How to kill bubble strat

While I definitely make the most of bubble strat myself there's no denying it's detrimental for the game.

Niantic chose the technical approach to handle the problem, which in the end turned out not working at all. This, once again, proves that Niantic are made up of programmers who have little or no knowledge about gamers and games.


Permanently hammering bubble strat into the ground is laughably easy, and it's done by using the gaming approach.

• Pick a cutoff point
• Apply inverted diminishing returns from there

Pick a cutoff point

Decide at what level (level of the pokemon, not the player) a pokemon is a fully grown defender. Probably 20 or 30, and preferably 30.

Apply diminishing returns

For each level below the cutoff subtract a penalty. That is, only defenders at or above the cutoff can reward the friendly player the full 500 - 1000 prestige for attacking with a lower CP pokemon.

For every level below the cutoff simply subtract a percentage of the 400 - 900 (you always receive 100 prestige) from the reward. Ideally a level one pokemon would reward you with a maximum of zero extra prestige.

Problem solved

Despite costing zero potions and revives almost every player using the bubble strat today would drop it in an instant if the prestige added to the gym capped somewhere at 100 - 150 prestige, which would happen as the defending pokemon is level one or level two.

Basically you'd see new strategies based either around the cutoff point or high CP squishies, which incidentally coincides with how the game was supposed to be played to begin with.