Using Nanabs to catch Legendaries

Seriously? 🤔

When did you start playing?

There was a very prominent myth during the first few montof legendary raids that alternating nanab and golden razzberries would "guarantee" your catch. Googling "alternating nanab" will bring up posts about and debunking it.

Nanab berries are the one berry that have a lingering effect. When you use a nanab berry, it reduces the pokemon's movement by 80%. ( The chance of using an attack, jump, or dodge, not the speed at which those animations play). After you hit the pokemon with a ball and this initial effect wears off, its movement continues to be reduced by 20% (IIRC).

One YouTuber demonstrated this lingering effect of nanabs. Another YouTuber then declared that alternating nanab and golden razzberries gave him a 100% catch rate for legendary pokemon. ...ignoring and not mentioning the fact that he was also using curballs and hitting every throw in a fairly small excellent catch circle. He implied it was some sort of bug that he was exploiting. People watching this thought they could do alternating nanab/razz part without knowing about the importance of curve balls and accuracy.

Nanab berries help you to hit the pokemon and hit within the catch circle. If you are not good at the later posted method of waiting and throwing during the end of an attack animation, then starting your first throw with a nanab could be beneficial. The two methods are kind of working against each other though. It will be longer waiting for an attack after using a nanab.

I don’t usually use nanas on anything but feeding gyms. I don’t find nanabs to be that good when catching anything. I wouldn’t be using nanabs instead of goldens if I were you. Golden razzes are the best thing to use when catching these legendaries or rare Pokémon.

DON'T PRESS OK!!!

The only use of Nanabs for catching is if you have trouble timing your throws and need the raid boss to calm down. Sufficient patience completely gets rid of this need, which means nanabs should only go to feeding gyms.

It's superstition. If you catch a few more legendaries under a Nanab's effect it's easy to see why one may think the rate is up, but it's just luck.

Don't get me wrong, alternating berries WAS proven to increase catch rates. However, by the time this secret got out it was patched (midway through Zapdos as I remember).

People that still do this are just lowering their catch rate. They may catch more than others that use Golden Razz, but these are simply instances of luck.

I'm not trying to sound mean or anything. This superstition is sweeping my school's new players from some of the holdouts and I'm trying to put an end to it.

Solid snake, do you use the method where you set your circle to an "excellent" size and throw while the legendary is completing an attack?

If so, all a nanab will do is make the legendary attack less frequently and thus make you wait around longer to throw at it (which could prove frustrating with one like kyogre that moves side to side and you're not comfortable throwing at it unless it's centered).

But psychologically, it may help, and if it seems to work and you don't mind "wasting" a non-golden razz throw, keep doing it.

Use Nanab? Pinap works better.

I do tend to see a higher catch rate when alternating between berries.
Just today, on a Lapras, (not a legendary I know, but still hard to catch), I used golden 4 times, then used a pineapp and got it.

On the topic of Suicune, I remember I went and did a Suicune raid on the very first day it came here, I used a nanab berry just for lols on my first ball and caught it. That was the only Suicune raid I did.