PvP - return of prestiging?
Reading through the speculation so far really reminds me of the old prestiging discussions, where a higher level but lower CP mon might be preferable - 0 att/0 def/15hp might reign supreme! Remember how we built teams at certain CP levels? This sure sounds the same... maybe my lowish level wigglies and vaporeons can see action again!
Answers
Will Last Resort have any value in PvP?
I spent probably 60% of my total effort this weekend IV and evolve-CP checking nearly every potential candidate to find suitable specimens for both 1500 and 2500CP PvP Leagues for all of the useful legacy moves (all except Pikachu and Eevee). The rest are either OP (starters + MM), excellent typing (Rock, Electric+Dragon), or Dragonite I'll look to evolve after the event (and you just don't find dratini at all).
I wrote Last resort off initially because it's normal type and can't be super effective into anything. So even if it's an OP move, not having STAB or Super Effective into any matchup should make it a losing pick?
However I hadn't planned to get Ampharos in my team until just a few minutes ago, when I realized his legacy move is actually insane for this. If others follow my strategy and have the same 6-team I was planning (yes I know spoilers indicate 3, but I'm still hopeful we choose the 3 out of 6...) then Ampharos destroys nearly the entire team.
He:
Resists Steel (beats Metagross)
Hits SE/Neutral into Water or Flying (beats Blastoise, Charizard)
Hits Neutral/SE into Dragon+Flying (beats Dragonite)
Hits Neutral into Rock+Dark (ties Tyranitar)
Is resisted by Grass (loses to Venusaur)
Probably loses to Typhlosion (both Neutral, but Typhlosion has stab on BB and BB is OP).
So, given that I nearly missed this beast - have I also missed something about one of the eeveelutions?
I strongly suspect that Last Resort will be just as useless in PvP as it is in gyms, raids, or whatever. Since the CP capped leagues take CP strength away as a variable, what's left is attack move strength, stat shape, and resistances. Last resort is a pretty weak attack, nothing is weak to normal, and you'd keep the resistances and weaknesses of the Eeveloution you end up in.
In short, almost certainly not.
It is often partly cloudy, these were some harmless evolves with candy I'll never use. It just seems kinda weird/dicy with only being able to choose 3 pokemon for your team. Gonna be a lot of trial and error and super effective won't be happening much of the time.
****After I typed this I realized weather doesn't seems like a viable function of what I am imagining/theorizing what PvP will be like
They have the same impact when def stat = hp stat.
If stats are severely skewed, increasing your lowest stat will increase your CP by more than increasing your higher stats.
This is why Gengar gets nearly the same CP out of attack stat as he does the other stats (because his ATK is so much higher than his other stats). So while 1 attack IV is usually worth double a def/stam IV, in Gengar's case it's worth almost the same.
Likewise, a high HP / low defense pokemon will gain a lot more CP from 1 defense than it does from 1 HP.
One big difference is that with prestiging, a pokemon with CP 1505 was basically the same as one with CP 1495. In the new PvP leagues, a pokemon with CP 1495 is awesome, and one with CP 1505 is useless.
I think it would have been much better (Niantic: it's not too late to change this!) if they set a limit on the sum total of the CP's of the three pokemon per team, i.e. the Great League becomes <4500, and the Ultra League becomes <7500. That way, every pokemon potentially would be usable, instead of just ones right below the CP caps.
The planned system, as I understand it, penalizes a player for maxing out a perfect Absol, Granbull, or Jynx, for example, all of which will have a CP just above 2500. Using my idea, those pokemon could be used in the Ultra League, simply by including other pokemon on the team that have CP's low enough to bring the average below 2500. You'd even be able to use a CP 3500 Dragonite in the Ultra League, as long as your other two pokemon totalled <4000 CP. Of course, you'd be taking a risk having so much of your CP cap used on one pokemon type; for example, if one of the other player's mons was a CP 2480 double ice Lapras, the Dragonite player would only have two much weaker mons for backup.
