Pokemon GO Buddy System: Who's worth walking with?

A throwback to gen 4's
buddy Pokemon!

Greetings trainers!

The buddy system has been released (more info here), which means grindable candies for the Pokemon of your choice! But who should you make your buddy!? Which Pokemon are most worth walking with, and which Pokemon are more trouble than they're worth? Should you really walk with ________ just to evolve it for the Pokedex? Not to worry, here are our picks for the top Pokemon to walk with and why:

Turn your Puff into Tuff

1km walkables

• Jigglypuff
• Geodude
• Pikachu

The most worthwhile Pokemon in the 1km range list is definitely Jigglypuff. Jigglypuff tends to be pretty rare, and it's actually one of the best low-CP defenders for gyms, as Wigglytuff boasts incredibly high Stamina. A Wigglytuff with Dazzling Gleam functions like a mini-Snorlax that constantly spams a base 55 power STAB move.

I'll mention a couple others, but I wouldn't recommend walking with them: Clefairy and Magikarp are solid Pokemon, but I'm sure you can get candies easier than walking for them. Geodude makes the list solely for getting a Golem faster for your Pokedex. At only 1km per candy, it's not so unreasonable to try and top off your current candies through the buddy system. But once you have a Golem, this is definitely not worth it. The same applies to Pikachu/Raichu.

I'm still working on a Venusaur, so
I'll have to think about this...

3km walkables

• Charmander
• Bulbasaur
• Squirtle
• Exeggcute
• Growlithe
• Slowpoke
• Grimer
• Koffing
• Abra
• Magnemite

There are a number of solid Pokemon in the 3km list worth walking for to fill a Pokedex entry, as these Pokemon also make for decent defenders or useful prestige-earners. Everything in the above list is pretty self-explanatory, but I've also included Abra and Magnemite. The reason for these two is simply because Abra is pretty rare, so walking to finish off your candies and fill that Pokedex entry might be worth it to some. Magnemite is also relatively rare, but Magneton can actually be incredibly useful for dealing with the likes of Gyarados and Slowbro when you're trying to raise a friendly gym's prestige. So if you don't yet have a Magneton, I can respect if you'd want to walk with your Magnemite until you can get the Pokedex entry; you'll also be getting a solid Pokemon with niche use.

I like the idea of forcing such a lazy
Pokemon to walk for candy

5km walkables

• Snorlax
• Lapras
• Dratini

There really isn't anything else worth walking with. Five km is a lot, so while it may be tempting to fill the Pokedex entries for Omanyte and/or Kabuto (and Omastar is even good), you're probably better off just fishing for spawns and hatching eggs. By the time you earn any reasonable candy from the buddy system, you'll probably have caught a couple that will outpace your candy gain anyways. I would probably prioritize Snorlax and/or Lapras over Dratini, simply because these two are far more rare than Dratini-line Pokemon.

Walking with a 5km Pokemon, to me, is really meant more for powering up your own Pokemon, not for filling a Pokedex entry. Yes... you could technically evolve a Dragonair this way. But 100 candies for a Dragonite is probably less efficient than just waiting to find a relatively high CP wild one, and then powering it up that way. For instance, a friend caught a 1300 CP Dragonite, and then used ~40-50 candies raising it to 2500 CP. That saved him 50 candies to use for powering up his next Dragonite, or powering up later. All it takes is catching one Dragonite for you to kind of regret evolving Dragonair; naturally if you have a perfect IV, high CP Dragonair it becomes a bit more justified, but the point stands.

Conclusion

Looking forward to the new buddy system! It really depends on what's more important to you as far as what you want to walk with. I'm really close to finishing my Pokedex, so it's awfully tempting to walk for those final candies. But if I were to be logically-minded to walk with the most worthwhile Pokemon in the very long term, it'd almost certainly be Snorlax or Lapras. No other Pokemon compares in terms of rarity and candy availability.

Cheers,
Let's GO!