On Deoxys and Ex Raids

My first Ex Raid may have been a total disaster for me, but I got over my anger and started playing Pokemon Go again. Quite obviously if you’re a regular reader, since I published an article about Pokemon Go’s Gengar event the other day, not to mention the fact that I managed to catch 108 Pokemon for the Spiritomb research. Since that Ex Raid, I’ve done two more and was going to be invited to do another but unfortunately I had work. Clearly something must have changed since I did that first raid, because Deoxys was much easier to catch these two times. Not only was he ‘closer’ to the screen but he seemed to catch more easily as well, with some people catching him with Pinaps and stuff.

I did an Ex Raid today (on November 15th, the day I wrote this article) and I actually caught my Deoxys in one throw. Still thinking of names for him.

But honestly? Ex Raids are kinda disappointing.

Actually, Deoxys is kinda disappointing too. It’s a cool-looking Pokemon, definitely, coming in four different forms. Currently though, you can only fight normal Deoxys, with his big noodle arms. Normal Deoxys is probably the better form anyway since Attack Form is probably the glassiest of glass cannons and Defense Form, just like the Regi-Pokemon, simply isn’t usable. The Pokemon Go meta seems to favour high damage and high health over actual defense, and you can’t put legendaries or mythical Pokemon in gyms anyway.

Sure, Deoxys did get a buff (literally the day I had an Ex Raid for him) but there are plenty of Pokemon that do Deoxy’s job. Like Gengar. Or my Shadow Ball Alakazam that did a ton of damage to the Ex Raid I did today. Sure, more options are always nice, but for something that’s supposed to be either legendary or mythical (turns out people aren’t sure) and looks like a fighting noodle alien from another world, you kinda expect a little better.

But back to Ex Raids.

There’s something off about them. It’s worth pointing out that I’ve received 3 Ex Raid passes since I started playing in August and aabicus, who has been playing from the start, only seems to have received two. Which were both cancelled, due to a bug which will delete your invitation if you do a raid at an Ex Gym before the date of your Ex Raid. Dumb bug, I know. But aabicus raids a lot more than I do and probably has access to way, way more Ex Gyms than I do. As far as I’m aware, in a 50km radius, there’s only 3 Ex Raid gyms and one of them is kinda remote.

But still, even if you do get an Ex Raid pass, they’re… not very common. I don’t do that many Raids, but brother is always driving around town for work reasons, so he’ll do raids whenever he can. We’ve both received the same number of Ex Raid passes.

Even then, Ex Raids are for a VERY specific date and time. Two of the Ex Raids for me were at 1pm, which is lunch time and some people might have breaks, but both raids were near schools, meaning there were kids and parents everywhere. Today’s raid was at 11:30am, meaning only 4 people could make it – me, the brother and two players who both had 3 accounts each, two accounts each with passes for the Ex Raid.

Assuming you can even make it to a raid, it’s not anything special. Ex Raids are just level 5 raids with a unique pass to enter them. The only difference is that you’re getting a Pokemon that’s not available elsewhere… except, if you are patient enough, you can. The previous (and only other) Ex Raid boss was Mewtwo, but he was available as a level 5 raid for at least a month while Deoxys transitioned into the role of Ex Raid boss. Chances are, when the next Ex Raid boss comes out, normal Deoxys will be available in level 5 raids anyway.

I can’t help but ask myself, aside from making legendary Pokemon hard to obtain, which they’re not really if you can get people together to do level 5 raids, what’s the point?