G’day PoGO lovers! If anyone has attempted to do any raiding in recent weeks, you may have noticed something a little bit… different about the state of the game. Without notice, Niantic rolled out some MASSIVE changes to the functionality of raid battles, completely changing the PvE scene and introducing a wave of consequences as a result!
New Raid Mechanics

Let’s Get Back to Basics

For those looking for more information about the new raid mechanics, we have broken this down in depth for you here. At a high level, the main updates to the structure of raid battles are:

• Raid Battles now operate based on a 0.5 second cycle;

• The duration of all moves has been rounded up or rounded down to the closest multiple of 0.5 seconds. Some moves are faster, some are slower, some are unchanged. 

• Raid bosses now appear to be using their charged moves as soon as they have enough energy to use them. Previously, the game performed a coin flip, meaning there was a 50% chance of the boss firing off their energy. Now, this appears to be a 100% outcome.

• Raid bosses appear to be receiving less energy from damage dealt to them by players.

New Top Counters

Small changes, right? Well… no. These changes have had a massive effect on the best moves, best counters, and best Raid Attackers of every type in the game, due to the updates in the speed to damage output from the new updates. Previously some of the best raid attackers in the game are now going to be left languishing on the bench as a result of the reduction in their utility. For example, Kartana was previously a top-tier Grass type attacker due to its insane DPS and attack stat, but since the changes it has dropped multiple spots in the rankings, sitting below… Meowscarada and Decidueye! I almost can’t believe it’s true, and there will be countless other examples just like it. 

Maybe this is an intentional consequence? Maybe Niantic wanted to shake up the PvE scene, but just not give the player base a heads up this was going to happen? For better or worse, players will now be looking to reinvest their resources into the newly crowned top tier raid attackers.

New Raid Bugs

Sadly, it wouldn’t be Pokémon GO if there weren’t a bunch of new glitches and bugs that emerged as a result of the game changes. 

Kyogre Dishing out the Thunder

But how is this operating in practice? If you’ve tried to take on any Yveltal or Kyogre raids in recent weeks, you may have noticed that the bosses have become a LOT spammier than before!

If we review the new mechanics above, we can see that raid bosses will fire off their charged moves as soon as they have the energy for them. So, even if they are receiving less energy from damage dealt to them than before (how much less is to be ascertained), because they are firing off their charged moves 100% of the time, this means they are now dishing out WAY more damage to players.

Edit: according to this Reddit post, this has reverted back to a 50% chance. However, with the new mechanic of raid bosses using their energy as soon as they have it, we are still seeing much more aggressive raid bosses than before the changes.

X (previously Twitter) has been lighting up with examples of Kyogre’s dishing out wave after wave of Surfs, Blizzards and Thunders to raid groups – meaning that even with groups of 20 players, players need to relobby multiple times to defeat the raid boss. When you factor in the fact that their energy stacks based on the number of players in the raid, it makes sense that fully lobbied raid battles are finding it a lot more challenging to defeat the bosses. 

• Kyogre throwing 7 Thunder’s in a row

• Kyogre and broken Blizzards

Hit With No Warning

Even if we take the previous mechanic as a potentially intended consequence – there are so many visual (and potentially game changing) bugs that have emerged as a result. 

A few examples of these include:

• Phantom moves from raid bosses – in particular, Kyogre have been spamming out Surf’s without any warning for players, with no animation and no visual warning of the attack. This is making it impossible to dodge raid boss charge attacks;

• The dodging mechanic appears to be inconsistent at best, broken at worst. Fast dodging of multiple steps used to be straight forward, but now only one step at a time is possible, and due to the new timing of charged move damage received, it has become incredibly challenging to actually dodge moves at all;

• Raid bosses throwing their charged move as their fast move – this particular glitch appears to be a lot less prevalent, but still a huge issue! 

Perhaps it is just the Kyogre raids that are broken (Yveltal raids felt broken too but less impactful than Kyogre), but it requires immediate remediation. It will be interesting to see how Niantic handle these issues going forward, given their current tendency to remain hush on any issues until the noise becomes too great, rather than being on the front foot.

Where did my Mega Go?

Mega raid bosses and mega evolved trainer Pokémon have been battling with their base stats only, not their mega evolved form stats. This has meant that some Mega raids were now soloable, such as Mega Kanghaskhan and Mega Salamence – which was previously not the case. This appears to have been a temporary bug that is resolved, allowing players to use their mega evolved Pokémon for good (not just XL candy buffs).
The Fallout

Overall, we’ve got a completely new PvE game to contend with, our top raid attackers we’ve previously invested in are no longer as powerful, and legendary raids are now MUCH MUCH harder to contend with (not to mention the bugs). I’m sceptical that this was 100% intentional, but once again it raises question marks about Pokémon GO’s testing environments and communication methods, both of which have significant room for improvement.

But the question must be asked – was this the intention of Niantic? Were 5 star raids really so easy that they needed to have their difficulty levels increased so dramatically? Sure, the raid system had become fairly stale and there have long been bugs in that system that needed to be addressed, but doing so appears to have brought a swathe of other issues along with it. Interestingly, the Falinks raid day appeared to be slightly less glitchy than Kyogre bosses have been, however the key difference is that this is a 3-star raid of a much less powerful boss that can be easily hard countered. However, even Falinks seemed to be hitting a bit harder than usual.

I feel as though this is another nail in the coffin for rural players, who already find it difficult enough to conjure the numbers to defeat the harder 5 and 6 star raid bosses in the previous system. Dishing out even more damage to players will only make it harder for players to come up with large enough groups to handle the hardest hitting legendaries.

All we can do at this point is continue to shine a light on the challenges in the current state of the game. Hopefully Niantic hears the player base and considers whether these changes are intentional outcomes of the new mechanics. A rebalance of the raid mechanics and fixing the bugs could leave us with a healthier game, and hopefully the player base isn’t washed away by rampant Kyogre in the meantime.

See ya later,

JT

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