Pokémon GO has made a significant change to its raids. The raid bosses now have more CP and are therefore much harder to defeat.
What’s new: At the start of February, Niantic not only released 17 new Pokémon, but also introduced several other changes. Raids are now significantly harder to complete than before.
We will investigate the reasons why Niantic made the raids harder and explain what this means for the players.
What has changed in the raids
What is different? The Pokémon in the raids now have new CP. Each monster now has more combat points and is therefore harder to defeat.
Each Pokémon from level 3, 4, and 5 raids now has 1.2x more stamina in raids. As a result, their CP have also been increased.
We will show you the current raid bosses and the changes to their CP:
- Palkia
- Old CP: 50019
- New CP: 54793
- Togetic
- Old CP: 18671
- New CP: 20453
- Ursaring
- Old CP: 27409
- New CP: 30035
- Absol
- Old CP: 26262
- New CP: 28769
- Despotar
- Old CP: 34323
- New CP: 37599
- Alolan Marowak
- Old CP: 19522
- New CP: 21385
- Granbull
- Old CP: 15023
- New CP: 16457
- Azumarill
- Old CP: 8989
- New CP: 9847
- Machamp
- Old CP: 17990
- New CP: 19707
- Alakazam
- Old CP: 21133
- New CP: 23150
Are these Pokémon also stronger when caught? These changes only affect the Pokémon’s stats in raids. When you catch it, the Pokémon will not have any different stats than it did previously.
What does this mean for the players? The result of this change is that raids are now harder. You will likely not be able to defeat Absol or Geowaz alone, and even level-3 raids will become significantly more challenging again.
It also remains to be seen how many people are now needed for Palkia. Whether it can still be defeated by just two people is questionable.
Why is there this change?
This is what Niantic says: The developers did not specify a reason why they made the raids harder. They said in their announcement: “You may notice that the Pokémon you face in raid battles are now stronger and tougher.”
What could be behind this? Some time ago, Niantic made the very effective attacks stronger. They dealt more damage to opponents. This made many raid bosses easier. You could even defeat level-4 raids such as Despotar and Absol alone for the first time.
In level-4 raids, there are many Pokémon that are very strong. It was therefore possible for some time to obtain very strong Pokémon without help from other trainers. This was apparently too easy for Niantic.
This is now different: In the early days of raids, level-3 raids were difficult to defeat alone. Only very strong trainers could conquer these raids. After the change, these raids were now very easy to beat. One can now assume that Niantic wants to return to those early days and make raid bosses like Machamp and Alakazam harder to access for every player again.
What do you think about this change? Do you like harder raids?
Since the bosses are now harder to defeat, we will show you how you can counter the bosses:
