New Gym Defense Tier List

The greatest defender in Pokemon GO is the same as it has been: Blissey. Even with the stat rebalance, the existence of Metagross, and the threat of multiple charge moves nothing is quite as potent as Blissey in Gym Defense.

Tier 2 Pokemon are the defensive elite. Their stats, resistances, and movepools allow them to handle most neutral threats and even punish their common counters. Their main drawback is that they need to have their motivation maintained to keep their performance which may be unreasonable for some.

Tier 2.5 Pokemon are not as potent as tier 2, but are arguably more practical to use due to their blended resistances or CP-range performance.

Tier 3 Pokemon are excellent gym defenders that would rate higher on a more generalized defender tier list but are ultimately held back due to their weakness to Machamp and lack of threat towards Metagross.

Tier 3.5 Pokemon are optimal at countering several top defenders, but fall flat against many others. If a gym has a glaring weakness to the Pokemon types they perform well against, it could be worth slotting them in.

This Tier List was formulated after the Fall Stat Rebalance and before the PvP teasers. Where the (slightly outdated) specific defender tier lists aim to highlight the best defenders for different defense strategies, this tier list rates which Pokemon are generally the best to invest in on defense. If you’re familiar with motivation decay ranges, you can easily pick out which defenders would excel under which specific strategies.

It is important to note that gym defense isn’t so important that you should be investing your last stardust into defense Pokemon. Golden Razz Berries will do more to stop attackers than most Pokemon will with their native stats. However, it is apart of our due diligence to keep players informed of the best defenders in Pokemon GO!

For the quantitative side of this model, simulations were performed using GoBattleSim with the 5 most relevant gym attackers in the game: Machamp, Metagross, Raikou, Rayquaza, and Shadow Ball Mewtwo. These simulations used level 40 and 2000 CP defenders against the aforementioned attackers at level 40, both with and without dodging specials. The initial rankings were based on these defenders sorted by their time to KO combined with their lethality.

Battle times were adjusted for unfavorable offensive matchups. Adjusted battle times were replaced with either Machamp or Metagross’s battle time plus 5 seconds. In the event the matchup was unfavorable for both Machamp and Metagross, the most appropriate attacker’s battle time was chosen plus 10 seconds. From here, rankings were re-sorted and a weight was given to Pokemon that performed better against Machamp and Metagross even with the adjusted rankings.

For the qualitative side of the model, defenders were further adjusted for their resistances, CP-range performance, and overall usefulness in practice. Spot simulations were also performed for some defenders against specific threats outside of the 5 selected attackers. In doing so, it was found that several specific qualities separated defenders not named “Blissey”: How practical they are, if they’re weak to Machamp or not, and if they only perform well in a handful of specific matchups. How important these qualities are is what then defined the tiers.

Overall, while it cannot be argued that Blissey is clearly Tier 1, most other defenders highlighted could be valued higher or lower than presented here. For example, Tier 2.5 Pokemon arguably have more practical applications than Tier 2 Pokemon despite being worse in performance overall. Tier 3 Pokemon defend very well against most Pokemon not named “Machamp” and Tier 4 Pokemon can perform as well if not better than Blissey in their favorable matchups.

Now that PvP is out, Pokemon can have two charge moves to pick from instead of just one. This is a huge advantage for some attackers and may give a slight edge to some defenders, but overall doesn’t affect these rankings much at all. It’s not that Heavy Slam won’t help Machamp overcome Fairy-type Pokemon, it’s that swapping to Metagross or another attacker will still be a better option. On top of that, most Pokemon don’t get attacks that help significantly with their poor matchups, and if they do, they’re often single bar Charge Moves. For example, Raikou, Zapdos, and Electivire’s movepool “expansion” doesn’t mean anything for them on gym offense.

For dedicated gym defenders, you will likely want to stick with one charge move. Reports indicate that charge move selection from gym defenders is random; therefore any niche advantage in giving Milotic both Surf and Blizzard (for example) could turn back on you as a disadvantage. In short, its a steep stardust investment with nebulous results. At best you'll make the attacker audibly state "Oh, they have two charge moves" as they proceed to knock you out of the gym, but most probably won't even notice. 

If gym defense adopted the new energy and damage boost system PvP appears to have, then things could change quite a lot. Removing animation time, and completely changing the damage and energy requirements for attacks would obviously alter what's good by a great deal. We’ll have to see what the future brings and update then!