On Solo’ing a Deoxys
When it comes to one-player raids in Pokemon GO, the average player can easily do one-star raids and complete three-star raids with little trouble. Unless it’s a three-star Shuckle raid. Those things are tanky. However, the idea of a solo player beating a level 5 raid is often out of the question. There ARE ways of soloing some raids, but they often require a full party of shadows, a Mega Pokemon or both.
Over the years though, with better Legendaries, Community Days with strong moves and just better moves in general, the task of solo-ing a level 5 raid becomes less and less tricky. People are already starting to solo Mega Pokemon, ones that have double weaknesses. And slowly but surely, new Pokemon allow us to do so much damage.
However, there is actually a pretty old raid boss that’s been solo-able for a while. The Pokemon Deoxys has multiple forms. Aside from its normal form, it also has Speed, Defense and Attack forms. These forms dump all their power into one stat. Defense Form has super high defense but does no damage. Attack Form hits like a truck but has low defenses. Speed Form doesn’t really do anything special at all, while Normal Form Deoxys has pretty level stats overall. Normal and Speed Deoxys generally need a team of 2-3 (competent) trainers, while Defense Form Deoxys needs 5 at minimum. The important form here is Attack Form, because Attack Form Deoxys has some of the lowest health in the game, at least when it comes to legendaries and mythical Pokemon.
That’s a good thing though. That means we can solo it.
Funnily enough, I have solo’d an Attack Form Deoxys in the past. It’s not actually on the SPUF of Legend, our Youtube channel, because, firstly, raids are boring to watch in Pokemon GO. But also, I didn’t really want to upload a video where I beat the raid but fail to catch the Pokemon. I have since captured footage of a solo five-star raid, but it’s not Deoxys.
However the recorded raid I had ended up being a disaster because, despite beating the Deoxys, I failed to catch it. I’ve done 4 solo raids against Attack Form Deoxys, lost one, caught two by the skin of my teeth, then I lucked out. I got a shiny Deoxys. Just what I wanted! The gods of solo-ing raids looked down at me and blessed me with a bright yellow spaghetti-armed menace. And you guys all know how I feel about the colour yellow.
Fighting them is actually kinda easy
Fortunately, actually fighting an Attack Form Deoxys is kinda easy. You can pick whichever dark or ghost type Mega Pokemon you want, then load the rest of your party up with Hydreigons, as well as a Tyranitar or two at the end. Personally, I use Mega Houndoom because I have a 100% one that’s already powered up and ready to go. Mega Gengar is a very spicy pick, depending on Deoxys’s moves. I alternated between Hydreigon, Tyranitar and Darkrai, all after my Mega Hundoom. Giratina is okay but Deoxys has Dark Pulse as a move, which is super effective against ghosts. Heck, other dark types have issues resisting Dark Pulse simply because Attack Form Deoxys’s attack is so insanely high.
In the mean time though, I also duo-d two Deoxys raids, since my alt account actually didn’t have any of the other forms aside from Normal Deoxys. Then, on its very first Attack Form Deoxys raid, the alt account got a shiny. An untradeable shiny, because Mythicals (except for Meltan) can’t be traded. Funnily enough, that’s the second time that this account has caught a new legendary for the Pokedex and it’s been shiny.
Anyway, I’m getting sidetracked. I actually, finally, gone one shiny Deoxys. I don’t even want all of them, I just wanted to prove that 1. I can defeat a Deoxys solo and 2. I can catch one. But holy heck, it’s been a struggle with all these Deoxys. The grind now is over, and I’ve finally been rewarded for my efforts.