Adding prestige to a friendly gym

There are basically only two methods to adding prestige to a friendly gym.

• Pick a target far down in the gym and make sure your entire lineup has lower CP than the target.
• Bubble the gym.

The methods can be combined, depending on your goal for adding prestige to the gym.

I'll focus om the situation where you walk into a friendly gym that is already fully populated but not yet level 10.

Suddenly the star defenders aren't as interesting, because that's not what you'll find at the bottom of an average gym.

For gyms between level 4 and 6 you're likely to see some utter crap at the bottom. Someone happened to catch a new pokemon for the first time, and then that person is delusional enough to believe the rest of us actually want to see a CP 1000 miltank in the gym, or a cp 150 shuckle. You get what I mean.

Those are roadbumps. Just pretend they aren't present in the gym. Just aim at the one above.

So, we have this level 5 gym with some unmentionable crap at the bottom, and then what?

This is a list of what I often encounter:

• Decently powered up region specific pokemon unavailable at the gym location
• Crap versions of the shitty four (tyranitar, dragonite, rhydon, gyarados)
• Crap versions of the top five (blissey, snorlax, vaporeon, lapras, chansey)
• Maximized unusual defenders (IV 100 hypno at 2000 CP, etc)

You should learn the shitty four and the top five by heart. They're the nine pokemon you'll need to handle, and seven of them make up in the order of 90% of all gym defenders (lapras and chansey aren't seen that often).

Read guides, including the ones on this blog, about each of those nine to find out about type weaknesses.

That's all fine and dandy, but what do we attack with?

The bottom most pokemon in a gym, disregarding roadbumps, should pop up at 2000 - 2800 CP depending on how well the gym was built. That means you're interested in pokemon from 1000 CP to 2500 CP.

You should pretty much be covered in the 2000 - 2500 CP range. Promising evolves that turned sour, and hence you left an evolved pokemon never to power it up. Check their attacks again. Chanses are some of them are perfectly useful to prestige with.

And for the 1000 - 2000 CP range?

Well, I suggest:

• CP 1000 - 1200
• Hitmon (top, lee, chan), Primeape; fighting
• Blastoise, Starmie, Seadra; water
• Electrode, Raichu; electricity
• Dewgong; ice
• Bellossom; grass
• Ninetales; fire

• CP 1200 - 1500
• As above; fighting
• As above plus Polywrath, Tentacruel, Goldduck; water
• As above plus Electrabuzz; electricity
• Cloyster; ice
• As above plus Victreebel grass
• As above plus Rapidash; fire

• CP 1500 - 1800
• Machamp; fighting
• Starmie, vaporeon; water
• Jolteon Electrabuzz; electricity
• Cloyster, lapras; ice
• Vileplume, Bellossom; grass
• Charizard, arcanine; fire

• CP 1800 - 2000
• Machamp; fighting
• Rhydon; instead of fighting (for getting through snorlax)
• Jolteon; electricity
• Cloyster, lapras; ice
• As above plus Exeggutor; grass
• Flareon; fire
• Dragonite, Espeon, Alakazam; general dps

Just check your pokedex. Chanses are you already have most of what's needed. If they come with good attacks, which means attacks of their own type, rename them so you'll find your prestige pokemon easier.

I personally don't go as far as covering every range like this, but I do have correct types for every 300 CP or so.

So, now we're all set to go? Well, almost.

A few tips:

• Don't prestige against chansey. Like ever. Using it as a roadbump is fine, but not for prestige.
• Don't prestige against blissey if you need to build more than 2000 prestige. It's preferable to use it as a roadbump if the gap to the juicy ones is 300 or more CP.
• Always look for clusters further up in the gym. Three gyarados at 2800 above a vaporeon at 2100 and a snorlax at 2000 means you're bringing in jolteon at 2100 or higher even if you only get 100 for the vaporeon.
• Type-match those roadbumps (unless they're below 1000 CP). An 1800 rhydon shouldn't be handled by your 2100 jolteon. Bring in an 1800 starmie first.

Gym attackers, the lineup

So, let's have a look at which gym attackers you should have in your lineup.

First we'll start with the dream team, and after that I'll suggest replacements when luck isn't on your side. The replacements are all based on the assumption that you need them now, and for that reason are stuck with post generation 2 moves. Observe that pokemon in the replacement list could have better legacy moves, so if you happen to have one lying around -- good for you.

Replacements might very well be more difficult to find than the best in slot, but if you happen to have a rare one with good moves, why not?

Replacements can also be attackers on the nice to have list.


Dream team, must have:

• Dragonite -- Dragon Tail and Hurricane
• Gyarados -- Dragon Tail and Hydro Pump
• Jolteon -- Thunder Shock and Thunder
• Lapras -- Frost Breath and Blizzard

With the must have list you've covered the ability to get through blissey and snorlax in a timely fashion while standing a chance to survive the combat. All other usual defenders in gyms are also covered.

Dream Team, nice to have:

• Flareon -- Fire Spin and Overheat
• Exeggutor -- Bullet Seed and Solar Beam
• Alakazam -- Psycho Cut / Confusion and Future Sight
• Machamp -- Counter and Close Combat

The nice to have list is for making short work of the few grass type defenders out there, speeding through rhydon and tyranitar and gain access to the best overall DPS in the game. Machamp speeds up the fights against blissey and snorlax.

Replacements:

• Dragonite -- alakazam, gyarados or espeon
• Gyarados -- vaporeon with Water Gun and Hydro Pump
• Jolteon -- ampharos with Charge Beam and Thunder
• Lapras -- cloyster with Frost Breath and Avalanche
• Flareon -- arcanine with Fire Fang and Fire Blast
• Exeggutor -- none
• Alakazam -- espeon with Confusion and Future Sight
• Machamp -- heracross with Counter and Close Combat

The must have list will enable you to handle tyranitar, dragonite, gyarados, snorlax, rhydon, blissey and vaporeon. These defenders make up for the vast majority of what you'll encounter in a gym.

If at all possible push the four on the must have list (or your preferred replacement) to max. While the gain for going above level 30 isn't much, it still adds an edge, and you can afford spending the stardust on four gym attackers.

Of the pokemon in the must have list I strongly advice you to double up on gyarados, lapras and jolteon, or at least build a replacement pokemon to level 30. Powering up doubles above level 30 is optional.

In the case of jolteon you can make do with a large number of evolved eevee above 700 CP that turned out to be jolteon. In fact, if you do so don't bother about the attacks. You'll cut down defending vaporeon and gyarados no matter what. However, there is a price to pay in revives and potions.

Over hyped gym attackers, gengar

Labling gengar as over hyped is a little unfair, but sometimes you just have bad luck.

After the November patch alakazam and gengar rose to the status of prime attackers. Both received stellar base attack stats, with alakazam in the lead, but getting a good gengar remained a lot easier.

Fast forward three months and generation 2 hit us with repatched old attacks and the introduction of new ones.


A legacy gengar can have Shadow Claw as a primary attack, which is fast with really good DPS but with a disappointing capacity for powering up charge attacks. A post generation 2 one will have to settle for Hex, which comes with poor DPS but good capacity for powering up charge attacks.

In both cases you'll have to make do with Sludge Bomb as charge attack, a rather fast, two bar, attack.

Basically there's no point in building yourself a post generation 2 gengar. It simply doesn't make the cut.


A gengar should be pre generation 2 with Shadow Claw and Sludge Bomb. It comes with marginaly higher DPS compared to alakazam's Confusion for the primary attack, but the cost is a little slower powering up of charge attacks.

Alakazam's charge attack, however, is superior to gengar's Sludge Bomb. A fast, one bar bar attack makes dodging a lot less iffy.

This isn't where I'd place my stardust.


If you're stuck with a gengar as a general DPS, this ghost / poison pokemon doesn't shine against any defender's you're likely to see in a gym. Maybe with the exception of espeon (but you'll take a beating), and to a certain degree exeggutor. In both cases there are better attackers to use.

Stay away from tyranitar, rhydon, golem and donphan.

Both Snorlax and Blissey are iffy to attack since the best primary attacks for both are Zen Headbutt on top of them being normal type pokemon. Your primary attack will deal less damage, and you're weak against the incoming, psychic type damage.

Over hyped gym attackers, snorlax

Snorlax is a commonly overrated gym attacker. This normal type pokemon comes with an underwhelming 190 base attack stat and no primary attacks with a STAB bonus.

The preferred setup is Lick as primary attack and Hyper Beam as charge attack. In reality Zen Headbutt and Hyper Beam is just about equally good, or in this case, bad.


Place your snorlax in a gym. Even with the worst possible attacks it's still a better defender than most. Don't waste it on attacking a gym. If you're playing high level Pokemon Go you'll have access to a better attacker for every defender you're likely to ever see in a gym.

Gym attackers, espeon

Catching enough abra to get an alakazam with the right moves can be a pain. Luckily there's a second option. Getting yourself a good espeon might require some walking during which time you produce eevee candy instead of something useful. However, you will eventually end up with an espeon sporting the right attacks.

While not as powerful as alakazam's 271 base attack stat, espeon still comes with a stellar 261. Add a little less atrocious stamina, and since espeon and alakazam share their defence attributes you have an attacker with a little better staying power.

This psychic type pokemon doesn't come with one fast and one slow, hard hitting primary attack. You want Confusion, which is a slow sledgehammer. This also means espeon can't power up its charge attack as quickly as an alakazam with Psycho Cut.

For charge attacks the pick is the same as for alakazam. You want Future Sight.


An attacking espeone should come with Confusion and Future Sight.


Just like with alakazam you're using espeon as a general dps. There really aren't any decent defenders weak against psychic type attacks.

Stay away from tyranitar and you should be fine.

Gym attackers, cloyster

Well, if I featured lapras I have to showcase cloyster as well.

Just as lapras this one has one job only -- cutting down dragonite.

At 186 base attack stat it's, quite honestly, a pretty bad attacker. The only reason to build one of these is if you don't already have access to a fully maxed out lapras from before it was nerfed into the basement with the arrival of generation 2.

While the 323 base defence stat is stellar it just doesn't compensate for the atrocious 100 base stamina stat. Make sure you've got your dodging covered, or use a lapras instead.


Primary attacks are Frost Breath and Ice Shard. You want Frost Breath. While Ice Shard is servicable, this pokemon (or rather shellder) spawns often enough that you shouldn't accept second best.

The best charge attack is a legacy move, Blizzard. If you happen to have one of these lying around, good for you. However, if you for some reason waited half a year before seeing the need to cut down defending dragonites fast, well then you have to do with Avalance. It's a two bar attack, which kind of sucks, but it does the job.


If you're using cloyster to attack anything but dragonite, then you're doing something wrong. Hence I won't go into what attack types are suicide to run into.


While cloyster is better at cutting down a single dragonite than lapras I still prefer the latter. Dragonites have this unsettling tendency to come in groups due to overblown CP. Lapras is superior for burning through dragonites in bulk.

However, make sure you have a bunch of cloysters with the right attacks in the 1100 - 1400 CP range. They're a dream when it comes to adding prestige to a gym featuring dragonites at the bottom.

Gym attackers, lapras

Another special purpose attacker is lapras.

Since the brutal generation 2 nerf this water / ice type pokemon has lost most of its appeal. With a crap base attack stat the only reason you should attack with lapras is if you already had one maxed out before the nerf.

I don't recommend anyone to build a post generation 2 lapras for the purpose of attacking.

Lapras has one target, and one target only. Dragonite.

For that reason you want ice type attacks no matter the DPS stats for the water attacks available. There are plenty of other pokemon out there better suited for the role of water type attacker, or water type defender for that matter.


Lapras comes with two legacy attacks, but for the purpose of attacking into defending dragonites the preferred attacks have stayed the same.

Primary attack should be Frost Breath and charge attack Blizzard.


Observe that for attacking into a single dragonite, then lapras is no longer the optimal choise. Cloyster with an over 20% higher base attack stat is better despite atrocious stamina. Just don't fail those dodges.

Lapras shines at tearing down poorly built gyms. Dragonites stacked on top of each other, and you just continue through them without even blinking.


I'm not even going to describe which defenders you should avoid. You're using lapras to attack dragonite, nothing else.

Configuring the perfect gym attacker

There are a number of extremely stupid game mechanical implementations in the game.

I'll quickly describe one of them below.

Your perfect gym attacker comes with the following stats: 15 attack, 15 stamina and 0 defence. In reality you just don't care about stamina at all since you probably plan on making short work of the defender anyway.


So, 15 attack makes sense, but why on earth is zero defence optimal?


Let's have a look at the combat mechanics of the game. The formula means you take extra damage the lower your defence is.

Which is a good thing?

Well, yes. There's another aspect of the combat mechanics. For every two points of damage you take you power up your charge attack by one point. In other words, you want to take damage faster.


Now, realistically, the 0 - 15 range of a stat is a very small addition compared to base stats, but it definitly goes to show that an attacker with a truly poor base defence stat is preferred over one with a good one. Assuming, of course, equal base attack stats and equal attacks.

Compare, for example, omastar with vaporeon. Omastar comes with a 227 base defence stat versus vaporeon's 177. That, over 20%, difference means the extra damage taken by an attacking vaporeon more than makes up for the 207 versus 205 base attack stat in favour of omastar.

In other words, vaporeon has a higher Effective DPS than omastar, not the other way around.


Oh, and yes, it means you should avoid dodging anything but high damage charge attacks if you live where replenishing your bag is comparatively easily done.

Gym attackers, exeggutor

This time we'll have a look at exeggutor.

This grass / psychic comes with a 233 base attack stat, which is perfectly sufficient for the job it's supposed to do. Poor defence and decent stamina means you should at least have your dodging basics covered when attacking into targets with good HP bulk.


Offensively exeggutor has an almost identical base capacity as jolteon when it comes to cutting down water type defenders. More on that later.


Exeggutor can also be used as a psychic type attacker, but both alakazam and espeon are better in that role with their 271 and 261 base attack stat respectively. Add that they also feature better psychic charge attacks, and that you need a legacy exeggutor to get access to Confusion as a primary attack.

The only reason to use exeggutor for this role is if you're unable to dodge and thus can't survive with alakazam's and espeon's atrocious base stamina stats.


Hence I'll only care about exeggutor in its role as a grass type attacker.


As primary attack exeggutor should have Bullet Seed, and the charge attack of choise is Solar Beam.

Bullet Seed does 9.1 DPS including STAB bonus, compared to jolteon's Volt Switch that does 10.9. However, Bullet Seed i almost 20% faster at powering up your charge attack.

Solar Beam does 45.9 DPS compared to the 52.1 for Thunder. All together it means exeggutor and jolteon are just about equal when it comes to dishing out the hurt.

But, and this is an important but, Bullet Seed has a 1.1 second cooldown compared to the 2.3 for Volt Switch, which translates into a much easier job dodging. You're likely to be forced to hang on the trigger more often if you're attacking with Volt Switch, which in turn lowers your DPS.

There's a reason I recommend Thunder Shock for jolteon.

Given Thunder Shock and Thunder, jolteon is probably better at attacking water type pokemon than exeggutor, but that advantage comes at the price of awful stamina on top of increased damage taken, since water type attacks are neutral against electricity type pokemon but suffer a penalty against grass type pokemon.


The choise between jolteon and exeggutor boils down to survivability versus damage output. Exggutor wins the first one hands down, but jolteon does more damage.


So why bother with exeggutor if you've got your dodging covered? Well, it's also a perfectly good attacker against rhydon, tyranitar and golem?

The 233 base attack stat gives exeggutor an almost 15% advantage over vaporeon's 205, which makes up for a lot of the difference between the 9.1 DPS for Bullet Seed versus 12.5 for Water Gun.

Add an almost 40% higher speed for powering up the big gun in favour of Bullet Seed.

Solar Beams' 45.9 DPS versus Hydro Pump's 49.2 means that exeggutor does substantially more damage with its charge attack when you take that 15% higher base attack stat into consideration. And as seen above, it fires off that gun more often to boot, or at least faster since it's unlikely your ground / rock type target is going to do much more than barely stand up after you slammed it with a 180 power plus STAB bonus plus target weakness bonus attack.


How much damage is that? Well, all else equal, a tyranitar is going to take 156 damage. Standing in a gym the perfect tyranitar starts with 340 hp. So while the tyranitar is still standing up, it's not much left of it. You're shaving off well over 50% including the primary attacks needed to fire off that Solar Beam.


A rhydon isn't even funny. The 191 damage done leaves 65 to the 356 HP a perfect rhydon starts the fight with. In order to fire off your Solar Beam you'll need to attack with six or seven Bullet Seed for 8 (closer to 9) points of damage each. Say 50 points of damage done. Almost every rhydon found in a gym will simply go down after that Solar Beam.


This is the reason you want to invest in that exeggutor.


Targets to avoid are flareon, arcanine, lapras, and, to a certain degree, dragonite.

Stay the hell away from heracross or any other bug type defender. Exeggutor suffers from double weakness against bug type attacks, and you simply don't have the HP bulk to suffer that abuse.

Gym attackers, flareon

The turn has come to flareon, one of five possible evolves to eevee.

For the purpose of getting this attacker it helps that randomly evolving an eevee can only result in flareon, vaporeon and jolteon.

This specific, fire type, pokemon lived in the shadows of arcanine. Before the November rehash it was a no-brainer, but even after arcanine got nerfed, and flareon buffed, arcanine remained the preferred fire type attacker.

Flareon has 246 base attack, one of the highest in the game, compared to arcanines 227. This barely 10 percent advantage, when taking flareons poor stamina into account, made players look at flareon with disdain. However, the real dealbreaker was the attacks.

A legacy flareon came with Ember as primary attack and Fire Blast or Heat Wave as charge attacks.

Compare with a legacy arcanine's Fire Fang and arcanine still did more damage with its primary attack. Arcanine shared Fire Blast with flareon, so in the long run the two had access to pretty much the same Effective DPS.


A legacy flareon is still a poor attacker. You want one evolved after the introduction of generation 2.

A new flareon with Fire Spin and Overheat is a totally different kind of beast. 20% better dps for the primary attack combined with almost 20% better dps for the charge attack really make flareon shine.


In the end the utility value of flareon took a dive. You use it to burn down exeggutor and any other grass type defender, and those got nerfed during the November patch.

Should a decent bug, ice or steel type defender, without a secondary typing cancelling out the weakness, arrive on the scene, then flareon is the way to go.

While flareon now comes with the DPS to work as a general damage dealer, alakazam and dragonite still remain better options.


Still, flareon is easy to come by. Pushing one to level 30 is well worth it just in case it's neded.


As usual there are a few big no-nos. Stay away from gyarados, vaporeon, rhydon, golem, tyranitar and dragonite.

Water event, update

Totodile does spawn more commonly, but if you're not living near water you might be out of luck.

For those living close to water, dratini spawn all over the place.

Game upgrade

After the latest minor upgrade you're guaranteed to receive one random evolution item for the seven day streak when spinning a pokestop.

Water event

Niantic just announced another event.

From today (most likely defined as some time after noon PDT, or San Fransisco time zone) until Mars 27 1 PM PDT.

Magikarp, squirtle and totodile, and their evolutions, will start to spam spawn points everywhere. Water biomes, ie places where you were likely to get 'em karps before, should see more generation 2 water type pokemon, plus lapras.


Oh, and if you have the coins, some kind of magikarp hat for your avatar.


This means you should be able to fix them candy to that gyarados you couldn't afford earlier, and you'll basically be guaranted to clean up the totodile evolution line if you haven't done so by now.

Some extra lapras candy if you're still dead set on building one more.

Gym attackers, heracross

Heracross is a region bound pokemon, so you most likely haven't even seen one, but for the sake of completion, let's have a look at this one.


It's basically two different pokemon for two different purposes. With a base attack stat identical to machamp this fighting/bug type pokemon is able to be used exactly as a machamp. That even means the same primary and charge attack.

Given the slightly lower stamina and a bit higher defence heracross will yield marginally worse Effective DPS compared to machamp due to taking less damage. At the other hand it's a teeny weeny bit cheaper in terms of potions to use.

While machamp is the better option, the difference is very, very small. So small in fact that for all practical purposes they are identical fighting type atackers.

For the purpose of attacking normal type pokemon heracross should come with Counter and Close Combat as attacks.


Then there is the bug type version. It's of marginal value, but heracross is still the best bug type attacker out there.

Preferred attacks for this role are Struggle Bug as primary attack and Megahorn as charge attack.


I personally wouldn't pour in stardust into the bug version, but if you happened to catch a big one, then just disregard IV and use it to slaughter exeggutor and espeon. Just beware that psychic type attack are super effective against your heracross.


No matter which version you're running with, avoid rhydon, golem, flareon and arcanine. Stay the hell away from anything with flying type attacks, which includes dragonites post generation 2.

Flawed reasoning concerning defenders

The more I look at the general advice on-line, the stronger my feelings of consternation.


People just doesn't seem to understand that defence is the worst stat of them all.


A common misconception is that Effective HP has the same value if it's the same number.

Effective HP?

Well, the defence stat shaves off some of the incoming damage, so let's look at two hypothetical pokemon. One comes with a lot of stamina, and for that reason lots of real HP. The other comes with very high defence, and for that reason will take less damage.

For the sake of simplicity we'll assume both take one minute to knock out given the same attacker and no type bonuses against either defender. In other terms, they both have 200 Effective HP (and the number 200 is just grabbed out of thin air for this example).

The high stamina one comes with 180 real HP, but due to damage reduction it stays alive as if it had 200 HP and zero defence.

The high defence one comes with 120 real HP, but it reduces a lot of damage, enough to stay alive as if it had 200 HP with zero defence.


So both are equally good?

No. Not a chance. No way.


Remember the article with a short, short, short description concerning energy gain?

Charge attacks are powered up one point for every two damage taken. Not damage reduced -- taken.

And defenders receive twice the HP, so every pokemon you place in a gym will recharge those attacks with up to the number of HP they have listed (fine, they'll be knocked out if they lose the last one).

Take a look at those two fictive defenders. One will be able to fire off charge attacks worth 180 energy from taking damage only. The one with high defence has access to 120 energy. The difference is little more than a two bar attack extra.

You'll want to dodge that one, and you still take 25% damage. Dodging in itself costs a little time, so you're stuck in combat for a tiny bit longer with the high stamina pokemon.

With three bar attacks the difference is huge (in our example almost two extra attacks). This is the reason high stamina defenders seem to spew out those attacks all the time.


So repeat after me: Defence is the worst stat and a high stamina defender is always better than an "equal" high defence one.

Gym attackers, machamp

Machamp is a special purpose attacker, but since the targets include three of the five best defenders in the game as well as the highest possible CP pokemon, tyranitar, it could be worth investing in one.


Since the very beginning of the game machamp has been suggested as a counter against defending snorlax.

With varying degrees of success.


Normal type pokemon have a weakness against fighting attacks, and the idea was to have machamp with STAB bonus attacking into snorlax.

With a base attack of 234 and decent HP bulk only slightly suffering from a low defence value, machamp looks ready for the job. Initially it suffered from poor max CP (translated into poor base attack and defence), but it got a boost during the November patch.


Machamp comes with legacy moves, and a pre generation one used for the job most likely has Karate Chop as a primary attack and Cross Chop for a charge attack.

That combination, quite frankly, doesn't cut it any longer. Generation 2 brought changes to attacks which mauled existing machamp's ability to attack.

So you need to start all over again.


A post generation 2 machamp can receive either Bullet Punch or Counter as primary attacks. This one is a no brainer. Counter or start evolving into the next machamp.

Charge attacks are Close Combat, Dynamic Punch and Heavy Slam. If you're stuck with Heavy Slam, well, time to evolve yet another machamp.

Dynamic Punch, while servicable, is slower than Close Combat while being a two bar attack. Raw DPS is also lower. While total damage throughput should be higher with Dynamic Punch you run an increased risk of taking the full damage from a defener's charge attack, and machamp just doesn't have the survivability to handle the abuse from Body Slam or Crunch.

I recommend a new machamp with Counter and Close Combat. Both attacks receive the STAB bonus and work extra well against normal type defenders.


The original idea was to have machamp handle snorlax, and after the buff to chansey, to cut into that insane HP bulk as quickly as possible.

With the introduction of blissey surviving the fight became an issue as well.


Since Body Slam got reworked into a three bar attack survivability against snorlax also became important, and we're already watching how tyranitar starts making its presence known in gyms.


Machamp should shorten the fights against snorlax, chansey and blissey. It will slaughter a tyranitar due to double weakness to fighting type attacks.

As a bonus it works well against lapras, golem and rhydon (and the occasional steelix).

Warning: The preferred primary attack for both snorlax and blissey in defense is Zen Headbutt. While none of those defenders benefit from a STAB bonus, machamp is still weak against psychic type attacks.

Blissey can become a major problem since the preferred charge attack, Dazzling Gleam, is supereffective against machamp.


Avoid dragonite, especially generation 2 ones. Also be wary against exeggutor and slowbro. I'd definitely avoid espeon.

Gym attackers, jolteon

Evolving eevee will inevitably result in your getting a number of jolteon in the end. I suggest that you evolve just about everything with over 700 CP no matter the IV.

Trash the flareon you don't need, and if you're getting an excessive amount of vaporeon start trashing those with low IV.

Jolteon, however, is nice to have in the double digits. You should end up with a fair number of them between CP 1800 and CP 2300.


This pokemon comes with a surprisingly good base attack stat, 232, decent defence and atrocious stamina.

It fills two purposes. Slugging through vaporeon and slaughtering gyarados. Kind of works against those occasional lapras you encounter in gyms as well.


Primary attacks are Thunder Shock and Volt Switch. The former a fast attack that also powers up your charge attack at a good rate. Volt Switch is slow and with marginally better DPS than Thunder Shock.

Since jolteon lacks a decent HP bulk I recommend Thunder Shock, but both attacks are servicable.


Charge attacks are Discharge, Thunder and Thunderbolt.

Discharge is a defensive attack, so let's forget it.

Thunder is a one bar, fast attack, and by a wide margin the best for attacking.

If you don't have the number of jolteon you want, you can keep those with Thunderbolt as well. It's definitely not as good as Thunder, but it gets the job done against gyardos.


I recommed an attacking jolteon with Thunder Shock and Thunder.


Jolteon is a special purpose attacker. If your target isn't water and/or flying, just don't use jolteon. There are better options.

The reason to have a big bunch of jolteon lying around is that you just switch in the next one as they get beat up. Then, when you're replenishing your bag after a session of catching pokemon, just use the crap revives and potions you get. Works like a wonder when you're idling by a couple of lures as well.

Bubble strat, confirmed

The following pairs are confirmed to work. Confirmed as in I've been using them myself.

• Gastly / Astonish CP 40:ish (12 or lower HP) -- Gastly / Lick CP 24
• Gastly / Astonish CP 40:ish (12 or lower HP) -- Haunter / Shadow Claw CP 20
• Raichu / Volt Switch CP 25:ish (12 or lower HP) -- Diglett / Mud Slap CP 11 (lvl 1.5)

Since the Haunter runs for 1000 prestige it's better to evolve a small gastly, but sometimes you just don't get them.

The Raichu defender more or less requires you to have caught an insane number of pikachu during the events with pikachu and hats. You evolve a CP 10 pikachu and pray for Volt Switch.

Oh, and don't forget that the diglett has to be powered up once. I did, and it kind of got expensive in terms of revives and potions.

There should be more working pairs out there, but these are the ones I've found.

Gym attackers, starmie, omastar, cloyster

I've received a few questions concerning these pokemon as attackers. Looking through the stats I basically couldn't understand why until I ran into yet another tier ranking list.

Cloyster as a lapras replacement:

• 186 base attack versus 165 base attack translates into almost 13% more damage done with charge attacks.
• 100 versus 260 stamina and 323 versus 180 defence means you'll have a slightly lower effective HP bulk to play around with, so don't screw your dodging up.

For someone good at dodging cloyster is a perfectly reasonable replacement for lapras. If you're planning to build one now it should come with Frost Breath and Avalance. If you have a pre generation 2 one, Frost Breath and Blizzard is the way to go.

And you're probably not interested, since you're playing high level Pokemon Go and already invested heavily into that lapras you already had, only to see it brutally nerfed with the introduction of generation 2.

Starmie and omastar as a vaporeon replacement.

The short version -- I don't know what the guys at Pokeassistant have been smoking. Just don't do this.

The slightly longer version:

• vaporeon -- stamina 260, attack 205, defence 177
• starmie -- stamina 120, attack 210, defence 184
• omastar -- stamina 140, attack 207, defence 227
• gyarados -- stamina 190, attack 237, defence 197

All three come with Water Gun and Hydro Pump as preferred attacks. Gyarados

prefers Dragon Tail and Hydro Pump.

If you want to replace your easy to collect vaporeon that you already maxed out for a 2% or 1% higher damage output on the Hydro Pump, and risk getting one-shot by the defender then, by all means, go ahead.

The rest of you keep looking for a Dragon Tail and Hydro Pump gyarados if you're unhappy with the attacking performance of vaporeon. Hell, even a Bite and Hydro Pump gyarados is a better option.

Gym attackers, gyarados

A good attacker that most likely requires you to live near water is gyarados.

It comes with good HP bulk for an attacker and one of the higher attacks stats in the game.


When Pokemon Go was just released you could get a version of gyarados with Dragon Breath as primary attack. It became a legacy move in August. Since then, until generation 2 was released, you could only get Bite as a primary attack.

Since the release of generation 2, and the latest patch made to attack moves, Bite and Dragon Pulse are identical apart from attack type.


Generation 2 also made Twister and Dragon Pulse into legacy charge attacks. The former is a dedicated defensive attack. Dragon Pulse is servicable as an offensive move.

However, the charge attack that really shines is Hydro Pump. It's a water type attack with STAB bonus for gyardos.


Now a gyarados can get Dragon Tail as a primary attack. It's slow but comes with a little higher DPS than Bite. It also powers up the charge attack as fast as Bite.

Since gyarados has a decent HP bulk dodging everything isn't as important, so Dragon Tail is basically a better attack than the old ones.


The new charge attacks are Crunch and Outrage. Crunch is a dedicated defensive attack, and Outrage is basically a slightly better version of Dragon Pulse.


A legacy gyarados should come with either Dragon Breath or Bite as primary attack and Hydro Pump as charge attack.

A new gyarados should have Dragon Tail as primary attack and Hydro Pump as charge attack.


Now, before we move on to preferred targets, and those better avoided, let's have a look at gyarados as a water type attacker. More specifically, let's make a comparison with vaporeon.

Water Gun comes out ahead of Bite and Dragon Breath in terms of DPS due to STAB, and it's faster at powering up the charge attacks. It still falls behind Dragon Tail despite the lack of STAB for Dragon Tail.

And this observation is done without taking gyardos base attack of 237 into account. Vaporeon comes with a baseattack of 205. That's a fifteen percent difference. While the extra damage output isn't 15 percent for primary attacks, there's still a small bonus to be had.

Hydro Pump, though, does almost all of that 15% as extra damage for gyarados.

Gyarados is basically a better vaporeon than vaporeon.


Depending on primary attacks gyarados works well against different types of targets.

• Dragon Breath and Dragon Tail against dragonite 
• Bite against exeggutor and espeon

It also is best to avoid some targets.

• Bite is awful against tyranitar and suboptimal if you run into a defending machamp.
• Dragon Breath and Dragon Tail are suboptimal against steelix and the occasional clefable

Hydro Pump works especially well against flareon, arcanine, rhydon, golem and tyranitar.

It's also a poor choise against vaporeon, gyarados, dragonite, exeggutor, slowbro, slowking, lapras

Last, let's look at a specific combination.

A gyarados with Dragon Tail and Outrage. Given that gyarados has an almost 44% higher base attack stat than lapras it suddenly becomes a perfectly valid lapras replacement for attacking into dragonite.

Lapras is still better for this job though.

Gym attackers, vaporeon

Vaporeon is really a rather poor attacker. It makes up for a rather poor attack stat with a very good HP bulk. It allows you to keep slugging it out against almost any defender.

Oh, and it's everywhere. Anyone should have a good vaporeon for attacking.

Due to it's relatively poor performance vaporeon is best used for type specific fights.

As for attacks it's a perfect no-brainer. There is only one primary attacks, Water Gun, and for attacking purposes the one bar attack Hydro Pump is so much ahead of the other options it's not even funny.

So Water Gun and Hydro Pump it is.


Use vapreon to slaughter rhydon, flareon and arcanine defending gyms. It works like a wonder against the occasional golem, and is likely to be the attacker you already have prepared when those tyranitar become more and more common in gyms.

Avoid grass type defenders like exeggutor and venusaur, and steer clear of jolteon and ampharos as well.

Gym attackers, alakazam

The next general dps for people who, in difference from me, are able to dodge, is alakazam.

It's got the highest attack stat of every pokemon available in the game. It might not be by a wide margin, and dragonite still has access to a better primary attack.

In the case of alakazam it's easy to pick the setup -- you want one from after generation 2 was released.

While the legacy charge attack Psychic isn't awful in any way, the new one, Future Sight, is simply better.

For primary attacks you have to make a choise between dodging ability and raw damage. Psycho Cut is a fast attack with a high recharching capacity for that charge attack. Confusion is slower but with a distinctly higher dps. The price is a lower output for charging up that Future Sight.


This is a pokemon where it comes down to playing style. I'd say both Confusion and Psycho Cut are perfectly good primary attacks. It all boils down to if you want to pour in that damage continuously or if you prefer to blast off with your charge attack.

Good dodging players should probably go for the latter.

Anyway, you can't go wrong with the primary attacks. For charge attacks, though, you could end up with Focus Blast or Shadow Ball. Both are subpar, but none is disastrous, so off you go and build yourself one of these and try it out.

You should find out pretty soon if this is the way you want to attack gyms or not. If you're lucky it's only a matter of two evolves to find out, if not then at least only a matter of a rather low cost in stardust.

Alakazam shines against fighting type pokemon, in case you just happen to walk into a machamp. Avoid attacking into espeon and steelix. Stay the hell away from exeggutor and tyranitar.


A good staging ground is using one for prestige combat. That way you'll get a feeling for how this pokemon works should you want to blast away with a fully powered up one at a later date.

Gym attackers, dragonite

For those, who like me, aren't dodging experts dragonite is the overall best attacker in the game.

Decent HP bulk allows you to miss dodges and the attack value is one of the best in the game.

This pokemon is basically two different pokemon since the introduction of generation 2 pokemon changed and removed attacks available for dragonite.

A legacy dragonite should come with Dragon Breath as the primary attack and Dragon Claw as a charge attack. It's not perfect since you're stuck with a three bar charge attack, but Dragon Pulse is simply too slow for a two bar attack.

A new dragonite comes with the slow but hard hitting Dragon Tail as preferred primary attack.

There is no longer a good dragon type charge attack, because Outrage is even slower than Dragon Pulse while being a two bar attack. Go with Hurricane for a fast one bar attack and just accept that you're splitting attack types.


Avoid attacking into rhydon, dragonite, gyarados, and don't even think about attacking into a lapras.

Gym attackers

Let's have a look at the other side of the coin. When you're alone or with one team mate.

When you're a full raid it's faster to accept whatever crap your phone suggests, but for one or two players picking a good attacking line-up makes a huge difference.

I'll go through good attackers one by one in separate posts, but in this one I'll just cover the basics.

You want pokemon with a high base attack stat.

You want pokemon with two attacks that are super effective against your target.

Sometimes you can't get both. That's the main reason vaporeon is used for attacking gyms. It's actually a rather lackluster attacker.

If you're bad at dodging you also want the HP bulk to survive going into the gym. That usually comes at the cost of a high attack stat.

In general it's not as important to spend all that stardust on an attacker compared to a defender. I still do it, but that's just because I think it's fun. In reality there's very little difference between a 2600 CP attacker versus a 2800 one given the same pokemon and attacks.

If you're set on throwing stardust after attackers you should prioritise those you have most use for.

Alakazam for generally superb dps, vaporeon that can be used as a defender as well, dragonite with the legacy attacks Dragon Breath and Dragon Claw and just about anything decent with ice attacks and electricity attacks. That should cover nine out of ten defenders.

But it's fun with the special corps, which is the reason I'll cover quite a few more attackers than those really needed.

Prestige combat, some odd choises for low CP defenders

Let's have a look at situations when it's time to add prestige to an already populated gym.

First we'll see what's in there, apart from the most common defenders. I'll blithely assume you've got a good grasp about what to use on anything with more than 3000 CP.

But when the three lowest pokemon in the gym sports 2500 or lower CP? Well, one way to look at it is to just walk away. The gym really isn't worth building on, but let's assume you want to make yourself a spot in it anyway. After all, if the bottom most pokemon are awful enough the gym might actually be upgraded unless it's properly torn down.


I recommend using an extremely low CP defender as a road bump and running up proper prestige on the defenders above it, unless, of course, it's a dream to prestige against.

Anything under 1500 CP normally isn't worth the effort searching for pokemon to use for prestige combat. While it's sweet if the lowest CP defender in the gym is a 3000 CP gyarados, that's seldom the case.

So we have this gym with something between 2000 and 2500 CP as the lowest CP defender.

Let's look at some common defenders in that range:

• Vaporeon -- Electricity, jolteon (you already have them for gyarados anyway). Electrabuzz and raichu if the vaporeon runs at the 2000 CP end of the range.
• Vaporeon -- Grass, venusaur, vileplume and victreebel, provided double grass attacks
• Lapras -- Electricity, jolteon
• Lapras -- Fire, arcanine, charizard, typhlosion, magmar
• Snorlax -- High general dps, dragonite, alakazam, gengar, espeon
• Rhydon -- Water, slowbro, poliwrath, starmie, politoed, provided double water attacks
• Arcanine -- Water, slowbro, poliwrath, starmie, politoed, provided double water attacks
• Flareon -- Water, slowbro, poliwrath, starmie, politoed, provided double water attacks
• Golem -- Water, slowbro, poliwrath, starmie, politoed, provided double water attacks
• Tyranitar -- Water, slowbro poliwrath, starmie, politoed, provided double water attacks
• Tyranitar, Fighting, machamp. If the tyranitar has low CP, hitmonlee, hitmonchan
• Gyarados -- Electricity, jolteon, electrabuzz and raichu
• Donphan -- Grass, venusaur, vileplume and victreebel, provided double grass attacks
• Donphan -- Water, slowbro, poliwrath, starmie, politoed, provided double water attacks
• Espeon -- Dark / Ghost, gengar, misdreavus, provided both attacks are dark/ghost
• Espeon -- Dark, murkrow, sneasel, provided double dark attacks
• Blissey -- Drop it or aim at dinstinctly higher CP defenders further up in the gym -- dragonite, alakazam, gengar, espeon

As you can see a lot of defenders share the same weakness even though they're of different types. For that reason it's worth checking out if you can find a bundle of defenders sharing the same weakness within some 300 CP of each other and attacking them in bulk, even if it means accepting just 100 prestige gain for defeating the pokemon below.

Adding prestige to a gym, provided you have the time to spare, should be a no-brainer between 10000 and 20000 prestige. It's fast and make the most casual players hesitate before attacking the gym.

Above 20000 it's most often a matter of adding between 7000 and 8000 prestige to the gym. That's 10 to 15 battles won. I'd do it if the three lowest pokemon inside aren't a disaster, but pushing a gym with three pokemon below 1000 prestige usually isn't worth it.

One crap pokemon doesn't matter. You're just adding prestige enough to push the gym above the next level and add your own pokemon. With 3000, or less, prestige above that cutoff the lowest CP pokemon is likely to get kicked out anyway.

New kids on the block, donphan

An entirely new entry, donphan shares an almost identical HP-bulk with dragonite, landing it in the 150 max HP area.

This ground type pokemon comes with a rather high max CP at around 3000.

Primary attacks are Counter and Tackle. None of the attacks benefit from a STAB bonus, and Tackle is a fast attack best suited for attacking into gyms. The fighting type attack Counter is a middle of the road attack, but it's still the best available for defence.

Charge attacks are Earthquake, Heavy Slam and Play Rough. While Earthquake comes with a STAB bonus it also comes with an animation making it more or less impossible to fail dodging.

That leaves us with Heavy Slam and Play Rough. Both are two bar attacks, and none comes with a STAB bonus.

In normal circumstances I would have recommended Heavy Slam, since it's fast with decent damage. However it's a steel type attack, and since Ground type pokemon are weak against water, ice and grass you're likely to be attacked by vaporeon. Heavy Slam is ineffective against vaporeon.

What about lapras and exeggutor? Could happen, but they're less common and comes with substantially lower CP. It's easier to dig up a vaporeon with Hydro Pump.

So I recommend Play Rough.


Your donphan should come with Counter and Play Rough.


Donphan makes perfect company with non maxed out aporeon in a gym, even though that will invite attackers to search for that exeggutor rather than line up several jolteon in a row.

It's not really that good a defender, but it's uncommonly enough found in a gym to give attackers a pause.

For the attacker who brainlessly grabs the biggest mon in the deck a couple of months down the line, Counter will come as a nasty surprise since fighting type attacks are supereffective against tyranitar.


I'd primarily place donphan in remote gyms and those with occasional traffic.