Donphan questions
Is donphan ever worth powering up if so at what IV and which moveset?
Do you use donphan on attack. If so what moveset and to counter who?
Answers
True, maybe I shouldn't have replied in such few words. The ideal, for me, Donphan would be counter and HS. Good defensively and offensively. EQ takes to long, and I'd rather have PR defensively over EQ. If you could only have one Donphan, HS is a better middle ground. Put in a gym for defense, and have a good offensive appeal.
Ok so donphan has a respectable max cp of 3022 so depending on your area he can get decent placment for defence you want C/PR this is highest defensive dps moveset this might suprise pokemon like Blissey, Snorlax, Tyranitar, Dragonite, and Machamp also on offence you want C/EQ or C/PR or C/HS and all of these movesets are SE to tyranitar so in offence I would say his main use is a Tyranitar counter. Also as far as wich iv is the most important well that would be STA because that is his lowest stat at 180 then ATT at 214 is the next most important giving him a higher max cp the higher the attack iv is. By the way his ATT and DEF both are at 214.
If you really do not have a good vaporeon, gyarados, tyranitar, rhydon, blissey or snorlax, then Donphan does seem like the next best thing as a defender.
However, I won't power him up at his current stage with the quick moves tackle or counter. Counter+Earthquake (the best moveset) is an awkward moveset to synergise well. Not only do you lack STAB on counter, the only plausible situation in which you can synergise both the fighting move and ground move is versus a Rock type. Unless you have level 40 sudowoods in gyms, you can't really find that situation.
Lets hope they give him mud shot or even mud slap in the next update.
If it's true that there will be a limit to how many of the same Pokemons there can be in a gym is true, then a strong Donphan might become useful, as people will probably put in Blissey, Rhydon, Snorlax, Dragonite and such first.
I would probably wait with power up Pokemons until the gym rework is done.
Then we'll know for sure which Pokemons will be worth to power up.
Slightly off-topic, I've been looking at Bulbapedia and playing around with the spreadsheet data.
I wish Donphan had Mud Slap and Bulldoze instead of Tackle and Heavy Slam.
On offense, Mud Slap movesets and the same Counter movesets are pretty much tied, with Tackle about 8% behind. Mud Slap does a little extra damage, but counter would be a little easier to dodge with.
On defense though, Mud Slap movesets would do about 30% more damage than the same Counter movesets. And Mudslap movesets deal more than double the damage of same Tackle movesets.
Donphan has some bad moves. I sure hope at some point he gets a moveset overhaul. I think he looks so cool in gyms but I'm afraid to spend the remaining candies to evolve another just to get a terrible moveset. Candies are so rare.
Wondering if I should wait to see what happens with the gym re-work and maybe some pokemon will get some move adjustments.
