So I've been very off Pokemon Go for a while and recently had my interest reignited. Is there any place I can find something like an organized guide to catch up or familiarize myself with stuff like raids or leveling? Or preferred battlers and such?
raids aren't that complex, basically use the strongest mons you have that have type effectiveness or use dnite if dnite isn't weak to its moves / hits NVE into the raid boss; compared to some pokemon with shittier dps, it still outdamages some of them... golem is about as good as dnite vs. fire types lol. some movesets are better than others (ex. even though raikou and zapdos have similar attacking stats, raikou is like 10% faster into a water type like suicune just because wild charge is that good) but ultimately if you have STAB SE or dnite (ttar is not bad as well) you're fine.
having, say, one pokemon at level 30 and 5 at 20 is worse than 6 at level 25 or whatever.
there's no need to be too picky about IVs with pokemon, movesets are more important. you can try to reach jump points for quick moves and it's best to have max atk to make those easier to get, but if you have, say, a level 30 exeggcute with abysmal IVs, it's still better to evolve it than toss it because it requires no dust to get to that level.
in general you can probably get by with just having some ttars / dnites (I have 5 level 30 ttar accumulated from raids), a lot of raikou if you haven't missed those as a raid boss (else just one jolteon is fine), some exeggutor (which is going to pretty much stay a very solid grass type throughout the generations), some good fire types (entei or moltres if you haven't missed them, else flareon), some good water types (vaporeon), and some Machamp. if you find level 30 eevee just take a risk on evolving them since you'll always get something that's at least mildly useful, as all eeveelutions have forced STAB on all of their moves and good stats.
golem is niche but will be more or less functionally useless after we inevitably get ho-oh raids and those end, some bug types (esp. pinsir), double dark tyranitar, and double dark houndoom will be helpful if you are selected for a mewtwo raid (in essence, a total crapshoot that may occur if you raid at a sponsored location like a sprint or starbucks gym), but are otherwise not that relevant for now.
you can arrange raids easiest by using discord; if you live in a decently populated area just google [your area] pogo discord and you can probably find one.
leveling hasn't really changed since the game came out (i.e. the best way to powerlevel is just to use a lucky egg and evolve a lot of pidgey, preferably with a good phone), but you can improve on it with legendary raids - in essence, as many pokemon as you want to evolve during the egg, go to a raid, almost finish fighting said raid, force quit, then, when you re-enter the game, start the lucky egg, tap the gym where you did the raid, and you will get doubled experience for that raid (10k free exp!). catch the raid boss (or, if it's suicune, you can legit just run since they're not very good anyway...) and then start mass evolving stuff like normal til the egg runs out. preferably, couple this with a double experience event (like thanksgiving probably will be) for increased efficiency.
in practice, unless you're really trying to grind up to 40 there's no reason to powerlevel too hard after you've cleared level 30. there really is not that much value in powering up pokemon beyond level 30 and their performance generally does not improve by that much.
throw mechanics haven't changed, but the average player's understanding of them has improved - in essence, always curve your ball (it is a functionally free bonus to catch rate). you can "set" the circle size by holding (but not throwing) the ball until the ring is at a size you like, waiting until the pokemon attacks, and then throwing when it's near the end of its attack animation. the circle size does not change while the pokemon is in its attack animation or while the ball is in the air. you can get really consistent at throwing excellents into the legendaries if you get good at it.
tl;dr: get dnite / ttar, level with pidgeys, and throw gud