There has been a major update of this guide. Please see the new version here:
Tier 3 and 4 Raid Guide – Newer, Better, More Effective
Pokemon Go Raids are here and Pokebattler has been busy researching exactly how everything works. This is an extremely time consuming process with multiple hours spent analyzing video footage. The video footage has bugs, jumping HP bars, large lag spikes and more, that make determining exactly what’s going on almost impossible. That said, we have made significant strides in improving the accuracy of our simulations.
Solo-able Raids
There are not that many solo-able raids, or raids you can beat by yourself, out there currently, although I expect this to go up over time. I’d guess there will be occasional rotations just like Niantic does with eggs. These raids are fairly easy, with all raids being on the easy side for anyone currently able to access the raids at level 24 and above.
| Tier | Raid Boss | CP | |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 |  | Magikarp | 1,165 |
| 1 |  | Bayleef | 4,375 |
| 1 |  | Quilava | 5,085 |
| 1 |  | Croconaw | 5,207 |
| 2 |  | Muk | 11,200 |
| 2 |  | Exeggutor | 12,633 |
| 2 |  | Weezing | 11,245 |
| 2 |  | Electabuzz | 11,311 |
| 2 |  | Magmar | 11,610 |
Group Raids
Group raids generally require 2 people for the level 3 raids and 5 people with really strong Pokemons for the level 4 raids. 6 or 7 level 30 players is far safer.
| Tier | Raid Boss | CP | Hardest Moveset | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 3 |  | Arcanine | 17,832 | Snarl / Wild Charge |
| 3 |  | Alakazam | 22,646 | Confusion / Shadow Ball |
| 3 |  | Machamp | 18,144 | Counter / Heavy Slam |
| 3 |  | Gengar | 19,768 | Hex / Shadow Ball |
| 3 |  | Vaporeon | 16,696 | Water Gun / Aqua Tail |
| 3 |  | Jolteon | 19,883 | Volt Switch / Thunderbolt |
| 3 |  | Flareon | 21,155 | Fire Spin / Flamethrower |
| 4 |  | Venusaur | 26,921 | Razor Leaf / Sludge Bomb |
| 4 |  | Charizard | 28,485 | Air Slash / Dragon Claw |
| 4 |  | Blastoise | 24,162 | Water Gun / Ice Beam |
| 4 |  | Rhydon | 30,512 | Mud Slap / Stone Edge |
| 4 |  | Lapras | 21,768 | Ice Shard / Ice Beam |
| 4 |  | Snorlax | 25,419 | Zen Headbutt / Hyper Beam |
| 4 |  | Tyranitar | 34,707 | Iron Tail / Crunch |
Below is the best counters for the most difficult set. Note that the order is not exactly the same order shown on Pokebattler, as I tended to trim out Pokemon that died far more than the rest and ones that took too much time.
| Raid Boss | Counter #1 | Counter #2 | Counter #3 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
 | Arcanine |  | Rhydon |  | Golem |  | Donphan |
 | Alakazam |  | Tyranitar |  | Houndoom |  | Scizor |
 | Machamp | | Alakazam |  | Dragonite |  | Charizard |
 | Gengar | | Tyranitar | | Dragonite | | Houndoom |
 | Vaporeon |  | Exeggutor |  | Venusaur |  | Victreebel |
 | Jolteon | | Rhydon | | Donphan | | Golem |
 | Flareon | | Golem | | Rhydon |  | Omastar |
| Venusaur | | Charizard |  | Typhlosion |  | Espeon |
| Charizard | | Golem | | Omastar | | Tyranitar |
 | Blastoise | | Jolteon |  | Magneton | | Venusaur |
| Rhydon | | Venusaur | | Exeggutor | | Vaporeon |
 | Lapras | | Machamp | | Jolteon | | Arcanine |
 | Snorlax | | Machamp |  | Heracross | | Tyranitar |
| Tyranitar | | Machamp | | Vaporeon | | Heracross |
Simulation changes
After analyzing videos to make spreadsheets like this one, and using quite a bit of twiddling in the code, an approximation was created based on solo-able raids. The level of the boss has been set to level 80 with bonus attack and defense of 15. The bonus stamina for the boss has been set based on the raid tier.
- Raid tier 1 – Bonus Stamina 0
- Raid tier 2 – Bonus Stamina 315
- Raid tier 3 – Bonus Stamina 2000
- Raid tier 4 – Bonus Stamina 8000
This formula is absolutely not correct. This is only an approximation. It will most likely be weeks before we get an accurate formula.
So Many Assumptions
Many assumptions were made while tweaking these numbers. I would love for help from the community on improving these formulas, so I will share all of my thought processes and how I came up with the current formula.
Per the spreadsheet above, the combat time and incoming damage for the 3 Pokemon I used to kill Muk was quite useful. Turns out Alakazam getting killed quickly by 4 Poison Jabs and 1 huge Gunk Shot is quite useful to know. Tyranitar and Golem both were taking very small amounts of damage and had a very exact number of incoming attacks that killed them. Matching the 3 incoming damage rates, 1 fast, 1 medium, 1 slow helped narrow down what the incoming damage rate was.
Level 80 was one of the levels that matched all 3 incoming damage rates and was chosen as a convenient number. Humans like to pick round numbers and things that make sense so double current level worked well. From this, I can generate outgoing damage rates and incoming damage rates.
Now that we have a level, we can plug in the formulas for how much damage was dealt and extrapolate out how much HP the raid boss had. Add in some stamina to fit and we have a framework for simulating raids. Extrapolate out the stamina formulas to other raids based off the reported difficulty on many reddit posts and we have the formulas!
Assumptions are Okay! (At least for now)
Why, might you ask, if the formula is not correct and I’m making a bunch of assumptions am I comfortable making raid counters? First off, these are the most accurate raid simulations currently available. To not make these imperfect simulations available would be a bigger issue. These numbers are far more accurate than my previous ones and I’m sure as more data rolls in, the community will figure out the exact formulas.
More importantly, since we know incoming damage rates, and we can deduce outgoing damage rates and we know combat time, we can absolutely generate fairly accurate orderings of attackers! They do not have to be 100% accurate. They need to give a general idea of just how many times each Pokemon dies and how well they do. In this they have succeeded
The Future
We need the correct formulas! Collecting this data is extremely time consuming. I hope the spreadsheet I gave helped make sense. We need similar spreadsheets for every single boss fight. On top of that, raid fights will require collecting from all parties! I need people to record all 6-7 people and painstakingly count incoming and outgoing attacks and dodges along with all the levels and IVs of the attackers.
Finally, I have major UI work I need to perform on the site as this was jammed together and is a bit buggy. So as you can see, this is a work in progress. But it should give you a good baseline for these beginning days of raids, and we will continue to work hard perfecting this tool for the future.
Quick update
As I was about to post this article, there was a very interesting finding by /u/ClamusChowderus on reddit. The formula for deriving CP has been found! Unfortunately the formula causes the incoming attack damage to be far too high for it to be the real formula and worse the stamina is insanely too high for the actual experience. I expect there will be quite a bit of research going on today, but I decided to post this article as is.
Based on what I know right now, I have the following hypothesis:
- Level 1 and level 3 have a cpm around 0.75
- Level 2 and level 4 have a cpm around 1.0
- Level 2 caps out hp at 1000
- Level 1, 3 and 4 have some other hp
We will see if this shakes anything up
Infographic Information
Infographic was made with level 30 attackers vs. the most difficult boss moveset. Snarl / Wild Charge Arcanine for example shuts down all the water attackers. That’s why you want to use ground attackers and ground moves.
You can look in far more details in the raid tool. It will be much easier to use soon!
Uhm, unless niantic changed something today, Tier 3 bosses are definetly soloable with some seconds to spare too!
The raid boss simulator makes them seem impossible to solo in the current iteration, so something regarding stamina probably is wrong.
Agreed. Stamina is absolutely wrong. The damage calculations are hopefully closer. Most level 3 bosses can be soloed with perfect pokémon. The ranking order should not be affected though
Collecting information is very slow. I expect to have correct numbers sometime this week
How is there a different recommended attacker for Arcanine and flareon>?
There are different damage breakpoints due to the rounding that is done. These will shift
because Arcane can learn a Electric charge move which will wipe out the water types
Do u have a cheat sheet for the red eggs? Love the yellow egg one.
Thanks Dawn
Not yet. I am working on improving the formulas powering the analysis and will make these afterwards
Can you disclose what move sets are most effective with the ideal counter Pokemon plz. I can assume most of them but just want to be certain
It’s in the raid tool. There have been many changes since I made this info graphic, I need to make a new one
I love the raid tool, but I think it would be more helpful for most of us if the dodge success percentage was available (maybe it is, if I type my own link in?) and defaulted to 10%.
I will work on it. The ui needs a lot of work.
Awesome! Thanks for all your hard work.
In one of Niantic’s posts there was a screenshot showing a tier 4 Blissey raid active. Why is this not in the graph?
There has been no Blissey or dragonite raid in the game yet but you can see the results on https://www.pokebattler.com/raids under custom raids, unknown tier.
Just took down rhydon with ms/eq with three, my lvl 39 google acc, my lvl 38 ptc acc and a lvl 34 ptc acc. Caught on all accounts. Lineup was straight vapes with hp. Was close, less than 5 seconds!