Your best chance to get a tier three is Gengar and Machamp. You have three substantial Tyranitars and 5 Dragonites. At all costs walk, evolve, and power up multiple Espeons. I think you've said before your luck at catching good Abras has been bad, save pinaps and ultra balls for them. Totally ignore the GP topics about diversity, dust to the focused supreme counters you can obtain. After you get a handle of Machamp solos, battle every one you see. With a squad of Machamps you can beat Tyranitar with 3 trainers. You might find a few high level players, you probably are aware of many since you are active in gyms. They many times need your help, most times you need their's
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After one year....
.... I wonder how I compare. I started the game on 30 Oct 2016. These are my stats:
Level 38 - 12,288,312 XP
1,493 km walked
1,755 gym battles
23,887 gym hours (22 gold badges)
19.574 mon caught
3,476 evolved
1,641 eggs hatched
238/242 Dex entries
0 legendaries
The good: Love this game, I've never exercised so much, losing weight, stress relief, found awesome new parks and nature trails, rarely miss a lunch break now (going to the gym instead of working through lunch ;-)
The bad: The legendary situation makes me feel like a second class player. As a rural player (no spawns at home, but gyms and a nice loop trail with stops in town, 4 km away) I have been unable to find enough players for t4 and definitely legendary raids. I have enough maxed out t4 mon from hatches and catches, but have no way to obtain legendaries. I've resigned myself to it, but keep hoping there will be another way to get them (maybe ultra rare egg hatches).
Goal achieved: Level 38
Not yet achieved: Solo tier 3 success
Where were you after one year (or where do you want to be)?
P.S. Thanks to GP and this community, you have taught me so much (including how to prestige) and have been very helpful and understanding when I asked noob questions (which still happens occasionally ^_^).
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Answers
Thanks for the encouragement. Part of the problem is that there haven't been that many Machamp, Gengar or Vape raids at the times I can play! I hope this will change (but then they may change raid bosses and back to the drawing board). Sometimes I wonder if Niantic doesn't want us to solo t3 ;)
I am starting to meet other local players as the gyms in town have become very active since the rework. Some kind of in game chat (which Niantic is supposedly working on) might help a lot in getting enough players on all teams together for raids.
You have played for 365 days, if there is a sponsored Starbucks gym within 30 miles it might be worth it to sit there for a few hours on an offday surfing on a laptop/tablet and have your phone open. When/if a raid appears keep looking in the raid lobby to see if some players around--maybe an EX opportunity can come from that. If there isn't one around, maybe for the holidays you visit an area that has one
Nice stats! Don't worry, you will get a legendary, sooner or later. I imagine Niantic will make them available in an alternative way in the near future!
As for me, I started the game on August 7, 2016. Here's how far I've come since then:
-Level 40
-20,697,273 total XP
-2,651.1 km walked
-5,578 gym battles
-3,414 gym hours (with 4 gold badges)
-54,716 Pokémon caught
-3,900 Pokémon evolved
-840 eggs hatched (only use infinite incubator)
-245/250 Pokédex entries
-I have all available legendary Pokémon (except Mewtwo)
Goals Achieved
-Reached Level 40
-Beat level 3 raids solo
Goals I'd like to Achieve:
-Get a Mewtwo (it's my favorite Pokemon lol)
-Accumulate over 1 million stardust
-Complete the Pokédex
-Obtain one of each species and max them all out (possibly with perfect IVs)
-Catch over 100,000 Pokémon
I love this game, too. I naturally love to walk, too, so walking AND playing Pokémon Go is probably one of my favorite things to do. Unfortunately, people whom I used to play this game with all the time quit playing a year ago, so I've been playing on my own, since then. I don't mind it that much, but I'll admit, the experience would be more enjoyable if I had a few people I could play this game with. Quite frankly, I enjoyed the old gym system more than the current gym system. Also, I personally do not enjoy the raid system since it makes it too easy to obtain rare and powerful Pokémon. But, hopefully, Niantic will improve these systems in the future. I'll be sticking around for a long time! =]
Respect. I should reach 40 in about 8 months (unless some good extra XP events come along).
Maybe you need to introduce some people to the game (and get them hooked the way we were, LOL). It appears to be much easier for new players to get started and level up quickly and the new gyms are friendlier, by not having to prestige. I see a lot of noobs in gyms and restrain myself from kicking them out ;)
This is simply the best and most enjoyable exercise app ever! Who needs a boring step counter?!
I like your top 12, and especially the names. Nice. Interestingly, I think EX-raids may the the answer for people in my (our?) situation who don't have a lot of other players available on a regular basis by letting them plan in advance for the raid. These raids just need to happen everywhere on a fairly regular basis, which I suspect is the plan.
Hope you get your Mewtwo soon. Like you, I'll keep playing this game!
It'll definitely take a while to get to level 40, but with some lucky eggs, it should speed up the process a little bit!
Yeah, the people I used to play with used to be really addicted to this game (way before I started playing lol), but, in the long haul, I guess they either burnt out or just got bored of it. As you can see, the opposite stands for me haha! Hopefully, I can find a group of people who love this game as much as I do (and enjoy walking, as well LOL)!
And, thanks! I try to keep my list as creative and unique as possible. Keeping one of each Pokemon is definitely one way to do that! I look forward to the day I can add Mewtwo to the top of my list, ideally a perfect IV Mewtwo, but that's a pipe dream, at this point haha. I don't think I might get it via an EX Raid Pass, since we kinda have to get lucky to get one. Either way, I hope we both get one!
I think after a year (late July), I was about where you are.
Currently:
level 39 - 16.2MM XP
2574km walked
34,440 mons caught
1,161 eggs hatched (totally free player)
40,227 pokestops spun
6,148 battles won
3,945 times training (prestiging)
5,355 evolved
6,769 gym hours, 7 gold badges
246/251 dex entries (missing 5 region exclusives)
all 8 legendaries
I'm in no hurry to reach level 40, although it will happen soon enough. I pretty much stopped doing lucky eggs after I reached level 38, because I don't want to spend the coins. I figure a lucky egg is worth about 35,000 XP, and I'd rather have the 80 coins than the extra XP. I will buy a lucky egg once in a while, but not very often, and I haven't found the package deals to be compelling enough to part with that many of my hard-earned gym coins (currently holding about 4,200 coins). I just don't see any real benefit to levelling up at this point, so no rush.
I've managed to get all of the available legendaries, including a worst-possible 10/10/10 Mewtwo. I got the last one (Suicune) earlier today. My intention is to power up one of each legendary to at least level 30.
Tier 3 solo raids are one of the most enjoyable aspects of the game right now, along with doing raids & gym battles with my daughter. I've successfully soloed the five tier 3's that are reasonably possible (excluding Flareon & Jolteon). Machamp is the easiest, IMO. As Devshaw said, you just need to load up on Espeons and Alakazams, preferably with confusion. Level 30 is good enough. Dodging will generally hurt you more than it helps you. I found Gengar to be tough, but that depends a lot on moveset. Arcanine wasn't too bad. I managed Vaporeon on the first try, but I had two legendary electrics. Without legendaries, you probably need an army of BS/SoB Exeggutors.
Other highlights have been doing a three-man Tyranitar raid with my daughter and a friend, and finally catching a wild Chansey (and completing my gen 1 regional dex) near the end of the Valentine's event, after dozens of hours of hunting.
I'm still enjoying the game, and actually like it when they throw us a curveball and totally restructure the meta every once in a while.
I started playing on August 1st 2016.
I’m level 38 with
12,319,228XP
4,103 km walked
1,581 gym battles
1,485 prestiged gyms
5,188 gym hours (2 gold)
30,508 mon caught
2,206 evolved
1,493 hatched
Dex 246/250
All legendaries except Mewtwo
Goals achieved: Soloed most of tier 3 raid bosses (arcacnine, vaporeon, machamp, gengar).
Not yet achieved:
- Tried last week to solo Alakazam and failed miserably (he had focus blast)
- No shinies
It’s fun to see how with similar XP every player has very different stats (walked/gym/caught, etc.)
I can’t believe that with the team you have you have not been able to solo any level 3 raid boss. I found Gengar to be the easiest by far and I think that with the 3 tyranitars that you have you could definitely do it, so maybe start with that one?
My plan is to strenghten my team and try again Alakazam...
>I can’t believe that with the team you have you have not been able to solo any level 3 raid boss.
I know, right? Not making excuses, but part of the problem may be my older phone (Galaxy S5), which I plan to upgrade to the S8 soon. But I know players with similar phones have been successful. Also, there haven't been a lot of doable t3 raids recently when/where I needed them. But it's only a matter of time (watch out, Machamp!)
The OP isn't griping, however if it were me I'd certainly be griping. The OP has very similar stats to myself and quite a few others, but a disadvantage compared to us living in a more dense area with access to raiding chat channels. My Dragonites are 3330; 3218; 3200; 3043 but because of my setting I caught 65 out of 117 legendaries encountered. 15/25 Tyranitars encountered. I've spent a total of $167 on this game, but now I'm a free player until some significant game changes--both in my area and for other areas.
I'm happy one year out 1million to go until level 40. In meantime want a Mew Two not a snifter near me:( spent lots of stardust want to build it back. Hopefully solo alakazam is only possible 3star raid left.
Walked 3,000 km and hatched 3,000 eggs.
16,000 hours defending gyms
I do want a more expanded game plan if possible.
Ex raids have just annoyed me no end. I know the games inherently unfair depending on where you are but I imagine some little kid with 5 Mew twos and level 15. I hope he's happy!
Ex raids = exclusion raids
