"Beyond Power and Time to Win: How Pacing is Crucial to Soloing Tier Three Raids"

#PokemonGO: While waiting for Mewtwo and the next legendary beast, I've been working on soloing all of the solo-able tier 3 raids. I've been able to solo at least one moveset on each of the five solo-able Pokemon (Arcanine, Alakazam, Machamp, Gengar, and Vaporeon) and I've noticed one common theme on raids where I've been successful. There have been some great guides on soloing tier three raids lately and pokebattler (especially the pokebox feature) has been an amazing resource. But one thing that I don't think has gotten enough attention is how to pace the battle. By pacing, I mean both how much damage you do during the course of the battle and when you choose to take damage. To solo a tier three, I would recommend dodging as little as necessary to set yourself up so that each of your pokemon faints from an opposing charge move.In my experience, the overall power and survivability of my team as well as the raid boss's moveset are undoubtably important in soloing tier three raids, but once I've got a team that is workable (typically from pokebattler or tripledex, with a little tweaking), the difference between timing out and beating the boss is being intentional about when I take damage during the battle. Ideally, I try to ensure that all of my pokemon faint from an opposing charge move, preferably when my pokemon have significantly less health than that charge move would normal do. If I can time things so that my pokemon can take a charge move with a sliver of health left, I know I've set up my next pokemon to do maximum damage and also stolen a serious amount of DPS from the raid boss. (For example, if an Alakazam's Future Sight does 50 damage to a Tyranitar, but your Tyranitar only has 5 HP left, that's 45 damage that is wasted and that won't be dealt to your next pokemon.)Figuring out the timing for how to accomplish this is tricky and depends on your pokemon and the raid boss's charge move (one bar moves make this much easier). Usually though it can be accomplished with little or no dodging. Typically, I will dodge with my first pokemon so that it can take a charge move to faint and this usually sets me up for the rest of the battle.With this approach, it's important to know how much time you have to give for dodging (whenever you're dodging, you aren't dealing damage) and how many charge moves each of your pokemon can take. One or two strategic dodges of charge moves over the course of a battle can put you on pace to ensure that each of your pokemon gets over-killed by a charge move. It takes some trial and error but it has made a big difference for my ability to solo tier three raids. Hope this helps, trainers!TL;DR: When soloing a tier three raid, pace the battle by dodging as little as necessary to ensure that all of your pokemon faint from an over-killed charge move. It sets up your next pokemon and steals significant DPS from the raid boss. Just don't dodge too much and time out. via /r/TheSilphRoad http://ift.tt/2feclCy