Top 6 Pokemon NOT to Place in Gyms

October 19, 2016

In order to minimize the work I have to do to maintain 10 gyms in and near my hometown, I focus on training up friendly gyms instead of tearing down rival ones. (~800 training battles won) Most gyms are fairly easy for an experienced player to prestige up, but some Pokemon with specific moves are so annoying to train against that even I walk away most of the time.

I had a pretty bad experience on my gym circuit last night, so allow me to vent a little by listing the 6 Pokemon you should never place in gyms if you even remotely care about your teammates, unless they are CP1600+ and can be a valid gym defender against rival teams.

6) Chansey

A Chansey is probably horrible to train against given its typing and insane health pool. The reason it’s not higher on this list is that I’ve never actually had to train against one due to its rarity and low CP.

5) Slowbro (with Psychic moves)

Electric Pokemon is seriously underpowered in the current meta, which means my primary counter against water types are Grass Pokemon. Unfortunately, most Grass types are also Poison-type, which makes a Slowbro with Psychic moveset quite a pain to train against given its bulk.

4) Vaporeon – With Water Pulse

Most Vaporeon isn’t too bad to train against, but Water Pulse makes a Vaporeon an absolute nightmare cos it causes lag on many devices, making it very difficult to dodge consistently, which makes efficient prestiging impossible in some cases.

3) Snorlax – With Body Slam

The reasons that make high CP Snorlax the best gym defenders also makes low-medium CP Snorlax some of the worst gym defenders. There is basically no way to train efficiently against a Snorlax. At least Body Slam doesn’t cause lag, but it is harder to dodge than Earthquake and Hyper beam.

2) Lapras – With Blizzard

Lapras are an absolute pain because Ice move sets counters Grass Pokemon that can efficiently counter pure Water types, and Electric Pokemon are underpowered. If you were attacking a gym with a Lapras, you could overpower it with a strong Arcanine, but this isn’t an option for training.

Blizzard makes efficient training against Lapras nearly impossible, because although you can theoretically dodge it, it is very difficult to pull off in practice.

1) Hypno – With Psychic

Hypno is the bane of my life because apart from Vaporeon, all of the other Pokemon on the list are rare, and people tend to power them up so they don’t often appear at or near the bottom of gyms.

However, if you live in a Drowzee plague zone (most of England) like me, every mindless casual player has a Hypno squad and they very often fill up the bottom tiers of gyms.

All Hypnos are a pain due to their stats and the lack of counters, but Hypnos with Psychic are actually evil and impossible to train against due to Psychic causing lag.

If I were stupidly rich I’d hire somebody to play on a rival team and kill every single Hypno in allied gyms!

Alright rant over… please be considerate when placing Pokemon in gyms and give friendly advice to those you encounter that place the wrong Pokemon in gyms.

This rant was provoked by encountering two Hypnos, a Snorlax, and a Lapras on my gym circuit last night.

Edit: Common Questions & Answers

I didn’t expect this rant to blow up like this… I don’t have time to reply to every question/response, but there are a few common themes I’d like to respond to:

The new training system means you can easily beat any Pokemon on that list!

This is true, I can beat any defender if I wanted to, but clearly some Pokemon are easier than others. I am not complaining about not being able to beat those Pokemon, but rather that I cannot train against them efficiently. And efficiency is key when my daily PoGO time is limited, and I need to decide whether I want to spend the time to train up a gym or move onto an easier one.

For example, if a gym a lv6 gym has a CP 1200 Flareon and CP 1250 Arcanine as it’s bottom two defenders, I can use my sub-600 CP Vaporeon and quickly gain 2000 prestige per attack. If those bottom two Pokemon are Hypno with Pychic, there’s just no way I can beat them quickly with a Pokemon with half of their CP or less. I could swamp them with 6 Pokemon, but that’s a waste of time and resources, so I move on.

If those Pokemon are hard for you to train against, they are also harder to rival teams to take down.

No no no no no! 😛 If a Pokemon has low CP, it doesn’t matter what it is, it will be taken down by the first semi-committed attacker. A CP 1200 Flareon and a CP 1200 Hypno provides the same irrelevant level of challenge for an attacker with his CP 2500 Dragonite, CP 2400 Arcanine, and CP 2000 Vaporeon… but a Flareon is far easier for your team mates to train against. If you are a low-level player without top tier high CP defenders, you should just place Pokemon that are easier for your teammates to train against, because anything you place will be taken down anyway, and a higher level gym with stronger teammates is far more likely to keep your Pokemon safe by deterrence.

Get a better phone!

My phone is actually very good. It is a Huawei Mate 8, which is pretty new and powerful. I’m not sure what causes the lag on Psychic and (to a lesser extent) Water Pulse… maybe network quality… but I’m pretty sure it has something to do with the game itself, and more specifically the animation for those charged attacks. No other app or games I play lags like Pokemon Go(Top 6 Pokemon NOT to Place in Gyms) and most other moves are fine as well.

Source: Reddit

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