Offensive or defensive Dragonite?
Would guys rather power up offensive dragonites or defensive dragonites?
I have only fully powered up one dragonite (my first ever, which I caught). CP 3012 60% 15/0/12 with DB/DC moveset.
I have 3 other dragonites around level 20.
98% 15/14/15 SW/DC
40% 7/2/9 DB/DP
44% 2/15/3 SW/HB
I have 57 candies. What would you do?
Answers
As a rule you should only be powering up defensive Pokemon. When attacking type advantage and dodging will see you through. So Unless an attacker is seriously underpowered it's fine to leave it will a lower CP. Defensive Pokemon, on the other hand, need to be as beefy as possible as they will likely have a type disadvantage, plus the attacker will be dodging charge moves.
It depends on where you live.
What is the point powering up your defensive pokemon when gyms are changing colors every 10 minutes?
You are not playing with your defensive pokemons, you let the AI do it for you...
With offensive pokemons, you are going to take down gyms faster If you power them up.
Moreover most offensive pokemon are still beasts at defending gyms.
They said "time is money", to me it is better to invest more in offensive pokemon.
Where I live, no Matter what pokemon you put in gyms, even if it is a lvl 10 gym with 10 snorlax CP 3000+, it won't last more than half a day.
Then all the players invest in every single good offensive pokemon, and we leave them one by one in the gyms before collecting coins. And we don't lack offensive pokemon to go to the next gym.
We tried so many defensive strategy... placing this pokemon first, followed by this one, and so on, mixing types trying to make gyms harder to attack.
We even tried 10 snorlax. Then 10 chansey.
Trust me, defensive pokemon are really useless in my area.
If one day you will be able to fight against your neighbor or your friend, you'll be ready to fight with offensive pokemon.
Seeing how the game is, i doubt defenders will be as usefull as defenders on the real game.
But again it depends on where you live, I understand that somewhere defenders are usefull.
I agree with the latter part of this response. You won't get as much bang for your buck investing in your 3000+ cp dragonite, as the power up cost per candy spent is much less favorable compared to investing in, say, a lv 20 dragonite.
However, I personally think that dragonite doesn't make for a great gym defender as Cloyster, Lapras, Dewgong, and Jynx all hit extremely hard against dragonite (1.25 * 1.25 * 1.25 = 1.95x the typical damage; stab * super effective vs dragon * super effective vs flying}. A trainer that possesses any of these 4 around 1500+ can take down a 3000+ dragonite. Therefore, for that reason, I would personally invest in an offensive dragonite. Albeit the IV's are sweet, from my experience, DC as a defensive charge move is not as favorable against HB or DP (due to gym AI mechanics) and I would not invest in the 98%.
If I were in you're position, I would either invest in the DB/DP 40%, or farm dratinis for another dragonite and roll again (after evolving a great IV dratini) in hopes for a greater IV dragonite with dragon breath.
Just battling a gym with 2 dragonites today. SW/DP is definitely an annoying moveset as DP hits quite often and does big damage if you don't dodge. Battling HB is very easy though. By the time I'd taken out the dragonite w/ HB it only managed one HB before it was down and as such an easy move to dodge it really isn't a problem so on that basis I would say DC is better than HB.
I don't think that there is a definite "you should absolutely do X" answer.
Personally, I would power up the 98% IV one as I like good IV mons and I never have enough 3000+ CP pokemons to put in the back of gyms. I already have a good squad of attackers. It depends a bit on how much you like putting mons in gyms for the long haul vs. just smashing gyms. Dragonite isn't a great defender, but its high CP puts it in the back of most gyms.
