"My EX Raid Experience"

#PokemonGO: I was lucky enough to receive an EX Invite late last evening. I figured it might help to hopefully give some feedback to Niantic as well share with others my experience.CountdownI drove down and parked at Stonestown Galleria. This mall has extensive parking, and is right next to the SFSU campus, and may have been an additional factor why SFSU was chosen as an EX raid. I then headed down to the SFSU quad while blasting some pokemon music to get in the mood.I arrived at the gym 30-40 minutes early. I joined another Instinct member and proceeded to take down the Valor gym in hopes of getting Gym control. We managed to swap it over to Instinct, and put up 3 pokemon but soon a large amount of Valor showed up and took back the gym with 20+ minutes left on the egg timer (I had only fed pinap berries). They then proceeded to use Golden Razzberries to hold control despite continued efforts to take down their pokemon. We ended up taking a group picture (not mine, so I blurred everyone's faces) 5-10 min before the egg hatched since they were trying to distract us from taking back the gym. :PBattleAs we gathered, we naturally split by team. I'd estimate there were roughly 40 people, with 15+ Valor, ~10 Mystic, and 8 Instinct. Everyone was hyped and pretty much jumped into the raid once the egg hatched. There were some concerns that there weren't enough Instinct, but I kept reassuring people as the Japan livestream showed that 7 could easily take down Mewtwo. We decided to go in and try it and worse case scenario we run out of time and then join mystic who were waiting for someone anyway.Our Mewtwo had Shadowball as its charge move for all of us. My first pokemon was a lvl 28 Scizor FC/XS, as I had powered it up some time ago and finally was excited to use it. Sadly Scizor pretty much got wrecked and killed on the first Shadowball despite dodging (ie the dodge glitch). My next two were lvl 30 Ttars that were my solid B/SE attackers from the bird legendaries. They as usual did solid work, tanking dodged Shadow Balls, and losing large chunks of HP when they got caught. They went down, and next was my lvl 30 S/C Houndoom that despite being only 44% IVs had a 15 atk and was level 30 when I caught it. Sadly just like my Scizor, he went down to the dodge glitch on the first Shadow Ball. My 5th Pokemon was a lvl 20 B/C Ttar fresh from a level 4 raid. I was surprised that it easily tanked the dodged Shadowball. Mewtwo eventually went down with ~110 sec left on the clock and my Ttar with 1/3 hp left.CatchI ended up getting:6 balls for defeating the boss2 Balls for damage0 balls for gym control3 balls for team contributionFor a total of 11 premier balls. The catch phase is mostly a blur looking back on it. You've got a lot of adrenaline going from the fight, and then there's the nerves of potentially not catching it. I ended up walking away from the group to sit down on the bench so I could focus. The biggest thing I noticed is that Mewtwo is far away. According to this chart, Mewtwo is further back than the Legendary beasts. There's also the fact that Mewtwo is tall and the catch circle is centered on its head. I managed to catch it on a junk nice throw, but I'm certainly not complaining. Here's my Mewtwo which I believe is an 84% IVs with a 14 atk. All in all, it was 6:10PM by the time I had my Mewtwo in storage.Post-FightThere was certainly a lot of excitement and high-fives going around as what seemed like a fair majority of people caught it. A fair share of people immediately left once they caught Mewtwo/It ran away. I stuck around and chatted with people as this was certainly a fun event and who knows when the next time might be.Unfortunately, this is where the story takes somewhat of a dive. It seems 1 player arrived supposedly at 6:06PM when the mystic team had already started their battle. A 2nd player arrived when we were in the catch phase. Lastly a 3rd player arrived around maybe 6:15PM. I stuck around with them to see if any other players might arrive to help out. Unfortunately, no one did. I felt bad as since I had completed the raid already, there was nothing I could do to help them. They decided to at least try the raid, and so went to battle around 6:50PM. One player was live-streaming and commentating as they threw every pokemon that their level 17 account had at Mewtwo. It was amusing to hear of the random 300 cp pidgey, a 200 cp spinarak, etc pokemon get slaughtered by Mewtwo. Surprisingly they had a ditto that transformed into a Mewtwo and not a common pokemon which has been reported in past legendary raids. Ultimately, they ran out of time with Mewtwo still having half of its HP. They did one last attempt as the timer ran out, but to no luck. As the raid timer ran out and the gym turned back to a regular gym, we eventually said goodbye and parted ways.TL;DRIf you want the extra balls from Gym Control, get there early, and be prepared to use golden razzberries to hold on. Battle will be fierce as more people arrive and the egg timer runs down.Definitely by all means split by team. The guaranteed 3 balls from Team contribution is key. Also with less people, you're more likely to get more balls for damage.If possible, see if one team might be willing to hold on and wait 10 or 15 minutes before starting their fight. There is no rush as there's a full 1 hour that the raid will be up and potentially being able to include late-comers could seriously help them out.Mewtwo can easily be taken out by 8 players. We had 108 sec left on our timer, so it's certainly possible with even fewer players.Mewtwo is tall and far back. Be prepared for longer/higher throws than the current legendary beasts.In my experience Scizor + Houndoom weren't nearly as effective as I had hoped. I had better experience with level 20 Ttars fresh from level 4 raids against my Shadowball Mewtwo.If you get invited to an EX raid, be sure to arrive early to the raid. The last thing you want is to arrive late and not be able to take down Mewtwo, since once you beat it, there's no way to fight Mewtwo again and help out late arrivals. It was heart-breaking to see people not be able to complete the EX raid because they were 5, 10 or 15 minutes late. via /r/TheSilphRoad http://ift.tt/2vUDXDQ