Psychic Attackers
As a trainer who prefers walking/exploring to standing in one place waiting for other people to show up, I rarely raid. And when I do it's usually solo. That being said, I doubt I'll ever get a Mewtwo or Lugia. I would still like a DPS oriented Psychic attacker to work as a gym-attacking generalist and occasional raid attacker (most likely against Machamp since I still need a quality one). Is Alakazam or Espeon better for this purpose? I don't have any elite Alakazams, but I have a lv 20 Espeon (15Atk/13Def/15Stam) with C/FS. I'm lv 37 with 750K stardust, zero rare candies, and 800+ Eevee candies. Also, for reference my current best team for attacking a Machamp is probably 2 Dragonites, 2 Eggys, SC/SB Gengar, and C/A Jynx. Should I power up my Espeon, wait for a good Alakazam, or just sit on my hands until Gen 3 or some other meta shift delivers me a better Psychic option?
Answers
They're both great, so with such a nice Espeon I think you're safe to power it up :) As for psychic types in gen 3, Deoxys might end up being the strongest psychic type. But he's a mythical pokemon (like celebi), so it's likely he won't be released until the very end, or even after, gen 3. He also might end up being too much of a glass cannon.
C/FS Zam is highest DPS psychic in the game. But C/FS Espeon still hits Machamp and Gengar like a truck. They can usually only take one direct hit and survive, but with some crafty dodging they can get off 3-4 FS and really do some damage. I like the extra beef that Espeon has over Zam (even if it's minimal compare to other mons) despite the slightly lower DPS. I usually find Espeon can get off an extra charge move comparatively, so it can make up for the marginally lower DPS.
In gym: espeon.
Raids: both,
Alakazam has a noticeable lower stamina but a slightly higher DPS-rate. Either way you have great DPS rates in both cases.
I prefer Zam, usually 1-3 of my glass cannons gets a perfect game (dodging all charge moves) and only spending time dodging 1-2 on each charge move; that feeling when Zams actually stays in long time and wrecks machamp/gengar.
That's a very valid question which I have also been pondering. Besides the well-known fact that Espeon is bulkier and its candies more readily available while Alakazam hits harder, I ultimately decided powering up Alakazam over Espeon on account of the quick moves.
Not being a brilliant dodger, I knew from the start that I would not want confusion on either one after my disappointing experiences with confusion exeguttors in Machamp raids.
Thanks to my exeguttors, I also had experience with zen headbutt in Machamp raids. I found it works for me, but not as reliably as I would like. This is why I ultimately decided to power up two Alakazams with psycut over my ZH Espeon.
So far I have not been disappointed with my choice, but to be fair I have no comparison to Espeon as a consequence of my decision. Still, if you are on the fence and are not going for confusion as qm, maybe you too should focus on which of the remaining qms you prefer. I am sure both Espeon and Alakazam are great, but ultimately it is also a question of which one suits your personal preferences better.
PC has Around 1,0-3,5% lower DPS against machamp and gengar and is in a few cases even better than C. Wouldn't bother TMing.
In this experiment we have 6 pokemons that average 1/6 of the boss HP on 30s each: the whole team will take it down in 180s.
What happens if we change one pokemon to a lvl 35 alakazam
Each zam roughly shaves 8s from averaging 180s/timing out: Each zam you put in your team above: you will decrease the time to win with 8s
A 3% increase of DPS will and you shave another 0,2s. I.e. So with 6 Zams the total gain would be that the boss goes down 1s faster. That has no real effect.
I usually start thinking about TMs around a 10-15% increase of DPS.
