Battle Blisseys and a team of tanks
For me, the biggest limitation in the game is potions and/or revives. There is also no coordination among my team, which makes me a one-man wrecking crew a lot of the time and a large amount of my resources go to prestiging friendly gyms. I also believe it is important to keep other teams rebuilding, so they don’t have the resources to attack your team.
Normally time is a big factor, but lately I just cannot get enough potions to do anything. I went to the Mall of America, which spawns a lot of pokemon, I caught pokemon constantly, and still filled my bag up with a stupid amount of pokeballs. It was so bad I was tossing normal pokeballs by the dozens. I piled up about 600 pokeballs (all types combined) and was barely able to get 40 super/hyper potions. Luckily, I was able to bank 50-60 revives. With a rival team taking down 4 of our towers, I thought it was time to test out low potion gym wrecking.
What I attempted to do was assemble the tankiest team possible, with the fire power to get the job done. I would like to note that a lot of my tankiest pokemon are in gyms, but this is the team I ended up assembling…
Blissey-2816 cp zh/dg
Blissey-2669 cp p/dg
Vaporeon-2563 cp wg/at
Vaporeon-2645 cp wg/hp
Exeggutor-2575 cp es/SoB
Muk-2460 cp pj/sw
Rhydon-2881 cp ms/se
On a few occasions I used-
Dragonite-3047 cp dt/o
Venusaur-2200 cp vw/pb
Golem-2422 cp rt/se
The Blisseys-They are the stars of the team and far more efficient than one might expect. They key to using the Blisseys is NOT dodging because the damage you take translates into energy. The higher the damage pokemon, the quicker Blissey takes them down. DT Dragonites are easy pickings for DG Blisseys. With no dodging (maybe an occasional hp), a Blissey can easily take down 3-4 pokemon. With the energy gained through damage taken, timing out is not a problem vs most pokemon. Gyarados is no problem for her and I believe she is fine with Vaporeon as well. Snorlax and other Blisseys are the only thing that really get in her way, but I will address them in a bit. Blissey is great if you are trying to be either revive or potion efficient, because if she manages to faint, you are just being careless. Because I was good on revives, I let her faint on purpose. This method turned out to be extremely potion efficient, as Blisseys at half health could still take out 2 pokemon. Because of that, I used my Blisseys at half health for most of the battle.
My other options were to support my Blisseys. My Exeggutor and Muk were my fire power, each capable of dispatching a Blissey on their own (Muk needs a little help against really high level ones.) Muk also doubled as my main generalist attacker, as his attacks are not resisted by many pokemon. Muk is resisted and hit SE by Rhydon, so that is where my Vaporeons come in, in addition to them being able to deal with anything from Snorlax to another Vaporeon. Rhydon was used against Snorlax and Gyarados, as SE is SE, just be careful of those with hydro pump.
The time it actually takes to take down a gym is what is surprising…it isn’t any longer than it normally takes, if not faster. They key is awareness. You want to start by taking out the first pokemon (or 2 if at 52,000) and then running from the battle. After that, the key is making it though the entire gym. The first couple of rounds is the only time you should really need to use potions, as it is extremely important to make it through the entire gym to get that bonus.
Once the gym is knocked down a few levels, potions should really not be needed (unless you are short on revives and switch them out. It depends on what method you are going for.) Muk, Vaporeon, Exeggutor, and Rhydon should be capable of taking out nearly any pokemon at half health, so that left me with this…
At half health (meaning only a revive is required)-
Blissey-2 pokemon
Blissey-2 pokemon
Muk-1 pokemon
Exeggutor-1 pokemon
Rhydon-1 pokemon
Vaporeon-1-2 pokemon
This is what I did for most of the battles, until the end when I pulled in Dragonite or Venusaur to end it just a little bit quicker when I had some margin for error.
The time it takes me to take down a level 10 gym is about 45 minutes, which isn’t bad for a bunch of tanks. I didn’t write down the exact numbers, but the potion usage was very low, 10-15 for 2 level 10 gyms. I think the revive rate was around 30 for the 2 gyms. Either way, it is far more efficient than trying to use higher damage pokemon with type advantages.
I just wanted to share this to give others ideas if you happen to be low on resources like myself.
Answers
I agree with your points. I love my Lick/HB panda as an attacker. Most people swear by 'glass attackers' are the most potion efficient but fail to realise how easy they are to take out in the first place. I suppose you can make a case for the yellow and purple potions, as they are more suited for the glass cannons. Snorlax and Blissey and Wobbuffet are the 'best' candidates for a max potion as they actually need them to heal properly. So while it depends on potion type (and the amount of stock you have), the fatter mons usually use the potions better.
Here's my personal team. I tend not to look so much into counters anymore:
DB/DC Dragonite
Lick/HB Snorlax
TS/TB Jolteon
Confusion/Solar Exeggutor
WG/HP Vaporeon
And finally B/HP Gyarados or B/OR or DT/HP (whatever fits) or +1 of Whatever else I need.
However being in a more privileged position than you (with regards to potion access) I do tend to use a lot of my Glass cannon teams. Whenever my first 6 are wiped out and I cannot be bothered to heal them I go with something like this:
Gengar SC/Shadow Ball
Gengar SC/Sludge Bomb
Gengar SC/Sludge Bomb
Espeon ZH/FS
Flareon FS/OH
Alakazam PC/Psychic
It helps with my 'excess revive' situtation and also gives me an excuse to use my purple and yellow potions.
Gengar is quite good against dragonite. If you duel it all out with a DT/OR, you might be able to finish it before it even gets an OR out if you're lucky. The hurricane/HB defenders won't have time to charge the attack. Obviously the ice types are better, but it's easier to scroll down to 2236 for my Gengar than 2056 for my Cloyster.
Gengar is questionable against Snorlax Blissey but the neutral sludge bomb ones do make up for the loss in DPS for the NVE for main attack.
It also helps that this page ranked it as the fastest attacker into Vaporeon. But out of big 7 it's probably not good against Rhydon Tyranitar (unusable) Snorlax Blissey (not so optimal)
I have been saying this for a long time - how 'quick' Blissey is as part of the team should not be judged on individual fights, but on the bigger picture of dropping the gym as a whole.
Expect to have those that have never used Blissey in an attack line to come and tell you how wrong you are - based on the time of a single fight.
All in all...good story.
The gyms in my area turnover very quickly, so it is rare that I find one above L5, and even rarer that I'm able to hold more than 1 at a time. I usually avoid the super tanks because they are too slow and my squad below is good for most gyms:
1. Tyranitur 3401 with B/SE (very lucky to have evolved this beast on my first try)
2. Dragonite 3361 with DT/O
3. Eggy 2764 with C/SBeam
4. Machamp 2557 with KC/CC (legacy moves, working on powering up a new one)
5. Lapras 2423 with FB/B (dragon slayer)
6. One of Jolteon 2498, Cloyster 2339, Vaporeon (2925), Poliwrath 2296 with fighting moves, depending on the gym.
I believe they mean that you can battle with them in your line up, and at the end of the battle they may be half health.
Even then, they are a viable attacker to place in your attacking line up for the next pass, without healing them up, as their bulk is adequate for them to continue to take out more defenders, even though they are only half health.
It'd be nice if you used a stop watch to do an actual time required...Maybe your next few runs can be timed with an actual defender breakout/level?
I think it will be more than 45 minutes to tear down a moderately competent gym with a mix of say 2 Blisseys/2 Snorlax/2 Dragonites, mix of the rest...
Also, I don't think the gym all clear is as great as it's made out to be since the extra 1000 prestige may not be worth it time wise if you have to spend near 80 secs to take out a high level Blissey (3000+CP) when there are say lower CP garys or something that you can clean out in 15-20 seconds.
At times, you may end up doing the same number of fights without all clears as well so you can calculate it out I've noticed.
I did time my first attempt about a week ago with a slightly different team. I wrote down the gym make up and the cps, I will edit this post when I get my notebook out of my wife's car. My dry run took an hour on the dot, but that was with a good amount of time waiting for me to drift back into range of the gym. I remember it was a fairly formidable gym.
Edit: Here was the gym lineup.
2787 Rhydon
2841 Gyarados
3017 Vaporeon
3018 Dragonite
3023 Gyarados
3072 Vaporeon
3204 Dragonite
3233 Snorlax
3307 Dragonite
3328 Dragonite
Obviously the gym make-up makes a lot of difference and that will vary greatly by the area, or just by the gym. I can't pick and choose which pokemon are in a particular gym, I can only battle the ones around me. Rarely are gyms well put together, and this team would certainly struggle against more than 2 Blisseys, but then you just have to modify accordingly.
This is not as much of an argument for time, as potion efficiency. The point is that the time is not significantly different, but saves a lot on potions. Look at time as a whole...I hit pokestops for 3 hours and got 20 super/hyper potions. An extra 5, 10, or even 15 minutes is worth saving 10-15 potions for me.
This is a valuable post and after the Attacker List came out I tried using my 2800+CP P/HB and P/DG Blisseys as attackers. The results were ok and consistent with this report.... but the main limiting factor for me was that this worked only if the gyms did not hold more than 3 Blisseys.
In my gym scene however, usage of Blissey as a sweeping attacker is limited because most gyms are built up to levels 7-10 with the 10 stacked ones commonly holding 7 or more Blisseys. :( Sad and tough gym life over here for me.
