When burning through berries is good

Normally you'd avoid burning through a gym defended by berries, but sometimes you want to keep at it for reasons having very little to do with actually taking the gym down.

We're talking the idiot defence.

While most hardcore players will laugh off ten berries spent, ten berries per gym and day will deplete even the most imbalanced of bags. Say someone with 400 golden razz berries or something like that.

Sure, you have those who spend a significant amount of money and time on the game, but unless you can sustain five bossraids per day, every day, a cost of 40 golden razz berries per day is simply not sustainable.


So, the idiot defence. The definition doesn't apply to defending a gym just prior to a boss raid. At that time just defend everything inside until the boss spawns if you deem those two extra balls important.


With the main exception of chansey basically nothing below 2000 CP should be defended.

As for maxed out, or nearly maxed out pokemon, here's the list:

• Gyarados -- anything electric, but specifically raikou destroys this defender
• Tyranitar and aggron -- machamp does extremely short work of these
• Rhydon and golem -- exeggutor is likely to down just about anything when Solar Beam goes off

And the list of dubious defenders:

• Dragonite -- mauled by articuno
• Scizor -- anything fire, primarily moltres chops this one down

The dubious defenders at least have a chance at inflicting some damage before going down.

The shortlist will cost the defender two golden razz berries for every revive or main potion used. The cost in time for forcing a berry is neglible.

Your main problem as an attacker is that you're likely to run the defender out of feeding slots in less than fifteen minutes at a marginal cost since you get to spin the gym three or four times.

Why persist with attacking, and even prolonging battle if possible? As I said, the cost in potions and revives is neglible, but if you're doing this against a gym defended by multiple players while, for example, having a coffee at a coffee house, you could easily squeeze out thirty berries in a little over half an hour. Those are berries you don't have to care about when it counts later on.

While this won't push the really hard core oppnents out of the game, the semi casuals will have their golden razz berry storage effectively depleted in a few days.

Gym territory, intelligent solo feeding

When you're feeding mons alone you need to rethink your feeding strategy.

The limitations:

• Max ten berries to a pokemon per 30 minutes
• Max ten defenders fed per 30 minutes
• You receive a limited surplus of Golden Razz Berries from boss raiding

I've had great success in attacking a string of gyms with the same well known player slotting in defenders in each of them.

Hammer one gym twice, leave, hammer the next twice and leave. Check the game to verify ten fully restored defenders.

Clear out the third and fourth gym.

As a defending player you want to avoid this.

The solution:

• Feed blissey and snorlax only
• If both aren't present, add lapras or vaporeon
• Always feed two defenders

Observe that this is when you're the only one responding to the defensive need of a gym.

If you're more than one player with mons present in the gym then you can pick two each and keep them up. Let the crap inside burn in hell, and trust me, there will be crap inside unless you built the gym from scratch during a gym raid.

Did you read that?

Pick two each! Don't strangle your ability to feed more gyms by feeding four a berry every second battle.

If you stick to the two defenders per gym then you're able to defend five gyms. Until you run out of berries.

The thing with territory isn't to keep a hundred percent strangle hold over every gym. Those days are gone, well unless you're six players physically sitting on a group of gyms your refuse to yield.

Territory is about creating conditions during which rival players simply refuse to attack your gyms. You keep them during night, or during office hours, for example. There has to be an easily identifiable pattern, or else your rivals won't learn.

When the conditions are fulfilled you just keep feeding berries to gyms under attack, and only for two defenders.

Sure, if your turf is exactly one gym then by all means feed everything, or feed five each in the two gyms that make up your territory. Otherwise stick to two.

Benefits:

• You can defend more gyms
• Most casual attackers simply give up when they see blissey and snorlax return to full capacity even once
• Even though weaker defenders will get knocked out you're almost certain to keep the gym up for the ten minutes after which friendly players can start adding defenders to the gym once again
• You're not depleting your Golden Razz berries at an insane rate

But don't forget to yield to a raid. With three or more players hammering into a gym the only thing you'll get for your effort is more bag space. There's no way a solo defender can handle that kind of attack.

Sure, test them by feeding the two strongest defenders once. Sometimes people just give up, but if they're persistent then drop it.

When to stop tearing down

Last post was about taking pot shots.

Conversely there's a situation when that's the last you want to do. Depending on the pokemon standing in a rival gym that you encounter you'll need to take into consideration how likely it is that it will get prestiged back up again.

When you're starved for time anything above level six takes too long time to clean out, so this post is about those times.

There are three prestige points worth looking at; 20K, 30K and 40K. If the bottom-most pokemon is awkard to prestige against I recommend that you stop tearing down the gym at 2K above those points. That means it takes three won battles to kick out that pokemon in order to create an easy prestige situation.

Yes, there are people who use extra accounts to kick down high level friendly gyms to be able to drop a high cp pokemon inside. We call them parasites.

What you're aiming at is the 8K prestige needed against, for example a snorlax, to level up.

If the bottom-most pokemon is very easy to prestige against just kick it out by fighting against it, give up the match and repeat. You'll save both time and resources that way. And you want it out to increase the amount of time and resources needed to prestige the gym back up again.

While you may not have the time to drop the gym all the way to 2K above the 20 or 30K mark in this situation, at least aim at 3K below it. So 17, 27 or 37K. That should normally force anyone to spend five battles to level the gym up.

With two or more prestige friendly pokemon at the bottom I'd argue that the gym is in reality at 20 or 30K prestige no matter what it says. It should be quick work lowering prestige by upwards to 20K.

Taking pot shots

You're starved for both time and gym resources, and on top of it all, you're always alone when you walk by that level 10 rival gym.

And it's all snorlax and lapras.

Seems it'll stand there forever.

Or?

Try taking pot shots at it.

In the worst case scenario you need to win two battles to push it down to level nine and 49000 pretige.

Pointless! It's shit simple to prestige that gym back to level 10, so why bother?

You bother because you want people to prestige that gym back to 10. You're speeding up the process of gym degradation.

A player kicking the gym back to 10 isn't interested in being the bouncer, and the opportunity to have your crappy, but high cp, dragonite protected by nine grade A defenders is where greed bypasses need, because no gym needs a dragonite.

Watch those solid walls crumble as the gym slowly degrades into a house of cards.

Drop and walk prestige

And that rival gym just went down and you're walking by.

You're dropping something good inside, or, maybe not.

Sometimes it's a good idea to dump a glass cannon inside and hope for the best. Maybe you arrived at a friendly gym with two mons inside and a free slot.

The thing is, you're alone.

There are occasions when a poorly designed gym is better than a good one.

Let's say there's a 3200 dragonite and a 3100 snorlax inside. This would normally force you to dump an even bigger rhydon or dragonite inside, but what about dropping a 3000 gyarados instead?

Going above that snorlax effectively plugs the gym for anyone but a dedicated player. But if you're playing high level pokemon go you're likely to have the material needed to dispatch a big gyarados easily.

So how about taking a look at that 6000 prestige gym with your 3000 cp gyardos at the bottom. Now bring out your lineup with 2200:ish jolteon and go to work. By pushing that gym to 12000 prestige you'll open up two slots, and if it stays unattacked until both slots are taken, a third one will open up.

It's an invitation to push the gym to 18000 prestige, and two or three of the pokemon placed inside are likely to have lower cp than your gyarados. As icing on the cake, a level six gym with 2000 prestige left to open up slot number seven is likely to see someone do the work to get inside a decently built gym.

Here's the best part.

While I'm unlikely to make the effort to prestige against a 3000 cp snorlax in a 6000 prestige gym, I'll quite happily do it against a 2600 cp snorlax in an 18000 gym, because a level seven gym has that much better staying power than a level four one.