Kleavor Raid Day

I like raid days. You get five free raid passes and get to do a bunch of raids for a Pokemon with an increased shiny chance. Kleavor Raid Day is no different, although it IS a Pokemon from the Pokemon Arceus game, which means it does stick out a bit.

This raid day follows the normal formula. Kleavor appears as a three-star raid boss on all available gyms. There’s not an infinite amount of raids though, so once you’ve done one gym, you can’t get a second raid on it. That being said, you can only have so many raid passes. The raids aren’t too difficult either. As a three-star raid, you can solo it pretty easily, and even just having one more player means Kleavor falls extremely quickly. It also helps that its charged attacks are pretty slow and easy to avoid, although X-Scissor can be a little bit spammy. Even then though, the raid is still extremely easy. You also have a lot of options of what to use, because Kleavor has a lot of weaknesses. There’s no double weakness like Scizor with fire, but you can use a large variety of types.

Kleavor’s shiny is also very nice. I actually lucked out and got a LOT of shinies. We did five raids and I got two shinies on my main account and, amazingly, two shinies on my little account too. Just like Scizor, Kleavor’s shiny turns green. The shiny actually gives Kleavor the same colour scheme that Scyther has. My only complaint is that Kleavor is an insanely skinny Pokemon. It looks like you can easily snap its legs and its arms don’t look strong enough to carry those massive axe heads.

What about Kleavor itself? Is it any good? Well, unfortunately, the answer is no. Not at all. While its stats are alright, the problem with Kleavor is that its fast moves suck. It can only learn Quick Attack and Air Slash. Quick Attack is a normal type move and is utterly useless. Air Slash would be okay, but it doesn’t have STAB, meaning it does lackluster damage. Its charge moves are actually pretty okay, although having both Stone Edge and Rock Slide feels a tad redundant. What is even more unfortunate is that it’s already got a huge amount of competition both as a bug type and as a rock type. For rock types, we still have Rampardos and Rhyperior at the top, and plenty of other rock types underneath, like Terrakion and Tyranitar. For bug types, we have competition from Scyther’s otyher evolution, Scizor, as well as the also newly released Volcarona. Although we don’t often need bug types, so being a good or bad bug type doesn’t really matter.

I didn’t manage to get a Kleavor with good stats, but, well, it doesn’t really matter. It’s unlikely I’ll ever actually use a Kleavor for anything.

Still, it was nice having a bit of a classic event. I only used the free raid passes though. Kleavor isn’t worth a remote raid pass, not at $2 a pop.