Rhydon with MS/SE
I have a wonder Rhydon with MS/SE, another with MS/MH, 160K stardust and 32 Rhyhorn candy.
There is a nearby Rhyhorn nest, so I could easily earn enough candy and then spend 60K stardust turning my Rhydon with MS/SE into a formidable gym defender (my Arcanine, Omastar and Venusaur are no longer viable).
Before I do so, I would like to check whether he has any use as a prestiger (or attacker). Of course, he would be useless against Gyarados, Vaporeon or Exeggutor, but I have read that he may be good against Snorlax, Blissey or even Lapras.
Answers
I actually think crappy attackers with high CP are better as defenders so you don't have to waste an actual good attacker in a gym...
Like Exeggutor is a great attacker and can solo Blissey pretty much up to 3000CP...Leave it in a gym if he had high CP and you lose that when you need to clear a Blissey gym.
Same goes for Machamp, Alakazam, etc...
160k dust however is very low IMO (I have 800k+ now) so I'd see what other defenders you have or wait for gym revamp...32 candies is low too so it's probably biome dependent since Rhyhorns are common here in the desert and I have 400+ candies with multiple maxed Rhydons for my level (34).
When gen 4 hits, I'd probably can evolve all of them to Rhyperior as well...
Rhyhorn is rare in my area, which mostly spawns various birds and water-types plus Venonat/Exeggcute, so I was happy to discover a nearby Rhyhorn nest.
Indeed, the stardust may hold me back from powering him up, even if he has little potential as a prestiger. I still need to power up my Machamp with Count/DP and when I eventually get RS/DP on a Poliwrath...
My high-CP defenders are Dragonite, Gyarados, Vaporeon, Snorlax and Exeggutor. I sometimes use Lapras and Slowbro for gym diversity. (Yes, I have a Blissey, but her CP is too low and I lack candies.)
Because STAB and type advantage are both x1.25 in Pokemon Go, Rock Smash is only better than Mud Slap if the other pokemon is:
- double resistant to ground, but not resistant to fighting. (I don't think there are any pokemon that actually fit that category.)
or:
- both resistant to ground and weak to fighting. (Nothing until Gen3's grass/dark Shiftry.)
Both of Rhydon's quick moves are resisted by Exeggutor and Rhydon has a double weakness to grass, so a Rhydon with a bad Megahorn moveset doesn't seem like a good choice for fighting Exeggutor.
I have a 3084 CP MS/SE.
I can tell you, it is painfully slow to attack with. Yes you can get away with not dodging and all (it lasts a very long time) but there are usually better options to take out mons like snorlax and blissey.
The most comparable mon is probably vaporeon (the types water and ground attack super effective into fire) The only 'real utility' of powering a rhydon over a vaporeon is that whenever it is kicked out of a gym you can still use it as a slow tank attacker (just like vaporeon), whereas vaporeon wouldn't even qualify to put into the gym nowadays given the shaver situation.
But yours has stone edge though, which is the most important part. It wrecks dragonite and gyarados irrespective of how bad the quick move is.
