Top neutral DPS: Rayquaza or Mewtwo?
Is there a consensus on who's better? I know Mewtwo has higher attack, but their neutral movesets are have different damage and cooldowns. 110 Damage for Outrage, 100 for shadow ball. 15 for dragon tail versus 20 for confusion.
Curious if the extra 10 damage on outrage makes up for the difference in attack stat.
Answers
If you check simulations, level 40 Mewtwo/Rayquaza will actually outperform most level 30 specialists (sometimes even level 35) in many raids which means they can fill in as last spots or 2nd team members for players without that many optimized raid counters. Maxing out a top tier generalist or two can give one a lot of bang for their buck in the long run. Most people don't have infinite resources so this is quite relevant.
And for gyms high neutral damage is obviously great since it lets you efficiently destroy many different defenders without bringing dedicated specialists in.
Neutral DPS certainly has usage in the current meta.
One mewtwo or rayquaza from lvl 30 to 40 will cost 197 candies.
Three mewtwos, rayquzasas, specialist from lvl 30 to 35 will cost 192 candies.
Even if a lvl 40 rayquzasa outperforms a lvl 30 specialist the cost of
maxing out it a bad option.
having 3 lvl 35 legendaries; raikou+moltres+articuno gives way more usage than 1 lvl 40 rayquzasa in the raid meta.
The gym meta is only about potion efficiency and not timing out Blissey; Machamps and decent bulky attackers like dragonite. Catch a couple of 1000CP+ machops for not timing out and dragonite as it it has a better potion efficiency.
TL;DR:
Avoid powering up neutral DPSers for raids, its a waste of resources.
Use machamps and dragonites in gyms.
also people don't have the resources to power up 6 pokemon for each raid, powering up 1 or 2 generalists is generally a good idea as for example: for kyogre I powered up 2 raikou, had 1 jolteon and 2 eggys at high level. I had a mew2 generalist as the last slot, that was usefull for every raid, so for 192 candies I have a good counter for EVERY raid, raikou was only useful for kyogre, mew2 will always have use as resources are finite
Vs kyogre a lvl 35 mewtwo DPS performs equal that of a lvl 30 victreebel. Bellsprout is not the hardest pokemon to come by at lvl 35 with ok IVs.
EDIT:
Also, in my case. I'd say im a below average player. My raiders consists of: 3 tyranitars a 3500CP, 2x2500 gengars, 1 Pinsir and Scizor at 2600 and Powering up a 93% mewtwo. + a couple of lvl 30 legendaries.
Vs deoxy, mew, celebi, Jirachi no need for a generalist.
Vs regi-series: my 6 lvl 35 machamps will outperform any neutral DPS at lvl 40?
Vs latios/latias. Maybe could use another dragon. Got 3 dragonites so no real hurry though.
In the current raid meta Rayquaza is a top counter to itself and will also be top counter to both Lati twins.
Raikou is useless for the raid meta at the moment and for the rest of gen 3.
Articuno is top counter now but not useful later on (severely outclassed since Latis aren't double weak).
Moltres will be top counter to two of the Regis.
The thing with raid meta is that it's always changing. Right now Rayquaza happens to be a current top counter and a useful future top counter all the while being also the best generalist in the game. This heavily suggests powering it up if one has the resources and wants to go further than Dragonites can take them.
I maxed my second Dragonite solely for raids. It's been used in tens of raids including Raikou, Groudon, Kyogre, Rayquaza and in the future will find heavy use against Lati twins. Waste of resources? The exact opposite I'd say.
But now you're are talking about if (super effective) Rayquaza (and mewtwo) is meta-relevant. I'm only arguing at using them as neutral DPSers.
Im not saying Rayquaza and mewtwo are bad. They are very good. But they should not be used as neutral DPSers.
And in the upcoming raids I can't see myself using Mewtwo or Rayquaza in any scenaorios Except in a role as a spec with SE-damage.
Then you must have a very deep roster that can wield multiple teams of level 35+ counters against every upcoming raid boss in the future. That's the only situation where you could be sure that you won't have a use for a neutral generalist.
I'm not saying every player needs to max Rayquaza and Mewtwo as generalists either. But I don't think you can deny that a raid generalist is an extremely good investment for a player more limited in resources. Some players can't even bring out full teams of 6 top counters and a powered up generalist would improve all their raid teams for a much lower cost than powering up multiple specialists for different raids.
I think they are mostly equal. Shadow Ball sucks for lifting at the gym. Dragon type takes it for overall usefulness, no? doesn't Blissey's normal fairy type negate resistance to Dragon? Just saying that overall ghost is less universally useful than say Dragon or Psychic type attacks. don't these two give the best overall coverage?
