I would love to know what your top 30-ish highest level Pokemon are just so I could give a more thorough opinion. If you don't have a good Rayquaza, I'd go for another Dragonite. Otherwise, I'd walk a Ralts. The rest aren't good enough at this moment IMO, and you'll have like 2 weeks to walk them if they announce them as CD protagonists anyways.
I wouldn't walk a Zapdos (or any other legendary) unless you were swimming in candy for all the other ones. I walk Mew because I want to max it out (but am stocking up on RC) and I don't need candy for anything else this gen.
Outside of the species you mentioned, I'd only walk Chansey but my gym scene is very competitive so there's a need for high-level squads of Blissey here, which might not be the case for you.
What to buddy after Togepi
Currently, ive got a togepi, im at 143 candy for her, and am going for around 250 before i switch off.
Ones im thinking are
Tyranitar
33 candy, have numerous smack down tyranitar (6) and one dark offense tyranitar, all but one smack down and the dark type (both level 35 and 36.5) are sub level 23, and after the event i was left with no candy to power them up. Tyranitar raids are a possible source of candy now that i have my registeel, but they are scarce raid bosses, and i am considering putting rarecandy into them (the only nonlegendary i feel is justifiable to spend RC on)
Bagon
240 candy
Predicting an event for bagon, and after what happened with tyranitar, i do walk possible event mon now. Even if it doesnt get an event, it will be a powerhouse against the other dragons
Beldum
490 candy, same story as bagon, plus its my favorite line
Dratini
229 candy
I have a level 30'ish dragonite, dragon tail draco meteor (i know outrage is better, but she was my first pokemon above 60% iv's, has96 iv's, so i could bring myself to get rid of that)
Rhydon
526 candy
Mostly prep for Rhyperior and i dont have any groudon for ground offense
Honorable mentions i considered but wont:
Ralts, because Kirlia's a raid boss now and is easy to pinab
Scizor, because until that beldum event, it is my only steel type and they are nesting species and possible raid boss when regirock comes
Gyarados, because easy enough to get candy from pinab'd research and my local park i raid at
Zapdos, because team instinct
Answers
I dont have any rayquaza, or really any legendaries worth much other than mewtwo (getting a second one, hopefully, thursday), 4 kyogre and a few latios, i have moltres and zapdos, moltres hes been rendered obsolete by my BB Charizard squad, and zapdos is already bested by raikou, and possibly electivire. only the kyogre and mewtwo are the ones im powering up, no groudon, ray, lugia or raikou (the zapdos busy was a bit of a joke, i'd never walk a legendary, even my shiny 91 zap)
I thought about ralts, but because Kirlia's easy to raid and pinab, i desided agaist it, plus i have nearly 200 candy
I already have a blissey, and we already have a designated blissey carrier on the team, we fill in the machamp deterrents behind her (yes, we have actually found a way to make machamp a bad choice for gym offense by not using all the uber tanky normal types)
From that list? Larvitar. Least amount of candies, most use currently. You've got enough candies now to evolve a Bagon all the way, and there's a good possibility of there being a Bagon Community Day in the future. Same with Beldum. Rhydon you have enough candies to max out a level 1 Rhyhorn, so good there too. Larvitar is the way to go from that list.
[aside]
Also, if you're talking about Registeel being a counter for Tyranitar... you might want to look into doing Machamp raids and if you don't have many Machop candies right now, walking a Machop instead of the ones listed above for at least long enough to get enough candies to raise a Machamp to Level 36. Machamp is great for Registeel and Regirock (and likely for Regigigas as Regigigas is Normal type, and Normal is weak to Fighting), and annihilates Tyranitar - particularly in Cloudy weather. I've actually 3-personned a Tyranitar raid with my wife and daughters accounts - with my wife having only 2 Machamp's above level 30 and my daughter having 1 at 34 (With the rest being 20/25; my Fighting team is rather overpowered, as I've maxed out 2 Perfects and 3 91+ with Attack 15, and two 98% Hariyama's both with Attack 15. It's strong enough that in a Regice raid with 7 new trainers (levels 15-29) on a Cloudy day, I managed to be the only member of my Team in the raid AND get 6 damage balls; +3 Individual and +3 for being the highest Team total.)).
So with a good group of Fighting Pokémon, you can more easily do the rare Tyranitar raids and get a chance for 21 Larvitar candies (Pinap and transfer the raid boss), saving 105km of walking. If you can get powerful enough to do a Tyranitar Raid with 3 people (or better yet, Duo it), that might be the best option of the bunch.
[/aside]
Until I hatched 2 Larvitar in the recent double candy event (And... no Trapinch?!? Not a single Trapinch hatch?!? I... I... I... what? No Trapinch at all? AND 2 Larvitar? "R"NG working in my favour? What?) I had been walking a Larvitar for 200km AND doing Tyranitar Raids when I could.
Wouldn't dream of using a registeel agaisnt tyranitar, i may dislike machamp for the attention it gets for a specific function, but i cannot dispute the efficiency it does that with.
Registeel and rock i've got covered, i already did my registeel raid only went out for one because dex filler, and for reliable regirock coverage i have venasaur, gyarados, kyogre and yes, my perfect machamp
I see the value in going for more machamo raids to have a better team against tyranitar raids for duos, but as its mostly cloudy here, the ones i have will suffice for a two man if the opportunity arises (which is wont because my raid chat insists on a 12 person safety net for tier 4's)
i'm already able to theoretically duo tyranitar, haven't been able to test it, as when i did try to, the other person had left all their best pokemon in gyms (they didnt know about gym meta yet). I'm always eager to get more candy for my tyranitar, first one was a 98 iv catch during the kanto event, breaking a streak of horrible raid fails
Most of them are, its not really a safety net concern if you ask me, its mostly they dont want t be bothered with trying to break raids into smaller groups, ike making us 15 man mewtwo, which is why i stick mostly with my instinct chat, a lot less of us, but we get it done just the same with people we all know well
I have a lot of swinub, both candy and the pokemon itself, got really lucky during the double candy with hatches, and 3 good Rhydon with a lot of candy
I do lack candy for most of those others, but i dont have any good IV versions of them other than electabuzz, and i am waiting to see electivire's moves before i walk him. That and i think its pretty likely magneton piloswine and sneasel will come as raid bosses when Regirock shows up, like electabuzz kilria and magmar have done
Does it even matter?
Seriously, the reward for walking is laughable.
A Community day equalizes thousands of km walking, an egg hatch more than a month if you are not a marathon runner or something like that. The same with raids. God, even a wild catch prevents u from walking a week.
And till you walked your remaining 321km with togepi u will have forgotten that u even asked this ;-)
I have 6 SD Tyranitars. All except a shiny are above level 25, a few hovering in between 34 and 37. Of those in the 30s includes another shiny I powered up from like, level 2 because it was 93%. I still have ~400 Larvitar candy left over - If anything it was a gross misuse of dust, not that I regret it as it's carried me through Regice, Articuno day, Zapdos day, and will carry me through the inevitable Moltres day. Not to mention utility in partly cloudy against A-Marowak.
I know I'm not everyone and I'm not trying to discredit buddy candies at all. In fact if someone walks a ton with the game open they should consider their buddy a little more heavily. I'm just saying not everyone will blow through their CD reserves as soon as they build it up, especially players lucky enough to have the weather on their side during the event. I had both the weather and ~170 Pinaps on hand.
I do agree buddy distance may be inconsequential at times, but theres always the never knowing if it could help.
The weather was also with me on that day, and i did use a lot of pinab,s every catch was pinab'd, but it also does depend on how many candies you have before the event stared, i had about 100 because i powered up my best tyranitar long before the event was announced for misc uses, i know a lot of people had reserves of 300-400 going into it from raiding tyranitar/buddy prior, which did help maintain reserves even after evolving
I wanna say I had like 200-some before the event but I con't honestly remember. I saved some candy by raiding a boosted Tyranitar in the middle of the event, gaining 20 candy with a Pinap with the bonus of it knowing Smack Down on capture. So that's a net gain of 145 since I didn't need to actually evolve one.
I know at least one dude who had over 1400 candy going into it. I guess he raided Tyranitar like mad beforehand.
Ah, makes sense, all of mine were evolved, there weren't any raids near me
for most previous events, the pokemon wasn't particularly high profile so any potential candy crash wouldn't be too pressing, or like dragonite most players probably had lots of candy for it beforehand, tyranitar was really the only thing that was really pressing to have tons of candy before and after while getting as many as possible evolved
The trick is not to waste all the candies and to prefer mediocre high level ones to low level good IV ones.
In case of Tyrannitar it doesnt really matter. Cuz you can easily get the candies from raids (why didnt you do it at double candy event?)
But with the others you will pay the price. Walking is just not efficent compared to a raid.
Since you asked: I lost my head as well on the CD and evolved them all. No candies left. Just like you. 6/8 were 3000+ so I didnt really have to power them up (although I would have liked to). Now I'm good again but that could have went a diffrent way if they took Ttar out of the raids. I was lucky.
However, CD with Bagon, Beldum or Ralts it is important to be more clever.
There weren't any tyranitar raids, no one saw any of them during the event
Ralts isnt likely to get a community day, gardevoir cant get another fairy move without niantic really screwing with the moves in the game, soemthing that likely wont happen, and any other psychic move it gets for a CD would still have it be less effective than mewtwo
