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.