Welcome to Raid Review, where we take a look at the current raid rotation in Pokemon Go in order to see how valuable the current candidates are and what's worth your precious raid passes and what should generally be ignored! This is an ongoing series for Gamepress where we break down the proceedings into three-to-four different sections and work out the top choices for each, with consideration given to PvP and PvE alike.
We've sort of taken a... prolonged hiatus... from this series, but felt that this was the ideal time to bring it back. Why is that? Because the Rising Shadows event has brought us the grand debut of Shadow Raids in Pokemon Go! With this change, we're finally given the ability to farm some really strong and rare Pokemon, so it's worth taking a look at the current Pokemon on offer!
Five-Star and Mega Raids
Regigigas
Regigigas is a really great Pokemon... in design and concept. In practice, it's very underwhelming, and not really worth farming beyond the initial dex-entry. It has some potential for the future, but it'll likely never be a huge threat in Pokemon Go as it stands.
Mega Altaria
Puffy fluffy cotton dragon!
Mega Altaria has some degree of strange utility in raids, but in general it's not worth farming once you've gotten its dex entry.
The Rising Shadow
Shadow Mewtwo
This event will mark the release of Shadow Mewtwo into raids on May 27th & 28th, and let's be honest; the above options are underwhelming specifically because this raid boss casts such a foreboding shadow.
As one of the absolute top Pokemon in the game, additional opportunities to capture the nightmare that is Shadow Mewtwo should always be taken, but note that it can only be challenged in-person, so get together your best raid group and make this your priority for the event!
Three-Star Raids
Magneton, Lapras, Mawile, and Empoleon have utility in some situations blah blah blah... let's be honest; no one really cares about the vanilla raids this rotation, we all want those sweet, sweet shadows!
The Johto starters are nice and all, but the big stand-out for Three Star raids is Shadow Sneasel. One of the top-DPS Ice Type attackers, this little monster is a rare sight in raids, so bring your top punching Pokemon and definitely farm it if you can! ...assuming you wouldn't rather go for the one-star options instead.
One-Star Raids
Holy Crap we hit the jackpot, everybody! Shadow Bellsprout is great, but has traditionally be the only Shadow Pokemon that it's possible to consistently farm, so don't worry about it too much. The real prizes here are Shadow Machop and Shadow Beldum. Shadow Machamp may not be the Fighting king any longer, but it's still a massively useful Pokemon that is definitely worth picking up based on its own merit. And Shadow Beldum? Shadow Metagross is a rare and tremendously good Pokemon! Most players will probably want to prioritize farming this little tin-can any time that it may show up!
