Pokemon Go recommends some truly questionable teams for battles and raids. The suggestions are especially problematic for the latter. The game seems to favor survivability over damage output, which…isn’t the best. Recently, I’ve done a few four-person raids against Latios and have seen fellow trainers achieve suboptimal results thanks to Pokemon Go’s team recommendations.
One trainer I bumped into was perfectly happy with his recommended team, which was full of steel pokemon. He was content to battle Latios with a team full of Aggrons and Steelix. Those pokemon are great for enduring a battle and saving some healing items, but they’re poor at damaging Latios. In fact, I wouldn’t even put them in the top 20 pokemon to use against Latios.
While it’s nice to save on revives and healing potions, raids are all about inflicting the most damage so that you get the most bonus balls. The more bonus balls you get, the more chances you have a catching a pokemon. There are three ways to get bonus balls from raids. First is by doing the most damage against a boss with your pokemon. Second is a “team bonus,” which grants additional balls to the team that does the most damage. Lastly, the team that controls the gym gets a pair of bonus balls.
Above is a screenshot from a four-person raid I recently did. The gym was controlled by Team Valor and I was accompanied by three Team Mystic trainers. I received the maximum amount of damage balls and the second-most amount of team-bonus balls. The former is believed to be granted for doing more than 20-percent of the total damage, while the latter tallies up the team damage.
Considering there were three Team Mystic players that were at my level or higher, they should have done way more damage than I did. Of course they received a higher team bonus, but I shouldn’t have gotten the maximum amount of personal damage balls. I used a team of two Rayquazas, a Latios, two Dragonites, and a Mewtwo. Their teams filled the battleground with Steelixes, Aggrons, and Lugias — all based on Pokemon Go’s suggestions.
Yes, their initial team lasted longer than mine and they were able to save some potions/revives, but so what? When the dust clears, it’s all about inflicting damage in order to get the most bonus balls. Potions and revives are easy to get by spinning pokestops and gyms. Pokemon Go’s silly team recommendations do nothing to help trainers achieve the best results.
The lesson here is to take the time to learn the best counters, especially for level five raids. With Latios currently the level five boss, I have three different teams set up, based on its three different charge moves. My teams are always different from the suggested pokemon recommended by the game. Ignoring the suggested pokemon and setting up optimal teams will help you get the most chances at catching rare pokemon. Like Sean LeBeef Shia LaBeouf says, “Do it!!!”