New Meta Speculation
So - given that CP will not affect gym placement, which Pokemon will be worth powering up for the new metagame? Which of the old Big 7 will lose their luster?
Speculate wildly in this thread, and use facts and stuff!
Answers
Doesn't this now shift the meta from individual Pokemon to Pokemon combinations though? Weak mons will still get kicked out faster - the longest-lasting gyms will probably have "ideal" combinations of Pokemon that make them harder to attack, or at least have the deterring effect that a bottom-level chain of Blisseys once did.
If you see a gym with a Blissey in it already, you'll probably want to put something in that can shred Machamps. So the meta is going to, in my opinion, be more combination-based.
Along those lines - what pairings or triples are effective together?
Actually have double weakness mons really taken a hit at all? Now more than ever being stuck with a weak direct counter has less use since there aren't multiple types of that mon in a gym. Raw damage will be more important for a defender since most middle of the road mons will just get trucked by Blissey.
I honestly don't think this changes much except there is zero need to invest in a defender from a powering up or hatching standpoint anymore.
Tyranitar for sure, every team will have at least one Fighter. Having T-Rex and Rhydon in the same gym would welcome a full team of Fighting or Water-types depending on other defenders, if there are Blissey and Snorlax as well they're bringing a full punching squad on themselves. And people will reroll their Machamps so punching can become even more efficient.
In terms of attacking, DPS and EPS may become more important, as well as attacking weaknesses. Again, not exactly news. For me, I'm gonna hoard stardust for a while (with the exception of powering up my Dragonite that's been stuck in a gym since March at level 29 while I've accumulated 60something candy for it).
Powering up mon beyond level 30 is probably rarely worth it anymore.
Gyarados and Rhydon only useful as attackers now.
Slowbro, Steelix, Lapras, etc. should be viable defenders.
Vaporeon still the best "basic" mon.
Blissey still the best defender. Chansey not bad either.
Dragonite still the best attacker.
But I guess we don't know whether they have changed the attack/damage formulas.
Prestigers seem useless.
Spoofers more at an advantage than ever before.
IV's not really important anymore as CP loses its importance. Stardust also less important for the same reason. Even movesets less important as tm's are introduced.
Overall I am not happy. This heavily encourages group play and I play solo. But I'll try to keep an open mind for now.
There is no throne for defenders. Place whatever you want it makes no difference. Of course how they act as defenders (if that gets changed) could affect what mons defend better.
In regards to attackers (based on very limited information) the attackers will be basically the same although for normal gyms generalists will have a better use than before. For the big boss battles super strong specialists will be very good.
There's definitely going to be a throne for defenders - I just think it'll be more combination-based than individual-based.
A tower full of Blisseys was a major deterrent in the past - are there any combinations of defenders that might have a similar chilling effect on potential attackers?
I get the point that most gyms will be solo-attackable, but with the increase in the number of gyms out there, some of them will be less attractive to attackers than others.
I don't think anything will change for one reason...people already have defenders. There is no incentive for me to power up a Nidoking or something like that because I already have a couple dozen pokemon to choose from. I don't think there are any pokemon that are superior to the big 7 with cp not as much of a factor.
I feel like this will hurt the people with a bunch of the same defender the most, but even then, as long as there isn't already one in the gyms, it doesn't matter.
I think the best defender will be Chansey...This is because the higher CP mons lose motivation faster and Chansey has low CP, but takes a frigging long time so they may have to battle a Chansey, say 6 times vs a Blissey, 2 times to lose all motivation...
The best attackers are the highest DPS types since you can actually leave a raid and rejoin it so you need max DPS.
https://support.pokemongo.nianticlabs.com/hc/en-us/articles/115009004747-Raid-Battles
"If you are not able to defeat the Boss in the battle, you may rejoin the raid and battle again. You won’t need to use another Raid Pass to rejoin; your pass will grant you access to the battle for the duration of the raid. You can join as many times as you’d like before the raid ends."
I'm not sure I necessarily agree with the Chansey being better than Blissey thing - we still don't know very many details about the mechanics of motivation (unless I've missed something).
It could be that motivation gets decreased more dramatically if you're attacking with a team of lower-CP mons (similar to prestiging) or it could be that higher-CP mons have more net motivation in their meter and are thus stickier and harder to remove.
I tried to find it, but I read that mons with higher starting CP will drop motivation a lot faster than mons with low starting CP so if you had a 400 CP shuckle, maybe you lose very little motivation compared to a 3000CP Dragonite, etc...
One way to allow ALL mons to participate in gym battles since it's 1st in, 1st attacked/out anyways...
Again, I agree we are all speculating at this point since we don't know the actual motivation drops per fight, but it's just a guess since Chansey can have 1/3 of Blissey's CP, but battles are CERTAINLY not 1/3 the time...
