Primal Groudon Raid Day
These constant raid days have been great, but damn, my luck has been all over the damn place. Primal Groudon Raid Day is the raid day I’ve been waiting for for a long, long time. One of my goals in Pokemon GO was to get my 100% Groudon to level 50, but it’s becoming more and more clear that this isn’t going to happen, not for a long time, and not without walking every single good Groudon I have.
This raid day was pretty much identical to the Primal Kyogre Raid day, except easier. Primal Groudon, being a dual ground/fire type, has a double weakness to water, and since everyone did Primal Kyogre the weekend prior, everyone should have had a Primal Kyogre ready to go. Failing that, a Mega Swampert would have been great, but really, Primal Kyogre, even without Origin Pulse, is so stupidly good that anything else is only okay. Shadow Kyogre is also an option, but most people only have one of those, and I don’t fancy spending a huge amount of stardust and candy on my 1-star shadow Kyogre. Thanks to the double weakness, Primal Groudon goes down somewhat easily with a group of 4 trainers with strong counters, and 7-8 players is good enough to make sure you actually get a good amount of Primal Energy.
Locally, we had some pretty alright interest, but not as much as Primal Kyogre. With Primal Kyogre, most of our free raids got 14-16 people, and it was only 7-14 people for Primal Groudon, despite it being easier and more useful. The Groudons went down pretty quick with 10+ players but dramatically slowed down with under 10. Still managed to get 80 energy minimum per raid (didn’t manage to get over 90, even with a lobby of 17 people), meaning you’d need 5 raids minimum to Primal Reverse a Groudon.
That being said, despite that double weakness to water, Primal Groudon fucking hurts. Despite resisting both moves, Earthquake and Fireblast will do 3/4 of a Kyogre’s health with ease, and Solar Beam will one-shot anything but a level 35+ Primal Kyogre. On top of that, one of Groudon’s fast moves is Dragon Tail, which most of its counters don’t resist.
In total, I did 12 raids, before everyone else in my group got bored and left. I managed to get 70 XL candy, plus 3 Rare Candy XL from three raids, plus the 3 Rare Candy XL I got for finishing the Level 45 Research, for a total of 82 candy, because I already had some Groudon XL Candy before the event started. I still need about 65 XL Candy to max out my hundo Groudon, and it’s unlikely Groudon will be back in raids for a while, so walking as a buddy and trading/transferring/hoping are my only hopes of getting more. The best Groudon I got out of 12 Raids (one fled, despite me landing, I kid you not, 10 excellent throws in a row) was 2319 CP, only just a 3-star. I did get three shinies, but they were 2-stars and one was a measly 10/9/10. None of the Groudons I caught had over 14 attack.
Honestly, I wasn’t going for the shinies, I was going for the candy, but I should have saved my remote passes from Kyogre and used them on Groudon. At least I have plenty of normal Groudon candy, for my guaranteed-to-be-awful Shadow Groudon I’m going to catch next week.
Also, the rewards fucking sucked from doing these raids. Despite being some of the hardest raids in the game (beaten only by Mega Latias with Charm, Primal Kyogre and Lugia, who is just insanely tanky) you get LESS rewards than if you beat a regular 5-star raid. You can solo a Attack Form Deoxys raid and get better rewards than a raid that requires a minimum of 4 people and a Primal Pokemon. Sure, it gave me lots of Silver Pinaps, but I used up most of my Golden Razberries catching Groudon and a lot of the raids only gave me 2-4 revives and potions, meaning I ended up with far, far less resources than when I started.
And they give you less rare candy. The rare candy you get in a normal Legendary raid comes in bunches of 3, for a maximum of 12, while Primal raids come in bunches of 2, for a maximum of 8.
Ugh.
Like, it’s nice getting more candy for Groudon, one of my favourite Legendary Pokemon, but still, it kinda sucks.