I'm currently at level 28 and during the Halloween event I luckily hatched a Snorlax with 1736 CP, 80% IV (13/12/11), and Lick / Body Slam as a moveset. So I have now 50 Snorlax candies and I don't know if it'd be worth powering up, especially for defensive purposes.
I have caught another two since the start of the game, but one has only 721 CP and the other, at 1502 CP, has terrible IVs. Should I just save the candy instead and let it sit among the usual Vileplumes and Vaporeons while I wait for a better one?
A Snorlax with 0% IVs and the worst defending moveset (Lick + Earthquake) is still going to do a decent job of defending just because of it's massive HP.
You could argue that no pokemon is worth powering up because gyms are so easy to take down regardless of what pokemon you put in even with their best movesets, and because gyms are so easy to take down, you don't need fully powered pokemon to do so.
Good points there. However where I live (Italy) gyms can still become pretty stagnant from time to time - near my house there have been three Level 10 Valor gyms for a couple of weeks now. And 2300+ CP Snorlaxes (which I see almost everywhere) can actually be intimidating enough to last a pretty long time if placed in the right gyms!
Your one Snorlax having ZH compared to Lick won't make that much difference to the overall difficulty of a level 10 gym.
You could put a Lick and Earthquake Snorlax in a gym and it would still be annoying to defeat just because of its high HP, plus attackers won't know what the move set is until they actually fight it.
But if a gym is stacked with several Snorlax or Lapras most people aren't going to attack into it anyway even if all the defenders had the worst move sets possible and low IVs.
If it's a low level gym again move set won't make a difference because low level gyms are even easier to take down.
Snorlax deters attackers from attacking your gym because there's no super favourable match ups against it unlike Ice moves vs Dragonite for example, regardless of its move set or IVs.
If you don't already have top tier attackers for each common defender, then Snorlax is good as a jack of all trades - good at everything, not the best at anything though, with his neutral damage against most defenders.
But let's say you've got 100% IV perfect move set attackers for all the common defenders, then you wouldn't need to power up the Snorlax since those other Pokemon would do a better job. But let's say you don't have a Fire type for grasses, then you'd just use Snorlax in place of an Arcanine/Flareon and it'd be fine.
Thanks for the in depth feedback!
Yeah, I often use him for attacking and he already does a great job. As for the common defenders' counters, the only one I really miss is a good Arcanine for Exeggutor and Lapras, but I have fun experimenting with my second/third tier counters anyway.
I also currently have five 2100+ CP pokémon - Lapras, Slowbro, Vaporeon, Poliwrath and Exeggutor - which I fully powered up to use as top gym defenders, so my main intention was to add big boy Snorlax to that group.
Edit: as I was writing this, I catched a 815 CP Eevee with 93% IV, which evolved into a 2013 CP Flareon with Ember / Fire Blast. Guess I don't really need an attacking Arcanine now.
hi lorma, I've been waiting for a good snorlax for a long time (seen 7 caught 6 but not with either good IVs or movesets) , I'm living in Istanbul so, similar gyms are around here , I know what you mean by stagnant gyms with full of snorlax and lapras so my advice is to wait for a better snorlax with higher IV (that means you will put your candies into that one and get the higher CP snorlax when it comes to gym defending) if you use your candies lower IV snorlax it will be less CP than others I guess , patience is the key even though It is hard to wait.
I powered it up in the end, and he's now my best pokemon with 2475 CP! He joins my team of gym defenders with:
- 2370 CP (Confusion + Solar Beam) Exeggutor
- 2341 CP (Frost Breath + Blizzard) Lapras
- 2261 CP (Water Gun + Aqua Tail) Vaporeon
- 2083 CP (Confusion + Psychic) Slowbro (my personal favourite)
- 2013 CP (Bubble + Hydro Pump) Poliwrath
Great moveset and not-so-bad IVs usually means just be patient and wait for something better but given the case this is a Snorlax I would say power the guy up.
I faced the same situation you did and I decided to power up my 71% IV 11/10/11 lick/body slam to lvl 30.5 (2579 cp) and he tears everything a new one without breaking a sweat. He hasnt lost a single fight against anything since I started using him.
