Elite Raids in Pokemon GO

Back before the pandemic, Pokemon GO used to have a system called EX Raids. Every month or so, players who spun certain gyms (called EX gyms) would be given a black raid pass, with a date and time printed on it. On the day, a raid would appear, and only people with EX Passes could do the raid. The raid boss was always something rare, like a Mewtwo with Shadow Ball. However, this system was scrapped, and for a while, we didn’t really have anything to replace them.

Now, a couple of years later, we got a new system, called Elite Raids. Similar idea, but are they better than EX Raids?

Mostly yes, a little no.

Firstly, the timings are much easier. Elite Raid eggs appear at formerly EX gyms, and only hatch at specific times: 11am, 2pm or 5pm. This gives you plenty of time to organize people to do these raids together. The time slots are mostly alright because these Elite Raids mostly happen on weekends. It’s much easier than organizing an EX Raid which only opened at a specific time. However, EX Raids lasted for a full hour, while Elite Raids only last half an hour, leaving less wriggle room if things go wrong.

What’s also nice is that you can do more than one Elite Raid. You just need to organize it with friends. That being said, not everywhere has an EX Gym available, so some areas were raid-less. There are four gyms near where I live and none of them had raid eggs on them, because none of them were EX Gyms. However, in town, there were a few more available. The times that they hatched seemed to pick one at random, there was no pattern between raids at 11am, 2pm or 5pm.

But unlike EX Raids, Elite Raids are actually genuinely difficult.

Seriously. Hoopa Unbound, the Elite Raid boss at the time of writing, hits like a truck. And while normally its bulk isn’t amazing, the (unofficial)  6-star raid really increases the boss’s health. To make matters even more difficult, Hoopa’s only real weaknesses are Bug and Fairy, with Bug being the stronger typing in this case. But not many people have leveled up bug types, and Hoopa’s charge attacks hit so hard that dodging was nigh impossible.

We had 7 accounts doing this raid, and it still took us a long time. Well, we did originally beat the boss with 5 players, but the game timer glitched and we ran out of time, despite having killing the boss with 50 seconds to spare.

In the end though we did defeat Hoopa Unbound. But there were a LOT of casualties.

The “special Pokemon spawns” are pretty bullshit.

After you win an Elite Raid, you get a small window where rare Pokemon have a chance to spawn. Assuming you get any spawns. When we finished the raid, we got some confetti, but we didn’t really get any rare spawns. The only non-event spawns were Pineco (which was nesting there anyway), Alolan Raichu and a Wooloo. We saw nothing else. The rewards weren’t anything spectacular either, but at least Hoopa Unbound was easy to catch.

Really though, at the end of the day, Elite Raids are just harder Legendary or Ultra Beast raids. Just on specific days and times. Better than EX Raids, at least.