There are a number of websites explaining the difference between attacking and defending a gym, but they kind of do a pretty bad job for players who aren't already into game mechanics as an interest of its own.
I'll use gamepress as the main source, and I'll totally disregard wether the data given there is correct or not. It's good enough to be used for explaining why there's a huge difference between attacking and defending a gym.
When explaining damage done I'll use tyranitar as an example.
First off: yes you benefit from having company when you're attacking a gym. But only if you're currently fighting the same defender. I you join the fight after your friend has already defeated the first defender you'll fight two separate battles.
If you catch up, for one reason or another, you're likely to take a huge chunk of damage. This is the game attempting to deal out the damage already taken by the player being caught up with.
As an added bonus the xp awarded isn't split between the attackers. Each attacker gets a full 10% of the prestige carved away from the gym.
Second: no you can't team up on defenders when you're adding prestige to a gym. You're on your own.
Now for the combat mechanics.
When you place a pokemon in a gym it doubles its HP for the purpose of defending the gym. To balance this out the defending pokemon attacks slower than the attacker can do.
I've seen some numbers floating arund, but for the purpos of this post I'll go with the one suggested by gamepress, 1.5 - 2.5 seconds. Let's say 2 seconds flat. This is the GCD, or Global Cooldown.
Let's have a look at that tyranitar. For primary attack you'll eithe get Bite or Iron Tail. Most players look to the bottom and see that Bite has a DPS (damage per second) of 15.0 (STAB included) while Iron Tail runs at 13.6. That would make Bite better.
Look at those numbers again. All the numbers. Bite has a 0.5 second CD (cooldown) and does 6 damage. That's how the DPS is calculated. 6 / 0.5 = 12. Add the 25% STAB bonus and 12 + 3 is indeed 15.
Iron Tail's 15 damage every 1.1 seconds leaves us with a DPS of 13.6.
It's also only half the truth.
When you're stabbing that screen like there was no tomorrow you will indeed fire off a Bite attack every half second.
Now we put that tyranitar in a gym.
DDPS
Remember that GCD? 2 seconds. It's added to the CD of all attacks for a defending pokemon.
Let's define DDPS (Defensive Damage Per Second) as Power / (GCD + CD).
Where does that leave Bite? Well, 6 / 2.5 = 2.4.
What? Yes. 6 damage per attack. GCD is 2 seconds and add the 0.5 second CD of bite to that and the defending tyranitar will fire off an attack for 6 damage every 2.5 seconds.
Bite has a DDPS of 2.4 including the STAB bonus for tyranitar.
Iron Tail?
DDPS = 15 / 3.1 because GCD + CD in this case is 2 + 1.1. So every 3.1 seconds Iron Tail goes off for 15 damage.
That's 4.8 (rounded down) damage per second.
Iron Tail has a DDPS of 4.8 including the lack of STAB for tyranitar.
Double damage per second compared to Bite.
This is why we recommend you to pick pokemon with slow primary attacks that yields a lot of damage per attack when using them for defence.
DDPS charge attacks
When it comes to charge attacks it gets a little trickier.
While DDPS works the same way an attacking player is more likely to dodge an attack that takes 6 seconds to go off than one that hits in 4.
Let's have a look at that tyranitar again.
Fireblast has a DDPS of 22.6. 140 divided by the sum of 4.2 and 2.0.
Stone Edge ha a DDPS of 23.3. (100 / (2 + 2.3))
So, kind of similar.
Opportunity cost
There's something called opportunity cost. In this case the opportunity cost is all the primary attacks that never go off while the defending pokemon pumps up the charge.
Assuming that the defending tyranitar has Iron Tail as a primary attack we can see that two full attacks are lost when attacking with Fire Blast. 3.1 seconds for every Iron Tail versus the full 6.2 seconds for Fire Blast. That's a loss of 30 damage.
In the case of Stone Edge we'll have to look at average loss. Basically by multiplying 4.3 (the total cooldown for Stone Edge) by 4.8 (the DDPS for Iron Tail). Aproximately 21 damage not done to the player.
Opportunity cost included, the DDPS of Fire Blast is 110 / 6.2 rather than 140 / 6.2. Likewise the DDPS os Stone Edge is 79 / 4.3.
18 DDPS versus 18.
I'd still pick Stone Edge though, because I don't believe in the premises that a 4.3 second long attack will be dodged as often as a 6.2 second long one.
Multi bar charge attacks
So why do we go on about the multi bar charge attacks for defenders?
Look at Crunch for example.
70 damage and a 3.2 + 2.0 second long coldown. 70 divided by 5.2 leaves us with an abysmal 13.5 DDPS.
Add in the factor of opportunity cost. 5.2 times 4.8 is 25. 70 - 25 = 45. 45 divided by 5.2 is a laughable 8.7 DDPS.
And we still recommend it? Are we all nuts?
Pumping up the charge attacks
A one bar attack needs 100 energy before it can be fired off. In our example we have Iron Tail going off every 3.1 seconds for a 7 point energy gain.
So after 15 Iron Tail the tyranitar fires off a Stone Edge?
No.
For every two damage the attacking player inflicts on the defending pokemon energy goes up by one. (The same goes for the attacker, but as we have seen DDPS is substantially lower than DPS, so this benefit is of lower value for the attacker)
Let's assume someone is attacking a tyranitar with another tyranitar. Let's further assume the attacking tyranitar has Bite as a primary attack. Since dark is strong against dark the STAB bonus is cancelled out and we have an effective DPS of 12. During the 3.1 seconds the defender needs to fire off one Iron Tail the attacker inflicts an average of 36 damage, for an extra 18 energy.
In reality the defending tyranitar will receive 25 energy between every Iron Tail.
That's four Iron Tail before Stone Edge goes off.
Now look at those numbers again. 25 energy.
That's just a little less than the 33 needed to fire off one Crunch.
Even worse. During the time needed to fire off that Crunch, 5.2 seconds, the attacker inflicts 60 damage if not dodging. That's 30 energy. Just shy of what's needed to fire off another Crunch.
Ever felt it just keeps coming over and over and over again? That's because it does.
Unless the attacker is dodging. And doing zero damage.
But most attackers just shrug off the damage from multi-bar attacks, because the DPS is so low that it can be disregarded.
At least that's what most of the websites say.
They're wrong.
A tyranitar with Crunch will either keep you dodging or receiving consecutive Crunch atacks for almost 90 points of damage each throughout the fight.
You'll attempt to dodge, and you'll be fairly successful, and the fight will take substantially longer time.
If the defending pokemon had only been equipped with a one-bar charge attack you could have gone all in until it finally started to fire it off. In the best of worlds zero times, but usually once, before that defender is knocked out.
That's why we normally recommend multibar attacks. Especially fast multibar attacks that attackers fail to dodge.
In the specific case of tyranitar 3.2 seconds is an absurdly slow three bar charge attack, and yet it's good for defence.
Clarification and correction of the above numbers
Pokemon have a defence stat. The damage received is lower than the DPS and DDPS given above due to that stat.
Still, the extra energy gained due to damage taken serves to explain why defending pokemon tend to suddenly unleash a barrage of multi-bar attacks.
Energy storage
One last piece of bad news.
Defenders cheat. They can store 200 points of energy.
That makes HP-monsters even stronger. They always survive your first one-bar attack. Remember the part about one energy per two damage taken? The defender suddenly sits on well over 100 points of energy.
That's why a defender sometimes go nuts even with two bar attacks. With more than 100 energy two such attacks can be fired off in sequence.
That's why it sucks to have mega defence and low HP. High defence means less damage taken, and that means less energy gained.
Stamina hugely outperforms defence, even offensively.
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