Ah, thanks. This was my first raid attempt so I had no idea how it works. So when you start it, it has that 120 second countdown, then it starts a 500 second timer? So you can revive and keep trying all you want until it hits 0, then its full health? Is that the correct way to understand them? I'm not sure I'd ever be able to solo any of these raids..
sorry, it's a 300 second timer, a 5 minute timer.
But right, the 120 seconds is until the raid begins, if you back out, you can restart that timer. That does let you see if anyone is around (or spoofing in, which I think was more common right at first) --- but it basically costs a raid pass to just check that, so better to just find people milling around the gym with their phones out, pretty obvious.
Once the 120 second timer expires, you then begin the battle, and there's 300 seconds/5 minutes to defeat it. If you fail you have to start from the beginning.
Also if your Pokemon are wiped out, you can immediately go back in with a new 6. You don't want to be "out" of the battle when it ends, as it can glitch and not give you the opportunity to catch it.
Probably more like 6 min with pretty decent players and pokemon. Did an Articuno earlier and with initial 6 we probably could have beat it, but we left as someone else pulled up so they could join. We then beat it 7 with little over 1/3rd time left.
that's 6 folks with deep rosters... I think Moltres / Zapdos may be easier, but I've been in 7/8 man raids where we just can't overcome. The problem of losing your best DPS dealers makes it tough to close.
Higher level players with deeper benches of Pokemon probably could make it happen.
Out here people usually want to wait until they have 8/9