What's your opinion on Bubblestrat?

I kinda have to agree with Nick here. If you think it benefits the attacker just because they gain more xp, I don't think your priorities are in line with most other trainers. I haven't seen bubblestratting in my town so far and I'm glad about it.

I have not really seen a bubblestrated arena in my play area. I always wanted to try it but couldn't even find the time to test my mons for compatibility. I also mostly play solo, so it doesn't make much sense except for XP.

Bubblestrat is ok as long as you leave the bubblestrat defenders in the gym after you're done prestiging it. I don't see anything illegal by putting in a defender you can reliably beat in the most efficient way, and then abusing those mechanics to prestige up the gym.

What I witnessed last week was NOT ok. 10 of the highest level trainers in my city (most of them are 35+ and one of them lvl 40) walked trough my neighbourhood and in the matter of a couple of hours they had prestiged all gyms to lvl 10, and then used their alt-accounts to kick out the bubblestrat defenders to put their 3200cp Snorlaxes in instead.

What disguisted me even more was what they did when they got to a gym already inhibited by other mystic teammates. They prestiged up the gym, kicked the bubblestratters, and then proceeded to kick out the defenders some sub-lvl 20 players had placed in that gym.

I screenshotted the whole process step by step, but I'm not sure if it's even worth bothering to report it to Niantic.

I dont see any problem, since it's so easy to take down the gyms. They can bubblestrat and train as much as they want, ina few minutes one or two people can tear down their work.

As everything, it depends on your area. Where I'm in school, it's great as we have a great team that will fill the spots pretty quickly because we coordinate. Now at home for Christmas, the locals are too few to take advantage of it, and the gym would just get taken down more easily. But yeah, encouraging alternate accounts isn't good. Even though I am level 30+, I have been able to find bubblers, so it's possible.

If Niantic thinks bubblestrat is a problem, they could stop it by imposing a lower level cap for pokemon placement in a gym. Already players can only compete in gyms if they are trainer Lv5 or high; make it so pokemon can only be placed in gyms if they are pokemon Lv5 or higher.

Trying to bubblestrat with that restriction would no longer be a resource free process.

I don't think people use Bubblestrat for prestige or XP. They use it to mine coins.

My town has about 7 gyms that have been stagnant level 10 Instinct fortresses for the last two months thanks to Bubblestrat. Whenever some rogue Valor or Mystic player one takes one down, it is put back up to level 10 within about 12 hours. Sometimes in the process you can see the obvious CP24 Horsea at the bottom owned by a level 11 trainer account that never does anything but put CP24 Horseas in these gyms... but as soon as the gym is filled, the Horsea somehow gets knocked out and the gym is full of real opponents. I don't think they are bots and I don't think they are spoofing. They don't have to walk around to get coins from their gyms, they just sit and let the huge wall of yellow do the work for them.

This is a drag for minority faction players, and those who aren't part of a coordinated gang. I have tried bubblestratting these gyms myself but I gave up, there weren't enough serious Valor players in my area to fill the gym.

Right now the cost of leveling up a friendly gym is very low in time and items, thanks to Bubblestrat, and the reward is high. But the cost of tearing down an enemy gym is much higher.

I would love to see them fix this by imposing a minimum level for pokemon placed in gyms, just so it's not possible to win a match without taking at least a little damage.

Or, what if you had to leave potions with your pokemon when you placed them in a gym? They get consumed somehow when the pokemon fights, and/or just over time... maybe it's just one potion of any color, per 24 hours. When your pokemon runs out of potions, they are kicked out of the gym after losing any one battle and the spot becomes empty. You can replenish your pokemon's potion stock only by visiting the gym. This would encourage more walking by the coin harvesters - not every day, but occasionally.

I also wonder what would happen if they added an extra reward for taking down a tough enemy gym, for example one candy for a randomly chosen member of your attack team if you are able to defeat all 10 members of a maxed out gym by yourself. I think they need to do something so that players who end up in a minority faction in their area, don't get discouraged and give up on gym battles, like I have.

I consider it plain cheating, since it exploits quantization/rounding errors in the program and is not playing like the developers intended. Apparently most other players here (Mainz, Germany) do too: We had only two cooperating players in town who were doing it, all their bubblestrated fake Lvl 10 gyms were taken down immediately, and when I confronted them about it they used all kinds of lame excuses why they're doing it because they were fully aware it is cheating.

Quite simply, I think Bubblestrat is an annoying exploit that undermines the players that play the game straight up, and I wish Niantic would do something about it. People do it in my neighborhood along with GPS spoofers AND multiple accounts, which IS against the T&C's of the game, even though Bubblestrat is not. I have reported it to Niantic, because it is completely OBVIOUS who has multiple accounts (they don't even bother to change their user names that much). So far Niantic has done nothing about it. C'est la vie...

As one of bubbletrat users, I will show you some difficulties a bubbletrat trainer has to face:

1. It's hard to collect the right bubble defenders. I have played since the game was released in my country, known about bubbletrat some months ago when I joined this site. But up to now, I only have 2 suitable horseas. I test Krabby and Gastly also, but it does not work (i.e resourse free). I don't know how the situation is in your place.
2. Niantic has some adjusment recently - smaller run away button - that causes some more difficulty to bubbletrat trainers. Imagine you put your bubbletrat defender at the bottom, train against it but then you are not fast enough to run away from the next defender - due to cold hands, network lag/error, slow phone... and now added smaller run away button - it will cost you 1 revive and 1 potion. Revive is usually hard to get.
3. As of the bottom defender, you are the one to be kicked out first. Many times, I trained a gym to level 7 for my teammates. But when I came back, it's still level 7 but I was kicked out, some trainers with 2 different accounts had kicked me out and put their stronger pokemons above ours. It does not only happen to bubbletrat defender, any lowest pokemon in a level 7 - 10 gyms will be kicked out by such damn trainers. Whenever I see a level 10 gym with full of Dragonites and Snorlaxes all above 3000CP in my town, I know most of these are those damn trainers and I will use all my resourse to take this gym down, not to put my pokemon in but leave it for casual trainers

So to me, bubbletrat is totally legal. It's fun and joyful as long as one doesn't not abuse it.