Any reason to keep gardevoir?
With meteor mash metagross being as fantastic of a generalist and gym clearer as it is, and gardevoir's whole thing was being a speed bump for machamp and dragons. Is gardegvoir even worth powering up?
Answers
Gardevoir is worth powering up as an alternate Attacker for the Gen 4 Dragons.
It's still pretty good as a Gym Defender, but when it comes to Gym Defense, the only "good" Gym Defender is a Blissey and a Golden Razzberry. Everything else is just a speedbump - with Metor Mash Metagross, it just means there are different speed bumps along the way now.
Just because Metagross will counter Gardevoir doesn’t mean that Gardevoir suddenly can’t do its job effectively. It walls fighting and dragon type attackers which are still the most common attacking types. Metagross can function as a slower but more potion efficient counter to Blissey and the like, but people will still use Machamp because Machamp is the fastest.
Gardevoir also can serve as a decent fairy attacker in upcoming dragon raids, and at the end of the day this is a game. People power up and evolve what they like. I have a friend who just maxes out their favorite Pokémon and use those in raids, because who really cares?
Gardevoir's gimpd heavily by confusion, It works on mewtwo, but with a fast move that isnt energy friendly like confusion, it cant do much against the dragons (for note a Steelwing dragonite with draco meteor does more DPS than Confusion/DG gardevoir v palkia)
Palkia also had dragon breath and draco meteor, dragon breath's a bad fast move on defense and draco meteor is a one bar, its other charge moves are hydropump and fire blast, both of which other dragons resist.
Gardevoir has many roles.
Gym defence: She is weaker than before, but not by that much, partly because Meteor Mash was only available for three hours.
Gym offence: Although bulky, she will face significant competition from the faster Mamoswine.
Machamp solos: Still a great choice. Togekiss has lower attack. For this, Metagross wants ZH/Ps (and is only better for not wiping out against HS).
Raiding dragons: DPS matters more and thus using other dragons would be advisable. However, she can round up a team, especially if there is a need to avoid wiping out.
The bit about Metagross in Machamp solos isn't actually true. Despite a lack of SE damage Meteor Mash is still the superior move. Whether that's attributed to how bad of a move Psychic is or how broken Meteor Mash is is up to you.
Gardevoir is still faster than it against Machamp. They both can pretty much be swapped depending on if Machamp has a fighting charge move or a steel one.
As others have said, just because something has a counter doesn't make it suddenly useless. Machamp counters Blissey, Chansey, Snorlax and Slaking, but we still see plenty of those.
Gardevoir is still a great counter for fighting and dragon types. You can of course also use it as a source of some extra Ralts candy by feeding it berries.
We only see Slaking that much because many players who don't know any better think it's good due to the high CP. It's a pretty bad defender because everybody is bringing its optimal counter anyway and it's not particularly bulky if you compare to putting in something like Vaporeon or Milotic that isn't weak to Machamp.
