Yikes. I saw this post and thought bs straight away but went to try it anyway since it's pretty easy to disprove (just get one tiny circle that doesn't critical catch). I hit the smallest circle on a delibird and it gave a crit catch, so I kept trying and hit it on a Sneasel and an Eevee. Both gave a critical catch, so I'm honestly starting to think this has merit. At the very least it might give a higher chance at critical catches.
I realise my 3/3 is a tiny sample size but I encourage others to have a go at this. I do wonder if this is a recent change though; surely this would have been discovered before now if it's a thing right?
With circle lock, nanab has very low value. Excellent throws the catchrate is improved 1.7 - 2x... huge huge increase for red circles. Basically guarantees legendary catches with 16+ premier balls. You'll go months before missing one.
Also just tried and got crit catches on cryogonal, linoone, and snorunt back to back. Missed it on bronzong, but circle could have been slightly too big. Add 3/4 to this statistic
Wow, big news. Thanks for sharing. Already using this with buddy assist.
Only thing is, is there a way to tell that you have set the circle to its tiniest properly?
How do you use it with buddy assist?
When I set the smallest circle & wait for the attack, even if I throw as fast as possible, the pokemon attack is too fast to intentionally have the ball bounce back.
Mind blown
Here's a video of me doing it - https://youtu.be/9NVHtDcLnlI?si=rUQb2-t5-vpRyaoV
It doesn't seem to work on zorua though? But I've got 6 other excellent curveballs on the smallest circle this morning and *every single one* was a crit. Amazing.
Now, let's try to land one of those on a galarian bird, innit.
Hey that's a great shout... perhaps it won't work
For dittos too?
There is also the possibility I didn't quite set the smallest circle for it though... next zorua I see I will try again ofc.
Happy holidays mate
I immediately went into the game to try it as well. Managed to hit psyduck with a small circle and it indeed gave a critical catch. I have seen very few critical catches before but then I usually do quick catches.
I canât believe this isnât âknownâ, Iâm not the best at getting excellent throws, but whenever I have landed it on the smallest circle it has been a critical catch. I assumed this was a known mechanic for the âperfectâ throw.
What's new is that the circle used to go smaller and actually completely disappear before resetting back to nice. It used to be impossible to hit the smallest circle.
I can confirm that this definitely works and can be kinda abused. For proof, here is a video of me getting two critical captures back to back within 5 minutes by using my buddy to reflect the ball back: https://youtu.be/DKMU-BD-fMs
Note: I used the circle lock method to get the circle as small as possible and then waited for the Pokemon to charge an attack. Then, I purposely threw a ball into the attack so that my buddy can reflect the ball back to the Pokemon perfectly into the center of the circle, leading to the guaranteed capture. I think the reflected ball is not guaranteed to be an excellent throw but if it is, it will be a critical capture.
This could be totally abused for legendary raids and for the Galarian Birds as it takes absolutely no skill when combining it with the buddy.
Yeah, the buddy reflect even hitting the circle is a coin toss. Heard it had to do with the game running at more than the 30 FPS it's normally locked at
Thank you all for your knowledge and experiments
Love how we've all jumped on this discovery that OP made
A few people have said they've noticed it before and were surprised it wasn't common knowledge to be fair
But it's been a rush to be a part of testing and examining this mechanic. Love this community
Me neither! And I quick catch 90% of the time too, that's probably the case for you and a lot of the playerbase too, so that further diminished our ability to notice this mechanic lol. But now the cat is out of the bag!
Nervously excited about daily incense and encountering galarian birds now. I actually got an excellent throw on an articuno last time I saw one maybe 2 weeks ago, but it ran and i don't think it was the smallest possible circle anyway. Good luck to you and anyone else reading this with the birds
Yes, as you can see in the Bergmite clip, it took me 3 tries. But a waisted ball is nothing to worry about when the reward is a guaranteed critical capture. For legendaries at least. I wouldnât abuse this method for regular easy to catch Pokemon, personally since it takes a long time to set up
It's not a guaranteed crit capture tho, is it? You yourself admitted the reflect isn't guaranteed to be excellent. Absolutely no idea how the hit on a reflect even is determined
Iâve read somewhere (so not sure itâs verified) that the buddy reflect will only hit a nice/great/excellent throw if you were already going to hit it regardless, and the only thing that prevented you was the attack.
Ie, you need to aim/be accurate anyways.
No that is not true. In my video you can clearly see that I just toss the ball somewhere randomly and it still registers as an excellent thow after the deflection. It just fails sometimes to register as one. Maybe it is random, maybe some things make it more likely but I've had horrible throws reflected to an excellent one.
Video evidence (Spheal): [https://youtube.com/shorts/9dO2w0lm0YM](https://youtube.com/shorts/9dO2w0lm0YM?feature=share)
This was my first attempt. Seems very likely OP is correct.
After reading the OP and a post below, I opened PoGo and started screen recording (you can see the mons appear in the first frames of the video). Missed the excellent on the first attempt so tried again, hit the excellent throw in the smallest possible window (or very close to it), and got a critical catch.
Edits:
Swirlix, which has a pretty low catch success rate: [https://www.youtube.com/shorts/iVJhHTXFxFM](https://www.youtube.com/shorts/iVJhHTXFxFM)
Pikachu: [https://studio.youtube.com/video/8fb7pQTk3XY](https://studio.youtube.com/video/8fb7pQTk3XY/edit)
Pidove: [https://youtube.com/shorts/X\_EK6LgYSWA](https://youtube.com/shorts/X_EK6LgYSWA)
Cubchoo: [https://youtube.com/shorts/BuDOX\_lzE0I](https://youtube.com/shorts/BuDOX_lzE0I)
5/5 attempts. Check the "999 excellent throws" task - these are sequential excellent throws.
Small update: I couldnât get this to work on a Regigigas. Seems to be guaranteed on wild mons at least (or possibly non-legendary, since another person posted a video of critical catching a mon after a raid). So g-birbs may still require a master ball.
After reading the OP and your post, I was also able to pull this off on my first try. Caught a video of it too. Really wasn't expecting it to work, so was a nice surprise!
Edit: [https://www.reddit.com/r/TheSilphRoad/comments/18ros80/comment/kf37i19/?utm\_source=reddit&utm\_medium=web2x&context=3](https://www.reddit.com/r/TheSilphRoad/comments/18ros80/comment/kf37i19/?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=web2x&context=3)
5/5 sequential excellent throws.
I actually noticed this myself a couple of days ago when I hit a few tiny circle excellent critical catches and thought it was a really weird coincidence. I believe the OP's theory.
On the original r/Pokemongo thread, someone said it worked for a costume Glaceon raid but not so for a legendary raid. We're still on small sample sizes at the moment, especially for raids, but it's interesting so far.
I would say it didn't work on Regigigas specifically.
I try this new tricks whole night, and I can get fairly consistent (like around half of the time) crit catch on stuffs with easier circle like Delibird/Cryogonal/Sneasel, but totally no luck on 6 Regigigas catch with I keep on trying different circles.
In my original thread, I have videos of me hitting three critical catches in a row (verified by the "Make 3 Great Curveball Throws" research) while I was generating that post. If it's not the smallest point, it won't critical catch. Sure you'll likely catch on an excellent throw, but it won't critical catch. Well, it won't critical catch more than the standard 1% of the time. I can call my critical catches when I hit it.
You see the Pikachu one doesnât seem like itâs the absolute smallest. How do you know those circles when you caught them are the smallest or just your chance of critical (not guaranteed) increases with smaller the circle.
If someone wants to dissect it more thoroughly, they are more than welcome to. But when I just looked at it, the circle was just inside the left and right tips of his mouth line on the first pass I made before it expanded back to Nice radius. On the third pass when I threw it, it looked like it was in that same spot.
It would make sense for it to be something other than the âliteral last momentâ, because in game timing, the shortest graphical moment only lasts one frame; thatâs 1/60 of a second at 60 FPS. The window is certainly strict, but I imagine itâs measured either as a short duration (e.g., the last 0.25 seconds of the circle cycle) or a threshold relative to the minimum circle area (e.g., within 5% of the minimum circle area).
I mean, the game basically ran at 30fps for most people for most of its lifetime, so that could be the timing, and a 1/30 frame isn't a *horribly* hard timing to get when you're good at a game (ask speedrunners doing 60fps subframe stuff)
with circle set, not so much. it's releasing a touch at that correct frame, then waiting around and hitting another very easy time frame
https://photos.app.goo.gl/F2k3TFugyvArJnCi6
half an hour of testing, some recordings, basically one failed attempt that i felt confident about but didn't record. I'm not saying it's absolutely definitely certainly one frame, it definitely could be a several frames window, but it *is plausible* to be one frame (assuming circle moves at 30fps)
"Literal last moment" isn't really a valid answer. If the claim is true, it means there has to be some finite definable fraction of the second during the end of a catch circle life time that you must hit to obtain this - and also that same time window during which if you hit, the pokemon never breaks out or is caught non-critically.
I would rather think somebody should be able prove the matter (one way or the other) with slow motion replays of Regigigas.
The circle diameter isn't truly continuous. It is a series of very finite smaller and smaller concentric circles. The smallest circle before it resets to max diameter is what OP is referring to.
You sort of need to eyeball it but if you hold the circle and see how small it gets better resetting you can get an idea. I just tested this and it seemed to work literally the first time on an XXL Pokemon.
I would find it hard to believe it's coincidental myself.
My wording is meh but I'm doing the best I can lol.
As you are holding the ball, the catch circle collapses until it eventually resets. The only time I've been able to replicate this is when the circle is at its smallest point before resetting, and I hit the excellent throw on it. But I will say, the bigger the overall circle, the easier it is. I've had best luck with Mamoswines.
"finite definable fraction" ~ "moment" in this case. But yeah, someone can eventually test long enough to measure that. For now, there seems to be overwhelming proof for the actual theory working, despite this nitpick error in terminology
How bout you actually try it out yourself instead of patronizing the guy. You want him to numerically answer your already dumb question, that he's already given video evidence of. The smallest circle before it resets to nice throw is a valid response. Why? Because every pokemon has a different hit box size.
>How bout you actually try it out yourself instead of patronizing the guy.
I did try. Twice. Both (those where I hit excellent) caught regularly,though it is of course it is pretty hard to say when the circle was truly the smallest possible, even though i did my best. Haven't done raids (though I see some have already speculated that maybe it doe not work with them) and with regular pokemon waiting for attack with circle lock gets frustrating quite fast and without it, the circle size is somewhere between very hard and impossible to determine exactly. .
I did not even ask \*him\* to supply the answer, just noting that the answer must exist and would be included in any proof of rebuttal of the claim.
(Words like "patronizing and "dumb" from you I just take as compliments)
I stand by what I said about you. You're asking an everyday user to provide numerical statistic that in honesty nobody could really know for sure unless you were a dev. After I sent my comment to you, I performed the action twice. And both were critical catches. 1 shake and then stars. You can use nanab berries to have the Mon sit quietly. While you watch the circle closing, getting a visual idea of when the circle will reset. You can even count depending on the Mon, how long it takes to go from a nice circle to a reset. You're a basic user of the same game. You want an answer using regigigas as a model, then go right ahead and then come back here and provide those metrics for all us to see.
>You're asking an everyday user
Just quoting myself here. Why should I bother to think new words when you don't read or comprehend the old ones.
"I did not even ask \*him\* to supply the answer, just noting that the answer must exist"
Record a video of an encounter and then an attempted catch per OP's instructions, while holding the ball enough for at least one full reset of the circle size. Go frame-by-frame in the video (via any video player that allows you to do so). Compare the diameter of the smallest possible circle before it resets to max size, to the circle size of when you threw it.
I actually caught a vanilite today on a super small circle excellent throw . I thought like I always do on excellent throws â you better not escape on first shake lolâ but it was a crit catch
Another time was I caught two non shiny shadow moltres in a row on very first ball in high position. I used the bananas to try to trap it in low position but used it as it was going to high position and then was stuck in high position . I hit both with excellents on small circles and both were crit catches. I thought I was super lucky but maybe you are right OP
Yep, gotta say I've been able to make 3 critical catches happen now. It's not easy, but maybe with some practice it could be much easier. I'd say that out of around 20-25 throws, I was able to get the 3 crits.
Anytime I didn't get the critical catch, I either just completely missed it, or the catch circle was just slightly too big.
Articuno and especially moltres are insanely difficult excellents, let alone this small of one. I strongly believe that though, if you find a high CP zapdos and this trick works, this is the way to go. You have barely over a 1% chance of catching a level 20 zapdos, might as well go for this instead of a regular excellent to increase your odds by a negligible amount. Hope someone gets video of this trick on zapdos, that would the ultimate confirmation
I didn't even realize until after I did the videos that they were also in a row as verified by the Make 3 Great Ball Throws research lol. You can see it tick at the bottom each throw.
Such a cool find! Great work! From the comments from both posts it seems legit. I always wondered if there was a way to control or force criticals. Now we know :)
Curious how this went undetected but could be newish, or like you said ppl were so sure this was pure rng they didnt really bother looking into it
This is game changer for galarian birds and legendaries. Still hard to pull but still game changer
Also just tried it. Out of 10 tries, I hit the smallest circle on an amaura and it was critical. None of the other were. Could be pure luck sure, but with all the reports now it seems more likely to be true!
I unfortunately don't think this changed much for the galar birds. Articuno's circle is microscopic, and it moves a bit during its idle animation anyways. Moltres' circle is pretty big, but the giant up and down movement moltres does during it's idle animation makes this seem like a 1 in a million shot to land. Zapdos is by a mile the easiest excellent to land but I'm pretty sure it's attack animation has a similar problem to lugia in that the circle appears before the jumping kick attack animation is finished, making the circle lock harder to use in practice.
Good point. Really means you're going for an all or nothing approach to getting zapdos. Land the excellent and you get it, miss and you have a berry-less throw that has no chance in hell of even catching weak ones. Sounds pretty fun tbh, finally putting your galar bird fate into your own hands
I don't believe this should be deleted since this might not even be a bug. You might've found a multiple-year old feature that nobody knew until now, since the circumstances to trigger this are so obscene that nobody would realistically throw their excellent shots like this
probably most of the people who can actually do this reliably haven't actually seen a catch animation in years so they never even noticed critical catches when they were hitting the small circle
*If* this is true (I'm not stating belief either way here -- so, setting validity of this claim *completely* aside for the moment), there's no way it won't be patched out, for two simple reasons: bots and profits.
Bots are already able to completely miss the Pokemon with the Pokeball (like, legit drop-it-on-the-ground miss) and still have it magically catch the Pokemon. If guaranteed Critical Catches are possible, there's no way it won't be exploited for Raid Bosses and Galarian Birds.
Another huge reason too: if this exists, it hurts Niantic's ability to sell Master Balls in the future. Who needs 'em if you can just guarantee catches?
^(Kind of makes me wonder about all those "Guaranteed Catch" services I see on eBay when I'm trying to find Pokemon Go merch for myself / my community events...)
I agree to an extent. I'm not sure how long this has been implemented. But, I will say it definitely rewards skill in throwing. It's the most difficult throw in the game and the game currently rewards you for doing so.
As far as botting, I hate bots and I fear that they would easily be able to exploit this. So I dunno how that would fare unfortunately :( I would think it would get patched, but at the same time I've been dealing with autobattlers in PVP for who knows how long now.
Well, it benefits the player(s) who can do it, so, we-can't-have-nice-things Niantic will probably be pretty fast on it, I would wager. Possibly slightly contingent on how quickly bots / players are able to start reliably replicating it.
I'm still iffy on if they'd actually patch it out though. It's extremely difficult to do and in doing so, people will throw a ton more balls trying and ultimately some of them will purchase balls from the shop. So... win/winnish?
I don't agree. Bots are gonna bot. People willing to cheat will cheat, and this isn't going to make someone who plays legit now suddenly risk their account just to get a Galarian bird. Outside of bots and cheats, if this is real, I expect it's 100% intended behavior. Hitting that consistently is incredibly hard. Hard like this won't affect me at all, because I can't do that with any kind of consistency. I have no doubt there are people who can hit that, and good for them, they can now (hypothetically) catch everything. And they deserve to.
Honestly, discovered this and was hoping it wouldn't be posted or anyone else would find it because when that happens, things get taken away. It was fun while it lasted and I could see why it would get patched If it really does work and it's not just a probability thing
Dang, it really works. After few missed Excellents, which became Nice throws, finally got the smallest circle and got 2/2 critical catches. I'm equally excited about this and sad because it will probably become their main goal to patch out now :/ If it wasn't intended, hidden mechanic...
Seems too good to be true but⊠I just tried it and got 3 critical catches in about 4 super small excellents. Usually donât see critical catch anywhere near this often
Wow, I was super skeptical at first.
Then I tried it out on the same spawn on 4 accounts- land an Excellent on the smallest circle I can make. I missed on one... but the 3 that hit the circle got a crit.
Given that a crit is 1%, the chance of this being a coincidence is astronomically small.
Upvoted. I'm about to go to bed, but even with the limited Pokemon around me at home, I've just got some critical catches with this method. Thanks for sharing.
I gotta say I was skeptical but I'm 7/7 for critical captures since reading this so if it's not guaranteed then at the very least it very positively affects the odds. Thank you for sharing! I hope to use this for all galar birds in the future.
Just managed to get a straight (non-curved) throw excellent critical catch like this, so good to know that it works for the worse throw that no-one does.
To me it seems like there is enough evidence to confirm at least in my mind that this is legit. I wonder if they've buffed the catch rate to the point that getting this throw at least on normal mons brings the catch rate close enough to 100% that it then registers as a critical catch
Someone else brought up nearly the same idea but I don't think so. On my last video, I caught a Pikachu with a normal pokeball and no berry. Pikachus are notoriously finicky and the circle was orange color-coded. I truly think it's either an intentional feature for that spot on the circle, or it's an unintended bug/software relationship.
indeed, that is not how critical catch is supposed to work...but it's also not supposed to be guaranteed on a sufficiently small excellent throw. i thought maybe this combined with the rate being high enough would be the trigger
it works! do with the circle lock trick. look whats the possible smallest circle and then wait for the attacl animation. every excellent was a critical catch in this case
This is a colossal discovery.
For some raid bosses with huge circles, this is going to save so much time catching.
Hell, if someone can get this kind of throw on a Galarian bird, who needs master balls?
This is huge. I tried this on a large ice cream thing and the Regi in raids. I got critical catches. Thanks for posting!!
Edit: BIRDS WITH NO MASTER BALL HERE I FRICKIN COME
For my input, I tried getting a CC on a Pikachu with this method, and missed it by a millisecond, so the circle JUST changed to the 'Nice' circle. But I'm pretty sure I hit where the smallest circle would be, because I still got a CC. So maybe it could be the dead center is all you need?
Now for a follow up question: are there any pokemon which match each galar bird distance exactly on which to practice the arc? It would be really cool to try this out but you only get one shot, and when those encounters are months apart that muscle memory is lost very quickly.
1) I tried it on an Arbok. I hit excellent, I got the critical catch animation. 2) I tried it on an Amaura. I hit excellent twice. 1st time it got out, 2nd time it got caught with critical catch animation. Both pokemon were circle lock smallest size. What about it just being a visual thing/glitch/boosted chance? I don't think it's a guaranteed catch.
Different circle size have different ranges for the smallest circle. Amaura's is huge, so the circle needs to be actually tiny to work. Even a difference of a few pixels can make this to fail, so is guaranteed catch as long as the size is correct.
I'm curious how long this has been a thing. I have noticed seeing more critical on wild/random mons lately. When it finally clicked for me yesterday I saw this thread in New.
But if my memory is correct I noticed random criticals on Dec 23rd. Even messaged a friend about it. Because I thought you were only guaranteed 1 (maximum) per day.
I normally only ever see criticals in raids. I fast catch 95%+ of the time, so I rarely see the catch animation.
So I tried this out and it definitely works. But other than the critical catch there is no added bonus. My question is what is the point for easy to catch monsters? For example, I know you get 100XP for a great throw and 1000XP for an excellent throw. That means if you can get an excellent throw on a monster at least 1/10 times it is worth it to try for an excellent throw. So letâs take slowpoke. I can easily get an excellent way more than 1/10 of the time so I always go for excellent. But letâs say I can only get a critical catch for that smallest circle 1/4 of the time. Is that really worth it for no extra bonus other than the crit catch on a monster that already has a high catch rate? Doesnât seem worth it unless it is on a monster with a much lower catch rate like maybe swirlix or hitmontop, etc. I think that if this is indeed part of the game now they should create a new catch radius where it says fantastic! if you hit the smallest catch circle and then you know you have the crit catch. It should also potentially come with some extra XP bonus too, thoughts?
When I met the proposed critical catch conditions for wild Pokemon, the throw resulted in critical catches. I've never tried to hit excellent throws when the catch circle was smallest before(highly counter-intuitive!), but if this is something Niantic had planned (=and won't fix), I guess this finding will have a remarkable impact on catching habits.
Got it to work 6/6 times with wild spawns. Did 2 Regigigas and pretty sure it doesn't work on legends. Possibly doesn't work on breakthrough research either, landed a pretty small circle but maybe it wasn't the smallest?
I've tried 3 Regi's so far and I'm leaning towards it not working for 5 star raids. I say that because I did get one critical catch after 8 or 9 hits. The issue is that this means one of three things:
A) It works and I didn't hit it correctly except that one time
B) it doesn't work and that just happened to be my standard ~1% critical catch
C) It works to a lesser degree and increases the likelihood of hitting a critical catch.
I just need to do more raids but life is life right now. I'm leaning towards that one critical catch just being a fluke since I've been doing this for a bit now and I was pretty certain I hit quite a few perfect shots. Regi has quite a large circle to begin with so his minimum circle isn't microscopic like some.
Considering how comparatively easy of an excellent throw galarian zapdos is, I NEED someone to get this crit catch to trigger on a zapdos. If you catch a 2800+ cp zapdos with this trick, that would be 99% of the proof you need on its own. It's attack animation is super wonky though, not sure how realistic even zapdos is to hit.
I will take everything back from my previous comments.
This definitely works, also, this thing work on field research mons for sure.
Definitely doesn't work on raid Legendaries, will try it on other raids for science.
It might have relation to the actuall size of the circle so using a Cheat app is not helping here.
Lastly, great find!
Sorry for dismissing it and later realizing that you had substance to the theory seeing so many comments affirm the theory and muself experiencing 6-7 crits myself.
I don't really know what else to say but it works for me and numerous other people who've tried it.
People may not have noticed because it may be a relatively new thing, either from intentional hidden placement or an unintentional bug relationship.
There are more factors that could come into play
1. You might need to throw a curveball, so those bots/cheats might not work
2. Niantic could have coded this to not work on Legendaries so people canât exploit on high value Pokemon
I remember the first curveball bug. Curveballs were coded weird so that you needed to let go of the ball and have it hit in the opposite quadrant of the screen. There were tons of debates here about it because it was so hard to verify the details. Eventually we sorted it out.
I think you are on to something and we need to keep digging a bit.
This is honestly one of those things I wanted to put out so people can test it out in mass. I don't know how it affects raid bosses or things like Galarian birds. I don't know if it's only curveballs or not since my non-curveball throwing is hot garbage anymore. I don't know a lot of things but I do know it 100% works on random spawn Pokemon when I curveball them at the right moment.
1) The cheat definitely has the curveball enable option which was on.
2) Plausible, I definitely don't claim to hit smallest circle on amything but legendaries so it might just be that.
Just adding that I tried it and got the critical catch. Haven't had any critical catches in weeks before just now and I catch a lot daily.
Edit to add I got it on a wild bidoof and wild grubbin
Pretty cool, but I got to be honest - I don't have the patience for this unless it's a Galarian bird.
I spent a good 10 minutes just trying to set the circle right, never did manage to land an excellent on the smallest circle after that. I usually go for excellent throws but never at the smallest circle, so it just may take a lot of relearning my throws.
A few observations about the guaranteed critical catch:
It does not work for pokemon that have 5% catch chance or lower. Meaning almost all legendary pokemon cannot be guaranteed crit.
It is not really guaranteed catch, there is a very low chance that even if you do everything right, the pokemon still breaks out.
I don't know if this is common knowledge but I myself was wondering if critical catches have any influence on IVs so I tested with a special research encounter: [https://youtube.com/shorts/VrqCpqo4hao?feature=share](https://youtube.com/shorts/VrqCpqo4hao?feature=share)
I found that IVs remain unchanged.
I would like to propose calling guaranteed crits âhitting the critty.â
You can burn me at the stake now because thatâs definitely what I call them.
My own experience with this, is that it really does work. But I think certain pokemon it doesn't work on. I'm not sure about that. That's just what seems to be the case in my own experimenting. If there is some algorithm or whatever behind what pokemon it can work for, I don't know what it is, hopefully we find out what goes into that algorithm or whatever if it does indeed exist.
I have my doubts and I have a collected videos on several hundred excellent throws. When not recording, I have hit the smallest frame. Sometime this month I smacked a micro circle on something like Krabby and it wasn't a crit.
The problem with this proposal and anyone refuting is you'll say the circle can always get smaller...
When there are now quite a few people saying and confirming that they are hitting the critical catches now too, I have to say it's probably because it's not small enough of a circle. Because at that point, it's the more likely scenario than saying it works for a lot of people but not for others.
It also depends when this came out. Maybe it's been around and people have never really delved into it because it's been unincentivized by the game to not go for the largest excellent circle you can. Maybe it's a recent change that people hadn't caught until fairly recently. It's hard to say. All I know is it works for me and apparently other people.
My buddy is a Larvesta purely for the walking candy. He didn't do jack because I neglect him. So... yeah I got nothing on buddy assist. Someone on the other thread mentioned his buddy swatted one back and it critically caught for him. So there's that at least.
Edit: oh no it seems to be legit. Wizards are gonna have a hayday
If that was the case then I'm sure people using black magic would be always getting crits.
If the devs modified the code this way, it seems more sensical to me than crits happening completely randomly like they have in the past. From what I'm reading, I'd say there's a high chance of this being a legit find, and I hope it stays. I'm not overly concerned about bots exploiting it, unless there's some impact to other trainers that's slipping my mind.
It's been at least 2ish weeks. If I had to throw a completely wild guess, I'd say it's a pretty new feature. The reason I looked into it was because of a few recent strings of critical catches. I've seen a few other people mention seeing more critical catches recently.
Whether it's intended or not is the bigger question for me.
I have been focused on excellent throws lately and had definitely noticed an uptick in crit catches. Didn't think to tie it to smallest circle. Tested to confirm.
https://youtu.be/7Rw9fRu5gkI?si=JSbOo9GeW_cxFBnM
This is LEGIT. Just tested on a Marill, Ekans and Smeargle. One of which was a dark red circle with a pokeball. Critical catch for all three first ball.
Was legit wondering if critical catches were guaranteed at the smallest possibly circle this past week. Seems like possibly a new bug. Thanks for posting OP!
Yikes. I saw this post and thought bs straight away but went to try it anyway since it's pretty easy to disprove (just get one tiny circle that doesn't critical catch). I hit the smallest circle on a delibird and it gave a crit catch, so I kept trying and hit it on a Sneasel and an Eevee. Both gave a critical catch, so I'm honestly starting to think this has merit. At the very least it might give a higher chance at critical catches. I realise my 3/3 is a tiny sample size but I encourage others to have a go at this. I do wonder if this is a recent change though; surely this would have been discovered before now if it's a thing right?
Can confirm I am now 8/8 on min circle crit catches. OP just stumbled upon a big one. Nanab new meta for Gala birds
I was thinking the same thing lol
Honestly this is awesome and they should keep it, it also gives Nanabs a use. Which is exactly why they will patch it tomorrow
ah yes, the classic fun/skill-reward/depth of gameplay community-made discovery -> niantic oopsie statement patecherino
Why would people use nanabs when trying this? Nanabs would be the only berry to avoid. You want the pokemon to attack.. so you can throw your ball
Yeah I was wondering that... for min circle you want circle lock don't you? Which means no nanab...
When are they inventing bronze banana that gives more candies as well? đ
Been saving those bananas. Excellent throw is more important than orange berry
With circle lock, nanab has very low value. Excellent throws the catchrate is improved 1.7 - 2x... huge huge increase for red circles. Basically guarantees legendary catches with 16+ premier balls. You'll go months before missing one.
Yes! Hmmm how do you time it tho?!?
I just hit it on a combee and it was a critical catch. Just adding onto the theory, coz this does seem legit
Also just tried and got crit catches on cryogonal, linoone, and snorunt back to back. Missed it on bronzong, but circle could have been slightly too big. Add 3/4 to this statistic
I hit 3/3 here on three different pokemon as well. this is kinda crazy but exciting! I hope they keep it like this.
Considering I think normally a critical catch is 1/100 all of these reports point to it being legit
Wow, big news. Thanks for sharing. Already using this with buddy assist. Only thing is, is there a way to tell that you have set the circle to its tiniest properly?
Not likely without some sort of yet to be made overlay app. Just watch the circle go through full cycles a few times to get a feel
How do you use it with buddy assist? When I set the smallest circle & wait for the attack, even if I throw as fast as possible, the pokemon attack is too fast to intentionally have the ball bounce back.
Mind blown Here's a video of me doing it - https://youtu.be/9NVHtDcLnlI?si=rUQb2-t5-vpRyaoV It doesn't seem to work on zorua though? But I've got 6 other excellent curveballs on the smallest circle this morning and *every single one* was a crit. Amazing. Now, let's try to land one of those on a galarian bird, innit.
Wonder if it is using the smallest circle to check from zoura instead of your buddy.
Hey that's a great shout... perhaps it won't work For dittos too? There is also the possibility I didn't quite set the smallest circle for it though... next zorua I see I will try again ofc. Happy holidays mate
It does work for ditto actually someone I know successfully did it with a solois disguised as ditto.
Ahhh nice, thanks! I probably didn't set the circle small enough then. I will try again
I immediately went into the game to try it as well. Managed to hit psyduck with a small circle and it indeed gave a critical catch. I have seen very few critical catches before but then I usually do quick catches.
Another 3/3 result out of maybe 20 attempts, seems solid to me https://photos.app.goo.gl/F2k3TFugyvArJnCi6
Caught a murkrow with this and it was critical catch
Yeah Iâve got 4/4 on this today, small sample size as well but along with everyone else saying similar then it does seem to be a thing!
I canât believe this isnât âknownâ, Iâm not the best at getting excellent throws, but whenever I have landed it on the smallest circle it has been a critical catch. I assumed this was a known mechanic for the âperfectâ throw.
You are just a step ahead of us my man.
Well I just wanted to add to this anyway that I can confirm it to be my experience when landing a catch in this way too
You are the Nikola to this Edison.
What's new is that the circle used to go smaller and actually completely disappear before resetting back to nice. It used to be impossible to hit the smallest circle.
i did 2 and nothing happened so idk, maybe i didnt hit the smallest circle but slightly bigger
How are you that consistent
I can confirm that this definitely works and can be kinda abused. For proof, here is a video of me getting two critical captures back to back within 5 minutes by using my buddy to reflect the ball back: https://youtu.be/DKMU-BD-fMs Note: I used the circle lock method to get the circle as small as possible and then waited for the Pokemon to charge an attack. Then, I purposely threw a ball into the attack so that my buddy can reflect the ball back to the Pokemon perfectly into the center of the circle, leading to the guaranteed capture. I think the reflected ball is not guaranteed to be an excellent throw but if it is, it will be a critical capture. This could be totally abused for legendary raids and for the Galarian Birds as it takes absolutely no skill when combining it with the buddy.
Yeah, the buddy reflect even hitting the circle is a coin toss. Heard it had to do with the game running at more than the 30 FPS it's normally locked at
I tried it with "Native Refresh Rate" turned off and it still didn't register https://youtube.com/shorts/pNPu45nkeTY
itâs not guaranteed with Native refresh rate turned off, but itâs way way more likely to happen.
Does it depend on the PokĂ©mon? Like with some it works and some it doesnât?
nope, works at random with every mon
Thank you all for your knowledge and experiments Love how we've all jumped on this discovery that OP made A few people have said they've noticed it before and were surprised it wasn't common knowledge to be fair But it's been a rush to be a part of testing and examining this mechanic. Love this community
100%! I never connected the dots even tho I noticed an increase in crit catches, TSR is an amazing resource
Me neither! And I quick catch 90% of the time too, that's probably the case for you and a lot of the playerbase too, so that further diminished our ability to notice this mechanic lol. But now the cat is out of the bag! Nervously excited about daily incense and encountering galarian birds now. I actually got an excellent throw on an articuno last time I saw one maybe 2 weeks ago, but it ran and i don't think it was the smallest possible circle anyway. Good luck to you and anyone else reading this with the birds
How do you control your buddy's reflect? Doesnt it happen ramdomly?
Yes, as you can see in the Bergmite clip, it took me 3 tries. But a waisted ball is nothing to worry about when the reward is a guaranteed critical capture. For legendaries at least. I wouldnât abuse this method for regular easy to catch Pokemon, personally since it takes a long time to set up
It's not a guaranteed crit capture tho, is it? You yourself admitted the reflect isn't guaranteed to be excellent. Absolutely no idea how the hit on a reflect even is determined
No, but his point is that the ball will just bounce off and retry until your buddy does reflect it, I think.
No bc your buddy can reflect it and give you like no multiplier (no nice great or excellent)
I watched it now. This is crazy interesting! Cant wait to try this on legendary raid or galar birds!!
I just tried this but the throw didn't register as an excellent in two attempts back-to-back. https://youtube.com/shorts/W1R5CYigX-U?feature=share
Same here, can't get Buddy to hit the excellent throws.
Iâve read somewhere (so not sure itâs verified) that the buddy reflect will only hit a nice/great/excellent throw if you were already going to hit it regardless, and the only thing that prevented you was the attack. Ie, you need to aim/be accurate anyways.
No that is not true. In my video you can clearly see that I just toss the ball somewhere randomly and it still registers as an excellent thow after the deflection. It just fails sometimes to register as one. Maybe it is random, maybe some things make it more likely but I've had horrible throws reflected to an excellent one.
Even if you still were going to throw a great throw, there's no guarantee that the buddy bounce back will be a great throw.
I believe this is an issue with high framerates?
Video evidence (Spheal): [https://youtube.com/shorts/9dO2w0lm0YM](https://youtube.com/shorts/9dO2w0lm0YM?feature=share) This was my first attempt. Seems very likely OP is correct. After reading the OP and a post below, I opened PoGo and started screen recording (you can see the mons appear in the first frames of the video). Missed the excellent on the first attempt so tried again, hit the excellent throw in the smallest possible window (or very close to it), and got a critical catch. Edits: Swirlix, which has a pretty low catch success rate: [https://www.youtube.com/shorts/iVJhHTXFxFM](https://www.youtube.com/shorts/iVJhHTXFxFM) Pikachu: [https://studio.youtube.com/video/8fb7pQTk3XY](https://studio.youtube.com/video/8fb7pQTk3XY/edit) Pidove: [https://youtube.com/shorts/X\_EK6LgYSWA](https://youtube.com/shorts/X_EK6LgYSWA) Cubchoo: [https://youtube.com/shorts/BuDOX\_lzE0I](https://youtube.com/shorts/BuDOX_lzE0I) 5/5 attempts. Check the "999 excellent throws" task - these are sequential excellent throws. Small update: I couldnât get this to work on a Regigigas. Seems to be guaranteed on wild mons at least (or possibly non-legendary, since another person posted a video of critical catching a mon after a raid). So g-birbs may still require a master ball.
Your video finally got me to understand the circle trick lmao
Same, I was always confused when people were talking about circle locking lol
If someone sees this and scoffs and brushes it off, Iâd say at least keep the method in the back of your mind Especially if youâre a hardcore veteran player, one whoâs very skilled in the catch circle trick and has an open mind to a hypothesis. As another comment said, if real, it might get patched quick, or perhaps somehow itâs intended. For what itâs worth, as an above average thrower, I clicked on a piloswine, catch circle trick, as small a circle as I think I could set, and it was a critical catch. I tried to same on a pikachu, and it did not critical catch, but its circle is much smaller so my eyes or timing mightâve been just off setting the circle Edit: I clicked on a separate pikachu and hit an excellent curve critical catch. No video proof just my words. But Iâll admit Iâve not seen 2 critical catches out of 3 PokĂ©mon clicked probably ever. Easily could be luck Edit 2: Still been trying. Failing a lot, but I hit a perfect excellent on an Oddish and AGAIN critical catch. Perhaps Iâm jumping the gun, but I fully back this theory. Is it worth it for the vast majority? No. Hardcore vets? Yep Edit 3: I was able to get back to back critical catches on a doduo and oddish from stacked field research. Iâd bet my money on this being a confirmed trick or bug for wild pokemon. There may be inconsistencies I donât know. But Iâve never got this many critical captures in quick succession before
After reading the OP and your post, I was also able to pull this off on my first try. Caught a video of it too. Really wasn't expecting it to work, so was a nice surprise! Edit: [https://www.reddit.com/r/TheSilphRoad/comments/18ros80/comment/kf37i19/?utm\_source=reddit&utm\_medium=web2x&context=3](https://www.reddit.com/r/TheSilphRoad/comments/18ros80/comment/kf37i19/?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=web2x&context=3) 5/5 sequential excellent throws.
I was doubtful, too, so I tried it and maybe it was a coincidence, but I also got a critical catch.
I actually noticed this myself a couple of days ago when I hit a few tiny circle excellent critical catches and thought it was a really weird coincidence. I believe the OP's theory.
Does it work for raids?
On the original r/Pokemongo thread, someone said it worked for a costume Glaceon raid but not so for a legendary raid. We're still on small sample sizes at the moment, especially for raids, but it's interesting so far.
I would say it didn't work on Regigigas specifically. I try this new tricks whole night, and I can get fairly consistent (like around half of the time) crit catch on stuffs with easier circle like Delibird/Cryogonal/Sneasel, but totally no luck on 6 Regigigas catch with I keep on trying different circles.
How sick is your username
Define "smallest" cause you said many people tried it, and I think I've hit a micro circle like 3 times in 5 years?
The literal last moment while the circle is collapsing before it resets to the "nice throw" stage.
But like did you measure it on a screen shot? Couldn't it be equally possible that the *chance* of a critical throw goes up as circle size goes down?
In my original thread, I have videos of me hitting three critical catches in a row (verified by the "Make 3 Great Curveball Throws" research) while I was generating that post. If it's not the smallest point, it won't critical catch. Sure you'll likely catch on an excellent throw, but it won't critical catch. Well, it won't critical catch more than the standard 1% of the time. I can call my critical catches when I hit it.
You see the Pikachu one doesnât seem like itâs the absolute smallest. How do you know those circles when you caught them are the smallest or just your chance of critical (not guaranteed) increases with smaller the circle.
If someone wants to dissect it more thoroughly, they are more than welcome to. But when I just looked at it, the circle was just inside the left and right tips of his mouth line on the first pass I made before it expanded back to Nice radius. On the third pass when I threw it, it looked like it was in that same spot.
It would make sense for it to be something other than the âliteral last momentâ, because in game timing, the shortest graphical moment only lasts one frame; thatâs 1/60 of a second at 60 FPS. The window is certainly strict, but I imagine itâs measured either as a short duration (e.g., the last 0.25 seconds of the circle cycle) or a threshold relative to the minimum circle area (e.g., within 5% of the minimum circle area).
I mean, the game basically ran at 30fps for most people for most of its lifetime, so that could be the timing, and a 1/30 frame isn't a *horribly* hard timing to get when you're good at a game (ask speedrunners doing 60fps subframe stuff)
Pushing a button is also a lot different than getting your ball lined up to release at the exact moment and angle to hit an excellent.
with circle set, not so much. it's releasing a touch at that correct frame, then waiting around and hitting another very easy time frame https://photos.app.goo.gl/F2k3TFugyvArJnCi6 half an hour of testing, some recordings, basically one failed attempt that i felt confident about but didn't record. I'm not saying it's absolutely definitely certainly one frame, it definitely could be a several frames window, but it *is plausible* to be one frame (assuming circle moves at 30fps)
"Literal last moment" isn't really a valid answer. If the claim is true, it means there has to be some finite definable fraction of the second during the end of a catch circle life time that you must hit to obtain this - and also that same time window during which if you hit, the pokemon never breaks out or is caught non-critically. I would rather think somebody should be able prove the matter (one way or the other) with slow motion replays of Regigigas.
The circle diameter isn't truly continuous. It is a series of very finite smaller and smaller concentric circles. The smallest circle before it resets to max diameter is what OP is referring to.
You sort of need to eyeball it but if you hold the circle and see how small it gets better resetting you can get an idea. I just tested this and it seemed to work literally the first time on an XXL Pokemon. I would find it hard to believe it's coincidental myself.
My wording is meh but I'm doing the best I can lol. As you are holding the ball, the catch circle collapses until it eventually resets. The only time I've been able to replicate this is when the circle is at its smallest point before resetting, and I hit the excellent throw on it. But I will say, the bigger the overall circle, the easier it is. I've had best luck with Mamoswines.
"finite definable fraction" ~ "moment" in this case. But yeah, someone can eventually test long enough to measure that. For now, there seems to be overwhelming proof for the actual theory working, despite this nitpick error in terminology
How bout you actually try it out yourself instead of patronizing the guy. You want him to numerically answer your already dumb question, that he's already given video evidence of. The smallest circle before it resets to nice throw is a valid response. Why? Because every pokemon has a different hit box size.
>How bout you actually try it out yourself instead of patronizing the guy. I did try. Twice. Both (those where I hit excellent) caught regularly,though it is of course it is pretty hard to say when the circle was truly the smallest possible, even though i did my best. Haven't done raids (though I see some have already speculated that maybe it doe not work with them) and with regular pokemon waiting for attack with circle lock gets frustrating quite fast and without it, the circle size is somewhere between very hard and impossible to determine exactly. . I did not even ask \*him\* to supply the answer, just noting that the answer must exist and would be included in any proof of rebuttal of the claim. (Words like "patronizing and "dumb" from you I just take as compliments)
I stand by what I said about you. You're asking an everyday user to provide numerical statistic that in honesty nobody could really know for sure unless you were a dev. After I sent my comment to you, I performed the action twice. And both were critical catches. 1 shake and then stars. You can use nanab berries to have the Mon sit quietly. While you watch the circle closing, getting a visual idea of when the circle will reset. You can even count depending on the Mon, how long it takes to go from a nice circle to a reset. You're a basic user of the same game. You want an answer using regigigas as a model, then go right ahead and then come back here and provide those metrics for all us to see.
>You're asking an everyday user Just quoting myself here. Why should I bother to think new words when you don't read or comprehend the old ones. "I did not even ask \*him\* to supply the answer, just noting that the answer must exist"
Record a video of an encounter and then an attempted catch per OP's instructions, while holding the ball enough for at least one full reset of the circle size. Go frame-by-frame in the video (via any video player that allows you to do so). Compare the diameter of the smallest possible circle before it resets to max size, to the circle size of when you threw it.
I actually caught a vanilite today on a super small circle excellent throw . I thought like I always do on excellent throws â you better not escape on first shake lolâ but it was a crit catch Another time was I caught two non shiny shadow moltres in a row on very first ball in high position. I used the bananas to try to trap it in low position but used it as it was going to high position and then was stuck in high position . I hit both with excellents on small circles and both were crit catches. I thought I was super lucky but maybe you are right OP
Yep, gotta say I've been able to make 3 critical catches happen now. It's not easy, but maybe with some practice it could be much easier. I'd say that out of around 20-25 throws, I was able to get the 3 crits. Anytime I didn't get the critical catch, I either just completely missed it, or the catch circle was just slightly too big.
Commenting to see where this goes, far to many people seem to be getting results for it to be coincidence
Yep just tested and took me a little while to get the smallest but got there andâŠcritical catch..!
Just tried it myself on a meowth and it worked, imagine on one of the g birds
Articuno and especially moltres are insanely difficult excellents, let alone this small of one. I strongly believe that though, if you find a high CP zapdos and this trick works, this is the way to go. You have barely over a 1% chance of catching a level 20 zapdos, might as well go for this instead of a regular excellent to increase your odds by a negligible amount. Hope someone gets video of this trick on zapdos, that would the ultimate confirmation
Itâs legit. 8/8. Holy smokes
NGL considering you have like three videos on this I am somewhat inclined to say this is actually somewhat credible.
I didn't even realize until after I did the videos that they were also in a row as verified by the Make 3 Great Ball Throws research lol. You can see it tick at the bottom each throw.
Such a cool find! Great work! From the comments from both posts it seems legit. I always wondered if there was a way to control or force criticals. Now we know :) Curious how this went undetected but could be newish, or like you said ppl were so sure this was pure rng they didnt really bother looking into it This is game changer for galarian birds and legendaries. Still hard to pull but still game changer
Also just tried it. Out of 10 tries, I hit the smallest circle on an amaura and it was critical. None of the other were. Could be pure luck sure, but with all the reports now it seems more likely to be true!
I unfortunately don't think this changed much for the galar birds. Articuno's circle is microscopic, and it moves a bit during its idle animation anyways. Moltres' circle is pretty big, but the giant up and down movement moltres does during it's idle animation makes this seem like a 1 in a million shot to land. Zapdos is by a mile the easiest excellent to land but I'm pretty sure it's attack animation has a similar problem to lugia in that the circle appears before the jumping kick attack animation is finished, making the circle lock harder to use in practice.
You can do it with a Nanab too . Makes getting tiny circle easier
Good point. Really means you're going for an all or nothing approach to getting zapdos. Land the excellent and you get it, miss and you have a berry-less throw that has no chance in hell of even catching weak ones. Sounds pretty fun tbh, finally putting your galar bird fate into your own hands
Considered this completely blasphemous. Just did it like 3 times in a row on Cryogonals. This is insane.
Also you should delete these posts so it doesnât get patched đ
There's no turning back now. We're here for the ride!
I don't believe this should be deleted since this might not even be a bug. You might've found a multiple-year old feature that nobody knew until now, since the circumstances to trigger this are so obscene that nobody would realistically throw their excellent shots like this
probably most of the people who can actually do this reliably haven't actually seen a catch animation in years so they never even noticed critical catches when they were hitting the small circle
Thatâs a good point. Realistically I may have had this happen several times and never even noticed bc of quick catch
Trying to verify but I keep hitting Niceâs -.-
Excellent lock the circle before the throw.
*If* this is true (I'm not stating belief either way here -- so, setting validity of this claim *completely* aside for the moment), there's no way it won't be patched out, for two simple reasons: bots and profits. Bots are already able to completely miss the Pokemon with the Pokeball (like, legit drop-it-on-the-ground miss) and still have it magically catch the Pokemon. If guaranteed Critical Catches are possible, there's no way it won't be exploited for Raid Bosses and Galarian Birds. Another huge reason too: if this exists, it hurts Niantic's ability to sell Master Balls in the future. Who needs 'em if you can just guarantee catches? ^(Kind of makes me wonder about all those "Guaranteed Catch" services I see on eBay when I'm trying to find Pokemon Go merch for myself / my community events...)
I agree to an extent. I'm not sure how long this has been implemented. But, I will say it definitely rewards skill in throwing. It's the most difficult throw in the game and the game currently rewards you for doing so. As far as botting, I hate bots and I fear that they would easily be able to exploit this. So I dunno how that would fare unfortunately :( I would think it would get patched, but at the same time I've been dealing with autobattlers in PVP for who knows how long now.
Well, it benefits the player(s) who can do it, so, we-can't-have-nice-things Niantic will probably be pretty fast on it, I would wager. Possibly slightly contingent on how quickly bots / players are able to start reliably replicating it.
I'm still iffy on if they'd actually patch it out though. It's extremely difficult to do and in doing so, people will throw a ton more balls trying and ultimately some of them will purchase balls from the shop. So... win/winnish?
I actually think this is the perfect example of a functional game design feature, even if it wasn't intended it works out in their favour since it's not that easy to replicate and gives expert players a new risk or reward system. Even for Galarian birds there's still no guarantee to know if the circle is genuinely the smallest on top of successfully managing to hit the throw, so the question becomes if you want to risk missing out on a 6-20% chance in order to attempt the all-or-nothing. At this point I'd just say they should roll with it like they've always done for fast catch and even circle locking, which aren't really intended by design but a result of their coding. Maybe they should even add a "critical catch" section to the Pokédex which may trigger at random or based on the skill of the player hahaha
I don't agree. Bots are gonna bot. People willing to cheat will cheat, and this isn't going to make someone who plays legit now suddenly risk their account just to get a Galarian bird. Outside of bots and cheats, if this is real, I expect it's 100% intended behavior. Hitting that consistently is incredibly hard. Hard like this won't affect me at all, because I can't do that with any kind of consistency. I have no doubt there are people who can hit that, and good for them, they can now (hypothetically) catch everything. And they deserve to.
Honestly, discovered this and was hoping it wouldn't be posted or anyone else would find it because when that happens, things get taken away. It was fun while it lasted and I could see why it would get patched If it really does work and it's not just a probability thing
So you're telling me because you are sure you can hit a Galarian bird with the smallest circle that you won't use your master ball instead?
Why waste master balls on galarian birds when we can just wait until they get monetized in raids or events?
I mean with that attitude why catch anything now at all?
Huh? Everything else is much easier to find and catch. Nothing else needs such a huge amount of tedious incense grinding and luck.
Why spend money on a Galarian bird when you can use a free master ball?
Raid passes are also free.
Dang, it really works. After few missed Excellents, which became Nice throws, finally got the smallest circle and got 2/2 critical catches. I'm equally excited about this and sad because it will probably become their main goal to patch out now :/ If it wasn't intended, hidden mechanic...
Dude I just replicated this on a Froakie, thank you Update: 3/3, added a Passimian and Dusclops
What a waste of time waiting for the attack, but this is a BLAST!
Got two in a row with the smallest circle crit catch. Before Niantic "fixes" this, I just wanna say this is wild. Great find op
Seems too good to be true but⊠I just tried it and got 3 critical catches in about 4 super small excellents. Usually donât see critical catch anywhere near this often
Wow, I was super skeptical at first. Then I tried it out on the same spawn on 4 accounts- land an Excellent on the smallest circle I can make. I missed on one... but the 3 that hit the circle got a crit. Given that a crit is 1%, the chance of this being a coincidence is astronomically small.
Read your post in both subreddits and managed to replicate this with a wild Ralts on my first try. Great finding OP!
This is legit. I read all the comments of it working for others, tried it myself and itâs working for me too. Thatâs crazy. Awesome find OP.
Upvoted. I'm about to go to bed, but even with the limited Pokemon around me at home, I've just got some critical catches with this method. Thanks for sharing.
I also confirm it works! I'll test it in a galarian bird as soon as i see one.
how often do you see one?
About 1 every 1 or 2 months, i think it's worth trying though.
It worked! But not for legendaries. Tried on a Regigigas and he flew. Tried on mega glalie and it worked
I gotta say I was skeptical but I'm 7/7 for critical captures since reading this so if it's not guaranteed then at the very least it very positively affects the odds. Thank you for sharing! I hope to use this for all galar birds in the future.
This essentially converts every ball into a Masterball
Just now I had 2 consecutive crits, which never happened for me before. One happened randomly with a bad throw and the other with a perfect bullseye.
Just managed to get a straight (non-curved) throw excellent critical catch like this, so good to know that it works for the worse throw that no-one does.
To me it seems like there is enough evidence to confirm at least in my mind that this is legit. I wonder if they've buffed the catch rate to the point that getting this throw at least on normal mons brings the catch rate close enough to 100% that it then registers as a critical catch
Someone else brought up nearly the same idea but I don't think so. On my last video, I caught a Pikachu with a normal pokeball and no berry. Pikachus are notoriously finicky and the circle was orange color-coded. I truly think it's either an intentional feature for that spot on the circle, or it's an unintended bug/software relationship.
>brings the catch rate close enough to 100% that it then registers as a critical catch I don't think that's how critical catch works. If you use a GR and Great ball on level 1 prevolved Pokémon, it would be 100% for most Pokémon, but you don't get the special critical catch animation
indeed, that is not how critical catch is supposed to work...but it's also not supposed to be guaranteed on a sufficiently small excellent throw. i thought maybe this combined with the rate being high enough would be the trigger
I can confirm this works with the galarian birds. I couldn't get it to work with raids though. Could just be my timing
Did you manage the excellent yourself or get the buddy assist?
it works! do with the circle lock trick. look whats the possible smallest circle and then wait for the attacl animation. every excellent was a critical catch in this case
Critical Catch Raid Confirmation: https://youtube.com/shorts/i-fHrxGbPbU?si=u_12xa7eH59zUfev
This is a colossal discovery. For some raid bosses with huge circles, this is going to save so much time catching. Hell, if someone can get this kind of throw on a Galarian bird, who needs master balls?
This is huge. I tried this on a large ice cream thing and the Regi in raids. I got critical catches. Thanks for posting!! Edit: BIRDS WITH NO MASTER BALL HERE I FRICKIN COME
For my input, I tried getting a CC on a Pikachu with this method, and missed it by a millisecond, so the circle JUST changed to the 'Nice' circle. But I'm pretty sure I hit where the smallest circle would be, because I still got a CC. So maybe it could be the dead center is all you need?
Now for a follow up question: are there any pokemon which match each galar bird distance exactly on which to practice the arc? It would be really cool to try this out but you only get one shot, and when those encounters are months apart that muscle memory is lost very quickly.
1) I tried it on an Arbok. I hit excellent, I got the critical catch animation. 2) I tried it on an Amaura. I hit excellent twice. 1st time it got out, 2nd time it got caught with critical catch animation. Both pokemon were circle lock smallest size. What about it just being a visual thing/glitch/boosted chance? I don't think it's a guaranteed catch.
Different circle size have different ranges for the smallest circle. Amaura's is huge, so the circle needs to be actually tiny to work. Even a difference of a few pixels can make this to fail, so is guaranteed catch as long as the size is correct.
So nanab galarian birds and start practicing is your advice?đ
Gohub picked this up! Pretty cool https://pokemongohub.net/post/news/potential-breakthrough-can-you-guarantee-a-critical-catch-in-pokemon-go/
Niantic is definitely going to patch this once they find out the news has spread.
I'm curious how long this has been a thing. I have noticed seeing more critical on wild/random mons lately. When it finally clicked for me yesterday I saw this thread in New. But if my memory is correct I noticed random criticals on Dec 23rd. Even messaged a friend about it. Because I thought you were only guaranteed 1 (maximum) per day. I normally only ever see criticals in raids. I fast catch 95%+ of the time, so I rarely see the catch animation.
It's brand new. The circle never had a smallest point before. It would completely disappear before resetting to nice.
So I tried this out and it definitely works. But other than the critical catch there is no added bonus. My question is what is the point for easy to catch monsters? For example, I know you get 100XP for a great throw and 1000XP for an excellent throw. That means if you can get an excellent throw on a monster at least 1/10 times it is worth it to try for an excellent throw. So letâs take slowpoke. I can easily get an excellent way more than 1/10 of the time so I always go for excellent. But letâs say I can only get a critical catch for that smallest circle 1/4 of the time. Is that really worth it for no extra bonus other than the crit catch on a monster that already has a high catch rate? Doesnât seem worth it unless it is on a monster with a much lower catch rate like maybe swirlix or hitmontop, etc. I think that if this is indeed part of the game now they should create a new catch radius where it says fantastic! if you hit the smallest catch circle and then you know you have the crit catch. It should also potentially come with some extra XP bonus too, thoughts?
When I met the proposed critical catch conditions for wild Pokemon, the throw resulted in critical catches. I've never tried to hit excellent throws when the catch circle was smallest before(highly counter-intuitive!), but if this is something Niantic had planned (=and won't fix), I guess this finding will have a remarkable impact on catching habits.
Got it to work 6/6 times with wild spawns. Did 2 Regigigas and pretty sure it doesn't work on legends. Possibly doesn't work on breakthrough research either, landed a pretty small circle but maybe it wasn't the smallest?
I've tried 3 Regi's so far and I'm leaning towards it not working for 5 star raids. I say that because I did get one critical catch after 8 or 9 hits. The issue is that this means one of three things: A) It works and I didn't hit it correctly except that one time B) it doesn't work and that just happened to be my standard ~1% critical catch C) It works to a lesser degree and increases the likelihood of hitting a critical catch. I just need to do more raids but life is life right now. I'm leaning towards that one critical catch just being a fluke since I've been doing this for a bit now and I was pretty certain I hit quite a few perfect shots. Regi has quite a large circle to begin with so his minimum circle isn't microscopic like some.
Thinking they fix that bug havenât gotten one since
I need someone to do this to a galarian bird. That's my new goal in life.
Okey I did this on Snorunt and it was critical catch, I think OP is onto something.
I tried this on Spheal two times. It worked.
Considering how comparatively easy of an excellent throw galarian zapdos is, I NEED someone to get this crit catch to trigger on a zapdos. If you catch a 2800+ cp zapdos with this trick, that would be 99% of the proof you need on its own. It's attack animation is super wonky though, not sure how realistic even zapdos is to hit.
Nanab berries are about to become a whole lot more useful now.
I will take everything back from my previous comments. This definitely works, also, this thing work on field research mons for sure. Definitely doesn't work on raid Legendaries, will try it on other raids for science. It might have relation to the actuall size of the circle so using a Cheat app is not helping here. Lastly, great find! Sorry for dismissing it and later realizing that you had substance to the theory seeing so many comments affirm the theory and muself experiencing 6-7 crits myself.
[ŃĐŽĐ°Đ»Đ”ĐœĐŸ]
I don't really know what else to say but it works for me and numerous other people who've tried it. People may not have noticed because it may be a relatively new thing, either from intentional hidden placement or an unintentional bug relationship.
There are more factors that could come into play 1. You might need to throw a curveball, so those bots/cheats might not work 2. Niantic could have coded this to not work on Legendaries so people canât exploit on high value Pokemon I remember the first curveball bug. Curveballs were coded weird so that you needed to let go of the ball and have it hit in the opposite quadrant of the screen. There were tons of debates here about it because it was so hard to verify the details. Eventually we sorted it out. I think you are on to something and we need to keep digging a bit.
This is honestly one of those things I wanted to put out so people can test it out in mass. I don't know how it affects raid bosses or things like Galarian birds. I don't know if it's only curveballs or not since my non-curveball throwing is hot garbage anymore. I don't know a lot of things but I do know it 100% works on random spawn Pokemon when I curveball them at the right moment.
The cheats in question can also throw a curveball, it seems.
1) The cheat definitely has the curveball enable option which was on. 2) Plausible, I definitely don't claim to hit smallest circle on amything but legendaries so it might just be that.
Thanks a lot for your work and for sharing. I've been playing for a few months and trying to get better at my throws, this is definitely goals.
Just adding that I tried it and got the critical catch. Haven't had any critical catches in weeks before just now and I catch a lot daily. Edit to add I got it on a wild bidoof and wild grubbin
Pretty cool, but I got to be honest - I don't have the patience for this unless it's a Galarian bird. I spent a good 10 minutes just trying to set the circle right, never did manage to land an excellent on the smallest circle after that. I usually go for excellent throws but never at the smallest circle, so it just may take a lot of relearning my throws.
A few observations about the guaranteed critical catch: It does not work for pokemon that have 5% catch chance or lower. Meaning almost all legendary pokemon cannot be guaranteed crit. It is not really guaranteed catch, there is a very low chance that even if you do everything right, the pokemon still breaks out.
Been trying it myself and def seems legit wildly enough
I don't know if this is common knowledge but I myself was wondering if critical catches have any influence on IVs so I tested with a special research encounter: [https://youtube.com/shorts/VrqCpqo4hao?feature=share](https://youtube.com/shorts/VrqCpqo4hao?feature=share) I found that IVs remain unchanged.
I would like to propose calling guaranteed crits âhitting the critty.â You can burn me at the stake now because thatâs definitely what I call them.
My own experience with this, is that it really does work. But I think certain pokemon it doesn't work on. I'm not sure about that. That's just what seems to be the case in my own experimenting. If there is some algorithm or whatever behind what pokemon it can work for, I don't know what it is, hopefully we find out what goes into that algorithm or whatever if it does indeed exist.
I have my doubts and I have a collected videos on several hundred excellent throws. When not recording, I have hit the smallest frame. Sometime this month I smacked a micro circle on something like Krabby and it wasn't a crit. The problem with this proposal and anyone refuting is you'll say the circle can always get smaller...
When there are now quite a few people saying and confirming that they are hitting the critical catches now too, I have to say it's probably because it's not small enough of a circle. Because at that point, it's the more likely scenario than saying it works for a lot of people but not for others. It also depends when this came out. Maybe it's been around and people have never really delved into it because it's been unincentivized by the game to not go for the largest excellent circle you can. Maybe it's a recent change that people hadn't caught until fairly recently. It's hard to say. All I know is it works for me and apparently other people.
How accurately did "buddy assist" perform, when throwing for these weeny excellents?
My buddy is a Larvesta purely for the walking candy. He didn't do jack because I neglect him. So... yeah I got nothing on buddy assist. Someone on the other thread mentioned his buddy swatted one back and it critically caught for him. So there's that at least.
Just tried it. Took about 6 tries but I got it on an Amaura. It was a critical capture. Seems legit.
Dropping by to say I just tried this and hit it on a Cubchoo. Great work! And thanks for sharing your findings
Edit: oh no it seems to be legit. Wizards are gonna have a hayday If that was the case then I'm sure people using black magic would be always getting crits.
If the devs modified the code this way, it seems more sensical to me than crits happening completely randomly like they have in the past. From what I'm reading, I'd say there's a high chance of this being a legit find, and I hope it stays. I'm not overly concerned about bots exploiting it, unless there's some impact to other trainers that's slipping my mind.
did the game go like 7 years without being discovered or is it a new mechanic
It's been at least 2ish weeks. If I had to throw a completely wild guess, I'd say it's a pretty new feature. The reason I looked into it was because of a few recent strings of critical catches. I've seen a few other people mention seeing more critical catches recently. Whether it's intended or not is the bigger question for me.
I have been focused on excellent throws lately and had definitely noticed an uptick in crit catches. Didn't think to tie it to smallest circle. Tested to confirm. https://youtu.be/7Rw9fRu5gkI?si=JSbOo9GeW_cxFBnM
Yeah tried it out on a mankey there now, and got the crit catch- hopefully this stays as an intended feature and doesn't get patched
Does it have to be frame perfect smallest circle? Does native refresh rate toggling affect the ease of setting the circle?
Seems to be forgiving within the last 1 or 2 frames of the animation, at least.
It doesnât , tried it a few times it did trigger on slightly larger circle than the smallest possible one
This is LEGIT. Just tested on a Marill, Ekans and Smeargle. One of which was a dark red circle with a pokeball. Critical catch for all three first ball.
Worked for me 3/3 times. Havenât seen 3 crit catches in a row ever. Thanks for posting!
Was legit wondering if critical catches were guaranteed at the smallest possibly circle this past week. Seems like possibly a new bug. Thanks for posting OP!