We're still waiting on Gen 2, and the gym metagame has settled since the major CP update, so I thought I'd give the current gym metagame a look-over while we wait.
When the CP update came out, the first place I'd recommend anyone look would be Gamepress' tiering system. The guys there do a great job of analyzing things thoroughly, and I always learn a lot about directions I can explore regarding effective attackers and defenders. I don't always 100% agree with their placings, but I mostly agree, and they justify themselves very well.
Their current gym defender tier list looks like this:
(as a reminder, here's our post-update Defenders Tier List)
Link here: https://pokemongo.gamepress.gg/gym-defenders-tier-list
I think the final rankings on this tier list are really interesting. Before the CP update, you saw a really good overlap between the highest-tier defenders and actual usage in the metagame. Lower tier defenders were seen infrequently, getting more rare as you got lower and lower in tier. This was a consequence of how the CP scaled the Pokemon's effective performance better with the old base-stats formula.
Then the new base stats formula came, and CP was changed forever
Since the new formula was introduced, and CPs were affected, we've seen the rise of a few, extremely high-CP Pokemon. From a personal perspective, Pokemon that saw a massive upswing in Gym Defence usage include:
- Rhydon
I'm big! Rawr! - Gyarados
and to a lesser extent these two that aren't even on the gamepress rankings:
- Alakazam
- Kingler
And here are the Pokemon you'll commonly see in gyms all over the place:
- Dragonite
- Snorlax
- Vaporeon
That's it... That's my list. I mean... I can give you a list of other Pokemon that I see more often now, but pretty much guaranteed, the 5 Pokemon in bold are going to make up like... 90% of gym slots. What's really weird to me is how much that disconnects with their actual utility as defenders. Like... Steel Wing Dragonite and Snorlax have always been great defenders, and Vaporeon's always been popular (and only got better through the update), but Rhydon and Gyarados are very niche defenders. And once a gym has more than one Rhydon in the upper tiers, it makes an attacking Vaporeon into a champ that takes out multiple defenders. Gyarados I'm less harsh on, because Jolteon isn't near as useful against other Pokemon, but Vaporeon is too strong an attacker to be making your gym weak against.
My post-update tier list article tried to highlight what other Pokemon existed with high CP that you could use to break up gyms, but admittedly anything with a low HP stat makes a poor defender, even if it does loads of damage. The best way to defend a gym is to make it take longer for enemy players to defeat, so putting a high-CP Alakazam in the gym is neat, but isn't really worth it if the gym doesn't have lots of high-HP Pokemon already.
Conclusion
I guess the point of this article is to comment on the unhealthy metagame right now, that's been promoting folks to fill gyms with Rhydon and Gyarados amongst others. The best solution for this would be for Gen 2 to come out and bring with it a new diversity of high-CP Pokemon. But in the meantime, folks can prevent their gyms from filling up with GyaraDon if they just make a point of adding other competent defenders from the tier list above. Pokemon like Lapras and Exeggutor are both high-CP and great defenders, so it's really baffling to me how unpopular Lapras defenders have become now; maybe folks are saving their Lapras' for all the Dragonites.
Oh well...
Cheers,
Let's GO
p.s. I've been really busy with a lot of major life things, so I've had no time for the blog. I likely won't have time in the near future either. But I had a few minutes to crank this out and will likely feel compelled to comment on Gen 2 when it's released. So look forward to that!
p.p.s. Here's a list of Gen 2 mons that will likely re-shape the metagame. Likely strong defenders are in bold, and likely dece-defenders in italics. Not sure about Scizor... I don't think folks are rewarded much right now for bringing a Fire-type attacker... so it could be good? But its HP is pretty low...:
Name - Max CP - Atk/Def/HP
Blissey - 3213 - 128/229/510
Donphan - 3017 - 213/213/180
Espeon - 2999 - 261/193/130
Heracross - 2931- 233/188/160
Scizor - 2803 - 236/191/140
Ursaring - 2762 - 236/144/180
Feraligatr - 2725 - 205/197/170
Ampharos - 2696 - 211/171/180
Anything with lower CP than Ampharos isn't likely to see too much gym usage due to its low CP. The list gets a little more sparse with Pokemon that will actually change things (e.g. Typhlosion will be decent, but Arcanine is likely better, and Porygon2 will exist, but Ursaring will likely be better). Whether or not a Pokemon is a good defender also largely depends on its moveset, which we don't know yet for any of these Pokemon. Like... if something got the equivalent of Bubble, and a decent CP stat, then it could just be Poliwrath 2.0.
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