Just curious what people are waiting to evolve because of a possible CD/exclusive move?
Also, how safe do you think it is for me to evolve my Rhyperior, Swampert, Aggron, Salamence, Altria, Empoleon, Slaking, and Gardevoir/Gallade? Would you hold off on any of these specifically?
I assume Swampert, Empoleon and Salamence, as starters/pseudo-legendary, are CDay-guaranteed.
Also, Gardevoir/Gallade are likely to have theirs, and maybe Slaking too. Who knows.
Altaria and Aggron meh, shiny is already available
The point is: if you have FOMO, then don't evolve anything unless it's something you really NEED in the immediate future.
Yeah I get how hardcore people do it. In my area we take whoever we can get and a lot of times that means people are using recommended parties. We are very rural and have to pull people from all around. No one has multiple accounts. If someone has an optimal counter it is usually just one, maybe two, never a whole party. But we have fun. Sometimes we want to learn things so we ask questions here. I thought that is what this site is for. It seems to me the people who already know everything wouldn't need this site, except to possibly stroke their own egos by bragging about how good they are...
I see need as "If we raid [X legendary] with a suboptimal amount of people (in Palkia's case I'd say 3 or fewer) will my team give a meaningful contribution or will I be dead weight?" I was planning to wait for better Rhyhorn before evolving them into Rhyperior - when Heatran dropped I evolved two L35 Rhyhorn immediately, and with them was able to secure 2-man wins. That was a need for me.
"Certain number of trainers" can be very misleading - it assumes a majority of them have counters up to a certain level of efficiency. Depending on how well you know your raid scene this isn't always the case. Using Heatran again, I once did a 4-man raid as the only Mystic among a group of Valor and nearly outdamaged all three of them combined based on the team contribution graph. If I didn't have those Rhyperior that raid and my previous 2-man raids would have ended in failure. Need varies from person to person. If you can win meaningfully against a given raid boss without evolving whatever you're considering then you don't need it immediately.
What kind of nonsense is that? Almost irrelevant what mons you bring to the table?
I can duo any Palkia at will with a similarly powered level 40, with 12 maxed dragons on each end.
Similarly I've been in the spot where I hard carried (no way they could've won without me) another 6 people using groudon and co. to beat Palkia.
It's exactly the mons you bring to the table that changes the number of trainers needed to beat bosses
Holding off on evolving Pokémon is the single stupidest idea on this site... IF you need it evolve it... Its not like you aren’t ever going to catch another one... or I’m i the only person that catches multiple CD Pokémon? I caught 100 IV Bagon immediately evolved and maxed it out... Sure it might get a day and get a better move but in the meantime I have duoed or three manned Giratina and Palkia getting more ultra balls charged TMs and rare candy and legendary moms than I would have gotten without it... Its cleared and defended more gyms in windy weather and earned more coins than I can remember... So instead of having 5 high IV and hundo Salamence with CD moves I’ll just have to suffer along 6 high IV ones after the event .. I get it if it’s a bedlum type of situation where a Pokémon goes from being complete trash to best of its type but seriously EVERYONE knew that Meteor Mash was coming and that it mostly likely going to be good
Key words here are the "if you need it" part. Evolving just for the sake of filling the Dex is actually THE single stupidest idea anyone could embark on in this game. Granted, not all species fir the criteria of being worth holding on to in case they become better in the future, but I'd be hard-pressed to believe anyone needed a Salamance with the inferior moveset that it got when there were Dragonite and Rayquaza (and to some extent Latios) prancing all over at the time, unless you were a relatively new player. In this case, I am afraid you screwed up and would have gotten the same use out of evolving a high-level, not-so-great-IVs bagon rather than choosing to evolve the hundo. Unlike non-MM Metagross, Salamance is serviceable, but nowhere near its true potential if it had gotten a moveset better suited to its relative fragility when compared to the OG dragon. I mean, even now against Palkia, I'd be surprised if you could actually justify to yourself to choose that poor beast over the dozens of other better-armed dragons you should have by now after d'nite's CD. You are a walking contradiction, sir.
Dex completion is a high priority for many players. Having a different playstyle than you doesn't make them stupid, it just means they value things differently.
As for a actual use cases of Salamence pre-CD, I maxed one for collection and bragging rights and a second one for pokedraft to save TMs, all of which I think are legit use cases for anyone interested in them. I don't feel the slightest bit of regret about it as I still have plenty of good ones saved for the CD.
Totally agree. I'm not into it, but LOTS of people prioritize dex completion. Not everyone can be a "hardcore" player. I don't even consider myself hardcore. It just sucks when you use this site to try to learn something and get flamed by all these people who apparently have infinite number of perfect Dragons.
The point is we don't have an infinite number of perfect dragons, that's precisely why many of us are so against this practice. It's not like we don't want to fill out the Dex as well, you are completely misunderstanding a very simple point, but you can't argue that in some cases it is more beneficial to just wait up with especially good specimens rather than just act out of impatience. Impatience is not a playstyle, it's an attitude that continuously screws up people in the long term. With Dragonite and Rayquaza around, Salamence could have never had become a priority for anyone. Seriously, how, is that justifiable? And maxing one, even! I can't brag about my perfect non-BB Charizard cause I screwed him over thanks to Niantic.
And maybe Salamence will never have a CD and I'll spend the rest of the game's life without that entry on my Dex because any moveset I could get would be absolutely inferior to everything I already have. But way before that point, I will probably have a big-enough surplus of bagon candy in stock and I'll just evolve a high-level one and move on to the next actually-useful thing.
I don't understand the hate against dex-filling in a game that's made for COLLECTING. Sure, if you are just above average casual short on starters candy, maybe it would be wise to hold on to the CD for optimizing your resources with regards to your gameplay time. If you're like me, swimming on any starter and pseudo-legendary candy, I feel legit to evolve whatever and have zero regrets about it. Who knows, maybe you miss out on potential legacy moves, actually.
Besides all that - I found plenty of use with my not even perfect Salamence. Believe it or not, Draco Meteor is a fantastic DPS move when you can fire off a few, which is not that difficult when you have some practice dodging and Salamence resists the charged move.
The game is not made for collecting. The game is not made for anything, in fact; its goals and activities are all over the place.
I don't get what's so hard to understand, if you had followed the conversation you wouldn't have missed the fact that a maxed non-CD perfect Salamence was the talking point of discussion and critique from me. Sure, you can have over 2k candies on mostly anything like I do (30,000+ on geodude candy is my max, just to give you a clue on my numbers) and have no regrets spending said candies for the sake of it, but when it comes to arbitrarily-nerfed,but potentially meta-dominant species like Salamence (all current sets inarguably inferior to Dragonite and Ray) or pre-CD Metagross, evolving your best ones just for the sake of registering them will probably come back to bite you in the ass someday, especially on the rarest ones (again, maybe not your case but definitely the standard for the max majority of players).
Your crappy Salamence is fine, as long as you know it has no chance of doing anything against other dragon raid bosses with dragon moves, while the rest of its competition are guaranteed to fire a charge move before getting OH-KO'd. Why? Oh you know why, I have no more time explain this again. Either you get it or you don't at this point.
I'm holding off on Lucario because he has no use to me with his current moveset. He'll be fun with Aura Sphere. I also evolved one PorygonZ and but saving my best Porygon in case it gets a Community Day with better moves.
To not dodge your question:
Rhyperior - Better than average chance at a community day. I evolved a good Rhydon into Rhyperior to duo Heatran with a friend but I'm saving my great ones for a possible Community Day. Don't evolve any yet because you probably don't need it anytime soon.
Swampert - Guaranteed a community day. Won't be better than Kyogre. Evolve one for the dex entry, save some for Community Day because it should be great for PVP.
Aggron - No chance of a Community day. Evolve if you want, it doesn't matter.
Salamence - Guaranteed a community day. There are so many better dragons and no move will make it the best, so evolve if you want or wait until Community Day. No loss either way.
Altaria - No chance of a Community day. Amazing in Great League PVP. Evolve whatever you want.
Empoleon - Guaranteed a community day. Won't be better than Kyogre or as good as Swampert. It'll be a water type that doesn't resist fire, so that sucks. Evolve whatever you want.
Slaking - Better than average chance at a community day. Save your best ones in case it gets a damage dealing charged move. No reason to evolve now except for dex entry.
Gardevoir/Gallade - Almost guaranteed a community day. Save your best Ralts unless you really need a Gardevoir for Palkia with Draco Meteor raids.
Don't assume Salamence will get a dragon move on its likely CD, with so much competition on that front it could be possible that they decide to give it a flying move or totally surprise us with something seemingly random. Also, I wouldn't say that neither Aggron nor Altaira have a chance at a CD after Eevee got one. Just because they have already released their shinies doesn't mean can't qualify, that is just speculation. Still, I don't think it would matter much for neither of them if they did.
Totally agreed. Any Pokémon that "has no chance to get a Community Day" could still easily be handled as Gengar (exclusive raid day paired with shiny) or Breloom (exclusive event perk, independent of shiny) have been.
At this point, the only Pok´émon that I hold as being safe from exclusive moves, are those that were already given exclusive moves. Hopefully Niantic at least has the decency to not double-dip.
Aside from the ones already mentioned in this thread, I'm waiting to evolve my hundo and lucky Magby. This one's a bit of a long shot considering it already has it's shiny released, but unlike it's counterpart Electivre, Magmortar doesn't have the best possible moveset that it can have.
It's got Fire Blast for a charge move whereas something like Overheat would make it amazing since it has some really good stats.
The thing with both Electivire and Magmortar is that their base forms are babies and those do not appear in the wild just yet, so a CD for them would not only go against known protocol but would also need to implement a change in their availability that I believe Niantic would rather stay away from.
For anything, if you have plenty of candy and you want the dex entry or need the pokemon for some actual use, you could evolve a high level low IV specimen for now. That's what I've done with a lot of pokemon like Swampert.
Safe:
Aggron, Altaria. Already have shinies, not much potential for better moves.
Debatable:
Salamence. High chance of not getting a meta-breaking dragon move. Then again, what would you need it for that Dragonite doesn't do better?
Rhyperior. Not guaranteed to get a CD. It's ok as a rock and ground attacker, a future CD can't outclass both uses. Then again it's not the best at anything currently, I don't see much use for one.
Gardevoir/Gallade: Neither is that useful outside of being good at fighting Machamp raids. Then again, not a guaranteed CD pokemon.
Slaking. Not guaranteed a CD. It's also unknown whether Niantic would be okay with giving it a good fast move. Then again it's useless even if you do evolve it.
Unsafe:
Swampert, Empoleon. 100% certain CDs incoming.
Personally I'm holding extras of all of these because why not, I don't need more of any of them.
