From a cave north of Dewford to your Raid Lobby, the Ice giant Regice is Thundering into raids this week. Let’s do a brief overview of the glacial titan and go over the best counters for it, the best non legendary counters, and then budget raid counters.
Regice: The Antarctic Anomaly
Regice is a Legendary Pokémon first discovered in the Hoenn region. It is a pure Ice type. This means that it takes super effective damage from Steel, Rock, Fighting and Fire type damage. It resists…Ice type damage (Ice as a defensive type womp womp). With a Tier 5 raid HP of 15000, you’ll want at least 3 trainers to beat this boss. It’s one of those raids where trios are certainly doable and not even risky if you know what you’re doing, but can still require work and relobbying. 4 trainers on the other hand makes for a fairly cozy time. Also, the trio can become dodgy when using suboptimal counters so I’ll just go ahead and leave my trainer suggestion at 4+, with the understanding that it is certainly trioable.
Should we raid this?
Before we dive into what Pokémon to build and bring for this raid, it’s probably a good idea to answer the question: is it worth raiding? The answer is: at least somewhat yeah it is. Regice is not a major player in Masters. Ice is legitimately one of if not THE worst defensive typings in Masters and even Regice’s powerful array of coverage nukes and access to the Fast Move Lock-On is not enough to overcome this fatal frozen flaw.
It’s much much better in Ultra League, coming in at rank 25 in PvPoke’s Ultra rankings. The Ice typing isn’t as much of a liability there (though it’s still a hindrance) and the lesser bulk makes Regice’s nukes more impactful.
So where does this leave us? Your Pokecoins can breath a sigh of relief. There’s no need to grind this raid for the hundo or the 296 XL for level 50. This should be welcome news after the wallet walloping that was the back to back raid cycles of Reshiram and Zekrom. I’d say it is still worth having some to flip for PvP IVs for Ultra, so using your free passes and maybe a few extra would still be wise. It has its exclusive move Thunder right now, so that ups the raid value as it saves a potential EliteTM down the road.
Enough overview and appetizers. Time for the main course. Let’s get in to the raid counters.
Premium Raid Counters: Mashing with Metagross
Let’s not bury the lead. Shadow Metagross is the unequivocal MVP of these Regice raids. No interesting debate or investigation to be had there.
But what you MIGHT find interesting, is how well even a level 40 Shadow Metagross performs when compared to these same level 50 attackers.
You’re reading that correctly. A level 40 Shadow Metagross, no XLs, is just barely worse than the level 50 Shadow Legendary Moltres, and outperforms all the other level 50 counters. That’s insane value. If nothing else, I hope this convinces you to level up at least a couple to 40 for raids this week.
Non Legendary Options
Budget/Makeshift options
Maybe you just don’t have a lot of raid stuff to work with. Maybe you’re trying to help locals, friends, or family cobble together effective raid teams. Here’s a table of decent non-shadow options that I could see people happening to have from Community Days, events, and seasonal spawns.
Given Shadow Metagross’ dominance in this raid, it only stands to reason that good old regular Metagross would take the top spot among Community Day/Event Pokémon. But if you don’t have one, there’s still plenty of good accessible options including recent Community Day recipient, Chandelure.
A Mega Moment: Great Balls of Fire
Conclusion
Just use Shadow Metagross. Given how well a level 40 Shadow Metagross fares amongst the pool of level 50 counters, I can't imagine spending a ton of resources building different Pokémon for this raid. I’ve laid out a lot of good options for trainers lacking in the Shadow Metagross department, but don’t overthink this. Shadow Metagross. EZ. I hope you have a great Lunar New Year event and a radical Regice raid cycle!