How to use the new Gym Battle system

Greetings trainers!

Update (Dec. 4th 2016): Gym prestige has been re-worked. Again. But for the better! The Prestige earned for battles has been restored (max per Pokemon is 1000 again), and the prestige earned for knocking down enemy gyms is 1000 per Pokemon, plus 1000 for defeating the whole gym.

Niantic unveiled a new Gym-battling update that totally re-worked the friendly Gym battles. For better or worse, this new system is here to stay. My opinion on the system is mixed, but more on that below. For now, how can you take advantage of the new system to put yourself in friendly gyms!?

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Table of Contents

• How to earn prestige
• How to maximize prestige per battle
• Some useful Pokemon for prestige-earning
• Thoughts on the new gym battle system
• Ramblings

How to earn prestige

So you've found yourself a friendly Gym, but it's taking ages to level up and you only get ~200 prestige per Pokemon anyways. Fear not! Gym battles have some basic mechanics you can take advantage of. Some things to keep in mind:

• If the Pokemon with the highest CP in your party has a higher CP than the Defending Pokemon, you will earn 255 prestige minus a multiplier down to a minimum of 100 prestige.
• If the Pokemon with the highest CP in your party has a lower CP than the Defending Pokemon, you will earn 500 prestige plus a multiplier up to a maximum of 1000 prestige.

• The new battle mechanics will level down any Defending Pokemon to match your level (+2). So the Combat Power of the later Pokemon may be reduced from the overview.
• To get the most out of each battle, you should try to beat every Defending Pokemon with an team that's about half their Combat Power.

If you're curious how the Gym combat mechanics, there's a great in-depth guide written up on gamepress.

How to maximize prestige per battle

There are a number of strategies out there to earn prestige as quickly as possible. The most famous of these is known as the "Bubblestrat." Other low-CP Pokemon strategies can earn prestige extremely quickly as well. But both of these strategies have their cons. For instance, there's now quite a bit of time spent choosing Pokemon in the menu, which cuts into how quickly you can transition from battle to battle. Here's a summary of some basic strategies:

Some say Bubblestrat was OP,
but look at this wag! What a champ.

Bubblestrat

Edit Dec. 2016: The new CP changes have made it difficult to bubblestrat, as Poliwag, Horsea, and Krabby's base stats have changed. The introduction of Ditto makes for a new intriguing possibility, but my testing thus far has not promised a DittoStrat that is reliable yet.

Bubblestrat takes advantage of Bubble's incredibly long animation to beat the Defender before they can even attack. The strategy uses a Pokemon like Poliwag, Krabby, or Horsea at ~20 CP, and typically a Diglett at 10 CP. The Diglett is your attacker, and if your Pokemon's stats are set up right, you can beat the defending Bubble-user before the first Bubble is even launched, earning 1000 prestige. Unfortunately, the new update forces you to bring six Pokemon to each battle, meaning you need to have six Pokemon at 10 CP to choose from, and some way to choose them quickly. Quick hands are also required to make sure the Diglett isn't knocked out by the next Pokemon in the gym.

Pros

• Battles are completed extremely quickly
• 1000 prestige earned in ~2.5 seconds of battle
• Even if others don't know how to use Bubblestrat effectively, it's still a bonus 100 prestige per battle for whoever comes upon your gym

Cons

• Miss hitting the run button in time? Need to use a Revive.
• Effectively maxes how much prestige you can earn per battle at 1000, which is tedious given the new requirement to bring six Pokemon
• Requires very specific Pokemon to make work, which means it is difficult to put a group together for efficient levelling.
• Takes up a gym slot with a 10 CP Pokemon, which means you can't leave something good yourself

Another Pokemon that can work as an attacker is Paras with either Bug Bite or Scratch. Scratch has the better DPS, but only by a bit.

Diglett is good for everything!

Low-CP levelling

There are a number of ways to use low-CP Pokemon to bring a gym's prestige up. Typically the easiest way is to use a low-CP attacker with a great Attack stat and moveset, and a low-CP defender with a weak Attack and low Stamina. For instance, Diglett has the lowest Stamina in the game, and with Scratch it is a terrible defender; any low-CP Pokemon with Water Gun can beat Diglett pretty easily. Paras is also both a great low-CP attacker and Paras with Scratch is a decent low-CP defender to use, as it is weak to its own Bug moves. Another good low-CP defender is Kabuto, which is doubly weak to Grass and guaranteed to have weak attacking moves. Bulbasaur, Tangela, or Bellsprout with Vine Whip handle Kabuto in no time. Magnemite has a double weakness of its own: Ground. Mud Shot makes for a fantastic move to tackle Magnemite with, though the only non-Water type (i.e. not weak to Electric) to use it is Sandshrew.

Pros

• Battles are extremely quick
• 1000 prestige earned in a matter of seconds
• Easy to organize a group of friends to all use the same Pokemon

Cons

• Miss hitting the run button in time? Need to use a Revive.
• Effectively maxes how much prestige you can earn per battle at 1000, which is tedious given the new requirement to bring six Pokemon
• Even if others don't know how to level effectively, it's still a bonus 100 prestige per battle for whoever comes upon your gym
• Takes up a gym slot with a weak Pokemon, which means you can't leave something good yourself

While it may be tedious to re-choose six Pokemon each battle, low-CP methods are still the most efficient way to earn prestige quickly. One way you can make choosing your team easier is to Favourite only your low-CP attackers, so they are sorted to the top of your box. Alternatively, re-name them so they sort to the top of your box!

Rhydon and Golem are both really
easy to beat for gym levelling

Strategic battling

This isn't so much a set strategy, as it is just how to level up effectively against gyms. If you bring a team of six lower-CP Pokemon to fight a gym, you can earn 500+ prestige per Pokemon defeated. With the new battle system, you're forced to pick six Pokemon anyways. You might as well make multiple Pokemon useful, and earn as much prestige as possible. This is also the most reasonable battle system to set up on the fly, and doesn't require any special gimmicks.

Pros

• Allows everyone to place a high CP Pokemon in the gym
• Each battle can earn a higher maximum prestige
• Minimizes time spent in the menu screen
• Can organize a group of friends to level up efficiently with good gym-building technique

Cons

• Greater potion use
• Less prestige earned per minute than low-CP strategies
• Requires you to have a number of Pokemon at varying Combat Powers to maximize prestige earned

There are a few reasons you might choose to earn prestige without low-CP Pokemon. For one, if you didn't set up the gym, there may not be any open slots available, so this is your only option. Alternatively, if the gym is already at a high level, adding a low-CP Pokemon does little to increase the Gym's toughness. That... and who wants to be the one to leave the low-CP Pokemon that is guaranteed to get knocked out first? However, it's difficult (and time-consuming) to get past Pokemon like Snorlax, Hypno, and Lapras with low-CP Pokemon. I often just run rather than fight these Pokemon as I find this earns prestige faster.

Some useful Pokemon for prestige-earning

Here is a list of useful Pokemon to hold onto for earning prestige. Feel free to experiment and figure out the most effective way to earn prestige for your group:

Water Gun / Hydro Pump users
are fantastic for this

Low-CP defenders (each Pokemon in this list has really low Stamina)

• Scratch Diglett
• Magikarp
• Abra (though ZH hurts)
• Magnemite (doubly weak to Ground)
• Bubblestrat defenders: Horsea, Krabby, Poliwag
• Kabuto (doubly weak to Grass)

Low-CP attackers with strong quick moves

• Mud Shot Sandshrew
• Scratch Diglett
• Bug Bite users: Paras, Venonat, Caterpie, Weedle
• Water Gun users: Psyduck, Omanyte, Staryu, Horsea, Slowpoke
• Vine Whip users: Tangela, Bulbasaur, Bellsprout
• Poison Sting users: Ekans, Nidorans, Tentacool, Weedle

Recommended attackers to hold onto that are likely to be at varying CPs

• Dragonite (Finally! A use for that crap-CP Dragonite!)
• Water types: Golduck, Starmie, and Seadra are easy to obtain at low CP
• Fire types: Ninetales, Magmar, and Flareon work fine. Arcanine is best though.
• Grass types: Tangela
• Ice types: Crapras (lower-CP Lapras), Dewgong, Cloyster

They kinda killed the gym system...

Thoughts on the new gym battle system

Edit Nov. 7th: As of Nov. 7th they re-worked the gym prestige system. Gyms are much harder to set up and fall much quicker than before. Will have to play around with it a bit to decide on how positive a change this is, but I think it was definitely a change in the right direction.

Edit Dec. 4th: They restored the prestige earned system to a max of 1000 per Pokemon defeated. This is a much better system, and I think gyms are now back to a good spot in the metagame.

At first I was pretty apathetic to the new system. Then I kind of appreciated it, as it meant that no Gym is totally ruined by a friggin' Hypno at the front (or worse, a Snorlax). Having to choose the optimal team also felt far more Pokemon-like to me strategy-wise. I was still able to level up gyms effectively with low-CP Pokemon, and could put myself in any gym if I really wanted to. But now that it's been out for a while... it's totally thrown Gym balance out of whack. I'll explain:

The update was intended to make it easier for low-level players to get into friendly gyms. It definitely did this. But it also made it easier for anyone to get into any gym. High-level players are more active than low-level players, and more likely to spend the time to get into gyms. As a result, it's now even easier for the high-level active players to get into every gym they see. Since the update, I've only rarely seen a gym at a level lower than 8, and it's usually up to level 8+ by the next day for some team.

While the update was rolled out to help low-level players get into gyms, I fear it's had the opposite effect. Even when low-level players do earn their way into a high-level gym, they're the first to be dropped, and high-level players end up clogging the gyms now more than ever. The only difference now is that almost no co-ordination is required between teammates to get a gym up to level 10. As it's still a huge pain to take down a level 7+ gym, level 7-8 gyms are left alone by anyone but teammates, who are now guaranteed to be able to get into the gym with relative ease.

Ramblings

Edit Nov. 7th: As of Nov. 7th they have started rolling out the Poke-stop based tracker to new regions. There's no way a blog like mine gets Niantic's attention, but it's pretty nice to see both of my major criticisms addressed in the very next update! Haha.

Edit Dec. 4th: They restored the prestige earned system to a max of 1000 per Pokemon defeated. This is a much better system, and I think gyms are now back to a good spot in the metagame. Level 10 gyms can be made, and they can be knocked down, but neither is a simple task.

To me, Niantic has their priorities totally backwards. They're focusing on player recruitment at a time when they need to be working on player retention. Unfortunately, this latest update has hurt the game for both new players and old, despite its intentions. I know the tracking system is no simple task, but the Poke-stop based "Nearby" has been in beta for months now. Third party trackers have caused a big strain on servers, but the game doesn't have 40 million daily users anymore, and they've been severely crippled since the days of Pokevision. If the thing holding Niantic back from re-releasing a tracker is server strain, they've already demonstrated that they can handle 20 times the current user base if needed. Given how much money Pokemon GO is still making, surely they can cut into their profit margin to purchase more server power.

The security updates Niantic has been layering on to block 3rd-party trackers has also hurt the game by introducing loads of extra code. More often than not, when I load the game now SOMETHING loads incorrectly. Either Pokemon won't spawn, sprites won't load, Poke-stops won't spin ("Try again later"), or the map will just fail to load altogether. Not to mention the random crashes when I load sprites like Mankey (don't know why... but just sometimes... Mankey). And I'm running the game on an iPhone SE. I pity anyone who's using an older phone with lower processing power.

So for now, make the best of the current battling system. Hopefully Niantic reverses this change so that gyms don't keep filling up constantly. If the system changes again, let's hope Niantic keeps the option around for co-ordinated and efficient levelling open to those willing to put in the effort.

Cheers
Let's GO!