The Pokemon Go Max Out season has seen some massive changes for the hit mobile game, with the grandiose Dynamax Battles at the very top of the agenda.
These take a leaf out of Pokemon Sword & Shield‘s gameplay, bringing the gigantic version of battles over to Pokemon Go and offering a unique twist on the established Raid formula. For now, though, we’ve seen some 1-Star battles like the Kanto starters and one 3-Star Max Battle with Beldum.
Many reported that Beldum’s Max Battle was a significant step up in difficulty from the 1-Star Raids (though it can be handled solo), but now players returning to 1-Star Raids are finding that the difficulty has been adjusted.
While it’s unclear what balance changes may have happened, many are saying that 1-Star Raids have gotten much tougher.
The discussion started with a Reddit post, where one user posted the comment, “It seems that with Beldum gone, 1-star Max Battles have gotten more difficult as Niantic further balances the game.”
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Backing this up, they report to have tackled “three Charmander Max Battles” in one afternoon, and while previously they felt like any Pokemon could take these down, now they report that they had a “weather-boosted Squirtle” faint and that battles are generally lasting much longer.
Other players also reported some major shifts to Max Battles, with one player adding to the evidence, saying, “I was wondering why I was struggling with a Charmander raid! normally they don’t even take out 1 mon but I actually had to use a second today.”
Another person even reports to have completed around “50 [1-Star] Dynamax Battles” and taken almost all of them down after one Max Move, but as of the recent changes the battles are “much harder” and battles will often KO the first basic monster before even reaching a Max Move.
At the time of writing, there is no official statement on these changes from Niantic either on the Niantic Support X account or on the Pokemon Go blog.