EX-Raids are Pointless

EX-Raids are pointless. They’re silly. A waste of time. Tedious and often unfair. But not actually difficult or anything.

You see, I took part in an EX-Raid on the 22nd. It was from 1pm to 1:45pm at one of the fountains at the local town hall. Funnily enough, the in-game gym hasn’t properly been updated so it, alongside many of the Pokestops nearby, is kinda inaccurate. Either way, I drove there, met a bunch of people who were also there to do the EX-Raid, did the EX-Raid, caught my Attack Forme Deoxys and then left. Getting stuck in traffic as I did so.

Why did I get stuck in traffic? Because 1:00 to 1:45pm is also the exact time that the nearby schools finish, so you find yourself stuck behind a bunch of retards trying to park as close to the school as possible so that their darling little demonspawn don’t have to walk too far. Because heavens forbid they have to use their legs a little.

So yeah, not fun.

In fact, because Attack Forme Deoxys is so damn fragile, I spent more time walking to and from the gym than actually fighting. I spent more time waiting for the raid to start than I did actually fighting Attack Forme Deoxys.

Between 7 accounts, the bastard was dead in 20 seconds. I lost a single Tyranitar and didn’t even get to use my army of Houndooms. Or the Ditto I had stuck at the end.

Amazingly, I managed to catch this one (although it instantly broke out of TWO excellent throws) but the lowest level player there, a poor guy at only level 25 who was doing his first EX-Raid, didn’t manage to. Between low damage, low levels and having the least team support, he only had 9 balls to work with and, like all level 5 raids, Deoxys is a bitch to catch.

The thing is, it’s not just Attack Forme Deoxys. Normal Deoxys was weak as well. It wasn’t as instantly kill-able as Attack Deoxys but you could still reliably take it down with 4 accounts in a decent amount of time. Even Mewtwo, the original EX-Raid Pokemon, was somewhat easier to take down because you can just throw Gengars at him. Mewtwo though was a bit more of a challenge though, which I think is nice.

But Ex-Raids are a royal pain in the ass. The chance of getting an EX-Raid pass in the first place is fucking tiny, especially since you can be fucked over simply because a raid is going on at an EX-Raid Gym when passes are being handed out, and you’re often limited on how many EX-Raid Gyms there are in the first place! I’m lucky, there’s 3 EX-Raid gyms near where I live, one of which has decent parking, but only one of them has raids on a regular basis, which are required to actually get an EX-Raid pass in the first place.

I’ve talked at length about EX-Raids before, and honestly they probably won’t improve. The same problems will always be there. Currently though, there’s barely any reward.

I mean, okay, sure, I caught an Attack Forme Deoxys. But Attack Forme Deoxys can’t change into any of the other forms and he only has a very niche glass cannon use in PvP battles. Normal Deoxys is considered to be completely useless. The other rewards are identical to the rewards to level 5 raids. I got 9 revives, 9 golden berries, a Fast TM and a couple of potions. I could have gotten those from a Palkia raid and come out of it with a nice dragon as well. But I could have picked which level raid I wanted to go, perhaps ignoring the one by a busy school and perhaps going to a raid later on.

Let’s be fair, the other mythical Pokemon available – Mew, Celebi and Meltan – all have very limited uses as well. You obtain them though through a series of tasks though that you can do at your leisure. Mewtwo is a worthy, powerful Pokemon to possess. Deoxys? Not so much.

Maybe I’m more annoyed about being stuck in traffic than I am about the raid. But my point still stands. EX-Raids and their very specific timings suck ass.