Rather go for great or excellent throws in raids?
Its basically a mathematical question, but assuming Im not confident with throwing excellents, but can consistently hit all but one or two great. How many excellents percentagewise do I have to hit per lets say 11 balls total to get a higher chance on average than with for example throwing 9 greats and 2 goods?
Usually I go for greats, but I've seen ppl trying excellents on Latios after three manning it on YT, so I thought about a change of strategy, once Latios rotates over to Europe. Got my perfect Latias, so I barely even try anymore there, but could use the remaining time for excellents-practice.
This question is especially important for situations where you face a high IV one, as I dont know what to do in these situations.
Answers
Hm, 3 raids are not a big sample size and apparently hitting excellents is about practice mostly.
You should try to make friends with some regular raiders, so you can organise in groups and do multiple legendary raids in a row.
I started with going for greats aswell, but when its possible to hit excellent reliably I slowly start to go for that. Down to 6 balls I would try an excellent if i were you.
The raiders around my area tend to raid a lot in the mornings when I'm sleeping, and at noon I have work to do, so that leaves me with just the evenings, when I rarely can find any raiders and we're not enough to beat legendaries.
In small raids i do try to hit excellents but in legendary ones I'd rather go for a 90% possibility of a Great than a low possibility of an Excellent.
I have only managed an excellent on a small, non-legend target maybe 3 times by now.
And it's bad enough that sometimes my ball just gets thrown later than I've released, or just falls off my finger because the game froze.
I've done some simulations before. For 14 balls.
If you throw 7/14 excellent throws, this will roughly be the same as hitting 11/14 greats.
For 5/14 excellent throws, you have to hit 8/14 greats.
At 3/14 excellents, 5 greats will do.
9/14 excellents will roughly equal 14/14 great throws. Which means that 10/14 excellents will surpass any chance you get with 14 great throws. Obviously here I'm assuming you don't miss any ball, you always hit the target.
Obviously these are just probabilities. On average, you perform better the ways I stated above.
Each throw bonus has a range of values though, not every great throw or excellent has the same multiplier, it’s a continuous value, rather than simply being nice = x multiplier, great = , and excellent = z.
A throw with the radius at 31% of the full size would be considered great and 30% would be considered excellent but would have a negligible difference.
Maybe 7 pixel perfect excellents are equivalent to 11 borderline great throws but that’s not the case for every player.
The simplest advice would be go for the most consistent throw. The relative increase in multiplier from a better throw bonus is more than negated by losing the multiplier for not hitting the inner ring.
This math is overly simplied and not fully accurate because it doesn't calculate in the ratio of what your rate is when you miss a great/excellent. But it gives a quick overview of the premise. Also assuming curve + golden
Biggest Great Circle = 4.23 (7%)
Smallest Great Circle = 5.47 (9%)
Biggest Excellent Circle: 5.53 (9%)
Small Excellent : 6.05
Okay let’s assume for simplistically sake Average Great Throw is 4.85 and Average Excellent Throw is 5.79
The key is to compare your hit rates percentage to the Above:
If you hit 90% Great Throws, you would need to hit 75%+ Excellent Throws to make it better to go for excellent.
In many cases, people are really better off hitting more average great throws then fewer excellents.
(4.85*.9 = 5.79 * .75)
Obviously try for Excellents.
On a personal level, I've caught more Legendary Pokémon with "missed" throws than with Excellents. (as in hitting the Pokémon outside the catch circle, so not even a Nice bonus) My highest IV Legendary (a 98% Latios) was caught this way. Two of my three Groudons were caught this way. I even caught a Rayquaza for my daughter when I literally dropped the phone while throwing the ball - not even a curveball on it, just a straight throw with a Golden Razz and no throw bonus.
Which isn't to say that you should stop looking for Excellent throws - the "R"NG can flip in an instant and those Excellent Bonuses can kick in. Just that it's been my personal experience that I've caught more Legendary's with missed throws than with Excellents, and I've tried the "settle for Great throws" as well and didn't notice any appreciable difference in catch rates for Legendary's. (for T4 and below, I've noticed that if I don't get a Great or higher throw, even T2 tend to jump out on me. Niantics "R"NG is weird.) So I'm always trying for Excellents on Legendary's, but not sweating it if I miss.
Excellent still gives you the best chance to catch, but consistency of good throws is probably more important overall. Some of the numbers have been crunched in the posts above, so all I can add is anecdotal evidence.
For example, with Lugia, it was difficult for me to score an excellent throw without being able to set the circle beforehand. However, it was relatively easy to get great throws on it. The strategy I used for Lugia was to try and hit it with a great throw every time rather than attempt excellent throws (and succeed one out of three or four times or so). I had only a 50% catch rate with Lugia, probably because I was relying on great rather than excellent throws.
On Latios, I have no problem landing excellent throws and thus try for one every time. I've found that Latios breaks out of a frustratingly high number of excellent throws, and most of the 9 I've caught were with one of the last 3 balls. Of those 9 though, all but one were with an excellent throw (the exception being a "critical catch" on a bad throw). Even though it has taken a lot of balls to do so, I've had a much easier go of it with Latios (caught 9 of 11) than Lugia, in part due to the barrage of excellents I consistently hit it with.
If you can master excellent throws on Latios (which is definitely doable), that should be the way to go.
