Sharing this because I'm super frustrated and want to vent somewhere, and my IRL friends would think I'm super weird for venting this to them.
I still need an Absol, I haven't successful managed to do an Absol raid. I've maybe seen like 4 in total, 1 in Boston, where no one went to do him, while I was on Vacation, and 3 times in Utah, my home State. 2 times, I posted in our Cities Slack Channel hoping someone would help, no response, understood, people are busy.
Today I finally saw my third Absol spawn, right by my work. I ask on Slack if someone could please help me, someone responded and I'm so happy!
I go there, meet him, and we try to raid it. See he's a Level 32, easy!
1st attempt, I immediately notice his team isn't designed for this. He's using Aggron, Aggron, Ho-Oh, and we time out before his Ho-Oh faints. I can only imagine the other 3 were more Legendaries. (His Ho-Oh had Psychic by the way, to make it worse.) We fail barely making it turn red in the last 10 seconds. No surprise.
2nd go, I explain to the guy how for Absol, using Aggron and Ho-Oh doesn't help much. The game recommends them because they have a high level of defense, and will survive a long time, but we won't beat the raid together like that. We need to use Pokemon that deal super effective damage to Absol, and explain to him that Bug, Fighting, and Fairy would be great! I then recommend he uses Machamp, if he has any. He has 6! I told him, excellent, those would be great!
We fail, this time doing about the same, Red Health in the last 10 seconds.
I ask if I can see his Machamps, because knew they were base level Raid Catches, but I didn't think that'd be a problem.
Only one of them had a Fighting/Fighting moveset, 3 had Steel/Steel, 2 had Fighting/Steel.
3rd go, I ask if I can select his team for him, and I find he has almost no powered up, fighting move only Pokemon. He has one CP 1,800 Poliwrath, great, useable! The one Machamp, and then 4 low level Hitmonchan and Hitmonlee.
I didn't make the raid team for him though, because he already had his 5 Raid Parties in use. All named after some Anime Character, all 5 parties only have Legendaries in them.
Dude had 900 Pokemon Storage, and like 100 of that was pure Legionaries. He's caught more Legendaries than I've done Legendary Raids (I've done 38). His only Pokemon above CP 2,000 were Legendaries. Everything else, no matter how good, was just evolved and floating around CP 1,500. Including his Dragonite and Tyranitar.
I just handed him his phone back, and told him to use what he likes.
We failed, again obviously.
At this point, I knew it wasn't happening, and no one else in Slack responded asking if anyone could help, so we both gave up. I told him thanks for coming, he apologized for us failing, and I just told him "It's fine man. It's just a game! We'll do it next time! Have a great day."
I'm not a big fan of Raids, I never do them personally. I've done like 70 raids in total. I've been on the receiving end of being criticized for my playstyle of the game, after we failed a Ho-Oh raid with 5 people, and the raid expired. ("Who's the idiot using Mew? Why are you using Ampharos and Jolteon for this? Dude use your Kyogre's or fucking Golems, you have to have Golems! You're such an idiot. Play the game right, we lost the raid and wasted money because of you. I'm gonna get you kicked from the group!")
Sorry man, I don't have any Legendaries, and I only power up Pokemon I like, so non of my Golems are powered up. Truth be told, I don't even have any Powered up Machamps (I have only 3, 2 raids, one evolved for my dex) to use for Absol, I used a Dolphan, 3 Fighting/Fairy Ursarings, and 2 Hiryamas I caught at level 35. My team took Absol down to yellow with 10 seconds to spare, so I did my half. ( I did a solo-run of Absol after he left to see.) I did 50% of health damage in 180 seconds, the other dude did 25% in 180 seconds.
I would never harass another player, for not playing "right", or not having a great raid team, or not understanding typing advantages and disadvantages, so I was polite and nice. Especially more so because, again, all my teams are more casual and I only use stardust for Pokemon I like, so, Ampharos, Vaporeon, Gardevoir, Espeon, etc.
But sucks to still not have an Absol, and waste 30 minutes of my time failing to get an Absol. Fuck man. :(
Anyways, useless rant over a mobile game made for children, done.