"My EX Raid Story: How 10 Mystics held off a combined Valor/Instinct attack for 4 hours, and why active gym defense represents the culmination of everything we have built and learned so far."

#PokemonGO: I am a Mystic player living in Boston, which has a Mystic plurality but also a strong representation of Valor and Instinct in certain neighborhoods. When this second cycle of sponsored gym EX raids spawned, our goal (obviously) was to maximize our chances of catching mewtwo by obtaining gym control.In Boston, the trainers from all three teams are each highly organized on their own team discord channels. Our first mewtwo raid was at the Porter gym, an area that was heavily Mystic. Nonetheless we arrived early, took over the gym when nobody was around, and held it firmly against a few sporadic Valor attacks until mewtwo spawned. We knew from our first mewtwo raid that Instinct was just as organized as us, and they were known for their defense of the Coolidge gym, which was located in dense Instinct territory. The Coolidge gym came under combined attack by Mystic and Valor (both by EX raid pass holders and helpers alike), yet remained firmly in Instinct hands until Mewtwo spawned. In fact, we discovered that they had separately arrived at the same conclusion as us for the optimal defensive line-up. Our mystic analysts had determined that the best team for active gym defense was Blissey, Vaporeon, Snorlax, Lapras, Steelix, Chansey (in that order). They determined this from months of battling gyms, and numerous calculations posted right here on reddit.When I received my second EX raid pass for the Coolidge gym (in Instinct territory), I was a little worried. The story of the one-sidedness of the Instinct defense there last week had already spread through the city. Therefore, we devised a plan to place our optimal defensive line-up there early in the day. Throughout the day, we organized hourly shifts to watch the gym like soldiers standing guard. If a gym came under attack, we would alert all members through discord to begin a cycle of actively remote feeding the gym, while also asking for any mystics in the vicinity to help feed on-site.The first Instinct attack came around 11 AM during my watch. The attackers cycled through our 6 defending pokemon twice before giving up. The speed of the attack was quick enough for us to conclude that there were at least two people attacking together. I had a bad feeling about this, because I knew this was the scout attack, and that these players would alert the entire Instinct discord of our presence on their turf. My only hope was that they would not realize they were facing a coordinated defense, and therefore neglect to organize a coordinated attack. Unfortunately, this was not to be the case.A few more probing attacks were made in the early afternoon, with clearly stronger and stronger teams, yet none came anywhere close to booting the Alert Pokemon (Blissey). We called this position the "Alert Pokemon" because it needed to be the tankiest pokemon that would give us time to "alert" the defenders to an attack. Chansey was our last pokemon, called the "Anchor" pokemon. We could also tell the attacks were not coordinated, because the attackers were cycling through all 6 of our pokemon (often failing on pokemon 5 or 6). We had previously determined, in the event of our defense failing and therefore requiring us to counterattack, that as attackers the best strategy would be to focus the first pokemon only rather than trying to cycle through all 6 (in the hopes of cutting the time the defenders would have to heal the alert pokemon).Around 3 PM, four hours before the EX raid start time, the gym started to come under sustained and coordinated attack. The attackers had clearly organized a strategy to boot Blissey, and the attacks intensified. Our defensive team began to estimate our cycle time. "Cycle time" is the amount of time required to put all defenders on berry cooldown. Refresh time is the time required to come off berry cooldown (30 minutes). If cycle time falls below refresh time, the defending pokemon will be booted since the attackers will be attacking so fast as to put all defenders on berry cooldown before the earliest defender can come back online and feed again. At this stage, cycle time was about 15 minutes longer than refresh time, which put us in a strong position. The only way they could defeat us was by exhausting our berry supply (which we counted about 1,000 at our disposal).Starting 5 PM, the attacks intensified. I am sure this was because everyone got off work. We also arrived in person to the gym, and organized our defense from there. An in person defense is highly superior to a remote defense because there is real time assignment of berry responsiblity to prevent double-berrying the same pokemon (which would inadvertently reduce your cycle time). Our strategy was organized such that the person with the fastest server connection (as indicated by whoever saw the pokemon lose health first) would alert the group to an attack on a pokemon "Lapras down!" Then another group member would call out "I have Lapras" to indicate that they, and they alone, would feed ONE berry. We also had one dedicated player "camping" on the alert pokemon, which means they had that pokemon selected and had a berry tee'd up for feeding. That person would be the exclusive point-person to feed the alert pokemon.This system worked well but there was a gradual crescendo of increased ferocity of the Instinct attack. Around 5:30 PM, Valor and Instinct both combined to organize a coordinated attack on the alert pokemon and defeated it. Our defenders set a 10 minute timer (the failsafe time) so we would know how long we would have to hold out with just 5 defenders. The "failsafe time" is the time the enemy team has to defeat each pokemon before the defending team can replace it. If the attacking team cannot remove pokemon faster than the defending team can replace them, they will be unable to take the gym. Even though we were facing a coordinated attack by more and more enemy players, We also had more and more mystic players arriving, so we could increase our cycle time in tandem.The last 15 minutes leading up to mewtwo spawn escalated into an attack rate which I am confident will never be seen again. Our individual cycle time, or the time taken to exhaust one player's 10 berries, was reduced to 2-3 minutes. This meant that our 3000+ CP Snorlax (by now we had lost both Blissey and Vaporeon) was being defeated (in full) about every 12-15 seconds. At that rate we would need 15 trainers to sustain a cycle time greater than 30 minutes, and would be consuming upwards of 300 berries per hour defending just that pokemon, nevermind the additional attacks on the five other pokemon.When the last few seconds counted down, Alert Blissey had been fed 200 golden berries, Alert Vaporeon had 200, and Alert Snorlax (legacy body slam) had 320 berries. All pokemon in total had been fed over 1,000 berries. We survived a coordinated attack by what was probably around 50-70 total trainers. This defense required us to call upon everything we knew (gym attack, gym defense, movesets), everything we had built (high CP pokemon, TMs and berries earned from raids) and everything we had organized (discord channels, defense strategy, attack strategy) to survive the combined Valor/Instinct onslaught. Every mystic caught mewtwo (some on their last 2 balls, demonstrating the importance of gym control for those trainers).This gym design might appear to favor the defensive team, as it would seem unfair for 6 pokemon being aggressively fed by 10 mystics to be able to defend against 50-70 attackers. However, consider that this type of defense can only be achieved through not only a highly organized defense, but also with very strong pokemon and the expenditure of massive resources (1,000 berries). This is a feat which cannot be repeated more than a few times, since the defending team cannot possibly hope to farm back another 1,000 berries every week.I know this was a long read, but I felt like this story needed to be told. If there is any interest I can describe our defensive strategy in full, though the main point of this story was to describe how great the EX Raids are for calling upon us to use everything we have learned and developed in this game. via /r/TheSilphRoad http://ift.tt/2xAHB59