"Notes on Soloing Confusion/Shadow Ball Alakazam"

#PokemonGO: With Mewtwo on the horizon and with our new understanding of raid rewards, I've been practicing soloing Alakazam, which is also IMO the most difficult of the soloable Tier 3 raids (Flareon excluded). With Psycho Cut, Alakazam goes down to Gengar in no time, but Confusion prohibits the use of Gengar and Focus Blast/Shadow Ball can give Tyranitar a lot of trouble. After successfully beating a Confusion Alakazam for the first time last week (Confusion/Future Sight) I was happy to run into Confusion/Shadow Ball this morning. It took me 4 attempts but I ultimately was successful with the following team (in order of appearance):PokemonCPLevelIVMovesetTyranitar35583914/14/13Bite/CrunchTyranitar35933915/12/15Bite/Stone EdgeTyranitar31123014/14/13Bite/CrunchScizor27503914/15/15Fury Cutter/X-ScissorHoundoom20603011/13/6Snarl/Foul PlayGengar25723915/15/14Shadow Claw/Shadow BallSome thoughts/observations from the battle:All defending Pokemon, raid bosses included, launch two quick attacks in rapid succession at the beginning of the battle. Because of how strong Confusion is, you take a lot of damage from those two quick attacks, and you really need a multi-charge bar pokemon to maximize your damage. I had initially wanted to maximize my time with the L39 B/C and thus put my L39 B/SE in the first slot, but T-tar would often faint before getting off a 2nd or 3rd Stone Edge, so I switched B/C to the first slot and was consistently able to get off 4-5 Crunches.The more Tyranitar you use, the less you should dodge. I ran out of time on a couple of my early attempts because I dodged too much. It's tempting to dodge often though because of how easy Shadow Ball is to predict.Gengar in the last slot was an attempt to compensate for dodging with T-tar as mentioned above. This strategy was very helpful in my second-closest attempt, but as you can see from the screenshot below, I didn't end up using Gengar in my winning lineup.Crunch T-tar was definitely the MVP here - if you have 2 maxed B/C or 6 L30 B/C you should be able to handle C/SB Zam easily.RNG plays a big role. I had 8 seconds left on my winning attempt solely because I got lucky with the boss not releasing many Shadow Balls on my best Tyranitar. Make sure you give it 4-5 tries minimum as results can vary greatly even within a two-bar move like Shadow Ball.Snarl has a really long animation. Be careful trying to launch Foul Play with Houndoom as you may not be done with Snarl yet and may accidentally miss a crucial attack.It was hard to gauge exactly how good Scizor was, but it was my 6th pick because of its high level and because of Steel's resistance to Confusion. Would another L30 Houndoom have been better, with its Psychic immunity and Ghost resistance? Very possibly. This is definitely the most flexible slot in my team.TL;DR If you want to solo Confusion Zam, don't hesitate to power up Ttar with Crunch (since you weren't planning on Mewtwo already!! /s). Gengar is really risky and Houndoom is better than you'd expect.My final, successful attempt, and one screenshot that really drives home how tough solo raid bosses can be (whenever you think you're pretty close): http://ift.tt/2iix20D for reading. via /r/TheSilphRoad http://ift.tt/2vV7t9j