Anyone Use this Gym Attacking Strategy?
I came across an enemy Level 3 gym yesterday with 6,000 prestige. Top spot was a 2850 Blissey, second was a 2675 Blissey, and the bottom spot was a 40 Weedle.
The "traditional" way of attacking would be to run through the gym once, and beat all three pokes, lowering the prestige to 2000. This isn't ideal, obviously, as it involves beating both Blisseys twice. After the first completion, the gym's prestige will drop to 2000, but the top two spots will remain in there.
What I ended up doing was quickly defeating the Weedle, then backing out. This lowered the prestige to 5,000. I then beat the Weedle again and ran away, and the prestige dropped to 4,000. At this point, the Weedle and two Blisseys all remained and I ran through the three of them (the Blisseys were tough), and the gym was defeated.
Basically, avoid the top spots as long as possible while easily beating the weak pokes first and then running. In this scenario with two Blisseys, it definitely saved me time and potions.
Answers
Yes, concentrate on the weak pokemon to knock down an opposing gym.
This also works if Blissey is at the "bottom". For example, let's suppose we have:
Blissey (bottom)
Vaporeon
Gyrados
Rhydon
Blissey
Snorlax
Blissey
In this case, you should "get past" the Blissey at the bottom, whomp the relatively easy vape, gyrados, and rhydon, then run. 4000 prestige down. Repeat until there is nothing but the top Blissey/Snorlax remaining.
The same priciple can be applied when you have Blissey mid way through the gym.
Stop at her, until the mon just below her is nearly kicked out - then make a full pass through the gym (if possible), and then you can put her in a vulnerable position, or even remove her completely, depending on her position without needing to take her on many times.
It isn't always the best option to go from top to bottom.
Another trick...with a level 10 gym, I only attack the first mon and leave. This instantly drops the gym to only 9 defenders, and means a top to bottom pass is much more likely next time through, to gain the bonus for going all the way through the gym.
It's a very useful strategy. I do this pretty often, especially if it doesn't change the number of battles I have to do. A couple of times though, I've experienced people prestiging the gym while I attack, leaving the gym at 600 prestige when I expected it to be ded.
I also took down a gym on my own with 3x 3200CP ZH/BS Snorlax at the top one time, and avoided the Snorlaxes until the gym fell below lvl 6. It probably took longer than it would have done to defeat them every time, but let me run trough the rest of the gym with only one Dragonite, which saved time both on healing and putting together the attack squad.
