Wednesday Raid Hour
Pokemon GO is kinda designed as a community game, a game we have to play together. After all, we have events called Community Days, we have large friends lists that give us bonuses as we level up and we work together to beat raids. One community-based event however happens every Wednesday. At 6pm local time, level 5 Legendary raids appear on the majority of gyms, an event known as Raid Hour. If a gym already has a raid on it, if it finishes before Raid Hour ends at 7pm, then it’ll get a Legendary raid egg after the current raid finishes. The majority of raids in Raid Hour appear as eggs 20 minutes before 6pm, last 1 hour and disappear at 7pm.
The Legendary that appears generally depends on whatever Legendary is currently in the raid pool. At the time of writing, it is Terrakion, but in December, we’re getting Reshiram, Zekrom and Kyurem. Whenever there are multiple Legendary Pokemon in raids, such as the Legendary Birds, Articuno, Zapdos and Moltres, you’ll generally get one specific Legendary for the next three weeks, so every Legendary gets a chance to appear in a Raid Hour. Shadow Pokemon don’t get raid hours though, they’re restricted to weekends only.
Although Raid Hour happens every week though, we don’t always go and do these raids. Because, unlike Raid Events like the Mega Garchomp Raid Day, there are no special bonuses or raid passes or anything. You get your standard daily free raid pass, plus an extra one if you already had a raid pass from the day before, and that’s it. In fact, most Raid Hours, I find myself skipping them. Why? Because, half the time, the Legendaries in Raid Hour are often heavily repeated or don’t have their exclusive moves. Throughout November, we had the Swords of Justice, and NONE of them had their special move, Sacred Sword. This meant that the only reason to do them was for shinies or candy. Okay, sure, I don’t have a shiny Terrakion, but I only have so many Elite TMs in order to make it usable.
On top of that, you also need raid passes if you plan on doing several of them. But not everyone has raid passes to spare. It takes 2 days to get enough coins for one raid pass, meaning you can only really get 3 raid passes a week. Sometimes it’s better spending raid passes on more useful Pokemon, such as Mega Pokemon, which don’t appear in Raid Hours. That being said, a second Raid Hour for Mega Pokemon would be pretty neat. Thursdays have nothing going on, so you might as well do something with them. Getting a bunch of people together to do two raids (using free raid passes) is a bit of a let down if you’re not in a massive major city with gyms that fill up quickly.
On the plus side, Legendary Raids are generally easier to do now. Between having more and stronger Pokemon, the buff to Shadow Pokemon, special moves, level 50 Pokemon and Party Play, many Legendaries can be defeated with just 2 or 3 accounts. Granted, for maximum chance of completing these raids, you want at least 4 players, but the difficulty levels have kinda gone down these days. This means that Legendary Raids are a bit more accessible now. Unfortunately though, many Legendaries require two teams of level 40 Pokemon with good IVs, and the harder ones require a team of level 50 Pokemon with near perfect IVs in order to beat them.
At least Raid Hours are regular, which gives people a chance to meet up at a guaranteed time to actually do a raid. Normally, raids are completely random, and getting people together to do a Legendary raid can be troublesome. But you can always say “meet me at X gym on Wednesday at 6pm” and there will almost certainly be a raid there.
Well, mostly. Assuming there isn’t some other raid already there…