Gym defenders advices

Hey there,

Yeah seems like in the US its full of dragonites everywhere and they all seem the be on top of every gym. Executors, Snorlax and Dragonite have very high CPS, and they tend to fill the first 6 slots of any gym. Then you have mid tier like Arcanines and Vaporeons that take the bottom half that is why CP is important. Also being the bottom slot will guarantee a boot from the gym. If where ever you live do not have these high CP pokemon around, then you got a chance. A very big city will guarantee 99% that dragonites fill up the gyms.

I am level 31 and seems that where I live most are around my level, but have way overpowered dragonites everywhere.

I agree. I live in a small city with about 12 gyms and being level 32, I'm usually at the top of the gym no matter what I put in there. Most common Pokémon here in gyms are Vaporeon, Hypno and Snorlax. Most of the Snorlaxes are at around 2000 CP. To be honest, I don't even remember a day when I wasn't the gym leader. I wouldn't worry about that too much, even though some people seem obsessed with it.

I have Vaporeon with Hydropump CP 2434 (100% Iv and max Level Pokemon for me in that time) and place in Lowest Level in Gym, and then Kick Out and replace by Dragonite 2800s CP
I think they come with other team ID and kick out Lowest member, and join in
at last there only Dragonite Lapras and Snorlax in that's Gym. and be too easy to down
.. ...

I live in a city with 2 gyms. Actually its impossible to keep a gym for 1 day even if you put 10 Laprases 2500+ in there.

I think this really depends on location and where you play, how many dedicated/hard core players spread among teams you have, etc...In my area, most gyms are now 2200+ for the lowest slots alone.

Ultimately, unless you play with a group, soloing any lvl 10 gym, even though very easy still wastes your time and resources (potions mostly...since you can change mons before fainting). For the rewards of a few hundred exp, people just find an easier target for their daily coins so the stagnation you see complained about is the time/effort spent isn't about whether something is hard, it's just worth the rewards/exp. I took down a lvl 8 solo with 3000 cp dragonites, 2500+ snorlaxes, etc...but burned through like 40 potions...(lvl 23 player with mostly weak mons). Won't be doing that again really...

If your town is heavily contested among the teams with gyms changing daily, that's great really...I am hoping Niantic changes the prestiging back to before where there were less lvl 10 gyms honestly.

I am in a gym in NYC. Back when I was level 30, I maxed out a 98% IV Dragonite and put it in the gym, a few weeks later and I'm still there (which is a miracle) and too many times the last pokemon gets booted, but because it is such a strong gym, anytime a spot is available someone will see it and quickly run to get the spot. My Dragonite is CP 3068 and that only gets me 4th from the bottom! The currently second highest pokemon CP in the game is Snorlax, but it doesn't reach CP >3000 until one is level 36. So unless you're level 36+, you need a Dragonite (and one with good stats at that) to get any spot that's not the bottom. Taking down a L10 gym is time consuming and resource intensive in many cases that's enough of a deterrent. So many people will come and knock it down a notch or two but really that gives it the opportunity to become stronger, which is why I consider it so important to completely take down a L10 unless you want it to be built back up even stronger. But anyway, back to the point, in an area like NYC, CP is pretty much everything, I imagine it is pretty nice to play in an area where that is not the case.

I live a little outside of Toronto (Canada).

When the game first came out (and for like 2 months or so) it was really popular. Few gyms ever made it to level 10 (unless they were trained in the middle of the night) and no gym lasted over 24 hours. It didn't matter - there were enough groups that they'd team up and take down level 10 gyms on sight.

Now, the game has lost a lot of popularity. The big thing is that even if most people still play, it isn't a widespread phenomenon anymore so people don't play super publicly. Which means finding people to join up and take down a level 10 gym together is tough, while taking one down solo is a huge waste.

So level 10 gyms are highly sought after because they last - often for weeks. The few "hot gyms" still get taken down every couple hours even if they make it to 10 (e.g. right at a subway stop strangers will work together) but otherwise people will train up higher level gyms because it'll likely last.

So - there's a gym immediately outside my house. It was level 10 red (my team) for several weeks. It then eventually got taken by blue and trained up to 10 one weekend while I was away. I went out the next weekend and took it back (basically trying to establish I wouldn't let the gym go for long so it wouldn't be worthwhile). After several days of low level back-and-forths it eventually went back to 10 red. Then a couple weeks later Yellow took it to 10 overnight. I haven't attacked it since. Why? Because the first time I took it from 10 blue, my girlfriend and I put our strongest pokemon in it each time we trained it up. She's a bit lower and her pokemon was booted out the day the gym hit 10 - allied red players used an alternate account to replace the lower pokemon with theirs. Mine was #1 in the level 10 gym initially, and when Yellow took it a couple weeks later I was sitting at #10. So tell me - why would I spend an hour of my time and a load of resource to take down an enemy gym with my girlfriend if she's not going to get anything and I'm going to eventually get kicked out. On top of that my allies who prestiged the gym also will get limited rewards. The "faux-allies" who use an alt-account to steal spots will reap the rewards for the majority of the time despite no effort. I'm not going to go through all of the work to reward other players who are cheating (it's against the ToS to have multiple accounts). So even though we could take down a level 10 gym we don't bother to touch it... and then people are surprised that level 10 gyms last so long. Of course they last, it's simply not worthwhile to attack them when your own teammates are going to rob you of your rewards.

You basically need a high level Dragonite to stay in a gym. If your pokemon is under 2400 in my area you will be booted out eventually. Your area may not have the problem yet, but it will almost definitely happen eventually if the game doesn't change. It's the "balance" of this game - once people aren't playing as much it will go in that direction.

Can't add so much to the discussion... It depends: low traffic areas and a single team prevailing over the others tend to create long lasting T10 gyms.
High traffic-single team areas have 2.5K+ CP gyms.
Where teams are well balanced long lasting T10 gyms are rare.

I'm concerned since we will see increasingly more often T10 dragonites gyms that can flatten the gameplay, unless Niantic would ASAP realase gen II Pokémon...

My area has too many gyms, usually not level 10. All high level players though(25--32). CP does not matter majority of time. Exeggutors are dominant Pokemon.