Just when I thought I’ve seen everything that the Pokemon Go community can do, there comes another player who uses only one, only ONE Pokemon to defeated a Tier 3 Raid Boss.
Chapotrap9876 is a Red (Team Valor) Pokemon Go Lvl40 player, who defeated Piloswine (currently Tier 3 Raid Boss) using only one Pokemon – Empoleon.
Who would have thought that the penguin-like Pokemon can be so strong?
Take a look at the battle below, but before that, let’s check some details that he shared:
Here my Empoleon with Metal Claw/Hydro Pump defeats a Powder Snow/Avalanche Piloswine in neutral weather (windy). Both Waterfall (which hits Piloswine for 21 damage) and Metal Claw (11 damage) are suitable for the job, but I opted for Metal Claw for the shorter cooldown and also because I’ve already done WF/HP 1v1 battles against Piloswine with Kyogre and Gyarados, so wanted to mix it up. There’s also the fact that Piloswine’s (unique) typing presents a cool opportunity to show off Empoleon’s (unique) typing by using a mixed Steel/Water moveset.
The battle itself is pretty straightforward. Powder Snow makes life easier here—but Ice Shard is definitely doable too— and probably would’ve been a first run win had it not been for the usual parade of phantom hits in the previous 3 or 4 runs. With Metal Claw’s cooldown (0.7s) and Avalanche’s damage window (1.7s), the dodging here is a breeze. The key is to not get tagged by an Avalanche on a Hydro Pump, so the safest approach is to fire the Hydro Pump at the start of a Powder Snow (you’ll see I often do some extra Metal Claws after filling my bar, to line up the timing).
This particular matchup is forgiving enough that even with a phantom or tanked hit, decent RNG & compensating by dodging a lot more fast moves could probably still get it over the line. In this battle, I was keeping an eye on the relative HP, sneaking some Powder Snow dodges here and there in anticipation of a phantom avalanche, which thankfully never came. As is often the case with 1v1s, getting a run without phantoms can be the hardest part of the challenge!
