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[Quick Analysis] Season of Timeless Travels: New recipients of Fly and Hisuian Samurott as raid attackers

December 2, 2023 - Teban54
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The new Season of Timeless Travels features several attack updates, including the addition of Fly (and many others) to many Pokemon’s move pools. Additionally, Hisuian Samurott will make its debut during a raid day on Sunday, December 3. In this article, we will examine the impacts of both changes on raid attackers.

Flying types: Charts

Flying attackers ranked by their average in-raid performance, using ASE and ASTTW.
Staraptor and Shadow Staraptor vs. similar attackers (L40 not friends)

Hisuian Samurott and Water types: Charts

Water attackers ranked by their average in-raid performance, using ASE and ASTTW.
Hisuian Samurott (with hypothetical Hydro Cannon) vs. similar attackers (L40 not friends)

Main Points

Fly is an overpowered move. Thanks to it being permanently added to their TM-able move pools:

  • Shadow Staraptor is now a top-tier flying attacker, near Yveltal level and only behind Rayquaza(s) and Shadow Moltres.
  • Staraptor and Braviary are both the best regular non-legendary flying attackers, only behind megas, shadows and legendaries. They are now firmly ahead of Honchkrow.

Gust is the best fast move on Staraptor for raids. It’s a 2022 Community Day move, and you can get it during December 2023 CD via evolution (even for all shadows). But the non-legacy Wing Attack is almost as good (the chart is underrepresenting the difference, but it’s still very small).

Hisuian Samurott is currently bad. In the event that it can get Hydro Cannon one day (we don’t know whether it will be), it’s a slightly faster but flimsier (regular) Swampert, and behind Hydro Cannon Greninja which you can also get during December CD.

My analyses of other types are in this spreadsheet. You can also follow me on Twitter (X) and Threads!

Imgur Links and Additional Charts

General attacker charts: ASE and ASTTW*

Comparisons:

* indicates additional charts that are not in the main post.


A note for the readers: The end of advice giving?

First of all, I won’t be doing an analysis for December Community Day. I have written analysis articles for all Pokemon featured in 2022-23 CDs that are relevant in raids, which you can find in this spreadsheet. Even though some of them are now very out of date (especially Hydreigon), the most recent charts of their type(s) still show their current positions.

On the other hand… You’ll notice that I refrained from giving any advice in this post (e.g. “worth an ETM”, “good for players who are X, Y and Z”, “no need to care if you have A, B and C”, etc). In fact, from now onwards, I will not give any subjective advice for players and will only present objective information, unless in exceptional situations.

The most recent time that I did so, for the Mega Garchomp analysis, there was significant backlash in the replies. Most commentors felt that my framing of Mega Garchomp in the context of Primal Groudon and Mega Rayquaza was too negative, with many people feeling that I was calling it useless just because two much more expensive options exist.

Ironically, that was less than 2 months after I literally said “this is your best chance – by far – to build a cheap bug-type team for its future uses, even for most veteran players” for Vikavolt. And a month after I noted an advantage of Shadow Moltres in its role compression for players who want to build only one legendary instead of two, despite it being outclassed by two non-shadow legendaries.

In general, I have never assumed everyone has access to everything, and I try to consider at least some variety of playstyles and situations in my articles. The Mega Garchomp article is one of the only exceptions, where I made an assumption that accessibility of Primal Groudon and Mega Rayquaza is reasonable (for reasons stated here). Yet, this happened.

Given the constantly diverging player base (those who started 2 months ago, Unique 6 users, F2P players, whales who can and do have 6 of all legendaries, people who aim for shortmanning vs people who just want to improve their teams, shadows vs non-shadows, megas vs non-megas, fan favorites like Mewtwo and Garchomp, etc), I feel increasingly difficult, if not impossible, to consider all possible viewpoints and write my articles in a way that satisfies everyone. In particular, I don’t want to reinforce the belief that every “PvE player” – or worse, every player – needs to grind for 6 of the #1 attacker and everything else is useless. Especially when there’s already an underlying sentiment of such in this community.

Unfortunately, the best way to avoid these issues is to avoid presenting my advice and opinions altogether. And I now think this is the best thing to do in the long term.

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Fly
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Flying raid pokemon
flying types
Hisuian Samurott
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water pve
water raid pokemon
Water types

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