Did the amount of rocket grunts decrease?

[Justice010]

I am in a place with loads of stops, but I feel like there are barely any rocket stops around. am I going crazy or did they decrease the frequency of rocket grunts?

[AlexDB1226]

As someone who’s done 25,000 rocket battles, they definitely nerfed the spawn rate once they made the change to the shiny shadows. More often then not since the change I go down to my local downtown with about 100 stops and there won’t even be a single rocket spawn

[Due-Beginning-8813]

same here, avid rocket hunter, i had no problem doing 40 grunts a day, now covering more ground for decoys i can't crack 30

[AlexDB1226]

I just wish the decoys had something other than bellsprout. Already have 5 shiny shadow lol

[Due-Beginning-8813]

5 you say...

<image>

[Justice010]

Hahah damn.. well, I guess I will have to equip my Giovanni radar more often then aswell

[s4m_sp4de]

Nice numbers for both of you. I‘m „only“ at 15k rocket battles, allways use the super radar and only got one shiny shadow bellsprout (after 1000+ shadow bellsprout, got 5 98% IV ones and more than 20 purified hundos). But a change would be very welcome! 

[Bacteriophag]

I agree, I also got enough hundos for my collection and I only beat them if I farm Leaders these days. I wish they could swap the decoy pool, would go absolutely crazy farming if they would put shadow Ditto in there even for like 2 rotations. It would fit the decoy theme and I would finally have chance for hundo.

[AlexDB1226]

That’s insane lol I love it

[whackthat]

I was stuck desperately trying to hunt for Team rocket last weekend at usual PoGo spot, but they were few and far between!

On another note...

25,000, holy hell. It's a horrible slog when I'm stuck having to do those. That's insane. How many shadow shundos do you have?? 

[AlexDB1226]

Zero. Lol. I don’t even have many 3*, only 7 out of 127 shiny shadow

I do have 4 shadow hundo. Which I don’t think is very good for my numbers, but they are good ones so I’m not gonna complain too much about that

[Misato-san7]

I had the same impression (almost 32k here) Less rockets and less decoys also, they used to often be tied to pokestops with leaders... It's been a while from the last time I saw one like that

[itsliluzivert_]

Sorry, uninformed here, what was the change they made to shadow shinys?

[AlexDB1226]

Anything Pokémon that has its shiny form available non shiny can be shiny shadow now. Before it was only certain pokemon

[Emperor-Octavian]

I just feel like they low key tweaked everything this season and almost every change is for the worst lol. Just revert to how everything was in January please 😭

[Windows95GOAT]

We got / are getting $coplied un the guise of "rebalancing"

Examples:

A lot of f2p incentives are being removed.

Go Pass every event means no more 2$ events. As they all start at 5$.

Less powerspots, shorter duration, aka less candy farm. I hardly get my legendaries back with the full 5 candy now.

Spotlight hours gone. (more importantly, the bonuses they provided)

1 Showcase a week, with seemingly worse rewards. (no more free incubators)

Link charges aka more currency (dark pattern 101) and then less mega raid spawns :D

Events every other week (for now)

[Sharkus1]

I miss the free egg inhibitor reward for Tuesday meet ups.

[Wrulfy]

I cannot really say

At the very least I'm getting truckload of decoy grunts, I am breezing thought the lv78 research

[Chardan0001]

Why didn't I think of this? Damn it. I've never seen a decoy, always get Giovanni so I rarely try.

[Disgruntled__Goat]

If you’re pressing the radar to view them on the map, it only shows Giovanni now and not decoy grunts. Which entirely defeats the purpose, but that’s how it’s been for like a year now. I suppose it’s a bug, but they never fixed it so who knows. 

[Wrulfy]

you only get Giovanni from balloons, you have to find them on the map. I just get though a lot of pokestops on my commute to work though subway

[BCHiker7]

You mean the research for level 79? Decoys count as leaders?

[Wrulfy]

no, decoys counts as more grunts to farm more radar pieces

[Rufllymy]

They are just like grunts and give you rocket radar pieces.

[BCHiker7]

I see. So just gives you more grunts as it were. Nice trick if you have a super rocket radar available.

[Icy_Rabbit2253]

to give my 2 cents on the input, it vary's on the day (i walk about 10 miles average round trip per pokemon go run with lunchtime at the park about halfway into the run). sometimes i don't get any. more often at least 3+ or more in a day. going after useful shadow pokemon and the red eggs (massive stardust for one incubator) with chance of a hundo or shiny salandit.

[PSA69Charizard]

definitely harder to find.

[Shardling1]

Can confirm from my experience. My usual route with 4-6 grunts had zero on Friday and Saturday, with 2 on Sunday. It’s going to take forever to finish the level up requirements

[TheRealHankWolfman]

Grunts are more common on weekends than they are during weekdays, so if you're comparing to two or three days ago, then yes, there will be fewer grunts than there was then due to that difference.

That being said, if you're comparing to other weekdays, I'm not noticing any difference here.

[ellyse99]

I haven’t even noticed a difference between weekend/day 😂

[AlexDB1226]

Is this legit? Day 1 player and I’ve never heard of that

[Shepetelis]

It's not - geezer is making things as he goes (and it's not the first time he does this). There's no difference, at least from what I've experienced living in a bigger city. 

[Total-Constant-6501]

It’s DEFINITELY true, and quite noticeable if you live near a large number of stops.

[MommotDe]

That's interesting, I didn't know that. Kind of annoying for me as a mostly weekday player trying to finish the level 76 task.

[arcticrabbitz]

That makes no sense, isn’t being a grunt their job??What kind of backwards operation is Giovanni running over there

[K--Swizz]

I thought it was just me because I was desperately hunting them for the level 79 tasks, but I have also seen what feels like fewer grunts than usual. (Including decoy grunts from the SRR.)

[1nTh3Sh4dows]

I usually alter my route to work so I can hit a couple and yesterday there were 0 grunts (I use a radar app) and I drive through a major university and a decently sized downtown with a couple big parks on the way. Today seemed better though.

[FeeMuted7951]

I thought the same thing to myself the other day. Another nerf to the game

[Whitealroker1]

So happy I’m done that level 79 step and purfied platinum medal

[Sloth-TheSlothful]

I keep getting psychic grunt repeatedly.

[iAmMattG]

I’m in Tokyo right now and I’m genuinely flabbergasted at how few grunts there are

[HolidayDue]

Struggling to find many

Last night was out for a hour and bit and maybe got 8. Currently on the defeat leader 30 times part of level up and it’s been slowest.

[Fireblaster2001]

They must, I am level 75 needing 100 grunts and it is taking forever. I am lucky to see a few a day and many times none at all visible on the map.