The State of the Gym Defense Meta

Most people don't consider TDO as the key factor for gym defence, but the time taken to clear the defender. Blissey still takes more time to defeat than Metagross, Meganium, and any other non-legendary Pokemon.

I assume that whenever someone attacks the gym, they will defeat it and clear it. And people often have more than enough Potions/Revives, so they often don't care about taking damage. But they do care if it takes longer to clear, especially when they can just head to another nearby gym and clear that in less time.

I can’t really see how damage matters in defense. The attacker is always going to win.

Blissey in this state can be removed even by high dps neutral attackers in around lv30+. You can't do that before the debuff. If you aren't berrying 24/7 everything is pointless.

Yes.

With one caveat.

Gym defense is not about defeating attackers. It's not even about doing damage to attackers. It's about convincing the Attacker to go away. High Level, High Motivation Blisseys tell most players to go away. In particular, it's about telling Solo Players to go somewhere else because two players can take down any gym, even if it's being Golden Razzberried, with very little trouble.

Blissey is the only Defender that has a legitimate chance of stopping a Solo attacker from taking a gym... when combined with using a Golden Razzberry. (that's the Caveat) And even then, it depends on the Attacker being persistent and having a good connection, so they save as much time as possible between battles. If they can win 21 battles against that single Blissey in less than 30 minutes, they can beat that Blissey. No other Defender can theoretically last 21 battles in 30min.

Under the current Gym meta, that makes Blissey the most potent gym defender. Even if it didn't have Dazzling Gleam and Psychic attacks that do damage to its most potent attacker, Blissey would be the top Defender in the game simply because of how much time it takes to take it out.

Take out the Golden Razzberry defense, and Blissey is still going to be among the top tier of defenders due to its huge HP stat. Blissey is almost always going to have a chance to get off a Charged Move when it defends, which isn't the case for many Pokémon, so it will almost always have that particular advantage. It may not end up being the best defender, but it's going to be a staple of the Gym Defense under almost any potential circumstance. (the only one I can see where it wouldn't be a top defender is if you could ACTIVELY defend a gym - ie: you take control of the Pokémon defending, and can dodge and attack as per normal. At that point, Blissey wouldn't be all that great - I'd probably go with Meteor Mash Metagross as the top "Active" Gym Defender just off the top of my head)