New to the extreme end-game, gym raider, attackers

Unless you're happy only assigning defenders to gyms someone else tore down, in which case you're not a gym raider at all, then you need an attacking line-up in order to be able to assign anything at all.

First of all we need to define the term gym raider.

It's not a solo player. Don't get me wrong here. Many of the best players I've met out there are solo players, but they aren't gym raiders. They simply lack that aggregated skill set.


A gym raider is a player who attacks gyms together with other players of the same team and more often than not defends conquered gyms together with those players. The attacking part is vital. Gym raiders who don't defend gyms just tend not to stay in them for very long.

Note the plural. Gyms as well as players. If you're three players walking down to that lonely gym every day you're not raiders. You're making certain that gym stays in your posession.


So, let's move on to the bare bones minimum attacking force. You want to at least be able to fill out one predefined attacking team now when we have access to this nifty party beta.

Talking about parties. I know it sucks, but you just have to wipe that party from time to time and create the same one placing it last since Niantic, in their divine wisdom, decided to list the parties in the reverse order you get access to them when you want to use them.

You want that party to be the first one to show up when you swipe left. More on why in a later article.


Six pokemon, with 15 attack stat if possible. Bolded are best.

• Machamp (Counter / Dynamic Punch) x 2
• Dragonite or Rayquaza (Dragon Tail / Outrage) x 1
• Zapdos (Charge Beam / Thunderbolt) or Raikou (Thunder Shock / Wild Charge) x 1
• Two more attackers

The six pokemon above are needed. Just get them maxed out.

Why those?

Gyms nowdays are populated by blissey, snorlax and, quite often, chansey. Add tyranitar, aggron, lapras and rhydon. Fighting attacks rule the day. I personally run with a third machamp as one of the two extras. Avoid flying type pokemon since machamp is ineffective against those. So no dragonites and gyarados as your targets. Also avoid fairy type pokemon like clefable and gardevoir. You'll get wiped out.

Dragon type attacks are largely unresisted. More often than not, when in doubt, attack with a dragon. Both dragonite and rayquaza come with superior attack stats combined with good to decent bulk. Dragontypes are an expensive but perfectly decent option when you're cleaning out dragonites in gyms. Sure, you'll take a beating, but you'll also make quick work of the defender without resorting to digging up that ice type attacker.

An electric type attacker is sweet to have for the ever present gyarados and vaporeon in gyms. Electric is also largey unresisted whenever your dragonite/rayquaza runs into problems.

The two extras depend on your local meta game. Where I live that chansey is almost always inserted into gyms together with the mandatory blissey and snorlax, and players here have learned to pump up their defenders. Thus I run with a third machamp.

For some obscure reason rhydon got extremely, and golem quite, popular locally, so I've been running with an exeggutor (Bullet Seed / Solar Beam) as the last party member since it absolutely destroys rhydon and golem. Now we're seeing more and more fairy type pokemon, so I'm thinking of swapping that one out in favour of an aggron (Iron Tail / Heavy Slam) or metagross (Bullet Punch / Flash Cannon).

Another place might see good use for a kyogre or gyarados (Waterfall / Hydro Pump). Maybe you're overdosing on plants locally, in which case I could see a use for moltres or entei (Fire Spin / Overheat)

No matter what, your local huting ground will have it's own idiosyncracies. The two last slots are for handling those. You want those two attackers. Don't cheat on them.

Max out that attacking line-up. You can go play the threshold game for boss raiding for all I care, or use level 33 attackers for rarely encountered defenders. But don't cheat on your primary attacking line-up. Level 40 they go. It's six pokemon for crying put loud.

Sure, as you collect more stardust and recall dinging level 40 yourself with a sense of nostalgica, you'll wind up with a plethora of maxed out attackers, but then you're hardly new to the extreme end game any longer.

Next article up will cover the bare bones defenders.