Pokemon Go: Rayquaza Raid Weekend, Weather Week 2021

ByAdam B Hours
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Pokemon Go Rayquaza Raid Weekend title card

Rayquaza is expected to be part of a special raid weekend in Pokemon Go in just a few days as part of the first-ever Weather Week event.

The sky-high Pokemon will be making appearances in five-star raids alongside Therian Forme Thundurus for the duration.

When is this raid weekend?

The raid weekend event will take place as part of the currently on-going Weather Week event – meaning it’ll take place this weekend.

The event starts on March 27th, at 10:00 AM, and ends at 8:00 PM on the 28th of March.

As usual, events use local time, so you don’t need to worry about timezones.

This gives you a fair bit of time to try a few Rayquaza raids and hopefully get lucky enough to get a strong one for your Pokemon collection.

Rayquaza as shown in the Pokemon anime
Rayquaza as shown in the Pokemon anime, Credit: The Pokemon Company

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Fighting Rayquaza

What types will be Effective

Rayquaza is a dual-type dragon/flying. This gives it a fair number of resistances – though unlike Thundurus this flying type isn’t using his secondary typing to negate weaknesses.

Super-effective types to prioritise using:

The complete list is below, though take particular note that you should use Ice-types if you can, as Rayquaza has double ice weakness.

The Pokemon Glaceon
Glaceon once again coming in useful for Raids, Credit: Bulbapedia

This means it will take 256% damage from any Ice attacks, compared to only 160% from other vulnerabilities.

  • Ice
  • Dragon
  • Fairy
  • Rock
Resisted types to avoid using:

Similar to the super-effective list and Ice being a clear standout – avoid Grass-type and Ground-type moves here, they’ll deal only 39% damage to Rayquaza.

The other types are standard resistance and will deal 62.5% of normal damage.

  • Grass
  • Ground
  • Bug
  • Fighting
  • Fire
  • Water

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What moves can Rayquaza use?

All in all Rayquaza’s move list is about what you’d expect from a dragon/flying type, it’s a lot of flying-type or dragon-type moves.

With that said, Ancient Power is a notable exception, being Rock-type. You’ll have to watch out for that if you bring Ice-types to bear against Rayquaza, as it’ll really hurt them due to being super effective.

Fast Attacks
  • Air Slash
  • Dragon Tail
Charged Attacks
  • Aerial Ace
  • Ancient Power
  • Outrage
  • Hurricane

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Is Shiny Rayquaza available?

Shiny Rayquaza is enabled in the game and thus should be available during the raids this weekend, so anyone seeking out a Rayquaza does indeed have a chance of encountering the shiny variant.

Bear in mind that the shiny chance for legendary raids is 5% – as covered in my piece about the probabilities of getting a shiny – so you’ll still need a bit of luck, but it is a lot better than most other shiny odds!

A comparison between shiny and normal Rayquaza in Pokemon Go
A comparison between shiny and normal Rayquaza in Pokemon Go,
Credit: Pokemon Go Wiki

That’s about everything you’ll need to know about the upcoming special raid weekend, best of luck fighting and capturing those Rayquaza, trainers!