How to Catch Pokemon During Raids

Catching raid Pokemon can be an intimidating experience for new Pokemon Go players. Many raid bosses are amongst the most powerful Pokemon in the game, and having a limited number of Pokeballs can make the prospect of actually catching them quite daunting. That said, here are some tips that should hopefully help you reliably catch them.

Learn to Set the Catch Circle

While this is likely a very familiar trick to old players, learning it is a foundational skill for any Pokemon Go player looking to maximize their chances of catching Pokemon. The crux of this trick lies in the fact that the ever-shrinking catch circle that determines whether your throw is nice, great, or excellent actually stops shrinking while a Pokemon is attacking.

This may not sound useful considering that an attacking Pokemon will deflect any balls that you throw at it, but you can actually use it to easily optimize the catch circle size, provided that the ball actually hits the Pokemon after it finishes its attack animation. In short, follow these steps:

1. Press on the phone screen to display the catch circle
2. Release the phone screen without throwing your Pokeball when the catch circle reaches the desired size
3. Wait until the Pokemon attacks without further interacting with the phone screen
4. Quickly throw your ball before the Pokemon finishes its attack animation. If timed correctly, the ball should actually hit the Pokemon after it finishes its animation. Otherwise, it will be deflected

This ties in nicely with the next trick we’re going to cover.

Practice Tight Great and Excellent Throws

It’s worth noting that the multiplier to your odds of catching a Pokemon actually scales linearly with the size of the catch circle rather than having a single multiplier for any given circle size of nice, great, or excellent throw. This means that the smallest possible great catch circle and the loosest possible excellent catch circle have very similar multipliers.

Even a very loose excellent throw still gives you 1.7x the regular odds of catching a Pokemon, so it’s very worthwhile to practice accurate throws.

Utilize Curveballs

For those not in the know, a curveball is the result of spinning the Pokeball around in a circle immediately before throwing it. This causes the Pokeball to arc in the direction that you were spinning after it is thrown.

While this may sound like it would make your job harder rather than easier, any curveball throw offers a 1.7x multiplier to your odds of catching a Pokemon, a boost equivalent to a loose excellent throw. This means that even landing a mediocre nice curveball throw will give you better odds of catching a Pokemon than an excellent regular throw.

Use Berries

Golden Razz Berries are a common raid reward and there’s arguably no better place to use them than when catching raid Pokemon themselves. Using a Golden Razz Berry gives you a whopping 2.5x the chance to catch a Pokemon.

In fact, even if you’re out of Golden Razz Berries, using a regular Razz Berry still offers a 1.5x boost to catch odds. A Silver Pinap Berry gives a 1.8x boost and will also increase the candy that you receive upon catching the Pokemon.

So How Do I Catch Raid Pokemon?

Ultimately, raid Pokemon aren’t much different from regular Pokemon in terms of how you catch them, even if you are limited to a set number of Pokeballs. Just utilize berries, curveballs, and excellent throws, and you’ll dramatically increase your odds of capturing the Pokemon at the end of a raid battle.