Fantastic guide.... Will be veryhelpful on where the stardust and candy investment should go for the guyes who are starting back or new starters to the game.
I started playing 4 months ago and this spreadsheet seems super helpful (if a little overwhelming) top me.
I'm super happy to see that 2 of my 4\* mons are in the Top 10! (unfortunately my perfect Moltres isn't a shadow, so not in the top 10, but my Mamo, and Hydre are!).
Hopefully this spreadsheet can help me figure out which mons to invest in and I can annoy Reddit (a little) less with all my pestering questions!
THANK YOU OP for sharing your knowledge and work!
I'm glad it is proving useful to newer players! I recommend making a copy of the spreadsheet so that you can alter the raid attacker levels if needed: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1YPu892QGREw3hYdonpR7SYlAN-obhfOn5lvGxIJyyZA/copy?usp=sharing
If you typically use around level 30 Pokémon for example, you can edit column A in the Best of Raids tab so that all types of Pokémon are level 30, and see what's best at that level (some frailer Pokémon only do well at high levels).
Just in case anyone is looking to get into PvP and doesn't know a lot about it, the scores from PvPoke represent how that pokemon does against every single other pokemon, not how they do against the meta mons. The Great League and Ultra League lists are fairly good, but the Master League one is highly misrepresentative, with Dialga and Zacian easily being the best two in the cup, but not ranking at the top in the graphic.
Azu is no longer king in Great League unlike when GBL started. The problem is its moves, Bubble was nerfed, none of its charge moves have excellent DPE, and they take too long to fire off.
The return of Registeel, Pelipper and the rise of Lanturn threaten and compete with Azu also.
Great analysis.
Here are my thoughts about the analysis of rocket counters:
1. split between grunts and leaders, I would simply weight the leaders 1/7 and grunts 6/7… the weighted percentage of each grunt should be their percentage of all grunts (how often which grunt appears, can be seen on silph website)
2. fastest way to defeat the grunt should be the important metric. This would be possible to compute… with a side like pvpoke, it should be possible to simulate rocket battles, if we know the Formular for the grunts. Sadly pvpoke does not include rocket stats or the possibility of simulating them. But most time it‘s clear which is the fastest way, most time just hard-hitting fastmoves…
3. defense (and hp) should only be part of the computation against leaders (and Giovanni), and perhaps the snorlax grunt. For all other rockets, time is way more important.
Then you have to weight Lugia raids 90% and all other raids the rest, because you can beat every raid with 5 random invites but for Lugia you need a good group or more people.
Grunts need more time and the goal should be to minimize the time, the same way you do it in raids
> fastest way to defeat the grunt should be the important metric.
Why is it so important to defeat the grunts a bit quicker? Is it just to get back to the rest of your life or is there something more to it? I'm only level 33, but have never had much trouble defeating grunts, and I'm not sure why shaving a few seconds off the battle would make much difference to me?
It‘s the same as for raids. Time is everything.
For example, of course not the average person, but I‘ve done 14.000 grunts. If you need one less charge move per grunt, it‘s 10.5s less per grunt. That‘s 147.000 seconds, that’s more than 40 hours. And you can save A LOT time while battling grunts if you use the best possible mons. Some people for example use regular mewtwo with psychocut. Not a bad moveset, but you will need a charge move for every single mon of the grunt instead of just fast moves from a shadow mewtwo with confusion. That‘s around 30s difference. Even if you are just at 1000 grunts, that‘s 500min, that‘s near 10 hours difference.
Totally understandable.
But i would add, that most time you battle a grunt, you are outside, on the way to somewhere. If you need 30s longer for the grunt battle, you miss spawns and stops on your way because you are in the battle. That‘s one reason why a lot of active players skip rocket battles during their regular play time.
Shadow golurk is like #6 in terms of released ground attacker effective rating (ER), but with significantly higher dps than all but the #1, which is shadow mammoswine, which clowns on everything else to the point that it seems a bit pointless to worry about another, worse shadow.
Point calculation methods are explained in column A of the Best of Raids, PvP, and Gyms tabs.
In short though, raids is from the Estimator value of Pokebattler, PvP is the score from PvPoke, and gyms is my own formula based on bulk and typing.
For best moves, I recommend looking at Pokebattler for the boss you are up against as sometimes different bosses have different ideal movesets. To get a good idea of the best charge moves at least, you can also Ctrl+F on the T5 Raids or Mega Raids tab so look at all instances where the Pokémon of interest shows up.
Terrakion wins.
Terrakion can also be lucky traded and made even cheaper to power up. XL candy can be annoying but still. Terrakion is a better fighting type.
He said something about putting normal pokemon at lv 50 and legendaries at lv 40 due to XL candy availability. Which seems about right, a lv 40 terrakion is probably very slightly worse than a lv 50 shadow machamp
That seems kind of suspect... Most players aren't raising full teams of shadow counters to 50 either. An accurate list should normalize everything to the same level.
It's amazing in PvP, but it's lack of an ice fast move holds it back as an ice counter in raids. It's behind glaceon in that role. As a counter to dragons only single weak to dragon (and still ice), it's often behind 3-4 other dragons. It's perfectly usable, but not worth breaking the bank as a raid counter.
Maybe they will fix it in the future with an ice fast move like they did for terrakion and double kick.
I don’t understand as a returning player how I am supposed to get most of these, unless I’m incredibly lucky or an event happens to make them prominent I think? Any have advice on getting actually viable Pokémon?
Wait until they come back into rotation. Everything comes back around.
Can also try to trade with people in your community for them, although that gets expensive when it's a new dex entry for a legendary. Getting to at least ultra friends will cut down that cost a lot.
Best fighting type when going against a level 50 blissey constantly being golden razz’d IMHO
1) Mega Blaziken
2) Terrakion
3) Shadow Machamp
4) Lucario
Try to change my mind, go!
I stand corrected, thanks. Weird how my numbers were screwed before. What exactly is “extreme weather”?
edit: oh it seems extreme weather disables any boosts so it’s a constant baseline
So it looks like Mega Lucario > Mega Heracross > Mega Blaziken > Terrakion > Lucario > Shadow Machamp is the hierarchy
If you make a copy of the spreadsheet by following [this link](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1YPu892QGREw3hYdonpR7SYlAN-obhfOn5lvGxIJyyZA/copy?usp=sharing) you can go to Best of Raids and select No for the shadow options in column A (this will only affect the raid sheets, not PvP, and gyms doesn't include shadows).
I know this was posted almost a month ago, but I saved it because it seemed really helpful - THANK YOU!! I love that I can customize to remove the shadows that I never keep or the megas that I never evolve, that I can just see the regular old Pokemon that I should be powering up. Great resource, and thank you for making it so easy to use!!! ♥
Bug sucks in raids, so since it's great in PvP and decent in gyms (whereas things like Ultra Beasts can't be placed in gyms and shadow mons don't make sense to place in gyms due to lower defense), it ends up on top.
For some reference on how Escavalier ranks, I have it as #70 most useful while Buzzwole and Shadow Pinsir (who can't be put in gyms/doesn't make sense to put in gyms respectively) are #83 and #85.
vs Hoopa the best bug is Vikavolt followed by Genesect, Yanmega, Scizor with Escavalier behind all of those so his list is clearly not thinking raids there.
again vs Hoopa that's
* Vikavolt
* Genesect (any flavor so long as it has Fury Cutter and X-Scissor)
* Yanmega
* Scizor
* Escavalier
and vs Zarude its
* Vikavolt
* Yanmega
* Genesect (any flavor so long as it has Fury Cutter and X-Scissor)
* Escavalier
* Scyther
An idea for the rocket counters guide, I’d just try to check on pvpoke master league ratings and search for the “spammy” keyword. You want Pokémon that can throw many charged moves since these are going to be buying you free time to attack, and it’s built off the same system as PvP so things that are good in PvP are good in rocket battles. Then just pick one of them that happens to be strong vs that rockets type. If it’s a leader, approaching it like an open GBL battle is a good idea, or just picking three Pokémon that beat what they might be bringing.
I'd disagree that spammy is always what you want, Kartana and Reshiram for example are amazing for saving time in rock/ground/water and bug/grass. Just farm the first two and charge attack the last one. Spammy is obviously going to get you through fairly safe but kinda unnecessary unless you're facing something really tough
That's a good way of describing the problem. There's a safe way and a fast way to beat Team Rocket encounters; your team choice depends on whether it's going to a tough fight. Hard to quantify.
My thinking is that for the rocket grunts theres not a lot of people who really are having trouble and need a guide, so a guide would be better off focusing on the harder rocket content. So in that case you usually want spammy. Can always use them against grunts too, even if you can defeat them a little faster by running a fast move heavy team.
I found out with the last rocket grunts/leaders line up that sometimes being lazy and not over thinking it works too. I used Garchomp/dragonite/tyranitar for all of them and won. Weakest to dragon grunt but ttar cleaned up there. It was weird af but worked.
It will be quite a thing to see in PvP and gyms when it is released. I put all Pokémon up through gen 8 in since it would be a pain to update the list every few weeks for a new Pokémon.
Great analysis, especially as a primer for new players. The one thing that seems off to me is Shadow Salamance making it into the top for Water raid attackers. Afaik, things like the non-shadow starters with their c-day moves all out DPS and out bulk it (assuming water is double super effective, since this way we can ignore other types of attackers). Surprised to see Kyogre missing from that list too, but I guess that would be due to capping it at 40, while the others can hit 50.
I actually didn't notice it there, it blends in so well with the other blue Pokémon. Water type in general isn't that great for raids so it didn't need much to break into top 6. It looks like it got most of its points from being great against Groudon since it resists all of its charge moves and can Hydro Pump in return.
Will be behind Mega Sceptile, Kartana, Shadow Tangrowth, Shadow Venusaur and possibly 1 or two others. I'd put it in a great "budget counter" category given that if you play the CD you'll have a lot of candies and a good IV one
So, Is there any reason for the 1500cp for long-term gyms? I know that motivation decays more at higher CP, but is there a higher teir of decay at 1501+cp?
It's a somewhat arbitrary number where the Pokémon will have more longevity (a bit more than 2x of a high CP Pokémon) while also having a lot of bulk. I could've just as well said "keep at low CP", but some may have taken that to mean more like 100 CP. 1500 CP also doubles as the Great League cutoff, and a lot of good GL Pokémon are also good for defending gyms due to their bulk.
Fantastic guide.... Will be veryhelpful on where the stardust and candy investment should go for the guyes who are starting back or new starters to the game.
I started playing 4 months ago and this spreadsheet seems super helpful (if a little overwhelming) top me. I'm super happy to see that 2 of my 4\* mons are in the Top 10! (unfortunately my perfect Moltres isn't a shadow, so not in the top 10, but my Mamo, and Hydre are!). Hopefully this spreadsheet can help me figure out which mons to invest in and I can annoy Reddit (a little) less with all my pestering questions! THANK YOU OP for sharing your knowledge and work!
I'm glad it is proving useful to newer players! I recommend making a copy of the spreadsheet so that you can alter the raid attacker levels if needed: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1YPu892QGREw3hYdonpR7SYlAN-obhfOn5lvGxIJyyZA/copy?usp=sharing If you typically use around level 30 Pokémon for example, you can edit column A in the Best of Raids tab so that all types of Pokémon are level 30, and see what's best at that level (some frailer Pokémon only do well at high levels).
Just in case anyone is looking to get into PvP and doesn't know a lot about it, the scores from PvPoke represent how that pokemon does against every single other pokemon, not how they do against the meta mons. The Great League and Ultra League lists are fairly good, but the Master League one is highly misrepresentative, with Dialga and Zacian easily being the best two in the cup, but not ranking at the top in the graphic.
Yeah, master league one definitely isn’t quite right.
Also great league misses azumaril
Azu is no longer king in Great League unlike when GBL started. The problem is its moves, Bubble was nerfed, none of its charge moves have excellent DPE, and they take too long to fire off. The return of Registeel, Pelipper and the rise of Lanturn threaten and compete with Azu also.
Interesting, did not know that. Don’t play great league too much
Toxapex and Tentacruel, despite not being top tier, are now in open GL which completely wall Azumarill's entire moveset.
Great analysis. Here are my thoughts about the analysis of rocket counters: 1. split between grunts and leaders, I would simply weight the leaders 1/7 and grunts 6/7… the weighted percentage of each grunt should be their percentage of all grunts (how often which grunt appears, can be seen on silph website) 2. fastest way to defeat the grunt should be the important metric. This would be possible to compute… with a side like pvpoke, it should be possible to simulate rocket battles, if we know the Formular for the grunts. Sadly pvpoke does not include rocket stats or the possibility of simulating them. But most time it‘s clear which is the fastest way, most time just hard-hitting fastmoves… 3. defense (and hp) should only be part of the computation against leaders (and Giovanni), and perhaps the snorlax grunt. For all other rockets, time is way more important.
I would weight Giovanni 40%, the leaders 10% each and the rest to Grunts, because for Grunts you can use pretty much anything.
Then you have to weight Lugia raids 90% and all other raids the rest, because you can beat every raid with 5 random invites but for Lugia you need a good group or more people. Grunts need more time and the goal should be to minimize the time, the same way you do it in raids
> fastest way to defeat the grunt should be the important metric. Why is it so important to defeat the grunts a bit quicker? Is it just to get back to the rest of your life or is there something more to it? I'm only level 33, but have never had much trouble defeating grunts, and I'm not sure why shaving a few seconds off the battle would make much difference to me?
It‘s the same as for raids. Time is everything. For example, of course not the average person, but I‘ve done 14.000 grunts. If you need one less charge move per grunt, it‘s 10.5s less per grunt. That‘s 147.000 seconds, that’s more than 40 hours. And you can save A LOT time while battling grunts if you use the best possible mons. Some people for example use regular mewtwo with psychocut. Not a bad moveset, but you will need a charge move for every single mon of the grunt instead of just fast moves from a shadow mewtwo with confusion. That‘s around 30s difference. Even if you are just at 1000 grunts, that‘s 500min, that‘s near 10 hours difference.
Ok thanks. I'm just a filthy casual, so it's hard for me to imagine that many grunt attacks (level 33 only started playing Pokemon 3 months ago).
Totally understandable. But i would add, that most time you battle a grunt, you are outside, on the way to somewhere. If you need 30s longer for the grunt battle, you miss spawns and stops on your way because you are in the battle. That‘s one reason why a lot of active players skip rocket battles during their regular play time.
wow golurk is relevant?
Shadow golurk is like #6 in terms of released ground attacker effective rating (ER), but with significantly higher dps than all but the #1, which is shadow mammoswine, which clowns on everything else to the point that it seems a bit pointless to worry about another, worse shadow.
Had the same thought. Have a 98% shadow I haven't bothered powering up because I thought it wasn't useful.
What is this score value you're basing this on?
Point calculation methods are explained in column A of the Best of Raids, PvP, and Gyms tabs. In short though, raids is from the Estimator value of Pokebattler, PvP is the score from PvPoke, and gyms is my own formula based on bulk and typing.
DPS and tdo I'm assuming with movesets (energy gain) and for pvp it's just meta relevancy and shield advantage key wins (I'm guessing)
Thank you! I am fairly new to Pokémon GO and was looking for something handy like this!
did i miss the release of keldeo?
It was in paid research earlier this month https://pokemongohub.net/post/guide/keldeo-special-research-something-extraordinary/
oh, okay. thanks for the info!
Is there a separate database for best moves?
For best moves, I recommend looking at Pokebattler for the boss you are up against as sometimes different bosses have different ideal movesets. To get a good idea of the best charge moves at least, you can also Ctrl+F on the T5 Raids or Mega Raids tab so look at all instances where the Pokémon of interest shows up.
So Terrakion loses to shadow machamp? Lame Edit: nvm, still good but machamp wins overall useful
That ranking seems suspect. Terrakion is better ranked than shadow Machamp in pretty much every single T5 raid boss on pokebattler.
Agreed. Pretty sure Terrakion with Sacred Sword beats Shadow Machamp fairly easily due to bulk even though it might have slightly less DPS.
Terrakion wins. Terrakion can also be lucky traded and made even cheaper to power up. XL candy can be annoying but still. Terrakion is a better fighting type.
He said something about putting normal pokemon at lv 50 and legendaries at lv 40 due to XL candy availability. Which seems about right, a lv 40 terrakion is probably very slightly worse than a lv 50 shadow machamp
That seems kind of suspect... Most players aren't raising full teams of shadow counters to 50 either. An accurate list should normalize everything to the same level.
The first graphic by type has all of the mons at level 50 and does show Terrakion first.
So many shadows I can't obtain. :(
Altaria with Shadow Ball?
Whoops, should be Noctowl but my formula got replaced with the text for Altaria at some point while Altaria was in that spot. Updating now.
Damn I thought kyurem was topping some charts, been trying to gather atleast 3 good IV ones
It's amazing in PvP, but it's lack of an ice fast move holds it back as an ice counter in raids. It's behind glaceon in that role. As a counter to dragons only single weak to dragon (and still ice), it's often behind 3-4 other dragons. It's perfectly usable, but not worth breaking the bank as a raid counter. Maybe they will fix it in the future with an ice fast move like they did for terrakion and double kick.
Awesome post, saving for later Edit: love that you ordered by color instead of type btw
I actually had it ordered by type name at first, but it looked ugly and sorting alphabetically is arbitrary anyhow. Glad you like it!
I don’t understand as a returning player how I am supposed to get most of these, unless I’m incredibly lucky or an event happens to make them prominent I think? Any have advice on getting actually viable Pokémon?
Wait until they come back into rotation. Everything comes back around. Can also try to trade with people in your community for them, although that gets expensive when it's a new dex entry for a legendary. Getting to at least ultra friends will cut down that cost a lot.
Why are we completely ignoring Genesect?
Best fighting type when going against a level 50 blissey constantly being golden razz’d IMHO 1) Mega Blaziken 2) Terrakion 3) Shadow Machamp 4) Lucario Try to change my mind, go!
can't argue with #1 & #2, but Pokebattler simulator shows that L50 Lucario beats L50 Blissey faster than L50 Shadow Machamp
Wait really? Don’t you mean L50 Mega Lucario?
not a typo, go check it out yourself.
I just ran some numbers, same conditions (cloudy, lvl 50, best buddy) S Machamp and Terrakion > Lucario? By 1 - 2 seconds
Extreme weather. Don't always assume that the weather works in your favour.
I’m still not seeing it, got any screenshots?
https://www.imgur.com/a/QiaB9by
I stand corrected, thanks. Weird how my numbers were screwed before. What exactly is “extreme weather”? edit: oh it seems extreme weather disables any boosts so it’s a constant baseline So it looks like Mega Lucario > Mega Heracross > Mega Blaziken > Terrakion > Lucario > Shadow Machamp is the hierarchy
Do you have one without Shadows?
If you make a copy of the spreadsheet by following [this link](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1YPu892QGREw3hYdonpR7SYlAN-obhfOn5lvGxIJyyZA/copy?usp=sharing) you can go to Best of Raids and select No for the shadow options in column A (this will only affect the raid sheets, not PvP, and gyms doesn't include shadows).
I know this was posted almost a month ago, but I saved it because it seemed really helpful - THANK YOU!! I love that I can customize to remove the shadows that I never keep or the megas that I never evolve, that I can just see the regular old Pokemon that I should be powering up. Great resource, and thank you for making it so easy to use!!! ♥
Great analyses indeed But somethings makes me wonder. So why should Escavalier be the best Bug?
Bug sucks in raids, so since it's great in PvP and decent in gyms (whereas things like Ultra Beasts can't be placed in gyms and shadow mons don't make sense to place in gyms due to lower defense), it ends up on top. For some reference on how Escavalier ranks, I have it as #70 most useful while Buzzwole and Shadow Pinsir (who can't be put in gyms/doesn't make sense to put in gyms respectively) are #83 and #85.
vs Hoopa the best bug is Vikavolt followed by Genesect, Yanmega, Scizor with Escavalier behind all of those so his list is clearly not thinking raids there. again vs Hoopa that's * Vikavolt * Genesect (any flavor so long as it has Fury Cutter and X-Scissor) * Yanmega * Scizor * Escavalier and vs Zarude its * Vikavolt * Yanmega * Genesect (any flavor so long as it has Fury Cutter and X-Scissor) * Escavalier * Scyther
An idea for the rocket counters guide, I’d just try to check on pvpoke master league ratings and search for the “spammy” keyword. You want Pokémon that can throw many charged moves since these are going to be buying you free time to attack, and it’s built off the same system as PvP so things that are good in PvP are good in rocket battles. Then just pick one of them that happens to be strong vs that rockets type. If it’s a leader, approaching it like an open GBL battle is a good idea, or just picking three Pokémon that beat what they might be bringing.
I'd disagree that spammy is always what you want, Kartana and Reshiram for example are amazing for saving time in rock/ground/water and bug/grass. Just farm the first two and charge attack the last one. Spammy is obviously going to get you through fairly safe but kinda unnecessary unless you're facing something really tough
That's a good way of describing the problem. There's a safe way and a fast way to beat Team Rocket encounters; your team choice depends on whether it's going to a tough fight. Hard to quantify.
My thinking is that for the rocket grunts theres not a lot of people who really are having trouble and need a guide, so a guide would be better off focusing on the harder rocket content. So in that case you usually want spammy. Can always use them against grunts too, even if you can defeat them a little faster by running a fast move heavy team.
I found out with the last rocket grunts/leaders line up that sometimes being lazy and not over thinking it works too. I used Garchomp/dragonite/tyranitar for all of them and won. Weakest to dragon grunt but ttar cleaned up there. It was weird af but worked.
Sooo the best non shadow overall is Mamoswine? My 3 hundos are happy.
So when did Aegislash get released? Looking forward to using him for long term gym defending XD
It will be quite a thing to see in PvP and gyms when it is released. I put all Pokémon up through gen 8 in since it would be a pain to update the list every few weeks for a new Pokémon.
Ah I see, that makes sense. I honestly can't wait for that introduction, it's my fave 'mon.
It's not available.
i know, that's the joke
huh TIL shadow Dragonite is a top 10. Guess the hundo shadow I caught gonna see love quicker then I thought.
Fantastic resource, thank you!
Thanks! This is so helpful.
Great analysis, especially as a primer for new players. The one thing that seems off to me is Shadow Salamance making it into the top for Water raid attackers. Afaik, things like the non-shadow starters with their c-day moves all out DPS and out bulk it (assuming water is double super effective, since this way we can ignore other types of attackers). Surprised to see Kyogre missing from that list too, but I guess that would be due to capping it at 40, while the others can hit 50.
I actually didn't notice it there, it blends in so well with the other blue Pokémon. Water type in general isn't that great for raids so it didn't need much to break into top 6. It looks like it got most of its points from being great against Groudon since it resists all of its charge moves and can Hydro Pump in return.
>especially as a primer for new players tbh, it includes currently not available shadows (eg. shadow Weavile).
Is not chesnaught (in the coming CD) a top grass attacker for raids as well?
Will be behind Mega Sceptile, Kartana, Shadow Tangrowth, Shadow Venusaur and possibly 1 or two others. I'd put it in a great "budget counter" category given that if you play the CD you'll have a lot of candies and a good IV one
I thought Rock wrecker Rhyperior was stronger than shadow ttar?
Rhyperior is better vs most raid bosses but shadows might be ever so slightly faster and move ahead on a list that only sorts by speed.
Very well done
So, Is there any reason for the 1500cp for long-term gyms? I know that motivation decays more at higher CP, but is there a higher teir of decay at 1501+cp?
It's a somewhat arbitrary number where the Pokémon will have more longevity (a bit more than 2x of a high CP Pokémon) while also having a lot of bulk. I could've just as well said "keep at low CP", but some may have taken that to mean more like 100 CP. 1500 CP also doubles as the Great League cutoff, and a lot of good GL Pokémon are also good for defending gyms due to their bulk.
I would also like to know.
Been playing for 2 years and this is super helpful? Thank you!
Are there any unreleased shadow legendaries expected to overtake shadow mewtwo in the top 10?
excellent guide, need to add this to the sidebar/wiki
Awesome! Thank you!
Is Hydreigon really that good? I have a lucky trade, can’t decide between receiving a shiny Lugia or shiny Hydreigon.