How Niantic Saved Dragonite
With gen IV coming, and given the trend of pseudo legendaries getting event moves, (and meteor mash was added to the game master a while back) I think its likely that trend will continue for bagon and beldum, and eventually for gible. That as well as Garchomp having near identical attack to dragonite but more bulk and salamence eclipsing dragonite's DPS, how could dragonite still remain a contender?
Simple, raids. Now that dratini's a raid boss, it gives players a much more reliable way of getting Dragonite and its candy, as opposed to bagon and likely gible that will be very hard to get candy for (needing to hatch, release, trade of buddy, or gym berry/RC). YEs eventually Dragonite will be outclassed by Garchomp and Salemence (however this does assume they are given the same moveset as dragonite) but the raids extended Dragonite's lifespan, its ability to be gotten via raids now makes it a much more viable option to hold on to those good bagon and again gible for their Community days as well as being used in the intervening time that it takes to power them up to raid worthy levels (and speaking as someone who's got a squad of 6 SD tyrantiar, I can attest that even buddying and raiding the consistently, I have yet to make a dent in powering them up). That is also assuming those 2 get the best possible moveset (but given niantic's recent outclassing of previous best attackers, this is seaming more possible) but its not like dragonite will loose its top shelf neutral DPS, there is a reason its viable in mewtwo raids even with neutral damage
I'm glad that they did add dratini as a raid boss, mostly because I hope it will still remain relevant, as well as opening the possibility for the other pseudo legendaries to become raids (aside from larvitar because we have tyrantar)
Answers
I mean for newer players. I know veterans have tons of them, heck I have a friend who traded out probably 20 junk ones last night alone, but for newer players theres a reason to use dragonite over the others for the time being, until it is ultimately outclassed, but at least dragonite's still going to be a great defender.
Two maxed out Dragonites, 98% and 96%, another fair one (caught wild at level 30) and two lower level ones not powered up. Currently 273 Dragonite candy, no strong need to get more.
For Bagon, I have 250 candy, but still no Salamance, because I don't have a good Bagon yet. Well, not good enough to be powered up to my only Salamance. I suspect I'll wait until Bagon CD, catch everything I can, and then just trade Bagons for Bagons with someone else until we get a lucky trade, and then power that one up. Of course, if the exclusive move is the bomb, then I'll have to play it differently, but trading is how I figure I'll get my Draco Meteor Salamance.
It's really Rayquaza that knocked Dragonite out of the top tier. A bit less TDO for a bit more DPS is always a good trade for raiding pokemon. Sure, it needs RC, but Rayquaza is one of the big 4 (as of now) that it's worth spending RC on. The Gen4 dragons will take another bite from Dragonite's prestige, unless they have crap movesets.
The only reason I have Salamence is that I hatched several during double candy events. I have been lucky enough to catch 2 wild bagon and 3 wild beldum. One Beldum was 91iv at lvl 26. The rest were bad. For anyone who has them...Dragonite will always be good and useable. I am sitting on 257 candy waiting to see if I get a good dratini to evolve.
There's a common misconception around newer, stronger Pokemon making older kings of their type "non-meta" or "irrelevant." Being displaced as the king of a certain type doesn't necessarily make any species unusable or irrelevant. This only happens when that species or type was already weak or irrelevant, to begin with, like Bugs since always or Fighting types before C/DP Machamp.
No newer dragon, however strong it may be, is gonna make Dragonite go away. Perhaps not a priority for use of dust, but those that already have teams of maxed Dragonite will continue to have a use for them, especially legacy ones which are much better gym sweepers than current DT/OR ones.
With its stellar stats and great generalist coverage, Dragonite will forever keep being at the top of the meta simply because it is just that powerful. It doesn't face a Jolteon-Raikou or Golem-Tyranitar fate. Obsolescence will never be a problem for it.
But yes, making it a raidable option is gonna keep it "on the radar" for a longer time if they let it stay after the Kantoccupation event part 3 is over and they make it a regular boss.
