"How to know and prepare your teams - the methodology for solo/duo/trio raid preparations in the wake of CP rebalance"

#PokemonGO: With the CP rebalance, a lot of things in Go will change slightly, and so will raid matchups. Likewise, gen 4 bosses will be coming in the following months. And with frequent recurring questions like "will my team be good enough to duo xyz boss", I had a feeling that an overview of tools and preparation methodology is really needed.TLDR: Using IV calculator, Pokebattler, breakpoint calculator and GoBattleSim, with a sprinkle of TSR, prepare your teams for future raid battles, in particular solo/duo/trio raids.I too was the person asking these questions every time something changed, and with TSR community’s help, and nice tools by 3rd party developers, over time I created my own way of doing raid preparations. This post is to share my process, hopefully both giving others a quick start-up guide, as well as garnering comments and possibly improving further on my methods.Tools I will use:- CalcyIV /r/CalcyIV/- Pokebattler https://ift.tt/2OK2hN0 DominikZen brakepoint calc https://ift.tt/2z95v87 GoBattleSim https://ift.tt/2OK1prN TSR :)My process begins by knowing your current setup. In this step, using IV calculator like CalcyIV is invaluable. You can use others like GoIV, Pokegenie, and similar, depending on your personal preference and mobile platform that you use.On example of CalcyIV, the process is simple – open Poke storage, open mon you want to know more of, and press the red CalcyIV button. It scans the screen and will present an overlay with data like level, and IVs. While all data is needed, we will focus on just two – level and attack IV.Go through your mons, and scan them. Those that are good you’d like to further appraise and save in CalcyIV database (history) permanently. While not crucial, as you fill your database you can export this history as a backup, which can be imported to Pokebattler’s Pokebox – our next destination.Once you know what you have, it’s time to see what you want to go after. For this, regular read at TSR is useful, but Pokebattler can do it quicker and in a more refined ways. So head over to Pokebattler’s Raids section. You’ll see a list of both old, current and future bosses. We’ll take a random one for this tutorial, and let’s say we want to check out Absol (someone just asked about it so there).Once you open Absol’s page, you’ll be presented with few crucial elements:- Boss stats- Pokebattler Estimator- Button to switch to Level / Pokebox- Weather- Friendship- Counters- Custom RaidBoss stats are just that, more details of what you’re up against. Now Estimator is THE thing to look at. Here you see that it estimates “n” players to be enough, right away signalling if it’s good solo/duo/trio target. Generally I like to start by switching to Level, setting Best friends (hey! You’re most likely to try duo with best friends!), Extreme weather (no bonuses on either side), and setting a Custom Raid to approximate levels of 20/25/30/35. Just by changing those, you’ll see how the Estimator figures changes. I try to put it so it’s close to full number, but not too close (eg. 1.99 is too close, 1.7 is just fine for duo).With our Absol, in extreme weather, for Best friends, you’ll see that level 20 isn’t enough (Estimator 2.07), while 25 is saying 1.77. That’s... pretty good. For optimised counters and good phone/connection. To make it safe we check level 30, and it now says 1.58 estimator. That’s good. Really good! So in general, our counters should be between levels 25 and 30, and some of the tops suggestions in the Counters section.Then we take a look at what’s offered. While generally looking at top 3-5, it all depends heavily upon two numbers – numbers of deaths (skull icon with number beside it) and time to win (in seconds). Here it becomes a bit tricky. These are numbers just for SINGLE trainer. Meaning, if it says time to win is 250s for Breloom, and Absol is T4 raid that takes 180 seconds (minus imperfections of start/end times), you’re certain to fail. But, two trainers take half the time, so 250/2 = 125. Now even adding 5 seconds at start, 5 more at end, that’s 135. Plenty of time for mistakes, rejoining if fainting, etc. Same with number of deaths. I personally have sluggish Android, so any amount of deaths more than 11 require a second rejoin, and that usually takes too much time. So if aforementioned Breloom has 13 deaths, single person will fail. But divide by two again, and it’s 6.5 for two trainers. Meaning 7-8 Brelooms per trainer, OR 4 Brelooms with max revives (per trainer). We’re all good here, at 135 seconds, we have plenty of time to max-revive 4 mons and rejoin the battle. Now when you know what to look for, do a quick visual glance at other counters. By same thinking, anything under 360 seconds (but make sure to account for inefficiencies and rejoins, so let’s say 330s) is good for duo. Anything under 22 deaths won’t require more than 1 rejoin for two trainers. Now, at level 30 I have plenty of choices! Breloom, Machamp, Hariyama, Blaziken, etc. So being CheapAssGamer, I take a look at lvl 25. Here the list is the same, just the times are a bit less forgiving.We’re not done here yet, what you need to note is the moves shown. If you’re looking at compact view then each species will show just one moveset, eg. Counter/Dynamic Punch. If you want even more options, click the hamburger menu on the picture of each species and you’ll see a list of all movesets with their death toll rates and time to win. That will show that eg. Counter/Close Combat works for Machamp at level 25, but not for Hariyama (cutting it close).OK, so we now know what we have (CalcyIV), what we want (Absol), and what can counter it (Breloom, Champ, Hariyama, etc.) and which movesets.Time to cross-reference the what you have and what you need. So example from the post in question was bunch of level 20/25 Machamps from raids, mostly with Counter/Close Combat, and no TMs (can’t change moves). To simplify, I’ll disregard the other dozen options.With our focus narrowed, now we know we’re after Absol using Machamps with C/CC moves. Time to see the breakpoints. I won’t dwell much upon the logic of breakpoints, to make it simple, due to formulas used, many similar Pokemon and movesets can essentially output exact SAME damage, even though they have different levels, IVs or moves. Formula takes all that (and more) into account, and will give you real damage that is WHOLE NUMBER. The damage is ROUNDED, and that’s why small differences like 7.2 damage vs 7.4 damage will both result in same round 7.So open the Dominikzen website, and enter the known facts:- Attacker- Level- Quick Move (Fast move)- Cinematic Move (Charge move)- Attack IV- Weather- Friendship- Defender- Raid tierIn our case that’s Machamp, level 15 (we’ll get to that), Counter, Close Combat, IV 13 (imperfect, you’ll enter whatever CalcyIV says you have), no weather (same as extreme), Best friends, Absol, Tier 4. It will spew results in a nice table.Now I’ve entered lower level on purpose, because table will show all levels after it, and I didn’t want to start at exact 20 because that first row (in bold) is sometimes... questionable. And results show many levels (ignoring first line), like 17, 19.5, 22, 25, 28, etc. Now look at the far right column. That too is the “estimator” of sorts. So if number is below 2, 2 full teams of such counters can duo this raid. Again, keep in mind that game is buggy and imperfect, so 1.99 is a no-go (just in theory). In that regard we see level 22 as 1.89. This is cutting it close. If you have 2 trainers, and each has 6 counters, yes, you can use one or two at this level if you’re short on dust/candy. But it also ties into previous estimation by Pokebattler, so let’s see what’s next. Level 25 says 1.79 and level 28 is 1.69.This is where you go back to the start, and look at your team and data from CalcyIV. Do you have anything at that level or higher? Or some that are close enough that you can powerup a couple times? Or maybe unevolved Machops of high level and plenty of candy to try to evolve a couple and see if you get good moveset? Ok, so let’s say we have 6 boosted Machamps from raids, and worst of them has 13 attack IV, and none can have lower def/HP than 10 due to being from raid. And your partner has the same. They are all reaching the level 25 / attack 13 breakpoint with best friends. Let’s see if it’s enough!Time to GoBattleSim! Open up their simulator page. There’s a quick-start pop-up where you can just select duo raid. OK, that’s done, but you need to set it up to your situation. Scroll to Primary team of Player 1, pick Lv4 Best Friend, change Pokemon to Machamp, the far right box should say 6 (it’s 6 of this same Machamp), then enter level 25 and IVs. Note that IVs are in different order than what’s displayed in CalcyIV! Enter accordingly! 10 / 13 / 10 (not 13/10/10). For moveset enter what you have (C/CC), no dodging (worst case), and check the Max revives to allow sim to use this team again. Now see the copy/paste icons? Use them, copy your 6x Machamp, and paste it to Player 2 (next section, different color), set to best friends, and check max revives. Third box (section with third color) denotes your enemy, so change to Absol, pick Tier 4, and DELETE the moves. You should see moves as “? Fast move” and “? Charge move”. That will give you results for all variations. Scroll down, and in raid settings make sure that weather is Extreme (for now), Repeat is empty (for now) and Aggregation is “Enumerate” (shows all variations). Click “Go”!Behold! We win! But we don’t win in all movesets. And where we do win, it’s in around 150-170 seconds with up to 14 deaths (divide by two, so 7 each trainer), requiring a rejoin. Now, you can do this again, and numbers will change. If you pick Repeats box and enter 10, you’ll see the same thing 10x over, but each time slight variation in numbers will occur. And you’ll note that for some moves you’ll SOMETIMES win, while for some you’ll always or almost always win. OK, so depending on this result you’ll want to upscale or downscale. With times of wins sometimes so close, and sometimes needing rejoin due to being wiped out, plus movesets where you can straight out lose even on multiple retries, you want to beef things up.If you’re extremely cheap, you’ll want to see what happens with same setup, but only one Machamp being powered up till next breakpoint. So go to Player 1, change the “6” for 6x same Machamp to “5”, click Add Pokemon, and you’ll get the cloned version, so just change the level to next breakpoint that dominikzen calc suggested, in this case it’s 28. Run sim again. Not enough? Do same with Player 2. Clear results, and re-run the sim. Better. But not perfect. Add one more so 4x 25 + 2x 28 for both players. Nice! Now you may have an odd loss, but 99% of times you win. Let’s call that OKish setup.Now you want to account for the weather. Are you planning to start cheap, and do Absol only when Machamp/fighting is weather boosted? Change weather to Cloudy, put back counters all to level 25, clear, rerun sim. Wow, consistent wins at level 25, and no match ended with more than 16 deaths. That’s 8 per trainer, or 4 Machamps plus a rejoin. So if Cloudy you can try doing it with just 4 such Machamps each!Weather boost, but on Absol side? Put in Fog. Add back in couple level 28 Machamps. Play around. Ok, so for Foggy (rare case) you’d need 3x level 28 to make it more fail-proof.This more or less shows the methodology. Play around with options to get even more details, but this is the base I personally use.Now let’s do one more, more or less the same thing but on another raid boss. You have Machamp vs Tyranitar duo, and you right away know you want to hunt for level 25 Tyranitars (Partly-cloudy). You have 2000 Machop candy, several wild Machops and multiples caught in raids, 2.000.000 dust, and 50 charge and 50 fast TMs. So you have your resources, but want to use them wisely, not just powerup those Machamps to level 40 (because that will certainly do it). Also, some of your Champs are wild ones and some are from raids, so range of IVs can be anything, and my imaginary sample set goes like this:- 13/10/7 @ lvl 27 : C/DP- 12/15/10 @ lvl 25 : C/DP- 15/4/14 @ lvl 29 : x/CC- 13/15/15 @ lvl 28 : x/DP- 15/12/15 @ lvl 25 : C/CC- 11/15/15 @ lvl 25 : C/CCOK, so note these, we got those from Calcy IV. X is for useless steel attacks that we’ll TM for sure (later).Step one - Pokebattler. Setup Tyranitar raid, best friends, Partly Cloudy, level 25. Look at estimator. It’s over 2, so no-go. Try attackers with level 30. Difficulty 2.01 Ok, we’re getting close! Level 35 = 1.92. OK, now remember what I said earlier about not going with estimators of 1.9x? You can kind of disregard it or loosen up a bit if you’re specifying exact weather and friendship level. So let’s see what level 35 offers. Switch the counters list to “Single” to see all movesets. You’ll see that we’re tight with what’s on offer. I’m not in region with Heracross, my Lucario is yet to be evolved, and my sole Breloom is level 11 wild caught. I’m down to Machamps and Hariyama. OK, I have plenty of Machamps. Says here both C/DP and C/CC are inside the limits, below 330 sec and under 14 deaths, with C/DP being preferred. Fast move has to be Counter.Step two is to just go in and TM those 2 steel fast moves, see what you get. Counter (naturally). Good, now those two mid ones are C/CC and C/DP. Both acceptable by Pokebattler.Step 3 is to see the breakpoints. Open Dominikzen site, and enter one by one your counters, and check their breakpoints. Make sure you select tier 4 raid, partly cloudy and best friends. It will look like this (pre-CP makeover):- 13/10/7 @ lvl 27 : C/DP -> anything over 24.5 is under 2, next in line is level 28 for 1.78- 12/15/10 @ lvl 25 : C/DP -> anything over 24.5 is under 2, next in line is level 28 for 1.78- 15/4/14 @ lvl 29 : C/CC -> anything over 32 is under 2, next in line is level 39.5 for 1.86- 13/15/15 @ lvl 28 : C/DP -> anything over 24.5 is under 2, next in line is level 28 for 1.78- 15/12/15 @ lvl 25 : C/CC -> anything over 32 is under 2, next in line is level 39.5 for 1.86- 11/15/15 @ lvl 25 : C/CC -> anything over 34 is under 2, can’t reach higher fast breakpointOK, so now we want to weight our choices. Upping first two to level 28 is fine, it will give us some breathing room and won’t cost a lot of candy/dust. 4th one is already in line with breakpoint, no need to do anything.Now, the options 3, 5, 6 are cutting it close at level 32/34 and going to max them is a lot of dust & candy. We have them though, but we’re cheap. Looking at similar Machamps with DP charge move we see that we’d already be hitting some breakpoints just with a charge move changed. We decide to gamble. 7 TMs later we have them all to C/DP. We re-check the breakpoints, and the two at level 25 are hitting level 24.5 breakpoint already (being half a level over it), and one at level 29 is hitting the breakpoint of level 28 (1 level over it).With that setup we have 4 C/DP Machamps hitting the level 28 breakpoint, and 2 of them hitting level 25.Next and final step is confirming it in GoBattleSim. Open website, and enter what you have. Pick Partly cloudy, Best friends and Tyranitar. Now note, your real Pokemon are all different in levels and Ivs, so you’ll erase that “6” of a kind, and enter 1, then proceed to add 5 more Pokemon one by one. Again, note that IVs in GoBattleSim are in different order. Check Max revive, just in case you get wiped out. Also, erase the movesets for Tyranitar, leave them at questionmarks. Enumerate, and Repeat at zero.Now ideally your friend / partner will repeat this whole thing for his real encounters, but let’s simplify here and just copy/paste your setup to Player 2 box. You can’t “copy/paste” 6 at a time, but you can save a battle party. So at Player 1 enter name for Party 1, and click the save button next to it. Scroll to Player 2, and in his Party 1 box start entering the same name. Picking that will (should) fill the party. If not, copy/paste one by one or enter manually, sometimes it can be buggy :)Run the sim. OK, so we have failed a lot. We’re pretty much consistently getting wiped. Why? Well, both Dominikzen and Pokebattler assume other IVs are 15/15 (or Pokebattler assumes 15/15/15). Since we’re cutting it close, we’re getting wiped. Also, remember Pokebattler suggested something over level 30 (ideally 35). Now, go to top of page and pick customize – Battle Settings. Just for fun, scroll and for rejoinDurationMs enter zero (default 10000). Save, Close, Clear All, and Go. See? We’re winning? OK, that’s just to show that rejoin times are killing us, while Pokebattler accounts for that it’s not perfect, and neither is dominikzen’s estimation. Go back in and put a real number, I keep it at 20000 (20 seconds) as my rejoins are SLOW! (Android) You can re-run, it will just be even worse. That’s bad phone/connection for you pal. OK, don’t despair. Remember those couple we’ve left at 25? Bring them in sim to next breakpoint level (level 27.5 for attack 15 and 28.5 for attack IV 11). Ok, we’re again partly winning here.It’s up to you from this point. Keep the rejoin time at 10s? If you can manage to be quick, you can ensure 99% wins. On odd occasion when you fail, just raid again (always leave extra time and show up early for solo/duo raids!). Or go back to DominikZen and see where’s the next breakpoint. In this case 32 for attack IV 15, so powerup couple to that. Win 99% (as Pokebattler Estimator indicated). Your pick!Do this in simulators and decide everything before you actually start powering your attackers. It will save you time, frustration, and resources (dust, candy, TMs). Only once both you and partner(s) are fully prepared with knowledge of what you want to do with your attackers, start powering and TMing, evolving etc.Conclusion: While it may seem complicated in my (badly) written post, we prepare using a fixed set of tools, and quite quickly as well. We scan our in-game Pokemon with IV calculator (CalcyIV). Then we check which raids have a duo/trio potential, and for those we check which are the optimal counters. Cross reference with what you have in Pokemon storage, and try to get it all down to half a dozen Pokemon. See where those Pokemon need to be level-wise to hit the needed breakpoints (taking in regard movesets and IVs). And finally double-check in GoBattleSim if that new potential team can do the job. If not, go back to breakpoint calc and see if powering up to next point can help. Don’t EVER powerup or TM (or evolve) your attackers blindly, you will most certainly waste resources doing it that way. And sometimes you’ll be glad to find out that your existing teams are already good enough ;)P.S.Tip for advanced users #1: After scanning your Pokemon with CalcyIV, you can export its database to a file. Import that file in Pokebattler’s Pokebox, and save yourself some guesswork and manual inputs. 50 spots in Pokebox are free, more available via Patron support. Export/import is just a text file, so if you have a list of thousand(s) of Pokemon, you can erase the useless stuff directly in the text file before importing to Pokebattler, so that only your best ones are imported. In that case the Raid Estimator can be used not “By Level” but using “My Pokebox”, allowing you to see the exact estimation for your own Pokemon, not generic level 20/25/30/35/40.Tip for advanced users #2: Pokebattler raid links are somewhat long but are easy to read... and they start with something like this -> https://ift.tt/2z9M7aM ... Now, see that? TYRANITAR ... level 4 ... levels/35 . While Custom raid offers dropdown for levels 20/25/30/35/40 you can actually make a link that sayshttps://https://ift.tt/2OK1pYP.... And get results for custom level 28 !Edit: minor text fixes :)Edit #2: if anyone has suggestions to improve on this, please comment away! Thanks! via /r/TheSilphRoad https://ift.tt/2DkWRWO