Is Alakazam worth stardust?
I've grinded Abras since day 1. Abras are actually the only good thing that spawn in my little town. After evolving 5 Alakazams all with crap movesets, i got extremely fortunate with my 6th evolution (100 percent iv abra i caught in the wild) and got Confusion and Future Sight at 1237 CP. So my question is, is a 100 percent iv alakazam worth powering up in this current Meta? or is he just a trophy and trade bait? I also got a 2.8k Confusion Psychic Exeggutor (which i actually usually place in gyms, its my second best defender i have) or should i just try to get a Future Sight Espeon? Thanks guys!
Answers
Rightfully or wrongfully, the video shows even with 1 Confusion in between dodges vs. Snorlax, it still wins out vs. Psycho Cut/Future Sight...(by 3 seconds).
Unless lagging, you can also get 100% perfect dodging since you are only trying to hit 1 confusion in between a defender's attacks.
Confusion just hits like a truck now...
I'd power it up personally to deal with the mountain of Snorlax in gyms (I finally broke down and powered up a C/SoB Exeggutor myself, mostly for Blissey (and useful for Rhydon/Vaporeon too) and planning to dodge only charged moves vs Blissey and save a SoB before fighting the next Blissey)...
Useful since Alakazam is potion efficient and will resist ZH Blisseys and Snorlax. Dodging Body Slam is easy too if all you're trying to do is hit 1 Confusion between attacks.
100IV and Future Sight is sick enough. No matter what quick move it has makes a small difference when everything else is tops.
I would definitely power up that dude. Personally I have a 91IV Alakazam with Psycho Cut/Shadow Bomb amd while it's not the optimal, especially now after gen2, he still gets the job done really nicely.
Alakazam requires a bit different tactic as most other heavy hitters in that you are expected to dodge a lot, but still he's surprisingly potion effective fighter of you manage to swap hiw out before a knock out. He doesn't require too many potions to get back to full health.
No contingency plan--I just prefer a more patient approach to growth than most, perhaps. It's not necessarily the best strategy, but it's worked for me to date. I've maxed out a few of my mons (generally for purposes of gym placement, but occasionally for sentimental purposes), and I haven't regretted any of them so far.
Even when the move rebalances hurt some of them (like my SW/DP Dragonite) or changes to the CP formula hurt others (looking at you Lapras), I wasn't terribly upset since I had enjoyed using them at their height and I could always just bump up the next one that struck my fancy since I have plenty of dust.
One thing that's been proven from the past few updates is that nothing in the PoGo world is fixed. Relative strength of mons can change (via CP formula), relative strength of moves can change (twice since Gen 2 came out), and we know that the likely upcoming changes to gym mechanics will have an effect as well (will we still want high-CP, but low defensive value mons like Gyarados, Rhydon, and even Tyranitar in gyms? Who knows?). Given that, I'm happy not to invest too much in any one mon (or even type of mon) so I can adapt to whatever Niantic throws at us next.
As reasonable argument could be made that I'm not maximizing my potential now--I'm essentially paying in the short term for flexibility in the long term--but I'm strong enough to collect enough coins to be a free player and have fun along the way. What more could I want? :)
Level 33, about 200,000 from level 34.
I have a limited amount of time to play (work full-time and have a 5 year old kid), so I aim to collect on between 5 and 10 gyms a day. I'm in a suburban area, but there are a few (usually 3 or 4) gyms that I can hold for a week or two at a time, so I only need to jump into 2-6 additional gyms to collect on each day. I generally collect 6-7 during the week (when I hop into gyms on my way to work), and 3-5 on the weekends (when I can't defend gyms so much since I'm playing with my kid :) ).
I have 5-6 solid defenders I'd say--one maxed ZH/BS Snorlax, one maxed SW/DP Dragonite, one maxed 100IV vaporeon, one maxed DT/O gyarados, plus several of the above that aren't maxed (2800 ZH/BS Snorlax, several 26-2700 vaporeons, a few 26-2700 gyarados) but the gym scene is dynamic enough that I really don't need that many. I haven't found enough gyms that don't turn over ever day to require additional maxed-out defenders.
Shaving is annoying, but more often than not, I'm simply kicked out of the gym that I'm in, so I just hop into it (or another, more convenient one) the next day. :)
