Raid Systems Suddenly Changed: What it Means for Pokemon GO and GamePress

In a move that is frankly very on-brand for Niantic, we've got an unexpected and unannounced yet very, very impactful change to the way that Pokemon Go runs its raids. Fortunately, The Silph Road Community Has Already Highlighted the Changes, so most of the differences have already been figured out by the community. Cardinal among these changes is the fact that Move damage windows are now being rounded up or down to the nearest .5 second interval, meaning PvE play now mirrors the half-second, turn-based system of PvP.

So what does this mean for raiders? It means that a tremendous shake-up seems imminent. As of right now, some of the best moves in the games are seeing nerfs while others are seeing unwarranted buffs, while some of the worst moves are also experiencing the same treatment. This means that our Attackers Tier List and Best Attackers By Type List are currently out of date, in some cases pretty badly. So does this mean that we're currently hard at work, getting everything updated to represent these changes? Well, not quite yet.

The fact of the matter is that Niantic has in no way referenced these changes in-game or in any official announcements, so we aren't 100% sure if this is the new status-quo, the accidental release of an in-progress update, or the first change in a series that will begin re-shaping the raid meta. This could also be an accident, or it could be a new system related to the Dynamax Release in one way or another. Either way, we've decided to wait on making updates to the database just in case more changes are on the near-horizon. But rest assured that we will begin our update once we have at least some idea as to what exactly is going on, and how likely we are to see changes in the near future.

For now, it's our fervent recommendation that you don't raise any Pokemon for PvE for the time being! As stated, these changes have the potential to shake up the meta severely, so save your stardust and candy until we actually know what's going on.