Who said snorlax should not be use in raid???
I see ppl treat snorlax as another bilssey when it comes to raid,
But early this day , I raid Rayquaza with 17 ppl and I was run out of potion ,
the auto select get me two L34 snorlax with ZH/HS , I run through the raid with the second snorlax with a few hp left by 50-60 second ,
and I found I got +1 damage ball, and I was shocked at the moment
Snorlax did all the job that my Dragonite should be done
And it is super potion efficient, guess I am gonna use snorlax for now lol
Answers
It is only "Big Potion Efficient". It has so much HP, but its defense is only above-average at best.
It may not make as big of a difference in large raids where the amount of damage to get another damage ball is huge, but at that point you may as well use a Blissey to at least get better survivability and effectiveness with Dazzling Gleam.
Seriously, there are WAY better tank options for Rayquaza that will also get you more damage. Lugia is arguably the most potion-efficient mon in the game and has higher Attack to boot, and it both has super-good STAB Charged Moved and carries Dragon Tail, one of the best Quick Moves with added effectiveness to Rayquaza. Gardevoir stands out as a semi-tank when facing double Dragon movesets for its above-average defense and double resistance, and carries very strong STAB moves and an effective Charged Move to Dragon-types. Aggron also packs Dragon Tail, and gets STAB on its effective Charged Move, Stone Edge, and carries double resistance to Flying and resistance to Rock (which most counters not only do not resist but are also weak to).
This way, you can both get more defensive capability and pull your weight in regards to damage.
My point is , +1 damage is all u can get for a raid with 15 ppl up
And snorlax manage to do that, so it is the roof top for damage u can get for reward, so it is enough for everything
No need to throw out 5 Dragonite or 4 Articuno out there just to die and waste revive and potion for the same +1 damage ball
I mean yeah, if you live in an area that can get 17 people together for a Rayquazza raid, that's great use literally any pokemon and you will be able to take it down. Some people aren't so lucky. In my area beyond the first week of availability we can struggle to get 4-5 people for a raid. Snorlax would be detrimental in this situation.
Well, Niantic always want money, if the small community do not generate money, why would Niantic ever wanna spend time on it ???
If the minority has impact for Niantic ( in here , it mean money spend enough to make Niantic notice) they will put their time on it, just like taiwan (the third spender in the world behind US and Japan)
That’s how it is for Niantic , and that will never change
Why would Niantic take care of community with few thousand ppl , while the city with millions ppl already done the 90% of income for it ???
I mean, yeah you get a lot more reward items (TMs, Rare Candies, Golden Razz) and a much higher chance at catching (sometimes 2x the chance).
Seems like a good deal to me. If your community has enough players to at least trigger EX-Raids, you all have a much higher chance at those as well. I hear large areas like Hong Kong and Singapore generate lots of EX-Raids but there is too much competition to reliably get a pass.
I don't know that there is any evidence that smaller raid groups result in more items or higher catch rates (at best you get 1 more ball). But regardless I would trade those for having more people doing raids in the area because there is a lot more inconvenience when raiding with small groups. Such as daily there are plenty of raids that one or two people are willing to do that go undone since we can't get enough, also having to travel further, and wait longer just to get a group together. In addition we don't have enough to trigger EX raids (or Niantic just doesn't recognize any of our locations as acceptable to host one). There have been no EX raids in our area since the testing phase.