Azelf Heat Map

Until May 27th at 1 PM PDT, Azelf will be the Tier 5 Raid Boss in The Americas and Greenland. To help you build your best possible team of counters for this third of the Lake Guardian trio, we’ve put together a Heat Map.

What’s a Heat Map?

Most Raid Boss counter lists assume that you have maxed out versions of each of the Pokémon on it, but in reality, the majority of people do not. With our Azelf Heat Map, however, you can identify whether a lower level Pokémon will do more damage to the Raid Boss than a higher level one, due to it having a better and more effective moveset. An excellent example of this is how a level 25 Giratina (Origin Forme) with Shadow Claw and Shadow Ball will do more damage to an Azelf Raid Boss than a level 40 Giratina (Origin Forme) with Shadow Claw and Ominous Wind (given the same amount of time).

There are several different methods for ranking Raid Boss counters, but the one we’ve selected to use is TTW, which stands for ‘Time-To-Win.’ This metric tells you which Pokémon would potentially beat the Raid Boss in the shortest amount of time, so if you’re short of Trainers, this will give you the best chance of beating Azelf before the time runs out. Not only that, but doing more damage can mean more Premier Balls with which to try and catch the Raid Boss!

So to supplement our Azelf Raid Guide, here’s the Heat Map that we’ve made. Below, we’ll explain how to read and use the Heat Map to get the most out of your Raid squads:

Azelf Heat Map

Azelf Heat Map - Lists Azelf's counters at various levels, with various movesets and in order of TTW (time to win)
Azelf Heat Map

(Shoutouts go to Pokebattler.com for the data, Redditor u/Rayunge for his guidance in compiling the data, and GOHub Artist OrangeHeart for putting the data into infographic form)

*This data assumes that you don’t know the moveset of the Raid Boss, that no moves will be weather boosted, and that you aren’t getting a friend damage bonus, so basically, almost the worst case scenario; unless the weather boosts the Raid Boss’ moves, things can only get easier.

How to Use Our Heat Maps

As detailed at the bottom of the graphic, to use a Pokémon GO Hub Heat Map, you first need to identify which of the listed Pokémon you have, whether they have the specified moveset (If not, you can of course use some TMs) and what level they are. As a rough guide:

  • If your Pokémon is fully powered up (and you’re at Trainer Level 38 or above), it’s at Level 40.
  • If it costs around 8000 Stardust to power up, it’s at about level 35.
  • If it costs around 5000 Stardust to power up, it’s at about level 30.
  • If it costs around 4000 Stardust to power up, it’s at about level 25.
  • If it costs around 2500 Stardust to power up, it’s at about level 20.

Try to identify your 12 best counters so that you can fill two Battle Parties because if Azelf defeats your first Party and you don’t want to use Max Revives, you’ll then have your next-best-optimized one ready to go straight back into battle.

Once you know which of these Pokémon you have and roughly what level they are, it’s time to put them in order of best to worst; The numbers in the grid represent how long that counter, at that level, with that moveset would take to beat the raid boss if the counter had unlimited HP. So the lower (and greener) the number, the better.

When you’ve ordered your Pokémon from best to worst, you can make a couple of battle parties so that you’re ready for every encounter you have with the Raid Boss.

Checking the TTW of Other Counters

If you need to check the TTW of a potential counter that isn’t listed in the Heat Map, here’s a quick rundown of how to do this:

  • Visit the Raid Counters section of Pokebattler.com
  • Scroll down until you find the Custom Raid section
  • Choose the Raid Boss you’re trying to counter and the level of the counter you’re trying to find the TTW for.
  • Leave the Weather set to ‘Extreme’ and the Friend bonus set to ‘Not Friends’ – this provides you with a (near) worst case scenario.
  • Click ‘Find Best Raider’ and a list of counters will populate.
  • At the top of the list of counters, there will be two small icons. One allows you to choose the metric (TTW, Estimator, etc.), while the other allows you to choose whether to group the counters by species or display all of their movesets singularly. Choose TTW on one and Single on the other.
  • Find the potential counter you’re looking for in the list (there’s a ‘More’ button if it doesn’t appear the top 24) and compare it to the rest of your potential counters.
  • Remember to check that you’re looking at the same moveset as your Pokémon has (or check which one has the lowest TTW and TM to that).
  • If you need any further help on this, feel free to contact me using the links below.

Best of luck in your battles with Azelf, and if you have any feedback, suggestions or changes you’d like to see in our future Raid Boss Heat Maps, please Tweet @GoHubQoncept or join us on the GO Hub Discord and tag @Qoncept with your comments.

Author & tags

Qoncept
Qoncept
Age 32, from Grantham UK. Team Valor - Admin of the Pokémon Go Grantham Community.
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