By now you have probably all seen the impressive-looking raid bosses with their astronomical CP numbers. I decided to analyze how strong these bosses actually are and how many players will be needed to defeat them.
Raid Analysis
Let’s have a look. If we divide the CP of a raid boss (~20000) by 9 we get a CP number (~2200) that you’re used to battle. Assuming that raid bosses don’t have their stat ratio shifted (and the damage to Kabutops at 0:57 in this video roughly supports this assumption) and ignoring damage rounding the following is true:
The raid boss deals 3x the damage of its 1/9 CP version
The raid boss takes 1/3x the damage of its 1/9 CP version
The raid boss has 3x the HP of its 1/9 CP version
Combining these facts leads to the following:
The raid boss needs to be hit 9x as many times to defeat it compared to its 1/9 CP version
The total damage taken during the battle is equal to that of battling the 1/9 CP version 27 times in a row
Now we can calculate how strong you need to be to defeat a raid boss. For example, suppose that you’re battling a 22500 CP Tyranitar, and you’re on your own. Defeating the boss within the 300 second time limit is equivalent to defeating nine 2500 CP Tyranitars in 300 seconds, or 33 seconds per Tyranitar. Not difficult eh? Defeating the boss before your 6 Pokemon faint is the main challenge; it’s equivalent to defeating 27 Tyranitars of 2500 CP each, in other words you need to go 1 vs 4.5. Difficult for sure, but absolutely not impossible with high level Machamp/even Vaporeon, especially if the boss has sub-optimal moves.
The following table shows the main results:
| number of trainers | Required power against 1/9 CP | Required time against 1/9 CP |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | 1 vs 4.5 | 33s |
| 2 | 1 vs 2.25 | 67s |
| 3 | 1 vs 1.5 | 100s |
| 4 | 1 vs 1.125 | 133s |
| 5 | 1 vs 0.9 | 167s |
| 10 | 1 vs 0.45 | 333s |
| 20 | 1 vs 0.225 | 667s |
Conclusion
Solo raids are possible against easier bosses for high level trainers, but there is some risk of failure involved. Duo raids shouldn’t be too difficult against non-Blissey bosses if you have strong attackers and you can dodge well. Blissey raids require more players, and just like normal battles they are heavily dependent on Blissey’s moveset. A rule of thumb is that 5 players is just enough if you can go 1v1 against a 1/9 CP enemy. Low level trainers shouldn’t feel afraid or left out, with a large group you can take on anything.
Type effectiveness changes
Niantic just changed the multipliers for STAB and type effectiveness as follows:
STAB 1.25x to 1.2x
super effective 1.25x to 1.4x
not very effective 0.8x to 0.714x
immune 0.8x to 0.51x (= double resist)
This gives the following changes compared to before in different situations:
no type advantage + STAB (Dragonite vs non-DG Blissey) – 4% nerf
1x type advantage + STAB (Jolteon vs Vaporeon) – 7.5% boost
2x type advantage + STAB (Jolteon vs Gyarados or Vaporeon vs Flareon) – 20.4% boost
3x type advantage + STAB (Machamp vs Bite/Crunch Tyranitar) – 34.8% boost
Pokebattler
Pokebattler supports raid bosses too! Check out this example where a raid boss Tyranitar is defeated by just 4 Machamps.
Rejoining a raid
Niantic’s help page is not fully clear on the mechanics of rejoining a raid. The relevant text (from this help page) is the following:
“If you are not able to defeat the Boss in the battle, you may rejoin the raid and battle again. You won’t need to use another Raid Pass to rejoin; your pass will grant you access to the battle for the duration of the raid. You can join as many times as you’d like before the raid ends.”
This can be interpreted in two ways:
You can rejoin the same instance (= 5min battle) of a raid after you run away or have all your Pokemon faint
You can retry another instance of the same raid if your teams fails to defeat the boss
In the first case the power requirements can be removed, as you can simply keep rejoining the battle after your Pokemon faint. A little extra time will be needed for this though.
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