Rhydon still sucks
I'm still wondering why Niantic decided to try to make Rhydon more relevant by artificially inflating its CP. Even at super high CP, it's slow and extremely easy to take down with a half-decent Vap, of which everyone has an army at this point. It's also super slow, so you can get in 4-5 water guns before it even gets off a quick attack. Whenever I see a gym with a bunch of Rhydon I get excited because it's an easy target.
The ONLY use I've found for Rhydon is that it's a decent counter to Snorlax when it has Rock Smash (its lowest rated quick move).
Answers
If you're dodging effectively, you shouldn't be getting lit up by anything with a 3100 CP dragon breath Dragonite.
A Pokémon like Dragonite has such high base stats to begin with that IVs aren't that incredibly important, except in terms of theoretical maximum CP you can achieve.
My advice would be to practice your dodging skills and you will be able to melt anything with your DB Dragonite.
Most players (I'm talking about the legitimate kind) don't have more than one DB/DC Dragonite. Most non-cheating players have about 1-3 Dragonites and they are probably already being used for defending a gym. So for most people, it's better to use the attackers which have STAB/double super-effective.
Thanks for making the distinction between cheaters and non-cheaters. I'm a non-cheater who fits your profile exactly - level 31, 2 Dragonites, both in gyms right now.
It's so funny to read the posts from cheaters with multiple perfect dragonites and an inflated player level, telling everyone else how to play the game.
Agreed. My close childhood best friend who started the game with me on day 1 in July is now level 34 (same as me) with 9-10 Dragonites. Four of them are maxed out or near max and the others are all above 2800 at least. Out of the 9-10, only 3 has bad IVs and I do mean bad. This is because he evolved them before IVs were even discovered to be in the game. The others are all above 93%. He had a Dratini nest 3 minutes away (walk) from his house that spawned 3-4 Dratini every hour. Of course, me living further (20-minute walk) could only take so much advantage compared to him. I only evolved two before August.
BUT, after IVs were introduced, we found a harbor-like place that is 30 minutes away by bus that spawned Magikarp and Dratini like crazy. Back in August-September, you could literally catch 20 Magikarp and 5 Dratini within the first hour you get there. 2-3 Magikarp popped up every few steps you took. Months later (November-now), Magikarp and Dratini still spawn since it is by a huge body of water, but not at the rate they used to. You could maybe catch 10 Magikarp and 1-2 Dratini within an hour now. So, "legitimate" players can definitely own more than 5 Dragonites if they took the time to go to a body of water with those two Pokémon spawning and farmed dedicatedly. That'd be 16-32 candies a day if you only play for 4 hours. Takes a week or less for a Dragonite.
Rhydon is not useless. In a L10 gym, if players alternate properly, between say (for example) Gyarados and Ryhdon and others it ensures that the attacker will have to switch between many pokemon, making it much more difficult to take down the gym. If the attacker is using a Jolteon (as is likely with a Gyarados), it will have to be switched or it will die quickly, same with Magneton (which is double weak to ground moves!).
E.g. Consider facing these pokemon in order.
Gyarados, Rhydon, Exeggutor, Lapras, Dragonite, Vaporeon, Exeggutor, Gyarados, Rhydon, Dragonite
If I took my time I could come up with a better example as there is a bit of chance for reuse/overlap here, but I hope you get the point.
Ideally it's good to have one pokemon for each of the double counters:
Electric for Gyarados, Water or Grass for Rhydon, Bug for Exeggutor, something for snorlax depending on its moveset, Grass or Water for Rhydon, Grass or Electric for Vaporeon, etc. Before you know it, it's not possible for the enemy teams to make the first run through with only 6 pokemon without first quitting and restarting and having to pick a good team again (super time consuming).
Rhydon add strengh to no gym. Forcing to take vaporeon is not an advantage since vaporeon is very strong and can be use against pretty much anything.
In your exemple, a team composed of : 1 Jolteon, 1 Vaporeon, and 4 Dragonite (or 2 Fire, 1 Dragonite and one Lapras (or Cloyster)) Can quite easily run trough this 10guys.
Actually, any gyms with several Gyarados and Rhydon is easy to take down, whatever the order.
Yeah, and most people have 4 Dragonites on hand? No. Also, it doesn't matter how good you are, you will likely loose one from your line up because you made a mistake or the game bugged out on you (let's face it this software is quite poorly written). And what happens when all of a sudden you are missing one of your needed counters? You are forced to use a sub optimal pokemon which will create a chain reaction such that you don't have that pokemon where you needed them and all of a sudden you are using all the wrong pokemon match ups. Have you tried to take down a Rhydon without a proper counter? It's actually nightmare. This is how Battles Won are accumulated, making strong gyms that alternate. Sorry but you're wrong.
Most players do nt understand this and keeps filling the gyms with Gyarados and Vaporeon where a rival can come and take the gym down with ease using a few Joltion and Electrabuzz. What even worse is that once they take out the first defender they can hit the second defender with a full charge bar move move like thunder at the start of the battle.
They didn't arbitrarily choose buffs/nerfs for individual species, they changed the algorithm that condenses the 6 stats in the original game (HP, Attack, Defense, Special Attack, Special Defense, Speed) into just 3 (HP, Attack, Defense). In the original game, speed was relatively important, and things with imbalanced stats (ie, 50 Attack, 150 Sp. Attack) were more powerful than things with balanced stats (100 Attack, 100 Sp. Attack). The original algorithm they chose didn't adequately reflect the importance of speed, and valued balanced stats over imbalanced stats. The new algorithm changed that.
Everything is easy to beat by something.
Everything "Solo" is easy to beat.
The only thing you can realistically do to make a Gym Tougher is make it where the Attacker Has to Switch Pokémon so they can't beat 2 pokemon in a row with the same 1 pokemon. This causes the attacker to waste left over energy and just makes it harder.
In that sense, 2 terrible solo pokemon, Rhydon and Gyrados actually make a good pairing.
You don't take the Electric you just beat a Gyrados with and continue battling the Rhydon. Or Vice-versa, you don't usually keep the Vaperon attacking into the Gyrados.
The only "use" for Rhydon, is to break up 2 Gyrados (or even Gyrados/Vap) that I see in a Gym.
It would be nice if we had More Options to Mix Things up at top of Gyms. But since CP Rebalance the only Pokémon with CP higher than the Super Common Vaperon are Rhydon, Dragonite, Gyrados, and Snorlax. And other than Snorlax, they all have a Double Weakness. So the only thing you can do is mix them up.
Any other pokemon, even Lapras, is probably going to be in bottom half of a Level 10 Gym.
Rhydon is a pretty terrible defender, you are correct about that.
He has his uses on attack though. Snorlax most notably. If someone puts up a Jolteon or double Poison Nidoqueen he can do some work (literally just fought both of those). A double ground one is also fairly good against himself which can let you avoid switching. More importantly... if you haven't gotten a Dragonite yet, he's pretty much your best option for a generalist. I for one am glad I've got a double ground Rhydon.
I'm close to level 33 also. Have one and am half way to a second. But its a matter of biome: I got half my candies in a couple of day trips to a nearby city with a river running through the middle of town. They don't exactly nest there, but I have seen 2 at once on the nearby within 1 km of each other. If you lived at one of the apartments on the waterfront, you would probably be able to get enough candies in a week or two at most
I really curious why everybody consider Rhydon weaker defender as Dragonite? IMO it is a bit harder to take down than Dragonite. I use 97%, lvl 30, AT Vaporeon, and it do not feels that easy, but I love to smash Dragonites, even with my unpowered FB/B Lapras.
Of course Dragonite let you get better spot, but as defender it still pretty bad.
Perhaps (just as a start) because it is double weak to water (or grass)? Anyone over level 25 is likely to have a super powered up Vaporeon with a 2/3 chance of getting a brilliant attacking move set. I have at least 5 and could easily have more (sitting on 300+ candy in hope of gen 2 eevolutions).
Yes, Dragonite also has a double weakness, but it is to ice, and while Lapras is a great counter there are still plenty of players at high level who have yet to even see a Lapras, let alone catch one. And if they do, there is only a 1/6 chance of getting FB/B. I'm lucky to have 2 Lapras, the better of which has Ice shard/dragon pulse. It takes down dragons pretty well, but compared with the way even an average Vape rips through Rhydon it's definitely not as one sided. CP does actually mean something in this game, and the dragon sits at the top of the gym for a reason!
I agree with you about that being his only real use. Well apart from occupying a high spot in a gym well defended by other people's snorlaxes! ;) I have a CP 2800 Rhydon with Rock Smash and he does take Snorlax down (with care) but its no fun at all - its a really slow move so you can only get one in between dodges, and if you don't dodge, he ends up costing heaps of potion to heal afterwards against a big snorlax. Lately I got lucky with evolving a nice Alakazam with Psycho cut/Psychic and since I learned to dodge, he can take down Snorlax quicker, is more fun while doing it and then takes less potion.
It's okay as a defender as part of a balanced gym - the trouble is players always try and take the highest spot rather than make the gym stronger. Stick a Rhydon between an Exeggutor and a Gyarados and you've got three Pokes that work okay together - add a Snorlax at the end and a Lapras at the beginnng and you've got a decent lv5 gym.
IMO an interesting use for Rhydon (a niche Rock Smash/Stone Edge one), is a Lapras counter.
If you dodge, it's effective. The absolute benefit of dodging is higher (Rhydon takes super effective damage from Ice, so dodging reduces more damage than otherwise).
Even if you don't dodge, it is still very effective (super effective non-STAB rock smash plus STAB Stone edge kills Lapras really quickly)
Definitely takes down a Lapras faster than Arcanine, Flareon.
I've yet to test it versus a Jolteon (for taking down a Lapras) as Jolteon goes super effective into Lapras as well.
