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Darkrai Raid Duo Guide

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Tier 5 Raid Boss Guides
Darkrai_Duo
Difficulty:

Doable at trainer level 30 with optimized counters or weather boost

HP15,000 ATK237.10 DEF147.80
CP Range
Lvl 20 2048 - 2136 Lvl 25 2560 - 2671

Notable Weather

Boosts Boss's Moves Boosts Counters' Moves
Fog, Cloudy Windy, Cloudy

Fast Move Difficulty

Move Difficulty
Snarl Challenging
Feint Attack Intermediate

Charge Move Difficulty

Move Difficulty
Shadow Ball Challenging
Dark Pulse Intermediate
Focus Blast Intermediate

Overview

In its March of 2020 release, Darkrai made its return to the raid scene as a Tier 5 rather than a Tier 6, making it substantially easier to deal with. This raid is actually doable with 2 trainers and without boosts given the proper counters, but this guide will focus on the much more forgiving 3-person run given the current rarity of these counters

Darkrai hits like a truck, plain and simple. While not as strong as Mewtwo in this regard, it is still able to cut down teams with its powerful blows, which makes TDO a bigger issue than DPS given perfect counters. Be ready to re-lobby for this one, as the Pitch Black Pokemon is quite the imposing force.

Approach

  • The duo is not extremely hard, though many of the counters below are also only trio-worthy.
  • Fighting Types tend to lead the pack in terms of counters, followed by Fairy Types. Bug Types barely even register.

Battling Strategy

  • Dodging can be very important, though it can also be difficult with some movesets
  • Try to always dodge Focus Blast unless you know that surviving it won't net your Pokemon another charged move
  • If attempting a Duo, then dodging is exceptionally important in many cases. With weather and friend bonuses, DPS isn't a huge issue. But TDO definitely is.

Best Raid Boss Counters

Supreme Mega Evolution Counters

Mega Blaziken Mega Blaziken
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The current ruler of the Fighting Type Mega meta, Mega Blaziken hits hard and can seriously damage Darkrai despite only having Focus Blast to fall back on. Its raw power combined with the pervasive nature of Fighting Types in this raid means that Mega Blaziken is arguably the absolute best option here.

Mega Gardevoir Mega Gardevoir
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Mega Gardevoir has a few advantages that make it very competitive with Mega Blaziken, in particular its huge double-resistance to Focus Blast, which is a potentially very annoying move to face. But to make up for this major advantage, Mega Blaziken also does not have a resistance to Darkrai's STAB moves, and it's also weak to Shadow Ball, making it pretty situational. On top of that, it also has a substantially less useful Mega boost, as there aren't many Fairy Types worth considering for this raid, and none of them quite compare with the Fighting Type competition. Add to this the fact that Fairy and Fighting share a boosting weather, and it can honestly be a bit hard to justify using Mega Gardevoir outside of the situations outlined above.

Good Mega Evolution Counters

Mega Lopunny Mega Lopunny
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Mega Lopunny has the issue of being a lesser Mega Blaziken that has a weakness to Focus Blast. However, it is double-resistant to Shadow Ball while spreading the useful Fighting Type Mega Boost, so it's a solid second-line pick.

Mega Rayquaza Mega Rayquaza
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While not Super Effective here, Mega Rayquaza is still good enough to easily register on the raid-radar thanks to its huge stat-pool and great moves.

Mega Pinsir Mega Pinsir
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The best of the Bug Mega Evolutions, Mega Pinsir is... okay. It's not on a par with the above, and its Mega Boos is borderline worthless when compared to what we've already covered due to a lack of strong Bug Types, but it can differentiate itself a bit in Rainy weather. And it also does have a double-resistance to Focus Blast, at least.

Mega Mega Beedrill
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In this raid, Mega Beedrill is basically Mega Pinsir, but worse.

Supreme Counters

Terrakion Terrakion
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Despite being weak to Focus Blast, Terrakion has the raw power needed to virtually rule this raid. It hits like an absolute truck, and also has the advantage of resisting Darkrai's STAB moves. It's hard to go wrong with this legendary monster.

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Terrakion, but a bit worse. Water over Rock doesn't change this matchup outside of losing the Focus Blast weakness, so most of the above points apply here as well, but to a lesser degree.

Shadow Machamp Shadow Machamp
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Same story as Keldeo applies here, for the most part.

Shadow Hariyama Shadow Hariyama
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The chain continues, as Shadow Hariyama is the same story as Shadow Machamp.

ShadowGardevoir Shadow Gardevoir
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Arguably the best of the Fairy Types outside of its Mega forme, Shadow Gardevoir hits hard and works extremely well here. It still has to fear Shadow Ball and contend with Darkrai's STAB moves, but that double-resistance to Focus Blast is nice.

Good Counters

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Lucario doesn't care for Focus Blast, but it's still got the raw power to work here very well.

Conkeldurr Conkeldurr
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Arguably the best of the vanilla Fighting Types outside of the Shadows, Conkeldurr is devalued compared to what it once was but still objectively good.

Mega Blaziken Mega Blaziken
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Shadow_Toxicroak Shadow Toxicroak
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Shadow Granbull Shadow Granbull
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Volcarona Volcarona
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Hariyama Hariyama
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Pheromosa Pheromosa
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Pinsir Shadow Pinsir
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shadow-regigigas Shadow Regigigas
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Shadow Regigigas needs Hidden Power Fighting or Bug to be good here, as Hidden Power Fairy doesn't exist. 

Togekiss Togekiss
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Bulky, though a bit light on DPS.

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Same as the above.

Xurkitree Xurkitree
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ShadowScizor Shadow Scizor
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Raid Graph