Bandwagon question
Im having mixed feelings about my Gyarados, it has dragon pulse, so i havent powered it up to max.
I bet many wouldnt power it up, cus hydro pump is better, but is it rlly better?
I have gym near me which has:
7 vaporeons
2 exeggutors
1 snorlax
Dmg difference versus 9/10 of those pokemons would be extremely small, almost none, because they all resist hydro pump, expect snorlax, which is highest pokemen at the gym.
Also Dragon Pulse would be better option versus Dragonites, which you also see pretty often at the gyms.
So is Dragon Pulse rlly b-move set when you take account that most of the common defenders rlly resist hydro pump (including lapras)
And as attacker you can always choose your battles, i wouldnt have to fight snorlax when there is 9 other pokemons at the gym that i can use my Gyarados.
What would you do? Power up or not?
Answers
Dragon Pulse is indeed the worse of the two, even factoring the resistance, as Hydro Pump has a much higher DPS. Not only that, Hydro Pump gains STAB, which cancels out the resistance to do normal damage. A bare Hydro still outperforms a bare DP.
However, the one case you mentioned (Dragonite) is a special case as not only does it resist Hydro Pump, Dragon Pulse goes super effective into it. So it is in effect a 1.5625x multiplier. This brings the two much closer to parity and given you can cast DP twice for 100 energy, it is the better choice against dragonites.
Then again, it's a second tier, but much more common dragonite counter. a Lapras will do a much better job, but it certainly does not hurt to have a DP Gyarados in hand.
I power mine up. I evolved a second one got twister. So i asked myself waiting at least 1-2 month to get the chance of 1/3 to get HP isnt worth it. If u have dust to spend i think do it . He has some good matchups and is a good overall attacker. Mine is now 3k and i'm fine with it. But is up to you. Your choice;)
I live in a place with barely any water. Magikarps rarely spawned here until this last nest migration. I walked nearly 300km with mine and got Dragon Pulse. I will likely never get another Gyarados so I powered mine up to max (96%IVs). I think he is about 2860CP right now.
I personally did it as I likely won't get a better IV one and I'm not walking another 300km with magikarp as I have other projects in mind (Muk and Venusaur) and then Gen 2 guys.
EDIT - I do like using Gyarados for attacking Dragonites. Pretty fun. Just make sure you dodge their Dragon Pulse!
