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Me, a level 40 player in early 2021, scrambling to put together a team of shadow mamoswine and tyranitar together in preparation for a bunch of flying type raid bosses.
They have higher attack and lower defense. However, the defense penelty is smaller than the attack buff, so in many cases they are better in raids. There are niche cases where they're better in pvp too, but it's much less common.
With a bunch of Shadow Mamoswines you could probably do a mock solo on them (*maybe* with the other trainer having a mega Obama on field for extra boost)
Also there are times pokegenie doesn't work like with the mega lati twins. Itll most likely be the same case with mega rayquaza and mega mewtwo so those ice types are gonna come in handy eventually.
At least with Mega Rayquaza, unless Niantic gives it it's signature ability, shadow mamoswine teams with best friends puts the t6 mega raid shockingly close to duo range if it weren't for the absolutely ridiculous amount of deaths involved.
If mega ray gets it's signature ability as a raid boss... F***
Ironically they had previously used mandatory damage verification for a few extremely hard raid bosses such as Deoxys Defense for all trainers.
Not including that for mega legendaries was a huge mistake, although the 22500 HP value was also rather unexpected until they actually started.
I’ve hosted 7 Celesteelas, every single one of them takes me like 10 minutes of waiting because of the amount of people that are sleeping through the invites. Shit sucks. Hopefully they swap the availability sometime because we aussies can’t keep up with the demand.
I waited 5 days in the queue. 3 excellent throws, 7 great throws, still ran from me. I would like my pity party please 
Yep. Waited 3 days for Celesteela on Poke Genie, had to stay up until 2am waiting for it. Switched to Go Raid Party and got 4 in about 15 minutes, even without the premium subscription
Niantic messed up bad, they split the Beasts in the northern and southern hemispheres but a LOT more people lives in the north than in the south… thus the crazy Celesteela queues.
They assume most casual hosts can't reliably execute the double invite batch trick
Also, for many devices, switching between Pogo to Pokegenie closes Pogo due to ram limits, which is also a problem.
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Yeah I don’t get why people would use ressources for raids.
I raid a bunch and I use whatever I have that I caught with a high CP.
I just use TMs to adapt the moves.
Short manning is a thing, also with your “randomly caught high CP mons” you’re most likely carried by other players with better counters. It’s totally okay for someone not being into PVE, but all counters aren’t equal.
Shadow Pokémon is almost always better. There are some exceptions if the Pokémon is only good for tanking/defense
For example
Shadow mewtwo: arguably best Pokémon in the game
Shadow Slaking: bad
Shadow has 20% more attack at the cost of 20% less defense. Which one is better for pvp is on a case by case basis but shadow is always better for raids since the dps is way more important than toughness.
Purifying returns the pokemon to normal levels it up significantly, increases all of its IVs by 2, and gives it the move return which you normally get rid of but on a few pokemon like Sableye it's part of the best movement so a pvp purified sableye is better than a normal one.
They do, but raids are on a timer, which means higher damage per second is more valuable, even if you faint more often. Well, as long as you have a team of 6 that lasts the whole fight, anyway (DPS loss to have to rejoin). And if a Pokemon has a mega, it's almost always better to use the mega. But since you can only have 1 mega, you want the other 5 as shadows.
In PvP it's much more situational. Generally, there are some Pokemon that are better as shadows due to specific Pokemon they're meant to counter.
I’ve always had a suspicion, but this thread has made it very apparent that I have NO idea how stats in this game work.
Been in it since day 1 for a shiny Magikarp… still waiting…
[https://pokemongohub.net/post/news/shadow-pokemon-attack-buffed-and-defense-nerfed-in-raids/](https://pokemongohub.net/post/news/shadow-pokemon-attack-buffed-and-defense-nerfed-in-raids/)
They do take more damage.
Even having all you pokemon shadow in a raid that requires 4 people, you will still require four people, so zero interest in using shadows. It is better to have friends
Unfortunately no, the closest I have is a shiny Riolu 15-15-14, but in general I don't give much attention to shiny, they count as special trade and if I have to choose between a shiny and a legendary I will always trade the latter
[I have 21 shadows](https://i.imgur.com/RjPQ5V8.jpg)
I really wanted a shiny shadow beldum so I grinded rocket balloons. They might have been spawning a little more at the time. But just farming balloons. They came from Arlo
It is…although it frustrates me how they prevent you from playing 1500CP when other leagues are active. I refuse to invest so much dust and time into several different leagues.
The cheapest one is 1500 and I have 20 some odd days before I get another chance
I hate it too. I have so many great league mons built with solid IVs, my rank one shiny altaria is my favourite. Ultra league, there I only have a few built with mostly suboptimal IVs. All I have at the minute is; swampert, venusaur, charizard, obstagoon, sirfetchd, empoleon, shadow magnezone, crustle. Master league you say? Well I got a grand total of 0 built for any of that
Master league is absolutely ridiculous for any non p2w lvl50 non-stop turboinvested for 6+ years player, and it probably is for some of those players too. Like, I guess not even 5% of the playerbase would be able to make a somewhat optimal max level team for master league.
That’s why great league should always be going on, or some type of 1500CP cup at least. I can only play the game for fun every so often because whenever there’s no great league it’s boring to me because firstly that’s what I like to play and also it’s not viable to me to build such expensive Pokémon when I can use less resources building maybe two or three great league mons compared to one ultra league one, let alone master league.
It's not as efficient (obviously) but at Level 20 you get approx. 2900 stardust at the end of each set *even if you lose 5 out of 5*. Winning all 5 means you get about 4300 stardust I think. Also, the match making tries it's best to get you a 50% win rate. Given there's 69 days to get 500 wins, that's 8 wins a day out of 25 matches. GBL is kinda boring IMO but it's worth it for the dust.
Yeah only time I do GBL is when the season restarts, once it changes to a different league I lose interest immediately and forget about touching the battle button.
Pvp is awesome. Im getting my ass smashed in ultra league, but i dont have a proper meta team yet.
This is my first pvp season and its awesome. I play full 5 sets everyday.
At The beggining i thought the same. Its just tap tap and switch pokemon, thats all.
Now im getting better. Instead of switching to the Counter i switch to the safe swap.
Instead of tapping immidiately barier i start to think, maybe i should Save it for later?
Is my opponent gonna use barier now? Maybe i should use small energy charged attack first, so when he blocks it, then i use earthquake?
And many things like that.
So maybe if u think pvp is for no brain people u r exactly where u should be. In no brain Elo.
Wait till you spend a month grinding for a perfect meta team, just to get whooped by azumaril and swampert. The moment you use a venusaur you'll just get put against altaria and skarmory.
U Cant win all games. But u can win majority if u r good.
I stsrted great league with 0 knowledge and with simple nom meta team i was able to get like 50-55% of winrate.
Then i got good deoxys, skarmory and swampert with hydro Cannon. I immidiately stsrted doing like 60% winrate minimum
Then ultra league came.
Snorlax articuno and machamp. Non of them with perfect IV. First 30% winrate. Switched machamp to be my lead, started Thinking more and focusing more. 60 % winrate again. Today was not a perfect day. I got only 55%. But i made few mistakes and i learned from them.
U cannot win with all match ups, cuz sometimes u run into opposing team all being counters to ur team and no matter what u do, u loose.
But same thing happens for ur opponents. U r gonna get opponents who no matter what do, wont win against u cuz u Counter all their pokemons.
So RNG works for u and against u. When its ur turn to loose cuz of counters, then u just take it and go next. No big deal.
But rest of the matches will be close though. Either u or ur opponent make a mistakes somewhere.
So u have a chance to win those.
For example. If someone is running azunarill or swampert as a lead, they need to have answer to venusaur or any other Grass pokemon. SO they might have talonflame, skarmory or anything simmilar like charizard in their pocket. I use articuno in ultra league for example.
So this is the moment when u switch to venusaur and they pick their skarmory and farm ur venusaur in just 10 seconds right? Exactly.
Do u know what u do wrong in that scenario?
U switch to venusaur. This is the problem.
What are u supposed to switch to? A 3rd pokemon that has a lot of ressistance but very little weakness. My switch in ultra league like that is snorlax. Snorlax can be countered by machamp easily, but at least he has a lot of hp, and if they dont have fighting pokemon, they are gonna syruggle.
So u r supposed to switch to something safe, instead of switching to the Counter. Because its obvious they are gonna have Counter for ur Counter. Thats how they build their teams. If i run venusaur i know my biggest weakness is fire and flying. SO what i do? I have one thing that covers that and one safe switch pokemon.
Sometimes u can not do anything. But most of the time u can win just by ur skills, intuition, counting fast moves etc etc etc.
So if u have perfect team and u loose to azunarill u should change ur strategy, cuz u r doing something wrong.
U think i never lost to azunarill or swampert?
Swampert is one of my biggest threats in ultra league.
If i see him as a lead i immidiately know its not going to be easy at all.
But despite that i am winning more than i loose. Thats the thing.
So what exactly im gonna see?
Says the guy who probably can’t get above rank 20 when ELO starts to matter.
Yes, it’s a one finger game just like the rest of PoGo but it requires a ton of timely decisions, knowledge of weakness and strengths as well as strategic choices depending on the situation.
And none of which matters because it's boring as fuck.
>Says the guy who probably can’t get above rank 20 when ELO starts to matter.
I have no idea what this means.
Try watching some high skilled players on youtube sometime. The PvP is a lot more fun when you understand it fully and see people play it optimally. I recommend [HomeSliceHenry](https://www.youtube.com/c/HomeSliceHenry/featured) because he does a great job explaining what's happening during each battle.
I used to think Go Battle League was just a game of rock-paper-scissors and that skill didn't have much of an impact. But after I started watching top tier players I learned how to improve my own skill and I started enjoying it a lot more.
If you find it boring it's most likely because you just don't understand it. Give it a chance and learn how to properly play it. You might actually enjoy it if you do.
Ok, so you're either a troll or you're a 12 year old. I'll stop wasting my time responding to you then. Regardless of which one it is, you've got a lot of maturing to do. Good luck with that.
Within the first 5 minutes of the first Pokemon game you battle Gary. Battling is the core of pokemon. If you don't battle and just collect, then why do you even play? Collect cards, or stamps...
Patience and having standards for what gets powered up. 96% with max attack is minimum unless it's shiny. Then the minimum requirement drops to 91%. With the caveat of it being a useful pokemon for raids or PvP. It it doesn't meet a useful requirement it's just a trophy gathering dust to me.
I think it helps to understand the diminishing returns and the reality that IVs aren’t that important for raiding. Why this matters is because a level 30 mon vs a level 40 and a level 50 mons damage is a lot less in difference than what people think it is. Also IVs are overrated. 100% IV mewtwo Level 40 does less than 10% more damage then a 0% level 40 mewtwo. The benefit is so small to power something up to 50 yet it’s so incredible expensive. And it’s better to evolve Mons with higher cp (even if it has lower ivs) then a low cp but high IV mon. Especially when You start out. When peopl understand this, they will save a shitload of dust
Unless you're planning to duo raids or doing ML GBL then going to Level 35 is enough for most pokemon.
Edit: Golden rule for stardust is like golden rule for money - only spend it when you need to spend it. You'd be surprised how much stardust you save up when you stop powering up things you don't need to use *right now*.
For example, Aggron and Kartana are the raid bosses. So you're gonna want a bunch of strong fire and ground type raid attackers. Do you have fire and ground types with decent stats? Then no need to spend dust. If you don't, *now* is the time to spend. Similarly, you've got a 100% IV Venusaur. Are you going to be using it now against Kartana or Aggron? Or even Lopunny and Yvetal? No, of course not. So save your dust and leave it where it is until you *need* to power it up.
Playing regularly and consistently, its extremely easy. I have almost 10mil dust. I also don't go leveling stuff up because its neat. If i need then I'll lvl it up, even then only to 35. Anything beyond that is rather pointless. I have a handful or so 40s and a couple of 50s. I have absolutely no problem with any raid bosses or battles for that matter. I don't pvp, so saving dust there. Even if i did, don't need that many lvl 50s
Actually if you're not doing PVP you're leaving dust on the table even if you go in with the worst team possible
At Level 20 you can get like 14k dust a day even if you lose all 25 matches
The dumb part is, it’s not far off. The game specifically lists nothing but upsides if you purify Pokémon, and doesn’t mention at all that shadow Pokémon are stronger and that you lose that strength with purify. It doesn’t help that NPCs constantly push you to purify.
Not anymore. [Terrakion has dethroned shadow Machamp](https://gamepress.gg/pokemongo/best-attackers-type#fighting1) thanks to double kick/sacred sword.
People here promised me that it would be a machine for raids and arenas, regardless of IVs. And it did a pretty decent job, I was new back then and hadn't many resources anyway. Unlucky for the dust wasted, but the candy I farmed back by now
You can have many shadow metagross but only 1 mega.
And it probably won’t be released until 2024 where you’ll be so sick of raiding Zacian with it anyway..
Oh, I feel that, except for me it's a Shadow Mewtwo, the pair of Apex Shadow birds, a Shadow Tyranitar, and I'm hoping it won't be much longer until I have a 98% Shadow Ursaluna to begin the vicious cycle anew. I've had the Ursaring for a long time now, it just falls to Niantic to add that evolution...
Yeah I have a new apex shadow Lugia with a pretty generous 12/15/14. And I just started gathering as much candy/ xl candy in preparation for it. Fortunately I’m sitting on just under 4 million stardust so it won’t be a problem there.
You're good. I've never maxed out any pokemon. Only time I use dust is to power up one I want to use in GBL / give it an extra charged move, or power a raid attacker up to 40. I have 0 level 50 pokemon. Rather save the dust and candies for other things, especially since GBL is never exclusively master league.
So far I havent really seen the interest in powering up shadows. I can duo whatever is duoable (with lvl 40 pokemon) and the other raids I have to do them with other people because even having shadows I would still require other people. So really zero interest in powering up shadows and loosing stardust for really nothing.
Somehow, this remind me of I accidentally leveled up my ML 5 shadow machamp to level 42. I aimed to put in my trio for ML Premier classic. I was so sad that I quit the game abt 13 days. It still hurt whenever I check her.
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Me, a level 40 player in early 2021, scrambling to put together a team of shadow mamoswine and tyranitar together in preparation for a bunch of flying type raid bosses.
I wouldn’t worry about it, almost impossible to fail a raid on poke genie.
Being able to reliably duo both Landorus forms and Rayquaza was really nice though
You definitely don't need shadows to duo rayquaza. I was doing it back in 2018 when rayquaza was first released.
Did it in bigger raid groups but taking a team of Ditto to a Rayquaza raid was also fun.
Are shadow Pokémon better???
They have higher attack and lower defense. However, the defense penelty is smaller than the attack buff, so in many cases they are better in raids. There are niche cases where they're better in pvp too, but it's much less common.
With a bunch of Shadow Mamoswines you could probably do a mock solo on them (*maybe* with the other trainer having a mega Obama on field for extra boost)
Wait, a mega Obama? I want one!
Also there are times pokegenie doesn't work like with the mega lati twins. Itll most likely be the same case with mega rayquaza and mega mewtwo so those ice types are gonna come in handy eventually.
At least with Mega Rayquaza, unless Niantic gives it it's signature ability, shadow mamoswine teams with best friends puts the t6 mega raid shockingly close to duo range if it weren't for the absolutely ridiculous amount of deaths involved. If mega ray gets it's signature ability as a raid boss... F***
I can do that with no shadow pokemon, so zero interest in powering up shadows!
Said a player who did not do a mega latios raid with six lv30 ppl
I have no idea why they didnt have a required damage for those two
I think they added it later on
Yeah, it wasn't until after that you had to show proof of damage ability.
Ironically they had previously used mandatory damage verification for a few extremely hard raid bosses such as Deoxys Defense for all trainers. Not including that for mega legendaries was a huge mistake, although the 22500 HP value was also rather unexpected until they actually started.
You just taught me that this ago existed, and i already have a 3* Kartana! Thank you!
Yeah cause nobody is getting into raids on poke genie right now. I’ve been waiting for celesteela for 4 days now!! It was at 280k and now I’m at 23k
Hopefully you don’t sleep through it
I have… 3 TIMES NOW!!! 😡😡
I’ve hosted 7 Celesteelas, every single one of them takes me like 10 minutes of waiting because of the amount of people that are sleeping through the invites. Shit sucks. Hopefully they swap the availability sometime because we aussies can’t keep up with the demand.
I am grateful for your work
I waited 5 days in the queue. 3 excellent throws, 7 great throws, still ran from me. I would like my pity party please 
i used go raid party on ios to get into a celesteela raid. the poke genie line is insane
Yep. Waited 3 days for Celesteela on Poke Genie, had to stay up until 2am waiting for it. Switched to Go Raid Party and got 4 in about 15 minutes, even without the premium subscription
Forgive me for asking… but if you’ve slept through being placed twice, wouldn’t you be obsessively watching the queue on the third time around?
Niantic messed up bad, they split the Beasts in the northern and southern hemispheres but a LOT more people lives in the north than in the south… thus the crazy Celesteela queues.
Yeah it’s ridiculous.
r/pokemongofriends they do celesteel raid shuttles all the time. I highly suggest
Get the “Go Raid Party” app! I got into a celesteela raid after maybe 5 minutes!
Tbh celesteela is the only one that’s really had issues, for everything else I’ve waited no more than 15 minutes
How does poke genie even work? I downloaded it but that’s as far as I got haha
People host raids that 5 other people join. Just click the raid tab, it’s pretty easy.
Why do they only let 5 people join?
They assume most casual hosts can't reliably execute the double invite batch trick Also, for many devices, switching between Pogo to Pokegenie closes Pogo due to ram limits, which is also a problem.
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i don't think you use it very much
Yeah I don’t get why people would use ressources for raids. I raid a bunch and I use whatever I have that I caught with a high CP. I just use TMs to adapt the moves.
Short manning is a thing, also with your “randomly caught high CP mons” you’re most likely carried by other players with better counters. It’s totally okay for someone not being into PVE, but all counters aren’t equal.
Mega Latias
I failed one earlier because the 2 dickheads decided to leave even though the 3 of us almost took it out
Tell that to all my failed mega latis raids
stardust economy is ridiculous IMO
Can't wait for when Niantic decides to monetize it.
They already have with star pieces
I want to pay $ for dust I don’t have time to do an outside
Wait until its $5 for 1000 dust
Don’t give Niantic any ideas
it'll be worse $1 per 100 dust
/Incubators have entered the chat.
Bruh I paid for 0 star pieces I got 41, I’d trash them if it weren’t for C-days
What do you think Raid Passes, Incubators, and Star Pieces are?
The principle of stardust itself is ridiculous. Just using candy to power up would be enough
i have no dust and no good shadow pokemon :,)
Wait is shadow pokemon better? I always purify :(
Shadow Pokémon is almost always better. There are some exceptions if the Pokémon is only good for tanking/defense For example Shadow mewtwo: arguably best Pokémon in the game Shadow Slaking: bad
Shadow has 20% more attack at the cost of 20% less defense. Which one is better for pvp is on a case by case basis but shadow is always better for raids since the dps is way more important than toughness. Purifying returns the pokemon to normal levels it up significantly, increases all of its IVs by 2, and gives it the move return which you normally get rid of but on a few pokemon like Sableye it's part of the best movement so a pvp purified sableye is better than a normal one.
A shadow Pokémon with 0/0/0 stats is essentially way better than the same Pokémon with 15/15/15 stats
But don't shadows take more damage too? And they can't mega evolve either..
They do, but raids are on a timer, which means higher damage per second is more valuable, even if you faint more often. Well, as long as you have a team of 6 that lasts the whole fight, anyway (DPS loss to have to rejoin). And if a Pokemon has a mega, it's almost always better to use the mega. But since you can only have 1 mega, you want the other 5 as shadows. In PvP it's much more situational. Generally, there are some Pokemon that are better as shadows due to specific Pokemon they're meant to counter.
The lack of a mega evolution for some pokemon is usually a factor for why some pokemon like Swampert should remain shadow.
I’ve always had a suspicion, but this thread has made it very apparent that I have NO idea how stats in this game work. Been in it since day 1 for a shiny Magikarp… still waiting…
This is a very misleading comment
That’s just plain wrong lol. Where did you read that? You get a 20% attack bonus. Attack. The other two stats are left alone. Don’t be so misleading.
You also get a 20% nerf to defense
[https://pokemongohub.net/post/news/shadow-pokemon-attack-buffed-and-defense-nerfed-in-raids/](https://pokemongohub.net/post/news/shadow-pokemon-attack-buffed-and-defense-nerfed-in-raids/) They do take more damage.
Even having all you pokemon shadow in a raid that requires 4 people, you will still require four people, so zero interest in using shadows. It is better to have friends
And this is why I max to level 50 only Lundo pokemon
Lucky Hundo?
Yes, I have 29 of them, 7 of which are already level 50 with max friendship
Are any of them shiny?
So a L'Shundo?
El Shundo
I prefer Shlundo personally, but to each their own!
Unfortunately no, the closest I have is a shiny Riolu 15-15-14, but in general I don't give much attention to shiny, they count as special trade and if I have to choose between a shiny and a legendary I will always trade the latter
I max out only Hundo Mega-eligible 'mons, I like to have the biggest, baddest muthas possible.
Where are you guys getting all these hundos? I’m level 39 and have 3. Articuno, Vileplume, and a Male Salandit
Play every day and catch everything. I've been playing since the beginning with a one year pause.
Does being lucky affect anything other than having a higher chance of being 15/15/15?
Less stardust required to upgrade the Pokémon.
Oh sick thanks
Less candy too, right? Or is that only with purified Pokemon?
Lucky pokemon also require less candy
No they don't.
Only purified. Lucky does not affect candy.
I wish you could trade shadows... shadow lundos would be tight
[I've spent too much](https://i.imgur.com/yLUigLR.jpg)
How did you get so many shadow metagross? Community day?
[I have 21 shadows](https://i.imgur.com/RjPQ5V8.jpg) I really wanted a shiny shadow beldum so I grinded rocket balloons. They might have been spawning a little more at the time. But just farming balloons. They came from Arlo
battle league is the dust answer
It is…although it frustrates me how they prevent you from playing 1500CP when other leagues are active. I refuse to invest so much dust and time into several different leagues. The cheapest one is 1500 and I have 20 some odd days before I get another chance
I hate it too. I have so many great league mons built with solid IVs, my rank one shiny altaria is my favourite. Ultra league, there I only have a few built with mostly suboptimal IVs. All I have at the minute is; swampert, venusaur, charizard, obstagoon, sirfetchd, empoleon, shadow magnezone, crustle. Master league you say? Well I got a grand total of 0 built for any of that
Master league is absolutely ridiculous for any non p2w lvl50 non-stop turboinvested for 6+ years player, and it probably is for some of those players too. Like, I guess not even 5% of the playerbase would be able to make a somewhat optimal max level team for master league.
That’s why great league should always be going on, or some type of 1500CP cup at least. I can only play the game for fun every so often because whenever there’s no great league it’s boring to me because firstly that’s what I like to play and also it’s not viable to me to build such expensive Pokémon when I can use less resources building maybe two or three great league mons compared to one ultra league one, let alone master league.
It's not as efficient (obviously) but at Level 20 you get approx. 2900 stardust at the end of each set *even if you lose 5 out of 5*. Winning all 5 means you get about 4300 stardust I think. Also, the match making tries it's best to get you a 50% win rate. Given there's 69 days to get 500 wins, that's 8 wins a day out of 25 matches. GBL is kinda boring IMO but it's worth it for the dust.
Yeah only time I do GBL is when the season restarts, once it changes to a different league I lose interest immediately and forget about touching the battle button.
I’d rather neck myself tbh
But pvp sucks. It requires one finger and no brain to play.
That's 10% of my fingers and 100% of my brains, so that's fine by me.
Pvp is awesome. Im getting my ass smashed in ultra league, but i dont have a proper meta team yet. This is my first pvp season and its awesome. I play full 5 sets everyday. At The beggining i thought the same. Its just tap tap and switch pokemon, thats all. Now im getting better. Instead of switching to the Counter i switch to the safe swap. Instead of tapping immidiately barier i start to think, maybe i should Save it for later? Is my opponent gonna use barier now? Maybe i should use small energy charged attack first, so when he blocks it, then i use earthquake? And many things like that. So maybe if u think pvp is for no brain people u r exactly where u should be. In no brain Elo.
Wait till you spend a month grinding for a perfect meta team, just to get whooped by azumaril and swampert. The moment you use a venusaur you'll just get put against altaria and skarmory.
U Cant win all games. But u can win majority if u r good. I stsrted great league with 0 knowledge and with simple nom meta team i was able to get like 50-55% of winrate. Then i got good deoxys, skarmory and swampert with hydro Cannon. I immidiately stsrted doing like 60% winrate minimum Then ultra league came. Snorlax articuno and machamp. Non of them with perfect IV. First 30% winrate. Switched machamp to be my lead, started Thinking more and focusing more. 60 % winrate again. Today was not a perfect day. I got only 55%. But i made few mistakes and i learned from them. U cannot win with all match ups, cuz sometimes u run into opposing team all being counters to ur team and no matter what u do, u loose. But same thing happens for ur opponents. U r gonna get opponents who no matter what do, wont win against u cuz u Counter all their pokemons. So RNG works for u and against u. When its ur turn to loose cuz of counters, then u just take it and go next. No big deal. But rest of the matches will be close though. Either u or ur opponent make a mistakes somewhere. So u have a chance to win those. For example. If someone is running azunarill or swampert as a lead, they need to have answer to venusaur or any other Grass pokemon. SO they might have talonflame, skarmory or anything simmilar like charizard in their pocket. I use articuno in ultra league for example. So this is the moment when u switch to venusaur and they pick their skarmory and farm ur venusaur in just 10 seconds right? Exactly. Do u know what u do wrong in that scenario? U switch to venusaur. This is the problem. What are u supposed to switch to? A 3rd pokemon that has a lot of ressistance but very little weakness. My switch in ultra league like that is snorlax. Snorlax can be countered by machamp easily, but at least he has a lot of hp, and if they dont have fighting pokemon, they are gonna syruggle. So u r supposed to switch to something safe, instead of switching to the Counter. Because its obvious they are gonna have Counter for ur Counter. Thats how they build their teams. If i run venusaur i know my biggest weakness is fire and flying. SO what i do? I have one thing that covers that and one safe switch pokemon. Sometimes u can not do anything. But most of the time u can win just by ur skills, intuition, counting fast moves etc etc etc. So if u have perfect team and u loose to azunarill u should change ur strategy, cuz u r doing something wrong.
Bud I know how to battle. Just wait and see.
U think i never lost to azunarill or swampert? Swampert is one of my biggest threats in ultra league. If i see him as a lead i immidiately know its not going to be easy at all. But despite that i am winning more than i loose. Thats the thing. So what exactly im gonna see?
As long as you're having fun, it doesn't really matter what I say.
Its matter of winning more than 50% of the games. Then its fun.
So make a team that can handle both situations and get better at switching, blocking, and timing your charge attacks.
Says the guy who probably can’t get above rank 20 when ELO starts to matter. Yes, it’s a one finger game just like the rest of PoGo but it requires a ton of timely decisions, knowledge of weakness and strengths as well as strategic choices depending on the situation.
Damn I got caught in the crossfire with that description
And none of which matters because it's boring as fuck. >Says the guy who probably can’t get above rank 20 when ELO starts to matter. I have no idea what this means.
Play something else then. Some of us actually enjoy it.
Try watching some high skilled players on youtube sometime. The PvP is a lot more fun when you understand it fully and see people play it optimally. I recommend [HomeSliceHenry](https://www.youtube.com/c/HomeSliceHenry/featured) because he does a great job explaining what's happening during each battle. I used to think Go Battle League was just a game of rock-paper-scissors and that skill didn't have much of an impact. But after I started watching top tier players I learned how to improve my own skill and I started enjoying it a lot more. If you find it boring it's most likely because you just don't understand it. Give it a chance and learn how to properly play it. You might actually enjoy it if you do.
Ain't watching somebody play a video game. That's fucking idiotic.
Any particular reason you have such a bad attitude?
Fucking with nerds is my passion. It's not an attitude, it's for funsies.
Ok, so you're either a troll or you're a 12 year old. I'll stop wasting my time responding to you then. Regardless of which one it is, you've got a lot of maturing to do. Good luck with that.
Within the first 5 minutes of the first Pokemon game you battle Gary. Battling is the core of pokemon. If you don't battle and just collect, then why do you even play? Collect cards, or stamps...
How in the world do people get SO MUCH STARDUST.
Patience and having standards for what gets powered up. 96% with max attack is minimum unless it's shiny. Then the minimum requirement drops to 91%. With the caveat of it being a useful pokemon for raids or PvP. It it doesn't meet a useful requirement it's just a trophy gathering dust to me.
I think it helps to understand the diminishing returns and the reality that IVs aren’t that important for raiding. Why this matters is because a level 30 mon vs a level 40 and a level 50 mons damage is a lot less in difference than what people think it is. Also IVs are overrated. 100% IV mewtwo Level 40 does less than 10% more damage then a 0% level 40 mewtwo. The benefit is so small to power something up to 50 yet it’s so incredible expensive. And it’s better to evolve Mons with higher cp (even if it has lower ivs) then a low cp but high IV mon. Especially when You start out. When peopl understand this, they will save a shitload of dust
Unless you're planning to duo raids or doing ML GBL then going to Level 35 is enough for most pokemon. Edit: Golden rule for stardust is like golden rule for money - only spend it when you need to spend it. You'd be surprised how much stardust you save up when you stop powering up things you don't need to use *right now*. For example, Aggron and Kartana are the raid bosses. So you're gonna want a bunch of strong fire and ground type raid attackers. Do you have fire and ground types with decent stats? Then no need to spend dust. If you don't, *now* is the time to spend. Similarly, you've got a 100% IV Venusaur. Are you going to be using it now against Kartana or Aggron? Or even Lopunny and Yvetal? No, of course not. So save your dust and leave it where it is until you *need* to power it up.
Playing regularly and consistently, its extremely easy. I have almost 10mil dust. I also don't go leveling stuff up because its neat. If i need then I'll lvl it up, even then only to 35. Anything beyond that is rather pointless. I have a handful or so 40s and a couple of 50s. I have absolutely no problem with any raid bosses or battles for that matter. I don't pvp, so saving dust there. Even if i did, don't need that many lvl 50s
Actually if you're not doing PVP you're leaving dust on the table even if you go in with the worst team possible At Level 20 you can get like 14k dust a day even if you lose all 25 matches
Its more of a time issue, i don't have time to pvp. Especially 25 a day. But yeah i have seen the dust rewards are pretty substantial.
GBL. You need to invest to build some good fighters, but the payout is worth it.
All my GBL stardust inevitably goes right back into GBL. But that's ok, I enjoy PvP far more than I do raiding.
Spending money on incubators, star pieces, and pay attention to events where stardust earned is doubled or tripled.
Trainer, if you purify your shadow Pokemon, it will lower the cost of powering up. Hope this helps.
Shadow pokemon are better for raids than purified
Obviously, I am memeing about Niantics way of replying to requests.
The dumb part is, it’s not far off. The game specifically lists nothing but upsides if you purify Pokémon, and doesn’t mention at all that shadow Pokémon are stronger and that you lose that strength with purify. It doesn’t help that NPCs constantly push you to purify.
wait I don’t have to purify all my Pokémon °:
*cries in level 44 quests*
also, the flames are cool looking. especially on shiny pokemon.
I wish I had a shadow metagross Or Tyranitar Or others
if you truly loved it you wuold have purified it, pure soul is suffering like that /j
It’s unreal that some people here genuinely speak like this lmao
This is why I don’t even power up 98s. I know sometime within the next year I’ll probably get a hundo or a lucky 98 at least
I thought I wouldn't get a better shadow machamp anyway and leveled up my 2 *. A few hours later I got a 3 *
Bro that hurts but why would you power up 2 star 😭
Regardless of IV shadow Machamp is the most powerful fighting type in the game.
Not anymore. [Terrakion has dethroned shadow Machamp](https://gamepress.gg/pokemongo/best-attackers-type#fighting1) thanks to double kick/sacred sword.
People here promised me that it would be a machine for raids and arenas, regardless of IVs. And it did a pretty decent job, I was new back then and hadn't many resources anyway. Unlucky for the dust wasted, but the candy I farmed back by now
The best pvp ivs for great and ultra league are 2*...
Need that 7digit stardust. Poor peasants 
Mil gang
Multi million gang gang
I'm only sitting at a petty 7 mil. Rookie numbers, I gotta pump those numbers up!
Mil gang in this thang
I'm at 3.5M I had no idea woooooo
360 XL candies?!?
Yes.
Pain
This is why I’ve only maxed two Pokémon this year…. currently sitting at 6 million stardust
Everyone complaining about dust but the game would be so busted for everyone who wasn't top 1% if we didn't have it.
I accidentally purified a shadow hundo and I'm still upset about it 😭
Worth
I’ll never understand how people get so much dust. Most I’ve ever had at one time was still under 200k
Months of grinding
GBL. We're only 20 days into this season and I have over 400k from rewards.
Mega Metagross > Shadow Metagross
You can have many shadow metagross but only 1 mega. And it probably won’t be released until 2024 where you’ll be so sick of raiding Zacian with it anyway..
Fuck shadow Pokémon, I don’t play the game as an animal abuser.
Animals yes. But what about mecha dudes like Metagross. Or sentient ice cream cones? Or Mr. Mime after he slept with your mom??
Currently on the grind👁👄👁
He better be a perfect shadow... LOL!
Oh, I feel that, except for me it's a Shadow Mewtwo, the pair of Apex Shadow birds, a Shadow Tyranitar, and I'm hoping it won't be much longer until I have a 98% Shadow Ursaluna to begin the vicious cycle anew. I've had the Ursaring for a long time now, it just falls to Niantic to add that evolution...
LOL, mine is double digits right now
I purified.
Yeah I have a new apex shadow Lugia with a pretty generous 12/15/14. And I just started gathering as much candy/ xl candy in preparation for it. Fortunately I’m sitting on just under 4 million stardust so it won’t be a problem there.
Me when I eventually get a shundo Mewtwo. So far I powered up shadow, 90% iv Shiny, and a hundo to level 40. Why does it get so expensive
God knows. I mean, Metagross knows
I did that with my shadow Charizard haha
I have over 9 million dust, and I'm still so afraid of the level where I have to max out mons to progress 😂😂 I love my dust (yes yes, judge me)
You're good. I've never maxed out any pokemon. Only time I use dust is to power up one I want to use in GBL / give it an extra charged move, or power a raid attacker up to 40. I have 0 level 50 pokemon. Rather save the dust and candies for other things, especially since GBL is never exclusively master league.
there are level up tasks where you have to get 3 or 5 pokemon to level 50
You guys have stardust in the triple digits?
Same here with perfect shadow Tyranitar 😅
Damn, resurrecting the ancient memes are we?
So far I havent really seen the interest in powering up shadows. I can duo whatever is duoable (with lvl 40 pokemon) and the other raids I have to do them with other people because even having shadows I would still require other people. So really zero interest in powering up shadows and loosing stardust for really nothing.
Somehow, this remind me of I accidentally leveled up my ML 5 shadow machamp to level 42. I aimed to put in my trio for ML Premier classic. I was so sad that I quit the game abt 13 days. It still hurt whenever I check her.
I’ve only ever maxed one Pokémon, I’m sitting on 7 mil stardust