Common defenders, snorlax

And we've arrived at the dethroned king of gym defence, snorlax.

While chansey probably has been a better defender, in terms of wasting time for the attacker, from the very beginning, snorlax' position as the number one defender didn't really come into scrutiny until the patch where chansey got its max CP more than doubled.

Snorlax, like so many other pokemon, have legacy moves, which are no longer obtainable. It's the charge move Body Slam, which has gone from a two bar attack to a three bar one.

While it looks disappointingly weak at first glance, it's fast and the attacker will be hit by it over and over again. The STAB bonus most certainly makes a difference.


Nothing has changed as far as the primary attacks are concerned. Lick is a fast, low damage attack best suited for attacking into gyms, and Zen Headbutt is a slow, comparatively high damage attack perfect for gym defence, especially since it's psychic and alakazam is just about the only commonly seen attacking pokemon strong against psychic attacks.


A legacy snorlax should have Zen Headbutt and Body Slam.


New snorlax have access to Heavy Slam, Hyper Beam and Earthquake. Earthquake is, simply put, a poor attack move. Slow and low damage for a one bar attack.

Hyper Beam comes with the STAB bonus and packs a brutal punch, but it's even slower than Earthquake, with an animation that's just about impossible to miss to boot. An attacker needs to be severely drunk to fail at dodging Hyper Beam.

Heavy Slam lacks the STAB bonus, and is of the steel type, making it ineffective against the abundance of water pokemon out there. Still, it's a relatively fast, two bar attack with acceptable damage.

A new snorlax should have Zen Headbutt and Heavy Slam. Zen Headbutt and Hyper Beam is still perfectly servicable since 25% of the damage is dealt even to a dodging attacker.

That said, a good legacy snorlax with the best moves is still a better defender.


Snorlax comes with over 250 HP, easily placing it among the top five defenders in the game.

Snorlax is best used in gyms that see a lot of action. A very high CP snorlax i basically wasted on a remote gym since you're unlikely to have more than a couple of snorlax maxed out.