After Niantic’s announcement about friendship bonus, we have discovered how this has affected Ultra Friend and Best Friend damage bonuses! HUGE news for Groudon on Raikou day!

Video analysis

In the below videos, we chose Pokemon on the edge of a new breakpoint and tested them in a controlled way. We know that Tier 1 raids have 600 HP and Tier 2 raids have 1800 HP. By attacking with a consistent Pokemon, (both attack IV, level, boost, and move) we can divide the boss HP by the number of fast moves each raid took. This gives us damage per attack. TiredTortiss/Phillip do not do any damage in any of the raids, they are simply providing the friend boost.

Best Friend Moltres vs. Roselia

We would expect a level 25 Moltres with 14 attack IV using Fire Spin in sunny weather to hit for 33 damage each Fire Spin. Needing only 53 Fire Spin attacks to take down Roselia, Fire Spin was doing 34 damage per attack and not the 33 damage per attack as expected. This confirmed a change to the best friend damage bonus.

Ultra Friend Venusaur(GOAT) vs. Magikarp

In this video, we tested if the ultra friend bonus had changed as well. With the previous friendship breakpoint for a level 20 15 attack IV Venusaur in sunny weather, we would expect venusaur to need 17 Razor Leafs at 35 damage a piece to take down Magikarp. The next two breakpoints are for 36 damage (or 16.6 Razor Leafs) or 37 damage (at 16.2 Razor Leafs). The video clearly shows 16.6 Razor leafs attack placing the Ultra Friend boost between 9.7% and 12.9%.

From /u/anthonyberkers

Garchomp vs Shinx, 25 fast attacks needed meaning 24 damage again, best friend values that return 24 in the damage formula are between 11.8% and 16.5%

More Research

Research from u/CuttyWow https://www.reddit.com/r/TheSilphRoad/comments/c87wjk/jumpstart_event_best_friend_bonus_research_unable/

To reproduce the result, we found a Tier 2 raid and looked for a breakpoint that could be reached with a 1.16 damage multiplier, but not a 1.15 multiplier. Using our favorite breakpoint calculator spreadsheet, we found that a level 40 Ho-Oh with a 15 attack IV using Hidden Power Flying does 34 damage per hit with a 1.15 damage multiplier and 35 damage per hit with a 1.16 damage multiplier. We further found that a 1.151 damage multiplier would also yield 35 damage per hit, making this the perfect case to set an upper limit on the multiplier.

Against the Tier 2 Roselia with 1800 hp, then, a 1.15 damage multiplier would require 53 hits to KO, while the higher multiplier would require only 52 due to the higher breakpoint.



Armed with the calculations, we did the raid. I used the empty lobby trick to enter before u/ct9876, whose maxed perfect Ho-Oh we used for the test. Once he entered, he waited to ensure that the friend bonus icon was shown onscreen before attacking. He then used only fast moves for the duration of the raid and did not dodge. I did not touch my screen. You can watch the side-by-side videos here: https://youtu.be/siYKFStFxHo.

Reviewing the video, we each counted three times, and got 53 fast moves each time. On first view, there appeared to be a 54th fast move used, but it is clear from looking closely at the boss health bar that no damage is applied by that move.

More Research

Research 2 by CuttyWow setting the minimum for best friends at 14.9%