"EX Raid Glendora, California (09-15-17)"

#PokemonGO: I wanted to post my experience with an EX raid in southern California. We have a couple groups organized mostly through facebook messenger that work raids in Azusa, Glendora, San Dimas, La Verne, Covina and West Covina primarily. I also put short version at the end.EX Pass A number of us (pretty random) got the EX raid pass for the Sprint store in Glendora, California, with others getting raid passes for a West Covina Sprint store and possibly one other store a little further west. Several of us that had received the EX pass had raided on 09/02 at the Sprint store at 5:30 AM for a Raikou raid. For me, that was the only time I had raided at that location ever, as I tend to focus more on San Dimas and La Verne.For a lot of people in our group, this was frustrating because there were people who had raided widely and heavily over the last several weeks and even months who didn't get a pass. I myself had eased off and had only been raiding one or twice a day for the last few weeks (grad school + work). I counted myself lucky but felt bad for some of the more committed group members.Once the raid passes went out - it doesn't seem like anybody else got the pass after that, even though many of the group members did raid at that store after the pass first came out.Pre-Raid Lot of discussion about gym control on the threads. People started warring for gym control as early as 24 hours out (maybe earlier). Instinct had the gym and had people feeding it several hours before the raid. Impressively, they maintained control fighting off 20-30 players by coordinating their golden razzberries. I was valor and trying to fight them, but we only ended up taking 2 of their pocket monsters off the gym before Mewto spawned. Props to instinct that day (I was kind of happy they got it because they often don't get the team bonus from having enough players at raids). From what I understand they did burn through almost all of their goldez razzberries.Pre-raid there had been some discussion about having staged groups go in a certain order (mystic, then valor, then instinct). We also talked about having a mop up crew that would be there for stragglers but that didn't really happen. I for one wanted to make sure I was in a valor group to get the damage bonus and not enough valor players seemed ready to hang back. I think it would be ideal (though unlikely) for valor, mystic, and instinct to dedicate 7 players each to going in later (a half hour after raid battle goes live), if they wanted to take care of stragglers. It's hard to coordinate during the battle for gym control though, and people are hyped to take on Mewto.During Raid When the raid egg was about to drop everybody cued up outside the store in a moment of chaos before I shouted for Valor to head to a certain point by me. We had 24 valor players out of the 60+ people there who had EX raid passes. I initially tried to suggest three groups or two, but we voted for two groups.First group went in minutes after the raid went live. Second group went in 6 minutes after. I had hoped to hold the group until 10 minutes after, but people were amped to go, so I went with that. Both groups easily beat Mewto (which spawned with Shadow Ball). It was too laggy to dodge, so bring your ttar tanks.Catching All but 2 people out of the 24 in Valor caught it. The two that didn't catch it weren't the best throwers - they missed a lot and didn't time their throws right so he batted some away. I caught it on a curved great with goldez razz on the first throw (2248).His movement pattern is really lame. He jumps up and down and swats at the player. Best thing to do is set the circle, wait till he starts the swat animation, and immediately spin your curve and throw a long curve. He's far out there - and the ball should hit a split second or so after he finished the attack animation. I think theres a chance he could double swat because of the time it takes to spin, throw, and for your ball to cover the distanceAfter Some people from an instinct group were in a battle with Mewto when a straggler showed up (I heard about this by way of another player). A bunch tried to back out but it was right before Mewto died so not enough were able to back out (some people tried to back out and failed). Because of that, a number of players ended up trying to help the stragglers with two few. The stragglers were low level players plus one level 38 player that had no good pocket monsters powered up for Mewto. Another straggler had tons of stardust but nothing good powered up. Because of this, the stragglers and the few people that were able to successfully back out all failed after 3-4 attempts. I believe it was six people with a couple of the six having poor lineups for Mewto. Another of the stragglers didn't even know they had a EX pass and just happened to be driving by in the last half-hour.That last part was awful - hearing about it after. So, a couple suggestions. The best thing to do would be to get solid committment from a team of 6-7 players from each team, with solid Mewto counters, to hang back and start in the last 15-20 minutes of the raid. At some point though, you have to cut off compassion for late stragglers with bad lineups. Otherwise you could get screwed over trying to help people that didn't plan well.Coordinating a late crew is hard in the battle for gym control. I think the battle for gym control might be a little pointless if one group has established control in the 30 minutes leading up to the raid.Alternatively, you could scrap the late crew as you are risking your chance at Mewto trying to help someone who should have been there at the start.If you are someone who knows they have to be late - because of time or work committments - and you have an established communication system with a group (through discord or messenger apps), then you need to get buy in for a late group well before the raid starts.Anyway, thats my overall - overly detailed - recollection of what happened. Short version is - get there on time - don't worry about gym control - make sure you have decent line-up of counters - and make sure you can throw a good curve (set the circle - if you don't know what that means, google it and find out). via /r/TheSilphRoad http://ift.tt/2jA8W23