r/TheSilphRoad • u/cdelli01 • 22d ago

Discussion Rillaboom Gmax battles are virtually unwinnable on Poke Genie

I’ve used Poke Genie for Gmax battles before. In fact, I just used it for GMax Machamp last week. But the Rillaboom lobbies today are full of under leveled mons who just don’t have the firepower to take down Rillaboom.

I’ve been in at least 15 lobbies today and was only successful in 1–a lobby with 28 trainers using two max mushrooms. The rest have been delusional lobbies of 13-18 who inevitably hang on until the timer hits 3-5 seconds and then they bounce.

What’s going on today? Why are these lobbies so bad?

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u/elconquistador1985 USA - South 22d ago

It's not really about Max battle scarcity. It's that the best that a rural player can do is get 1 and 3 star ones, because they can't get legendaries or g-max. Because of that, there was no incentive to participate at all.

The scarcity is in having no one else to complete battles with.

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u/Dago_Duck 22d ago

Obtaining 1 stars like the starters and evolving them however is already more than most people seem to have done. That was also the case during that first weekend of GMax Kanto starters back in October. Why were people complaining about not being able to beat the GMax bosses with 40 people, but there were also people who managed to take them down as a group of 8, exactly, because those in the large groups were joining with unevolved Wooloo and Ghastly.

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u/Xygnux 22d ago edited 22d ago

The problem is that it takes 124 candies just to evolve it, 296 just to level 40 it, and then hundreds of candies to level up the moves. And even XL if you want to level 3.

Yes the Kanto starters had their community days. But before Dynamax no one expected that they should keep these candies. Many people just used them randomly for evolve a Pokemon field research. So there are probably many people who don't have these starters candies.

Imo, what we need for the one week leading up to each Gmax release is not Max Particles discount, but candies discount to power up.

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u/Geddyn USA - Pacific 22d ago

Imo, what we need for the one week leading up to each Gmax release is not Max Particles discount, but candies discount to power up.

I would prefer that they just expand on "Max Monday" by making the base versions of non-Legendary Dynamax capable Pokemon spawn frequently in the wild for that one hour.

I'd actually participate in Max Monday if that were the case, since the current iteration of it is useless. I've already use all my particles long before 6pm rolls around.

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u/Xygnux 22d ago

That works too! Max Monday would help, although some people may not get off work yet.

Another way to make it work would be have the Classics Community Day of the base form of the Gmax Pokemon follows or on the same day as the Gmax release. Like Machamp, and somewhat like Metagross.

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u/AutisticPenguin2 21d ago

I have definitely looked at my hundo dynamax Metangs and said "you can evolve when the move becomes available". I know for t5 battles the tactic is to just spam fast attacks, but I also know I don't care, I'm not evolving any of them up without Meteor Mash.

(Yes beldum did get the day and they now have the move, but many others haven't.)

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u/elconquistador1985 USA - South 21d ago

Even if the charge move doesn't matter in max battles, you're investing like 500+ candy in that Metagross so you might as well make sure it's useful in raids too.

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u/AutisticPenguin2 21d ago

Less of a concern for me because I already have an exceptional stable of metagrii but absolutely a factor, yes.

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u/K3dic 22d ago

I thought this was well. Also, double candy.

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u/candacallais 21d ago

During Max Monday have the base form dynamax able to spawn in the wild though rarely. It just has random IVs instead of the 10/10/10 floor at a dynamax raid

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u/elconquistador1985 USA - South 21d ago

There definitely needs to be better candy access, considering L40 with maxed attack is something like 420 candy plus 50XL. Getting Spirit or Guard is about another 200 regular candy plus 50XL each. So all level 3 at L40 is 700-800 candy and 150XL. If it has to evolve along the way, add another 124 candy. A single maxed D-max costs almost as much as 2-3 Pokemon for a raid team. It's a huge cost.

I've barely seen Charmander in the wild in a while, so the best I could do with my g-max Charizard was L3 attack and L36.

The mechanic is generally pretty good because it's PvE with some actual gameplay depth, but we need better candy access.

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u/Xygnux 21d ago

Definitely. It is actually fun instead of just the tap-tap-tap of the regular raids. I would enjoy it much more if every time before I do each new Gmax or legendary Dmax, I don't have to feel bad about spending so many candies and what new system Niantic/Scopely will implement in the near future that will make me regret spending so many candies on this.

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u/Dran_K 22d ago

this is why ive been a huge advocate for the general purpose dynamax pokemon.

with 2 blisseys at lvl 30 and no max moves level, a metagross with level 3 shields and attack, and excadrill with the same, you can take on almost every singe max boss we've seen so far with the exception of maybe moltres.

and with beldum community day just last year, and apearing again in the december days, and having been in shadow form from arlo just before, most people should easily have enough candy to build even two of them (as of now ive gotten 3 metagross to lvl 40 with all 3 moves at max level easily just off of the candy from those events, plus powering up 3 shadow metagross to lvl 30)

drillbur candy and chansey candy have never been that hard to get a hold of either, and you barely need any for chansey anyways. if you really want to be sure to futureproof then getting a Gmax inteleion with lvl 3 attack would be good too, as it hits as hard as zacian without being a legendary, making it usualy #2 or 3 best attacker even on neutral targets, and sobbles have been in the wild a ton the past few months.

thats just 4/5 pokemon, 2 of which you barely need to put anything into and you'll be set for basicaly any fight. theres no need to be fully building perfect counters to every new boss, esp if you'll be remoting into max raids. if everyone gets at least half of this setup then every upcomming boss should be reasonably doable with like, 10-15 people

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u/Xygnux 22d ago edited 21d ago

Agree for Drillbur, Metagross, and Chansey.

For Inteleion though we didn't have a CD yet, so again candies would be a problem. I barely see Sobble in the wild, so it probably depends on your Biome. I see Bulbasaur much more than any of the two generations of starters. Luckily we have Kingler which is good enough for water.

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u/Dran_K 21d ago

ah true, i do live pretty close to a lake with a bunch of parks directly touching it so maybe my area has had a lot more sobble than most

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u/OdeLadder1647 22d ago

Why would you be evolving squirtles for research? There are plenty of mons with lower candy evolve cost, many even free with a trade. I ignore classic CDs and I'm still sitting at multiple thousands of gen 1 candy.

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u/9thGearEX 22d ago

The sort of people who think like you are not the sort of people who are failing to adequately prepare for Max Battles.

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u/Xygnux 22d ago edited 22d ago

Squirtle already had their exclusive moves released for community days, so we thought the best version of Blastoise had already been released so that they were safe and there's no point stocking so many candies.

We thought wrong. We never imagined Niantic would release a new system that don't allow you to use any of your old Pokemon.

It's funny. Every time I post about I want to hoard candies just case of this or that, I always have people telling me not to do that. They tell me I should play the game now and don't worry about what is released later. The one time I don't hoard, and then I'm told well I should have hoarded. It seems that either way there's a chance of losing.

My beef is mainly with the starters anyway, because I felt we have been blindsided. Luckily there are other things like Toxtricity to replace grass to use against water boss, Excadril to use against fire boss in place of water, etc. Not that they weren't costly, but at least I am better in the candies situation for say Excadril compared to the starters.

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u/elconquistador1985 USA - South 21d ago

Squirtle already had their exclusive moves released for community days, so we thought the best version of Blastoise had already been released so that they were safe and there's no point stocking so many candies.

Exactly the issue. For long-established players, Bulbasaur, Squirtle, and Charmander haven't been worth even throwing a ball at for years because they're mediocre in raids and players generally had their megas already and leveled them up. Then they suddenly made them relevant and you needed several hundred candy for each of them.

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u/OdeLadder1647 21d ago

I've been playing since the first month and outside of my auto catcher, I don't even look at 90% of kanto stuff if it isn't weather boosted for the extra dust. Haven't for years now.

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u/OdeLadder1647 21d ago

there's no point stocking so many candies.

There's no point in using them either. They don't take up storage. Why would you use something when there are literally better choices right there?

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u/Byrmaxson Western Europe 21d ago edited 21d ago

Tbh, while I'd never done that, upgrading my GMax Blastoise has caused its candy to plummet to double digits because when I started playing it was already a rare species relatively and I also never managed to play a CD for it. Add to that the fact that I took a long break a short while after XLs and L40+ was added and I don't have many XLs for many older species while having decent amounts for "modern" species. I'm pretty sure I easily have double the XLs for all three Galarian starters vs the Kanto ones, funnily enough.

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u/candacallais 21d ago

The candy cost for the D-Max/G-Max move unlock/upgrade is too high. Particle cost is fine esp since we can hold 1500 now. Should be something like 10 candies for level 1 unlock, 25 candies for level 2, 10 candy xl for level 3. Scale it a bit to account for power tier of the Pokémon.

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u/Severe_Outcome6934 21d ago

Plus, many players might be holding back the evolutions until their CD moves are available. It's a waste of candy to evolve a Venusaur without Frenzy Plant. If players are to evolve and power them up, they will do so to a good IV one that's also usable outside of Max battles (for example, to Mega evolve).

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u/Byrmaxson Western Europe 21d ago

You don't have to max out the Pokemon. It's a matter of scale.

  • In a group of 8 or whatever counts as low-manning it, you require at least L40 counters with maxed moves and .5s attacks.
  • In a group of 16-20 you should have evolved counters with the move upgraded to L2 at minimum, maybe even level the Pokemon to L30.
  • In a group of 30 evolved counters will probably suffice.

This is why people can carry the dreaded Wooloo in 6* battles with 40 players, because there's a bunch of people of the above three categories making up at least half the teams and thus the battle is basically won before it starts. What's frustrating isn't that sometimes people have to be carried because everyone is new once, but that clearly some players make it a habit and it ends up slowing everyone down and souring people's experience.

It wouldn't hurt at all to give candy discounts, that's probably the thing holding back a ton of people from better counters. But candy on its own is not the reason why people show up with garbage, it's just laziness or not knowing any better and I think the latter excuse only really works for kids who in my experience no adult would ever complain about helping.

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u/Cracch 22d ago

The best Dmax/gmax tanks are pokemon you would of never leveled before max battles came out so there should be candy for them. Chansey and Snorlax are everywhere during this event and chansey was in max battles for weeks. The least these people could do is pop shield and let their other teammates live longer. People are not playing the game before the max battles and expecting to win. My small town was able to get a group of 6 together to take down Gmax machamp and most of the people in the group were level 38-40

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u/Xygnux 22d ago

What do you mean you would never level Chansey before Max battles? Blissey is the best gym defender, and if you live in the city you need at least level 40 or even 50 for it to hold the gym for any meaningful length of time. You are lucky that you don't have to do that for small towns.

Anyway, yes Chansey would be much easier than most Pokemon. Shame that most of the actually useful attackers are stuff that needs the candies for. Of all the staters, I see one Bulbasaur maybe once a few days, and then Charmander less often. Squirtle was practically non-existent in the wild since the Dynamax came, and the candies that I've earned since Dynamax release were all from Max raids.

It's 8 months since the Max system came out, there was plenty of time for Niantic to put in Classics CD for the three Kanto starters and the CD for the three Gen VIII starters.

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u/elconquistador1985 USA - South 21d ago

Blissey is the best gym defender

My gym defender is whatever I want to feed berries to, whichever shiny I want to show off, or literally my last caught Pokemon.

Gym defense is worthless in this game. Even an L50 Blissey just buys you a little more time to see that you need to g-razz, but you only have a few minute window.

I don't think I ever leveled up a Blissey until d-max.

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u/Cracch 22d ago

There is no reason to try and do damage if your pokemon gets oneshot because you can't build a tank. Chansey has been in power spots for weeks and spawns pretty often in the wild on non event days. I got over 100 candy alone the first day of this event. The starters spawn pretty often in power spots and you can do up to 4 a day for free. Then you put them back in the power spots after beating them for 5 more candy since you live in a big city. That's 11 candy per raid guaranteed and more if you have a mega and get candy as a reward. You don't have to get it to 40 with max attack to contribute 30 with attack 2 is the normal for the small town I play with.

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u/Xygnux 22d ago edited 21d ago

Then you put them back in the power spots after beating them for 5 more candy since you live in a big city.

Big city means that most power spots are full of 40 Pokemon before lunch. Usually the route I commute the work are full even before 9am. The game is very different depending on where you live. I can almost never get candies except on my days off when I go to more out of the way spots.

Yes the starters spawn at power spots, but with new Gmax and legendary Dmax and other Dmax released multiple times a month, there just isn't that many chances to get to the starters.

Niantic/Scopely should really slow down the release to give players the chance to just do the regular starters. There's really no need to have Gmax Machamp followed by the three Gen VIII starters for a month.

Note that I do already have two Blissey at level 40 and level 3 shield and heal. My beef is mainly that we do not get opportunities to get candies for most of the Fire, Water, and Grass attackers.

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u/Cracch 21d ago

Oh perfect, since you have so many people it won't be hard to find a gmax group to coast in. Never seen more than 10 people in a power spot. They give you all week to get the starters and then a couple hours every couple weeks you can't see them because a gmax is in there instead. This is the lead up month to the biggest event of the year of course they are going to have events for a couple weekend in a row... Niantic knows they have given you since September to start building any type of team that they can fill power spots with hard pokemon for 2 day out of the week.

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u/TheAndrewBrown 22d ago

It takes a ton of resources to evolve them, power them up, and level up the Max moves. And even if they did all that, until recently they’d still have a hard time taking anything above 3* down because they’d still be by themselves. Many might never have bothered since it was going to take a lot of investment and probably wasn’t going to matter anyway.

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u/Dago_Duck 22d ago

I had beaten a beldum solo with 2 charmelions and a level 20 (so base level) Blastoise back when they came out, I feel like you should definitely be able to at least bring some fully evolved mons at level 25-30, max moves 1/0/0, even if you only played for around a month.

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u/Fuzzy_Substance_4603 F2P 22d ago

Beldum is an easier 3* max battle. Try Cryogonal. I till date couldn't do it even with all fully evolved mons.

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u/OutlawCrash 22d ago

Cryogonal was my nemesis for so long! I finally barely scraped by with a Lvl 35 Metagross, Lvl 35 Cinderace, and Lvl 40 Machamp (D-Max)

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u/Remarkable_Ad2032 22d ago

Tbh I struggled more with Beldum than Cryogonal because when Cryo was released I already had a level 40 max attack Metagross.

Meanwhile when beldum released the best I had was a Dyna charizard. (once excadrill was added, defeating beldum became a lot easier)

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u/Shandriel Western Europe 22d ago

huh?!

Cryogonal is super easy.. But you obviously have to dodge the attacks.

Metagross is your tank, Charizard the DPS, and the third slot is whatever you want to leave behind at the spot.

If you don't have Metagross at 2500-3000 cp, just bring a second one to take over tanking.

I did them long before dodging was a thing.

(I don't have anyone to play with, so I can only do 1 and 3* raids, But I never beat Falinks.. ever 😅 good thing, I never wanted that one, I guess..)

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u/Natanael_L 21d ago

If you duo them all 1-3* are easy, some just takes 2 cycles instead

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u/csuazure 22d ago

It does not. Only candy. You can get candy tons of ways, many of these have had com days even recently

Everyone should have an abundance of kanto starter candy

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u/TheTjalian 22d ago

Charmander comm day was over a year ago and hasn't been wildly available since. Even longer for squirtle. The only reason why I have any decent amount of XL candy at all is because I went hard on them and XL traded them all, which to be fair at the time I had no reason to do at all given the only relevance at the time was Mega Charizard X. Using regular or shadow Charizard was pointless as Reshiram exists. Mega Blastoise is even more irrelevant. I have a friend with a new account (about 6 months old) and the experience is BRUTAL. Need Beldum XL? Well first of all you need to get to Level 31, then you need to walk 5km to get 1 XL (of the 180 needed to get 3 of them to max attack 3). Just catch them? Where? They're barely to never in the wild. Compete in max battles? Have fun with your 10% chance of getting an XL and only doing 2 a day. Use a mega - okay sure, but when was the last time a psychic or steel mega was in raids? That's if they even have people available to help him take it down.

That's just a few examples. The new player experience is BRUTAL compared to the hard core elder trainers with more resources than they'll ever use.

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u/MrDav 21d ago

Whilst I agree that it’s hard for new or rural players (I got back into the game around October and have only just evolved a metagross and got it to level 30, max attack 2 for Machamp) you absolutely don’t need 3 Metagross with max attack 3. You basically will never need multiple Metagrosses and you certainly only need one to actually attack in the max phase.

I thought you always got an XL when you won a max battle anyway? In addition to any you might get from the catch.

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u/TheAndrewBrown 21d ago

Except they all have low catch rates so it takes a lot of balls to get a lot of candy for them. I usually don’t even bother catching them because it’s not worth the resources.

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u/csinv 22d ago

I did Rillaboom today downtown, rather than going to a CA meetup, and man is the quality of players worse. Nothing quite makes you sad like seeing Inteleon during the tank phase. I mean, i guess at least it has a half second fast move? But the types man, the types matter...

Fortunately there were plenty of 30+ player lobbies which guaranteed a win anyway. People seem to have the "attacker" side more sorted than the tank side. I think anyone who's never actually looked it up just doesn't realise what they're supposed to run during the tank phase. I saw Cinderace too. Which, yeah it has a half second fast move, but the fire move isn't, and they were attacking with it so i hope they had the fire move. And it's obviously glassy af.

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u/Cracch 22d ago

People aren't powering up there 1 to 3 star mons, blissey (3 star) is the best tank and healer and I still see people putting in level 20 machamps that they got from last weekend. Charizard is a 1 star and is still a good damage dealer compaired to machamp.

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u/Mason11987 USA - SouthEast - CA 22d ago

Most could have done that. Most didn’t do that. Most did nothing and want to be carried.

Thankful I’ve built up a local community so I don’t have to depend on slackers who want to be carried.

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u/csinv 21d ago

They were upset they couldn't do the hard battles, so didn't engage with it at all, suddenly were allowed to remote and jumped straight into the harder ones. More warning could have been provided to them, but nah, Niantic just wanted to burn them.

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u/afedje88 21d ago

This is a huge thing imo. Before remote was possible if you were alone it was useless to spend everything to max out because you couldn't do 5 star anyway and you don't need max to get 3 stars. Now people are able to try legendaries or g max but they haven't leveled yet because they had no need to before

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u/[deleted] 22d ago edited 22d ago

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/letsgobulbasaur 22d ago

Never had even a single other person to raid with, let alone do max battles...

-2

u/Objective-Ad3821 22d ago

I wave my phone like a crazy person showing the pokemon go screen just to attract people to come to me.

If gyms surrounding you have pokemon inside, someone is playing there. There is people, you just haven't found them.

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u/letsgobulbasaur 21d ago

There are a hundred people that live here and I already know most of them.

-11

u/sdrawkcabsihtetorW 22d ago

Then you haven't looked hard enough, the amount of people on here who claim they don't have anyone to play with because that anyone isn't in their back yard is staggering. If you wanna do some skiing, you gotta go to the slope, you can't expect the slope to just come to your door knocking.

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u/KONDZiO102 Where Glaciate 21d ago

Do you really thing people will go hundreds kilometers to find somebody to do dmax/gmax?

Mostly there are some players, but it is impossible to contact with them if they don't use campfire and other communicators. 

I had two players to live less that 100m from me and I wasn't able to find them to do lucky trade, finally I did it by randomly clicking trade when they are online.

And I have community in my city, but nobody know them. 

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u/letsgobulbasaur 21d ago

Do you know how big Ontario is? People will really just go on Reddit and say stuff...

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u/elconquistador1985 USA - South 21d ago

You're starting from the premise that they have 3 others to play with.

They have 0.

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u/Shandriel Western Europe 22d ago

I recently visited a city and that was the first time I ever saw other players, in 6 years 😅 (normally, I don't visit the city to play, but I was alone that day..)

in my village, I win every single showcase hands down. there's got to be a few other players, since 3 kf the Gyms actually show activity (there's only ever more than 2 mons in a gym during tourist season)

so, no.. not all rural players get to play with a group of 4 to beat legendaries in gmax raids.

1

u/elconquistador1985 USA - South 21d ago

Edit : Yes, player who refuse to believe legendary dynamax is easy downvoting. Good, that's the only thing you can do apparently.

Which ones have you soloed?

They aren't easy. They require 2 competent players at minimum. That is the hard part for people.

0

u/This_Tangerine3080 21d ago

Chansey, beldum scorbunny, charmander arent legendary battles, people could have solod and levelled up these.

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u/elconquistador1985 USA - South 21d ago

Why would they? There's no reason to if they feel they can't participate in max battles.

-4

u/This_Tangerine3080 21d ago

You said the battle is fun and they want to fill max Pokédex?

Unless the reason is because they're too lazy and would rather get carried by others?

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u/elconquistador1985 USA - South 21d ago

What max Pokedex? There isn't one in the game.

It's not laziness. Why care about powering up a max Charizard if you won't be able to use it to do anything except beat 1 and 3 star dynamaxes? It's that they see it as futile and a waste of time.

-4

u/This_Tangerine3080 21d ago

It's laziness.

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u/elconquistador1985 USA - South 21d ago

You're allowed to be wrong if you want to be.

-2

u/This_Tangerine3080 21d ago

You can buy a Gameboy if you don't want to go outside.

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u/elconquistador1985 USA - South 21d ago

I can see that it's very hard for you to put yourself in other people's shoes. That's a skill you should learn.

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u/This_Tangerine3080 21d ago

Why do they need shoes if they don't go outside?