Change in gym battle mechanics?
two bar defenders have been consistently firing off charge moves sooner. I used to be able to take down a Metagross, heavy slam Snorlax or play rough Slaking before they would fire a charge move. Now they fire it much earlier. Others noticed this?
Answers
Your need lower level attackers, that do less damage with a fast move, so the defender gains less energy from damage done, prior to you getting off your charge moves.
I say this partly as a joke...but unfortunately, it is accurate in many match ups.
Maybe we need 'defender energy gain' calculators to work in conjunction with break point calculators
My point is that a higher break point met for a fast move, in some cases will be enough to give the defender enough additional energy to fire off their charge move, before you KO with your own charge move (not always, but in some cases)
With a lesser break point, the defenders energy gain is less prior to the attacker using a charge move...and could mean the difference between the defender getting off a charge move or not.
There are more variables at play than simply "faster attacker dps on paper means less charge moves for defenders"
First off, there's a significant amount of RNG in how defenders use charge moves. They only fire about 50% of the time they have the energy for it.
You have been battling some very low motivation MM Metagross, HS Snorlax and PR Slaking if you were defeating them before the charge move most of the time, my experience with these defenders is totally different. Previously a full motivation Slaking would generally fire 2 PR, Snorlax would do 3 HS and Metagross would almost always get at least 1 MM off.
Things have definitely changed. Unfortunately for you, you may have just been on the wrong side of RNG consistently before
Slakings used to be a beacon for attacking a gym. Seeing them around 4000cp would make me have to attack it because it would almost never get off a play rough before my Machamp could KO it with 2 dynamic punches. I wouldn’t fire them till it was almost half way defeated, then I’d hit it.
Definitely on the second round it would never get off a play rough. Now it fires them way earlier
Slaking generates 50 energy way before you reach 100 energy with an attacking Machamp. It's *should be* very unlikely that you can consistently get full 2 bars before a PR comes out, sometimes you can't even do the first DP right away safely without Slaking slapping you with a PR during the DP cooldown. If one of us has been experiencing extremely anomalous RNG, it's definitely you, based on what's the current theory on defender AI at the moment. Maybe you're mixing in some memories of EQ/HB Slakings in there?
