How I’d Fix Raids in Pokemon GO

Raids in Pokemon GO have always been a bit problematic. Between the lack of great Pokemon, needing enough people to do a raid and having to forgo normal raids to do legendary raids due to a lack of people or raid passes, these raids can often be quite awkward. One of the much bigger problems is getting enough players to even do a raid in the first place. However, I have some ideas that might help smooth things out.

Make them scale

My first idea is that raid bosses should scale to the number of players in the lobby. You still need to work hard and put a good team together, but the boss’s health should be based on the number of players waiting to defeat said boss. For example, a Lugia raid boss would have different health, depending on whether there are 6 people in the lobby or more/less. As it is, you need at least a 5 player team with correct counters in order to almost guarantee defeating the Lugia boss. However, Lugia is a very tough boss, and 3-4 players doing the raid can fail with a bit of bad luck. However, if the boss’s HP scaled down a bit for the 3-4 player teams, then everyone can play without the smaller teams missing out. And on the flip side, a massive lobby with 10+ people, the raid should scale up a bit so it’s not a complete cakewalk.

Improve recommended teams

Let’s face it, the recommended teams Pokemon GO chooses for you absolutely suck. Rather than going for high damage, the recommended party is based solely on not dying. And the one time the recommended team does favor damage over defense, it seems to pick Pokemon that die to whatever the boss’s charge attack is. For example, for a Tapu Fini raid, the recommended party can either be a mishmash of tanky Pokemon like Melmetal, which does damage too slowly, or it could recommend a party of Venusaur and Sceptile, which would be fine, unless the boss has ice beam. And every time I’ve had a damage-based party recommended to me, there’s always some sort of catch.

As an example, earlier today, I joined a Tapu Fini raid. It picked out Sceptile and Zekrom. But the boss had Ice Beam, a very spammy move, and, despite my Pokemon doing lots of damage, it managed to wipe out my party pretty easily with hard-to-dodge ice moves. What I should have done was gone with my recommended team of Kartana, which, while still being pretty glassy, at least partially resist some of that damage.

Unrelated, Ice Beam is weirdly hard to dodge.

Get rid of the timer.

My simplest suggestion is to simply get rid of the timer. That way, no matter how many people are playing, they will eventually defeat a raid boss. Eventually. While this does somewhat remove a chance of failure, it becomes a battle of grit and resources, whether you are willing to sacrifice more and more Pokemon to beat the raid boss. Removing the clock just makes raids a little more accessible, regardless of how difficult the raid boss is. And you can get a ton of new players into raids because they are no longer 100% reliant on other people. Of course, a raid is a lot easier with more players, but people in rural areas or with dead communities can still take part in raids, no matter what.

Anyway, these are just my ideas for raids. None of them will happen, but it’s nice to think about…