event.
Don't forget that Mewtwo raids got you Mewtwo candy for the SB Mewtwo you did have (assuming you had any). I took one from 20 to near max before needing to drop any rares on it. I'll admit that the Regis and Giratina were less than exciting to say the least but people take the "If it's not the best it's shit" mentality too far.
To me, not the "uselessness" is frustrating. It's rather the fact, that it's much harder to participate in any T5 raid when the boss is both just a dex entry AND it's high Def one, meaning you won't do it with one-two random level 30+ players and some kids eager to get any legendary. Much less "hardcore players" are going to move out to get it, when they already caught one for the entry, and the rest will give up, because without the former they need much more people to show up.
I feel that. I'm guessing even within my own raid group interest will die off after a week when everyone has one or two. It's a shame that defensive Pokemon have no niche in Go because raids like this become tiring quick.
EDIT: Defensive *legendaries have no niche. Non-legends can be placed in gyms at least, for what that's worth.