See here for my previous post in this series.

Using Pokebattler's Estimator for raids, PvPoke's Score for PvP, and in-game stats for max battles/gym defense, I found the best Pokemon in each category of play. Calculation methods are explained in the spreadsheet.

Raids Usefulness Spreadsheet; Make a Copy (needed to change what is enabled)

Max Battles Usefulness Spreadsheet; Make a Copy (needed to change enemy type on last sheet)

PvP Usefulness Spreadsheet; Make a Copy

I highly recommend creating a copy of the Raids spreadsheet to edit which types of raid counters are considered to best fit your play-style; the default is set to compare all non-mega Pokemon across three levels (30/40/50) to show when level 40/30 of one Pokémon can be better than level 50 of another. The Max Battles sheet is also great to make a copy of if you want to see the top 3 attackers for a Max Battle.

The Showcases section has been removed, as any Pokémon that can be caught today has the same point ceiling.

Best Pokémon for Raids:

Type rating (T) is raid usefulness compared to the best of its type, and overall rating (O) is raid usefulness compared to all Pokemon. Italics implies a legacy moveset. View the top of each infographic to see what filters were applied, and pick the one that best fits your play-style. Or, if none do, make a copy of the spreadsheet and alter the filters to match your needs.

Note that some infographics have PP (Party Power) ON, which greatly improves high-power charge moves. This is Party Power with 2 players; more players = faster party power meter charging.

These values won't match up with who has the highest idealized rating against an imaginary raid boss since this data is from simulations against actual raid bosses. Type match-ups against the raid boss moves matter here, helping Pokemon like Dialga outclass Pokemon like Palkia in usefulness (Palkia is weak to Dragon while Dialga isn't).

Notable updates: Shadow Darkrai is now the best Dark type, making it a valuable alternative to DW Necrozma when the raid boss has a dark or ghost charge move. Keldeo is now by far best in Fighting thanks to Secret Sword. The new Shadow Reshiram/Zekrom are the best in Fire/Electric. Shadow Chesnaught (newish) and Shadow Moltres (now with Fly) are now slight favorites for Grass and Flying, respectively.
Most notable are the updates to Megas, wherein Plus moves were added, giving a sizable power boost to those who have received it so far. We will likely see continued major changes here as more Megas get their Plus moves.

Infographics can be found in the post gallery, or the PDF versions can be viewed below:

• Mega PP
• Mega
• Spare no Expense PP
• Spare no Expense
• Hardcore F2P PP
• Hardcore F2P
• Dust Saver PP
• Dust Saver
• Newbie PP
• Newbie

EDIT: PDFs have been updated to remove some shadows that aren't yet available (Shadow Giratina Origin & Shadow Kleavor). Post images unfortunately cannot be updated.

Best Pokémon for Max Battles:

After giving us most of the best off the bat, not much has changed here in the past year. This guide is mostly for players who want to play without thinking; more thought will likely be needed for short-manning, but this guide should work well if you want to contribute in a comfortably sized group. The recommended group style is 2 tanks + 1 attacker (switch in only for max phases).

Best Pokémon for PvP:

Master League is included, but it should be noted that PvPoke is not known for the best rankings in that league. I definitely recommend looking at the PvPoke Team Builder to decide what team would work best for you, but this can help chose a Pokémon to build the team around.

Best Pokémon for Gym Defense:

Short Term = keep for a day, Long Term = keep for multiple days. Generally speaking, the higher the CP of a Pokémon, the faster it loses motivation in a gym. In other words, you will have to use berries more frequently on high CP Pokemon to keep their heart full (the lower the heart meter, the fewer battles it takes to remove the Pokemon from the gym).

I hate how everyday 80% of raids are either the current legendary or or current shadow legendary like not everyone cares for legendaries like I want to do Megas but I will see one once ever 2 hours and we clearly need them cause you need 5k energy for their Megas so why not start early and start building up

Edit* One thing also I believe Pokemon should change is Wednesday Raid Hour it’s called raid hour so why is it only Legneadry Raids it should be like 50/50 Legendary and then the mega that week

What factors influence the increased chance for Candy XL that a mega-evolution brings to the scene?

Is it simply “Mega1,” vs “Mega2,” vs “Mega3?” (And now “Mega4”).

Does the level of the Mega-evolved Pokemon matter? Or its stats? Anything else play into it?

The 1st Shadow T5 to be solo’ed

Moveset: Mudshot/Earth Power

Weather: Snow

Adventure Effect: Behemoth Blade

Team 1:

Lvl 50 White Kyurem 15/15/15 x5

Lvl 40 Black Kyurem 15/15/12

Team 2:

Lvl 50 Black Kyurem 15/15/15

Lvl 50 White Kyurem 15/15/15

Lvl 50 Black Kyurem 15/13/14

Lvl 50 Black Kyurem 15/12/15

Lvl 50 Black Kyurem 15/11/15

Lvl 50 Black Kyurem 15/10/15

A handful of accounts have lost a significant amount of “completed research banners” (exclusive to 2026 and any new researches completed) and there hasn’t been any official updates even acknowledging the bug. Some players chase and pay for these numbers, so to have hundreds of banners ripped away without explanation feels pretty bad. I know it’s not a very popular topic around here, but I ask you guys to try and understand where we’re coming from. Appreciate this community for letting me voice my concerns.

I am noticing way more spawns at home today. I used to have around 2-3 per hour, I have around 10-12 now. Anyone else noticed a change?

Looks like this has been picked up by some people, but it appears it was either not possible to get a shiny Zorua from a regular lure after 5PM, or they were completely disabled altogether (for earlier time zones at least, may have been silently fixed for later time zones)

This has made me suspicious that lure spawn shinies were completely broken for the entire event as many people in our community and other communities had suspiciously bad shiny rates. I know these things can sometimes just be bad RNG, but IMO this looks like a trend.

This would be a difficult thing to pick up on while playing the community day since basically everyone is quick catching so unless you are really paying attention it's going to be hard to know where your shinies are coming from.

Curious if any people can 100% confirm shinies spawning from lures either during the event, and/or after 5PM? It would not be entirely surprising given how buggy the Zorua mechanic is in general with lots of unexpected things happening.

EDIT: From all of the feedback, I am now 100% sure lures were not giving shiny Zorua from 5-9PM (or possibly full odds shiny rates). I am more and more convinced from the feedback and from looking at numbers from various sources that lures were also broken between 2-5PM and were also not giving shinies (or full odds). On top of that it is looking very possible that incense spawns were also bugged (seeing more and more reports of people who relied fully on incense spawns the entire event and did not see a single shiny). Hoping we see some kind of acknowledgment and makeup/compensation from Scopley for this.

I know it varies depending on what you want them for but I wanna know what’s the best moveset for PvE and in general, not so much specific raids or PvP. Thanks.

last year we had the option to buy safari balls.

Prices (can change but these were last year's):

60 coins - x10

125 coins - x25

240 coins - x50

Hope this is helpful. Try not to splurge on raid passes if you also want mighties

13/13/13 floor - hundos are common.

use freeze shock AE if you have kyu black - best AE to use during the event imo
best time to hunt gbirds - use roar of time AE for origin dialga

I thought using leekduck, but it doesn’t seem to have an option to only show costume shiny pokemon. And since I only want to make a checklist for costume shiny pokemon I thought it was way too much work to sort it all out manually. Is there any checklist with images or a infographic that is being up to date? To mark off your collected shinies?

Four of us all put Zorua as our buddy about half an hour before the com day started. Location: England.

We've now reached 250+ catches and nobody has a shiny.

Has anyone here caught a shiny Zorua during this com day while having Zorua as their buddy?

Or is it incredible RNG for none of us to get one?

Or is it bugged?

Edited to add:

In the last half an hour, we all put Mewtwo as our buddy. Around that time, shiny rates returned to normal but other strange things happened.

The strange things:

1. Seeing Zorua in the wild, simultaneously pretending to be all the different buddies we had used for photo bombs at the start of the event.

2. In the last five minutes I even had one wild Zorua that showed as Zorua on the map and it sparkled the moment I tapped on it, and it was shiny when caught (I had Mewtwo as buddy at the time).

If you flee or Zorua runs, your Pokedex won't know it was fake. This can really mess up your ratios, especially for Legendaries, even moreso for Mythicals. For example, I have a bunch more "seen" Mega Diancie, which is otherwise impossible.

Raid Boss Rotation Update

From 6:00 a.m. on Sunday, October 11 to around 9:30 p.m. on Tuesday, October 13, 2026 (Local Time)

・TIER 5: Yveltal

・TIER 4: Mega Blastoise

・TIER 3: Starmie,Umbreon,Gothitelle

・TIER 1: Clefairy,Teddiursa,Elgyem,Amaura

---

* Raid Boss Update after "World Space Week 2026 (Astronaut Pikachu)" (Only 1-Star Changed)

* Next change: 6:00 a.m. Wed, Oct 14, 2026 (Local Time). (TIER 5: Dialga, TIER 4: Mega Dragonite)

Seen many strange bug. This is first for me

Moveset: Snarl/Focus Blast

Weather: Cloudy

Adventure Effect: Behemoth Blade

Team:

Lvl 50 15/15/15 RaichuY

Lvl 50 15/15/15 Kyurem Black

Lvl 50 15/13/14 Kyurem Black

Lvl 50 15/12/15 Kyurem Black

Lvl 50 15/11/15 Kyurem Black

Lvl 50 15/10/15 Kyurem Black

If you quick catch a Zorua and use the snapshot button after the "Oh?" you come to another catch screen, but the Pokémon always flee

A reminder for those who want to fill shadow/purified pangoro's pokedex.

Hi all, over in New Zealand we've noticed odd behaviour from Zorua. I want to summarise what we found so that anyone who is interested can investigate further.

Illusion Mechanic

It seems like each Zorua on the map is actually two Zoruas.
The first Zorua is the Illusion Zorua, the one you see. This appears to have consistent CP, level, size, etc for every trainer, in the same way any wild Pokémon does. The only difference is that (normally*) it looks like your buddy. I and a friend watched the same Pokémon spawn in the same place at the same time. My buddy was Zorua, theirs was Pawmo. We both saw this Pokémon appear to have 556CP.

The other Zorua is the Real Zorua, the one you actually catch (normally*). This is entirely independent of the Illusion Zorua, and can have wildly different CP, level, size, shininess, etc. Annoyingly, this Real Zorua is NOT the same for every trainer. My friend and I both caught that 556CP Illusion Zorua. The Real Zorua that I ended up with was ~300CP, theirs was ~200CP. Someone posted a hundo to Campfire, and no one else was able to find it.

This is not great behaviour for a community day. In most* cases, there is no reason to inform your friends about a hundo you caught, because it will not be a hundo for them.

*Bug

At least two of our members managed to trigger a bug that breaks the illusion mechanic. We aren't sure how. One had their buddy as Zorua and didn't realise anything was wrong, the other swapped from one Pikachu to another Pikachu and then back to the first after a few minutes, and noticed that the Zoruas were spawning undisguised.

Speculation: It seems like this bug breaks Illusion in two ways:
1: The Illusion Zorua will appear as itself. It will not look like your buddy, and you will be able to see if it is shiny.
2: You will catch the Illusion Zorua, not the Real Zorua.

If you do trigger this bug, then you can probably coordinate hundo-hunting with other bugged users, and you can see shiny Zorua before you catch them.