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.