Gym attackers, the compete line-up

I've written a lot about which pokemon are best for a certain situation, but that doesn't help you with the total line-up needed.

This post won't go into details about which pokemon is good against what defender. It's just a list of one line-up that should cover more or less any gym-combat you'll encounter as a solo player.

I won't even go into the best attacks. Those are covered in other posts.

Add friends and a good line-up quickly becomes less important.

This post is primarily aimed at players levels 38 and above. Collecting the entire list is most likely too expensive in terms of hampering your defensive line-up if you're lower level.

About level 31. That's when a power-up costs 6000 stardust and 6 candy. Using all 5000 stardust and 4 candy -power-ups is optimal from a price performance point of view.


The line-up:

• Lapras, one maxed out and one at level 31
• Dragonite, one maxed out
• Vaporeon, one maxed out and one at level 31
• Jolteon, five or six in the 2000 - 2200 CP range OR Jolteon, one maxed out, Victreebel, one maxed out, Exeggutor, one maxed out
• Machamp, one maxed out
• Gyarados, one maxed out
• Flareon, one at level 31

That's it. You're ready to assault just about any gym you're likely to encounter.

The Jolteon choice isn't permanent. Until you can afford the 750K stardust for the maxed out pokemon just go with the cheaper alternative.

A few months down the line I suggest you get yourself a second exeggutor as the number of tyranitar in gyms is likely to increase.

The extremely short list, gym attackers for prestige

I just posted a short list of vital attackers.


You've put a lot of effort into pushing your line-up to max. Could it be used for adding prestige to a gym?

Well, partially.

If you don't push for the maximum 1000 prestige per combat but can settle for 500 - 800 prestige, then you could use some of your maxed out attackers.

First we'll list the defenders and which pokemon of your attackers, if any, can be reused.

Defenders list:

• Tyranitar -- vaporeon (often), machamp (very often)
• Dragonite -- lapras (always), jynx (always)
• Snorlax -- vaporeon (sometimes), gyarados (sometimes), machamp (often)
• Rhydon -- vaporeon (often), exeggutor (very often), victreebel (always), venusaur [this pokemon was omitted from the attackers list] (always)
• Gyarados -- jolteon (almost always)
• Blissey -- machamp (often)
• Vaporeon -- exeggutor (often), victreebel (always), venusaur (almost always)
• Exeggutor -- sorry, you're out of luck
• Lapras -- You're either out of luck or have several jolteon you never powered up

Then let's have a look at your attackers.

Victreebel, venusaur and exeggutor, in that order of preference, can be used against rhydon and vaporeon

Machamp can be used against tyranitar, snorlax and blissey.

Observe that you're highly unlikely to last through the blissey with one machamp, especially if it comes with Zen Headbutt and Dazzling Gleam.

Lapras and jynx can be used against dragonite. Lapras for downing more than one, and jynx for speeding through exactly one.

Jolteon can be used against gyarados and vaporeon. I advice slotting in an extra jolteon for every target (two gyarados / vaporeon should see you assign three jolteon), since both Hydro Pump and Outrage mauls your jolteon.

The jolteon army (several eevees evolved into jolteon and left as is) can also be used against lapras. This is actually the preferred way to handle vaporeon and gyardos, but it comes at a higher cost in terms of potions and revives.

Vaporeon can be used against rhydon, tyranitar and snorlax. It's a little too high on the CP-scale to always work, and in the case of snorlax we're talking tanking the defender down, which is a tedious process.

Gyarados can be used against snorlax. In reality gyarados can only be used against a maxed out snorlax. A little quicker than vaporeon, but we're still slugging it out.

Conclusions

Just get yourself a victreebel and a machamp. They're just that useful, and machamp will only become more and more important as players slowly catch more and more larvitar.

If for some strange reason you haven't done so, fix that lapras. Sure you can go with the jynx, or in worst case push a cloyster, but you really, really, really want that lapras.

Don't transfer those jolteon at 2000 - 2200 CP you get from evolving eevee at 700 or higher CP. The jolteon army is a fantastic asset for prestige combat.

Ceiling on how many pokemon you can catch

According to this thread a previously existing limit to how many pokemon you are allowed to catch during a 24 hour period has been lowered.

Go above 500 pokemon caught during that period and you can't catch any more.

The following 24 hour period you're limited to 200 pokemon caught.


While this might seem like numbers well above what any player will reach, keep in mind that a lure spawns one pokemon every three minutes, or 20 per hour.

Popular clusters may sport five or more pokestops.

At at spawnrate of 100 pokemon per hour, plus natural spawns in the area, those 500 pokemon max caught could easily become an obstacle if you decided to travel to one of those places to spend a Saturday or Sunday gorging yourself on Pokemon Go.

(Almost) random pokemon

It seems the latest update to the game makes catching pokemon more random than earlier. Have a look at this conversation.

The gist seems to be the following:

• Levels 1 -29 will catch any one given pokemon at the same pokemon-level if two players are the same level (not confirmed though)
• Levels 30 and above will catch pokemon at the same pokemon level
• Every player at levels 1 - 29 will get a unique configuration for the caught pokemon, stats, attacks and cosmetics
• Every player at 30 or above will catch identical pokemon

Gym attackers, the short version

I'll make a compact list of a good line-up and their corresponding targets.

I'm assuming you're hulking through the primary attacks, but that you attempt to dodge charge attacks (not always succesfully). For the purpose of this post I'm going with better safe than sorry and have chosen attacks that should keep an attacker alive.

Let's concentrate on the seven pokemon dominating as gym defenders. I'll also add one grass type pokemon, more for type completion than because it's all that common, as well as lapras since you're bound to run into it sooner or later.

The first seven should account for over 90% of anything you'll see in a gym. At least if we disregard random crap inserted at 1500 CP or lower.

Name of pokemon, good attackers (plus special case attackers). Special case attackers in parentheses.


The list:

• Tyranitar -- gyarados, vaporeon, (machamp)
• Dragonite -- lapras, (jynx)
• Snorlax -- dragonite, gyarados, (machamp)
• Rhydon -- vaporeon (exeggutor, victreebel)
• Gyarados -- jolteon
• Blissey -- dragonite, gyarados, (machamp)
• Vaporeon -- jolteon, dragonite, (exeggutor)

Screw you over defenders:

• Exeggutor -- flareon, dragonite
• Lapras -- flareon, jolteon, (machamp)

For the attackers I'll make one list of what I believe you have, and one list for special cases attackers. Name of pokemon, preferred attacks and preferred target.

The special case attackers are nice to have if you've collected enough stardust to afford additional gym attackers.

The line-up you have:

• Dragonite, Dragon Tail / Hurricane -- general dps, can be used against all (avoid lapras)
• Gyarados, Dragon Tail or Bite / Hydro Pump, weaker version of dragonite -- tyranitar (not with Bite), dragonite, snorlax, rhydon, blissey
• Jolteon, any attacks but preferably not Discharge -- gyarados, vaporeon
• Lapras, Frost Breath / Blizzard (all ice attacks work though) -- dragonite
• Vaporeon, Water Gun / Hydro Pump -- rhydon, tyranitar
• Flareon, Fire Spin / Overheat (all other attacks servicable) -- exeggutor

The special case attackers:

• Exeggutor, Bullet Seed / Solar Beam -- rhydon, vaporeon
• Victreebel, Razor Leaf / Leaf Blade or Solar Beam -- rhydon
• Machamp, Counter / Close Combat or Dynamic Punch -- tyranitar, snorlax, if you're good at dodging also blissey
• Jynx, Frost Breath / Avalanche -- dragonite (one single dragonite)

Because you love doing damage:

• Alakazam, Confusion or Psycho Cut / Future Sight -- general dps, but you'd either better be good at dodging or use it to soften up a blissey

For some attackers I have deliberately not chosen the attacks that do most damage over time:

• Dragonite -- Outrage might get you killed when attacking snorlax with Body Slam, and you take excessive damage from vaporeon with Aqua Tail. Good dodgers should prefer Outrage however
• Jynx -- Confusion doesn't get double type bonus against dragonite
• Exeggutor -- Confusion DOES a litte more damage against rhydon, but is distinctly slower at powering up that Solar Beam. You want that rhydon down before it fires off its charge attack, if possible
• Exeggutor -- Confusion is better on paper against vaporeon, but you're only going to max out one exeggutor, and Bullet Seed services to slaughter that vaporeon anyway

Machamp deserves a special note. Zen Headbutt hurts, and the combination Zen Headbutt and Dazzling Gleam is outright lethal. Keep this in mind when you attack into snorlax and blissey.

Gym strategy, when is blissey a good attacker, or we dodge for nothing

There are occasions when it's profitable to tank your way through a gym. They don't occur all that often, but when they do it's just sensible to do so.

A large raid would be the most obvious setting.

When you're enough players to smash right through the gym without any considerations there's an advantage if your line-up consists of a single pokemon.

Basically you burn through the defenders at a speed preventing them from launching any charge attacks.

Don't dodge, just burn.

A few defenders are likely to manage to fire off one three bar attack, which is where tanking through the gym becomes an interesting alternative. While I'd still go with a vaporeon, or possibly snorlax, in theory you could run into a gym where blissey is an option despite its atrocious attack stat.

You want that first defender to last through all ten defenders, and as the gym loses levels you should replace your single attacker with something less tanky and with higher EDPS, at least as long as you feel confident it'll last all through the defenders.

Your resource cost should be limited to one max potion or sometimes even any one potion of your choise, for a full attack cycle. When the gym drops below 20K prestige you're likley to be able to reuse your attacker without even healing it before the next attack cycle, reducing the cost even further.


While this might seem like a corner case situation with very few appliactions, it also coinsides with when you're likely to attack a large number of gyms in short time. After all you gathered half a dozen players or more in the first place. This in turn turns a modest resource cost into a rather high one due to the sheer number of gyms you attack in short succesion.

Have fun with your raid.

Gym strategy, spoofers and spoofhunting

GPS spoofers belong to the unwanted human trash in the Pokemon Go world. Lazy parasites who pretend to play the game.

A GPS spoofer plays the game pretending to be somewhere else than where they actually are. This is achieved by using software that feeds the game with incorrect GPS data.

We're only looking at spoofers from a gym battling context. That they do all their rare hunting from home is a given.

There are a number of spoofer types, usually overlapping, and by no means exclusive to spoofers:

• Thief -- assigns pokemon to empty slots, often waiting for another player to open one up
• Sniper -- uses an extra account from a rival team to attack their own team. Usually in order to push ut the lowest positioned pokemon in a level 10 gym. Then trains the gym back to level 10 and assigns a high CP pokemon, normally one of the shitty four
• Aggressor -- tears down high level rival gyms, often without assigning any pokemon when the job is done to stay hidden
• Builder -- adds a substantial amount of prestige to a friendly gym
• Multiacc -- uses several accounts, often done by a builder

Spoofhunting, what is it?

An effort to make the gym battling aspect of the game a major PITA for an individual spoofer.

When is it futile?

Spoofers who who only match the thief and sniper types can't be hunted. Wherever there's an open spot or a level 10 friendly gym you'll find them. Especially the latter kind is a major problem for their 'team mates'.

Spoofers who belong to the aggressor type can't be succesfully hunted when they recieve the active help from other players from that team. When they become an accepted part of high level gyms there's not much you can do.

My enemy's enemy

For the builder type you need the help of players from rival teams. An exchange of services or some other deal is in order. Basically you ask those players to tear down a gym filled with the accounts controlled by the builder.

Team hunting

When it comes to the aggressor type you have to handle it with your own team members. You most likely need to be at least half a dozen team members to carry this out.

Locate which of the gyms, subject to targetting by the aggressor, doesn't 'belong' to that rival team.

Take one of those gyms down, build it to level 10 and make certain it's fully populated. Keep at it. The cost for attacking a level 10 gym alone is substantial both in terms of resources and time. The cost for doing it multiple times per day is horrendous.

When the aggressor gives up on that gym hit the next. Eventually the spoofer will give up the entire area and move elsewhere.

Spoohunting is a special case of keeping up the pressure and maintaining territory. The main difference being that you don't voice any threats but just carry them out.

Gym strategy, the game of attrition

Those of you who battle a lot of gyms probably encountered the problem with a diminishing line-up.

If not, then you're doing something severely wrong.

Most players start getting problems after they've assigned ten or so pokemon to gyms. Basically you run out of decent defenders, and in the worst case you run out of attackers as well.


There's a flip side to that as well.


Leave remote gyms with high quality defenders standing. Unless it's a high prestige gyms, for reasons of your local meta game, just leave it. It would probably be left standing even if fully populated by the shitty four.

The thing is, when such a gym is populated by maxed out or almost maxed out defenders from the big five it means you're looking at overkill. Keep those quality mons locked inside.

Even a hardcore player has a very limited amount of 3.1K CP blissey and 3.2K CP snorlax. Basically you don't want to free them up for use in whatever gyms are considered high prestige warzone areas according to your local meta game.

It's a game of attrition, forcing rival players to use subpar pokemon in the highly visible gyms you're actively fighting over without any realistic chance of holding for more than a day or two.

Local meta and context

So the last days I've had a reason to look closer at things like local meta and context.

Any location comes with its local meta game, and you have to adapt to it and, if at all possible, to influence it.

Gothenburg, where I play, promotes bulk. You can expect to see a lot of vaporeon, snorlax and blissey, and central gyms built around the shitty four are likely to burn down to the ground more or less immediately.

Observe that I define a built gym as 20K prestige or above.

The local meta has become coloured by decently large raid teams, and for that reason deterrent is important. This in turn results in central gyms below 30K becoming the target of just about anyone.


Stockholm, at the other hand, has a relatively low percentage of centrally built gyms. It would indicate a greater proportion of solo players. Looking at the contents of those gyms you'll find a lot more of the shitty four, which in turn lowers the deterrent factor.


As a player you act in a context. What works in one location might be next to useless in another. Your problem as a player is that your line-up is fixed.


This is another reason why I believe that maxing out your line-up is important. While the relative power of a level 39 pokemon might not be all that much higher than its level 30 counterpart, those 18 power-ups kick the CP.

For each and everyone of both the shitty four as well as vaporeon, blissey and snorlax, the expensive last four clicks are worth more than 80 CP. It makes a difference in where you're placed in a gym.

Especially for the three high-CP quality defenders, pushing them to the ceiling is important. It gives you the option to refuse to choose between high CP or high quality -- you can have both.

How? Because the lazy sods who drop dragonites left and right leave them at 3100 - 3300 CP, and their gyarados are even lower. Even a vaporeon who got your love should place decently in a gym in a Stockholm style meta.


Also, building your line-up the way I do allows you to drop 3500 dragonites into a gym containing crap. If you want to be present in a heap of dung, at least make certain you stand at the top.

A small change for you but a big one for game balance

According to this article two players catching the same pokemon no longer don't.

What? That didn't make any sense.

Well, up to now, apart from level, everyone catching the same pokemon got an identical configuration. Same stats and same attacks.

It seems this is no longer the case. While stats and attacks are still keyed to a level, players of different levels apparently get different configurations. After level 25 it's all the same again though.


The main difference from before is that tracking maps basically only tells you that a certain pokemon is at a certain place, but you can no longer trust any information concerning its stats and attacks.

So we're back to the kinder-egg experience. You can locate the pokemon, but you'll have to go there and catch it so see what it's really like.

This change should severely hamper gps spoofers, who tend to be loners. Players belonging to an active pokemon community will get ahead though. Especially half hour and one hour spawns with good stats and attacks above level 25 are likely to be spread through the grapevine, and then the hunt is on.

It means the game partially reverts to how it's supposed to be played. Players, at least high level ones, congregate around the spots where an especialy juicy pokemon spawned, making us meet other likeminded players more often.

About the PoGo Plus

This is a device I personally haven't aquired, so I have no experience from using it. There are, however, a number of conversations about it on the local Gothenburg Instinct chat.

Apparent advantages:

• Gives you a shot at pokemon while farming pokestops
• Can be used for catching pokemon at the same time as you're spinning pokestops
• Catch-time is drastically decreased compared to throwing balls at a pokemon from the screen
• Can be used to play in the background when you're really doing something else
• Frees up a hand when you need it, ie while carrying groceries

Apparent drawbacks:

• Only works with red balls
• Only one attempt per pokemon
• No curveball, nice throw, etc bonus
• Leaves you with lots of caught pokemon in your storage that must be disposed of later
• Increased runtime-cost due to consumption of batteries
• You're prone to use it when you should not

The last one is important. You're not forced to use the Plus.

Idling by a lure is a bad way of using it. You're stationary and have all the time in the world to catch the pokemon that pop up. Why decrease your catch rate?

If you get lazy you'll end up clicking the Plus when something really interesting pops on-screen. You probably want to avoid using the plus with a juicy snorlax on-screen.

Stardust and candy blues

What is good stardust and candy management?

Subjective, I'd say, so I'll just give you my personal preferences and the reasons for them.


My stance

I'm a firm advocate for the zero stardust, and candy, collection. I also believe in pushing a pokemon to max despite the diminishing returns.

As for candy there's one exception -- I save 12 candy (or multiples thereof) for pokemon currently locked inside a gym to be able to push the the last clicks when that gym is torn down.

Whenever I get enough stardust to power-up one of the pokemon I'm pushing I do exactly that. That translates into me very seldom having more than 10000 stardust.


My reason

My reasoning is that stardust, and candy for that matter, is worthless until it's applied inside a gym or when I'm attacking a gym.

Whenever I power-up a pokemon it becomes a tiny bit stronger, be it for the purpose of defending a gym or attacking one.

While the cost for pushing a lot of pokemon to their limits means a horrendous cost in stardust as well as candy, it also means I can place high quality defenders in a gym while minimising the risk of taking on the bouncer role.

A CP 3200 snorlax, or a CP 3100 vaporeon, might not be all that much better in terms of game mechanics when it comes to defending a gym compared to their 2900 and 2800 CP counterparts. However, they usually place above gyarados, rhydon and, quite often, even dragonites in gym.

They almost always place above defending blissey.


My goal

My first goal is to have a dozen maxed out quality defenders. Despite my explicit playstyle and my being level 38 I still only have nine.

Sure, half a dozen high CP crap defenders and a dozen 'for lolz' pokemon, added to that line-up, but apart from vaporeon, candy and not stardust is the limiting factor.


The process

I'm currently pushing a blissey and a snorlax from very low levels with a zero candy collection. Needless to say this is extremely slow.

In the meanwhile I max out my prime defenders that aren't locked inside gyms, or rather did, because that part is done now barring the defenders I haven't seen the last weeks.

For now I'm finishing off doing power-ups to the 'fun' pokemon while waiting for more snorlax and chansey candy, mostly because I can simply forget about those mons after they receive one power-up each. That should keep me occupied for another week or so.

After that I'll pick one, or possibly two, vaporeon to push a little extra and rotate adding power-ups to another stiff dozen pokemon. That will last all through level 38, which is about two more months of playing.

Level 39? Maxing out those close to 50 pokemon and start looking at the 100 IV crap I have lying around. I quite frankly don't have any use for more than fifteen maxed out first class defenders.

What about a maxed out 100 beedrill with poor attacks instead? Or a sneasel? Level 39 will be all for fun.

Level up, now what

Disregarding level 39 and 40, when nothing actually happens, what to do when you reach a new level?

As the only thing that happens when you level up is that your pokemon gains a new max level, let's have a look at your situation at level-up:

• Each pokemon has access to an amount of candy
• A number of your pokemon can gain exactly two more power-ups (unless you reached level 38, in which case they can gain one)
• You have an amount of stardust
• A number of your pokemon are assigned to gyms
• A number of pokemon are on your todo-list

Your maxed out pokemon are maxed out for a reason. They're either prime attackers, prime defenders or maxed out because of the bragging rights. More than one can apply to any one pokemon.

My advice is that you take a look at the pokemon you normally assign to gyms. With some luck one or more aren't at the moment. I'd max out those first, and after that those who get kicked out from gyms during the process.

While your gym presence geats weaker for a short while this essentially allows you to have the strongest line-up possible assigned to gyms for the bulk of your newly gained level.

After that I'd max out the prime attackers I, for some reason, chose to push to max. It's likely that these pokemon see action more or less every time you attack a gym.

Notably I'd stop pushing those attackers if one prime defender that was locked inside a gym suddenly drops out an becomes available for two power-ups.

After that my advice is to select one or two pokemon you want pushed to max during this level, calculate how much resources is needed for that, and alternate between them and other mons you don't see as critical to push.

The reason for this is quite simply a sense of fun. More often than not the not so important mons are associated with a lower cost to power-up, and it's nice to get a break from paying the higher cost, which translates into spending more time not seeing any progression.

So, in short:

• Available prime defenders
• Prime attackers (unless a prime defender becomes available)
• Future stars (unless a prime defender becomes available)
• The rest (preferably mixed into pushing the stars)

On best moves for attackers

When it comes to attackers I always suggest a fast primary attack, unless an available slow one has a huge advantage in terms of DPS and / or EPS.

For charge attacks I go for the one bar picks.

You should be aware my picks, especially for the charge attacks aren't the ones with the highest EDPS.


Let's have a look at two atackers, machamp and dragonite.

My suggestions are Close Combat and Hurricane respectively.

Close Combat:

• 100 power
• CD 2.3 sec
• DPS with STAB 54.4

Hurricane:

• 110 power
• CD 2.7 sec
• DPS with STAB 50.9

Almost any other guide would suggest Dynamic Punch and Outrage respectively

Dynamic Punch:

• 90 power
• CD 2.7 sec
• DPS with STAB 41.7

Outrage:

• 110 power
• CD 3.9 sec
• DPS with STAB 35.3

At a first lookt it would seem the one bar attacks have a higher DPS, but they are one bar attacks, and the more oftenly suggested attacks are two bar attacks.

For machamp it means that we're running Counter until we have enough energy to kick off the charge attack. Counter gives 8 energy for each attack. Five attacks give 48 energy, and it's reasonable to assume that your machamp has taken 4 points of damage during the 5.4 seconds it takes to fire off six Counter.

Dynamic Punch takes 2.7 seconds to go off, so the EDPS must be lowered by a third to compensate for the three Counter you can't use. This takes it down from 41.7 to 27.7, which is still almost twice as good as the 16.7 for Counter.

EDPS for a full cycle (six Counter and one Dynamic Punch) is 23.1.

Compare Close Combat.

12 Counter should fill the bar (in fact 11 will do, because you'll have taken 24 points of damage after eleven attacks, but for the sake of fairness.

Close Combat has a CD of 2.3 seconds, which is 2.6 cycles for Counter, but let's say 3 for the sake of simplicity.

EDPS for a full cycle (twelve Counter and one Close Combat) is 20.4.

Over time you inflict more damage with Dynamic Punch, and my advice that you pick Close Combat might verge on the over-cautious side.

For the dragonite the same calculations yield

EDPS 23.4 for Dragon Tail and Outrage (5 DT plus one Outrage at 9 DT cycles)

EDPS 22.7 for Dragon Tail and Hurricane (10 DT plus one Hurrivcane at 13 DT cycles)

I wrote over-cautious earlier.

The thing is that it's safer to fire off a 2.3 second Close Combat compared to a 2.7 second Dynamic Punch, but 2.7 seconds is probably fast enough to use.

In the case of dragonites we're talking a 2.7 second Hurricane versus a 3.9 second Outrage. 3.9 seconds for a two bar attack makes it likely that you'll take at least one charge attack in your face while waiting for Outrage to go off. That might very well be enough to off your attacker.

While I can see that Dynamic Punch is preferable over my suggested Close Combat, Outrage is simply too dangerous to use, unless you plan to just fire away and resurrect your dragonites after the combat anyway.

In short:

• DPS for charge attacks should be lowered by the number of primary attacks they steal, or rather the aggregated power of those stolen attacks
• Slow charge attacks are bad for your health

Easter event, awful advice

Saw this post on Go Hub.

Disregard the advice. The author is smoking camel dung.

Walk and evolve is sound, but flip a pokeball at everything that moves. You need to create open slots in your bag in order to keep 'em eggs coming.

The trick is knowing where you are relatively to the pokestops on your route. Don't be afraid to run away from a catch if you're closing in on a pokestop cluster.

Throwing balls at wild pokemon doesn't cost you anything as long as you make certain to keep the momentum.

While collecting pokemon for the next power evolve is nice in itself, don't disregard the 1000 xp gained from evolving comparatively expensive crap and transfering the result.

While I understand that the author refers to power evolving while walking, that is an activity you should do while stationary. If for no other reason then at least for your own safety.

Running the list of 80 pidgeys to evolve as quickly as possible requires a lot of attention. You're potentially walking around in traffic, which is a bloody awful thing to do when you're fixated on evolving stuff.

Add that you're likely to be able to cram in an extra five or so evolves if you're comfortably seated at a table. That's an extra 10K xp.


If you can afford running hours on end with lucky eggs, then just walk and catch and evolve crap whenever you get enough candy to do so.


If you really, really, really want an absurd amount of xp with next to no preparation, then you should find another player from a hostile team, or even better, gather a group of players from two hostile teams.

Find two gyms extremely close to each other.

Each team bubble up their gym to 50K with two or more bubble defenders.

Switch gym and tear it down.

Rinse and repeat.

The math for four players (two in each team):

• Building the gym is worth 2300 XP times 2 times 2 for each player.
• Building the gym takes 6 minutes
• Tearing down the gym is worth 2500 XP times 2 times 2 for each player (no you won't be able to coordinate it) 
• Tearing down the gym takes 2 minutes
• Walking between the gyms takes 1 minute
• A full loop is 10 minutes
• About 120 K xp per hour
• Die from boredom

Easter event, first day impression

After the first day of the event I've gathered a few impressions.

It's raining xp, as is usual for these kind of events. What's supposed to be a double xp run quickly turns into an xp bonanza as players make an extra effort to push the gain. Instead of making 20 - 50 K xp during the day, they make 200, 500, or in extreme cases well over a million XP.

Old eggs, that is eggs collected before the event, do indeed award double xp, but the candy isn't doubled.

2 km eggs may hatch pokemon youldn't normally get from them. However, that kind of happens once in a blue moon.

2 km eggs seem to pop more often than usual from pokestops.

If you're after the candy rather than the pokemon you won't get all that happy if that specific pokemon does hatch from a 2 km egg. The candy reward is still the one associated with a 2 km egg, and even if doubled that's not very much.

Crap is still crap. 5 km eggs may award double candy, and who cares?

10 km eggs are a potential goldmine. Upwards to 60 candy could pop up for the lucky player who gets the right pokemon.

This is an event you really want to spend outdoors. Apart from double xp it's centered around eggs, and you need to make that extra distance to get the full rewards.

If you're sped levelling this is it. At half the cost you can go bonkers on those lucky eggs.

Have fun. I do.

Easter event confirmed

Well, here it is. The easter event is confirmed, and this article gives you the specific details.

From 10 pm today, Stockholm time, and for one week.

Critters that would normally not hatch from 2 km eggs may do so, more candy from hatching, double xp and lucky eggs for half the price in the store.

If you planned to level up your trainer, now is the time to do so. Go bonkers on them pidgeys and give 'em a pineapple to keep the power evolves rolling.

Rumours of an Easter event

There are rumours of an upcoming Easter event floating around the net. Some are more specific than others.

Overhyped gym attackers, blissey

It never occured to me that I'd write this article, but since stupidity is limitless I'll do so anyway.

The main culprit is Gamepress' updated gym attackers tier list.

The short version:

• Just pretend you never read the idiocy

With a base attack stat of 129 blissey should never, ever, find itself in the lineup for attacking a gym.

To add insult to injury blissey candy is hard to collect, which means that if you have access to a stellar blissey you're already placing it in a gym.

That leaves you with level 30 or lower blisseys, with poor IV, to commence attacks with, something that aggravates an already poor situation.

Blissey makes snorlax look like a quality attacker and we've already concluded that snorlax is awful at attacking a gym.

For every possible target in a gym it's not only easy to find a better attacker, but you already have one, or else you're not playing high level pokemon go in the first place.

Basically anything you catch and/or evolve in the level 25 - 30 range is a better attacker even if picked at random. This in turn translates into the suicide squad being preferable for two reasons:

• They attack faster than a blissey
• They are more cost efficient in terms of potions and revives, because you're discarding them after the job is done

Why people should cover their bases before going public

I happened upon a gamepress article where the author explained why the tiers had been chosen as they were.

I don't agree with everything, but that's fair. Agreeing is subjective.

I do, however, react when I read blatantly incorrect statements.

This is what it says:

DT/HP Gyarados is better than Vaporeon as a specialist

In the 2 matchups where it really matters - vs. Rhydon and Tyranitar - Vaporeon wins faster and with more % HP remaining. So no. They do about the same vs. Flareon but Flareon is such a joke and uncommonly seen in gyms nowadays. Donphan is also uncommon but less of a joke, and Vaporeon does way better here

Which would have been fine apart from being incorrect, or at least partially incorrect.

Rhydon suffering from double weakness against water is faster to hack through with a Water Gun / Hydro Pump vaporeon than with a Dragon Tail / Hydro Pump gyarados.

The bit about tyranitar is wrong. Tyranitar suffers from a single weakness against water, so water attacks do an extra 25% damage.

Let's have a look at Water Gun versus Dragon Tail. Raw output power for vaporeon is 10 with STAB giving us a 12.5 power. Compare with Dragon Tail where gyarados lacks STAB and still gets 13.6.

The advantage is less than 25%, which makes the statement above viable -- until we look at the base attack stat for vaporeon and gyarados. 205 versus 237. That's an over 15% advantage for gyaraos. Combined with the small advantage built into the primary attacks we're at the 25%.

Running the calculations and inserting the base attack stats for vaporeon and gyarados respectively and dividing by the base defense stat for tyranitar we end up with Water Gun doing 4 points of damage every 0.5 seconds, while Dragon Tail does 9 points of damage every 1.1 second.

While 8.18 damage per second isn't much better than 8 damage per second, it's still better.

0.5 * 5 * 1.25 * 1.25 * 205 / 212 = 3.77. Round down and add 1. Cooldown 0.5 seconds.

0.5 * 15 * 237 / 212 = 8.38 Round down and add 1. Cooldown 1.1 seconds.

A bit into the fight gyarados is going to launch the same charge attack as the vaporeon, from a 15% advantage, and the discrepancy grows even larger.

10 energy per second from Water Gun versus 9 energy every 1.1 seconds for Dragon Tail helps vaporeon but doesn't suffice.


Yes, vaporeon will have more HP left after the job is done, but both pokemon will cut through a defending tyranitar so fast it isn't even funny. The same goes for rhydon, even though a vaporeon is indeed slightly faster here, but in the case of rhydon you're going with a Bullet Seed / Solar Beam exeggutor if truly ludicruous speed is of essence.

Counting stardust

Knowing how much xp you need to get one stardust comes in really handy when you start planning for the next level.

In reality we're talking about getting a fairly good idea of how much stardust you receive on average per 100000 xp.

Knowing that number becomes valuable when you start looking at the next high IV, low level, pokemon you plan to power up to max. The cost in stardust quickly becomes daunting as you progress beyond level 30, and you basically have to decide which pokemon you'll run with before you hit the 75% mark until next level.

At extreme levels a newly hatched, and evolved where applicable, pokemon will cost you in the order of 200000 stardust. Depending on your playstyle that probably translates into half a million xp, give or take a hundred thousand. For one pokemon.

Even for someone at level 38 half a million xp is a substantial amount, which is the reason you want to plan ahead surprisingly early during a level.

Extreme end game, level 38

This is more a reminder than anything else. In case there is still someone playing above level 30 who is unaware of what happens at level 38.

Gaining XP ceases to have any practical function.

Given that you have maxed out a pokemon for each level you gained, then that pokemon can receive one, and only one, power up when you hit level 38. That power up will bring the pokemon to level 39, which is max.

You can reach level 40, but your pokemon can't go above 39, well barring unintentional features in the game.

The main difference for you is a change of pace. If you've been gym battling you're likely to have done those two power ups to each and every of your main defenders. As your level increases this becomes very, very expensive in terms of stardust and candy.

Well, it more or less ends here. To begin with that part of the grind has its cost cut in half compared to level 37. Only one click, remember.

It also means you'll finally be able to build those pokemon you've been looking at but couldn't afford to power up due to a chronic lack of stardust.

Enjoy.

Army of suckers, building a gym

Or rather the army of prestige attackers.

While the bubblestrat only requires one attacker and multiple defenders, there are similar tactics where your attacker takes damage.

Why would anyone use a method that comes at a higher cost than the bubblestrat? Well, ease of use.

Bubblestrat might be optimal, but it takes longer to catch the pokemon pairs needed, and, more importantly, it takes much longer for several players to catch identical pairs.

An alternative would be, for example, to agree upon defending fire type pokemon at around 500 CP and ask team members to save water type pokemon at around 250 CP. That setup takes almost no time at all to coordinate.

Local biomes dictate which type of attackers and defenders are the easiest to collect, but every local area should yield at least one type match that is very easy to coordinate among players.

Those are, however, not bubblestrat viable. So your attackers will take damage.


Healing up your attacker between each round of combat is both a time consuming pain in the arse as well expensive in terms of potions.

This is where the army of suckers come in. Don't settle for one attacker of the agreed upon type. A dozen, or even more, is preferable. That way you just pick the next in line for the next round of combat and leave the injured ones to be healed at a later time.

First of all you'll save time this way.

Secondly you can use whatever crap potions you collect between gyms to heal up your army of suckers.

So in a way this is also about bag management, or at least efficient use of potions.

Bag management, balancing revives and potions

Sometimes your problem isn't the general lack of gym resources, but that what you have is poorly balanced.

You either have a surplus of potions or a surplus of revives.

This should influence how you charge into a gym.


1) Surplus of revives

Don't heal up your attacking pokemon and run them until they're knocked out.

Revive and start the next round of combat with attackers at half health.

Rinse and repeat until you've depleted enough revives.

Or

Trash a new team of attackers and leave the knocked out ones unrevived

Revive everything after you're done with the gym


2) Surplus of potions

Abort combat and change attacker so that you'll safely get your combatant out before it's knocked out

Heal up everything between combat rounds


Both methods come with a price in time spent, but they're hugely efficient for rebalancing gym combat resources.

Bag management, the suicide squad

If you have the time but not the revives or potions, using the suicide squad is a workaround that allows you to push into a gym without paying for it.

Basically you save everything with decent CP, rename it and use it to attack gyms. After you're done just transfer the entire batch.

It's slow, but it works.

Bag management, balance your activities and bag

And now for some bad news.

Unless you want to spend an unproportionate time refilling your bag you need to find a balance between gym battling and catching pokemon.

Problem being most of us prefer the one over the other.

As luck would have it you can set up this balance in two ways:

• Split time between battling gyms and catching pokemon
• Find the correct proportions between gym battling and pokemon catching for your bag

Rather obviously they can and should be combined.

The part you'll have problems influencing is the allocation of resources from pokestops. So there are limits to how smooth a ride you'll have.

So what, why bother at all?

Well, the thing is that if you don't find this balance, then you'll literally trash an absurd percentage of the items you're given by the pokestops you spin. For every item trashed you need to get another, so you'll be spinning more stops than needed.

Now there isn't a sweet spot that's absolute. You'll have to find out for yourself how much resources you need in your bag for battling gyms and how much for catching pokemon. You should also find the perfect subdivision for yourself, ie how many berries of one type, how many revives, and so on and so forth.

One easy way that helps a lot is swinging between gym battling and pokemon catching. A little like a pendulum going between two extremes.

Spend dedicated time for pokemon hunting, and refill your gym battling resources while you do.

End the run with a shortish bag refilling session.

Later spend those resources at a gym, or several, depending on your taste.

Refill your bag, and you should be set for catching pokemon again.

Rinse and repeat.

Bag management, the last gym

One way to mitigate the depletion of high quality potions and revives (mostly max potions and max revives) is to just let your combatants be after the last gym of the day.

When we play we tend to:

• Battle gyms
• Catch pokemon
• Refill the bag

It's basically three different activities.

Obviously you'll spin a stop when you pass one and aren't occupied with catching a pokemon. So to a certain degree refilling your bag is included when you go catching pokemon, but I'm primarily referring to the situation when your bag has run dry on resources and you just need to concentrate on refilling it.

When you know you're done battling gyms for the day there's no need to revive and heal your pokemon. Save it for when you're catching pokemon and refilling your bag.

The reason is that when the bag fills up most of us start throwing away low quality potions and revives. At least if we can afford doing that in the first place.

It's a lot more efficient to apply the two lowest grade potions on your pokemon as you go instead. That way you'll slowly restock on hyper potions and max potions.

The same goes for revives.

Gym defenders, the lineup

So, which are the essential defenders that you should have.

The big five are, in order:

• Blissey
• Chansey
• Snorlax
• Vaporeon
• Lapras

Of these you should concentrate on pushing one blissey to max, and after that two snorlax. The reason for this is that you're likely to have twice the candy for snorlax.

As the gym battles are implemented now, Zen Headbutt and Body Slam for a snorlax is a monster. There is nothing in the game that can match that combination for damage done to an attacker before the defender goes down. Anything 80 IV or higher with that combination is worth pushing.

One maxed out lapras is probably what you already have. It's enough, even though you'll eventually end up with enough candy to push number two. Nice but not needed since it'll end up in the bouncer role.

Vaporeon is easy to get. Three or four of these shouldn't be a problem. You could probably go as far as only pushing 93, or even 96 or better IV vaporeon.

The above six are the backbone of your defensive lineup. As you slowly level up add one exeggutor and three of your pick of the shitty four:

• Tyranitar
• Dragonite
• Rhydon
• Gyarados

While crap defenders they work well in gyms that don't change owners that often.

While you're getting these ten defenders you'll collect a decent number of secondary defenders. Most likely snorlax in the 2700 CP range and dragonite or tyranitar in the 2800 CP range. Add a few gyarados and rhydon, also in the 2700 CP range.

As you're closing in on the extreme end game at level 38 and onwards a few extra vaporeon and possibly an extra snorlax / blissey or two should pop up as well.

Eventually you'll end up with the ratio 1:2:6 for blissesy, snorlax and vaporeon, unless you made an effort to have it otherwise.

If you make an effort, and if you walk a lot, always remember that the buddy function is your best friend. Two or three extra candy daily doesn't sound much, but it adds up surprisingly fast. If you're running for level 38 or more then you're collecting 60 or more candy monthly from your buddy.