Pokemon Go

The official Twitter for China accidentally leaked that it will be getting Body Slam. Which is a shame, since getting a fast move other than Yawn would have made it actually usable (any fast move at all, really), though it would also have undermined the whole point of Slaking as a Pokémon. Guess I’ll be taking it easy that day, much like Slaking himself.

Edited by Anura on May 23rd 2019 at 11:49:45 AM

It becomes too much of a Game-Breaker if it gets any fast move other than Yawn, though. The only other way I could see it possibly working is if they made Snore into a fast move (either with faster energy gain or making it cause damage but have the worst energy gain in the game). As is... I guess I could see the possible merits of a wacky Body Slam/Play Rough gym defender.

Also, if nothing else, I still don't have enough candies to evolve out a Slaking (I just have had poor luck finding them, and I admittedly haven't put much effort in seeking them out), so I'll be out there to get that added to my 'dex if nothing else.

Gym defenders only ever use the charge move in their first slot, and Slaking is better off sticking with Play Rough because most people will be using Fighting (for super effectiveness) or Dragon (for general effectiveness) against it.

Doesn't seem too unexpected to me. I'll probably be more trying to take advantage of the egg rate with Star Pieces, though I suppose the usual shiny hunt will also be a thing.

I'm one of those North Americans who managed to accidentally snag a blue Shellos when Niantic screwed up. Totally didn't know how rare it was going to be, too. Hilariously terrible IVs on it (28%), but I still set it as my buddy and evolved it because I find it funny.

Huh.... I thought I heard that the game randomly chooses one of the two charged moves for defenders. Ah well.

Also, for those who missed the news announcement, the Lake Trio is out of raids; we're currently seeing a Cresselia rerun, with the chance of shiny.

I just realized Steel is a good type offensively in Go due to how the game is simplified.

To an extent. A lot of raid bosses aren't vulnerable to Steel and Steel types tend to have bad move sets (see: the rampant auto-select Aggron woes). You basically only have Meteor Mash Metagross as the real notable Steel type attacker as far as raiding goes (though you can troll PvP opponents with the likes of Melmetal and Registeel). I guess you also technically have Dialga for raiding, but that's using the Steel type as a defensive type since the main selling point there is to be able to take a Dragon move set against other Dragon types without being vulnerable to them.

Eh... Aggron is a decent attacker under the right circumstances. I regularly have two Heavy Tail/Heavy Slam/Stone Edge attackers do good things for me, but a few things I must admit. One, they're really high CP, above what most people push for in an Aggron (one is maxed; one I caught at level 35, since they're pretty common spawns locally). Two, if you're using it for gym takedowns, you have to basically hope that the gym is unattended. Push comes to shove, an Aggron at full health will always be able to take down a Blissey of equal or lower CP... but it's going to need a good chunk of the clock to do so unless you're at least double CP (if the CP is even, you're probably looking at nearly the whole clock, while I generally take around 70 seconds for my CP 2600 Aggron to wear down a ~CP 2400 Blissey). If someone decides to berry up, I have to switch attackers, forego the gym, or just accept that I'm about to rank up in the gym solely through battling. Three, if you're using it for a raid, either make sure you're supported or only use it if you're hitting a weakness with your charge moves (part of why it's worth it to burn the candy/dust and possibly some TMs if you have them to get Stone Edge as the extra move).

Aggron does have the remarkable advantage of having enough defenses, resistances, and HP to make it a very efficient attacker in terms of potion use (outside of Fighting and Ground defenders, of course) - I've even come out ahead when using one against Gyarados with Waterfall/Hydro Pump (though you have to dodge, and even then you're probably going to lose it on the following opponent in a revenge kill).

To some extent, this is a bit biased given that a) Aggron are easy to build locally, b) due to local spawns, Rock and Ice defenders are semi-common in local gyms, c) the type of play Aggron works best with is what circumstances basically set me up to play with, and d) I've always been fond of it (I love Rock types in general). That said, I will always defend Aggron's place in this game. It's a bit more particular than Machamp, but I maintain that Aggron too frequently gets a bad rap.

Auto-select Aggron tends to not meet 95% of those conditionals you laid out, though. Even with strategic use, that's an awful lot of help that it needs. Still, I will admit that the buff to the super effective multiplier does allow it to be a bit more viable than it used to be if it's hitting the rare few raid bosses weak to Steel (or attacking into gyms like what you've got around).

Maybe not for you; I find that I deal with enough Rock, Fairy, Ice, and unattended Blissey that Aggron is frequently an excellent pick even under autoselect situations. I probably should also mention that Aggron is a decent (even if not optimal in terms of DPS, though again it jumps back up if you're looking at efficient potion use) pick against Normal-type defenders that aren't using Fighting or Ground moves (in particular, Snorlax and Slaking that lack Earthquake are pretty easy pickings, going down fairly fast against a dual-Steel Aggron).

I admittedly tend to stow my Aggron when raids come up (for the most part; Tyranitar and Rhydon raids, when I do them, are a decent time to break them out), but I get a lot of mileage (and stretched potion use) for gym takedowns using them.

Is it really that much more efficient when drawing the fight out lets the opponent get off a bunch more charged moves?

I guess I'm also biased in that I tend to think more of raids when it comes to auto-select, since that's where I always see it crop up. Too often I'll go to a raid where there's 3-4 of us with actual counters and then 4-5 Aggrons attack into inappropriate targets because auto-select decided resisting the attacks of the raid boss was more important. This leads to taking a million years to down a T5 that should have taken 90 seconds with a properly equipped group of that size (one of those most memorable was a Heatran where we had 11 people with only 2 of us using proper counters and we didn't down it until the last 20-30 seconds...). Like, at that point, we're basically trioing/quadding it.

Depends on what charge move you're facing. In some instances, the charge move does so little that the fast move does more damage (I most often see that with Lick/Body Slam Snorlax). Also, depends on how good your dodging is.

I'll grant that we have precious few raids where Aggron is a useful choice. Tyranitar is probably the only one that really comes to mind, though Rhydon is possible if it has Stone Edge (or your dodging is impeccable). And while I'd recommend Fire types first, Aggron isn't a terrible choice against Mawile. And yeah, that's about it.

On the bright side, next gen, we get Bisharp, and Metal Claw/Iron Head might be workable (that said, odds are its best set will be double Dark).

Sleeping Snorelax event happening now.

Pokemon Plus+: Basically Pokemon Plus, but is a disc and connects to the upcoming Pokemon Sleep app.

Edited by tclittle on May 28th 2019 at 8:35:14 AM

Who needs Snorlax when you have superior Munchlax!

I mean, I appreciate that I can hoard Snorlax candies at the moment, and I swear the catch rate is up on the sleepers. And I get thematically why they made that choice... but universally having Yawn as a fast move? I feel so trolled.

Also, in terms of terrible names, we get the name for the upgraded Pokemon Go Plus accessory - Pokemon Go Plus +. No, really, that's the name.

At least Pokemon Home will let us send everything into the main series, not just Gen 1 stuff.

Every Wednesday in June is Raid Day now!

So...anybody get good snorlaxes?

And is there any word regarding whether the whole 3 balls to throw thing was a bug or a deliberate choice? I mean, the color of the circle makes it seem deliberate, but I cannot figure out what the "first two balls will always break free" is supposed to be.

I got a couple of pretty decent ones.

The thing I noticed though was that apparently you could only use one Berry on one of these Snorlaxes. Whenever I tried to use another Berry after a Snorlax broke out of a ball I would get a "this item couldn't be used" error message. Wonder what was up with that.

It's gotta be a deliberate choice, since catching it only takes one ball and one berry, even though it has those pseudo-breakouts. From a programming perspective, unless Niantic's completely off their game, 95% that it's a custom script over some unholy train wreck of multiple scripts.

It seems to be the same script used for Mew and Celebi. They also need three balls to catch, with increasingly difficult dodge patterns each time. Of course, Snorlax just keeps snoozing.

I was attempting to get a Research streak on the Snorlax, two Nice curveballs in a row. The first one wouldn't count. That's when I noticed that the first two throws don't decrease the number of pokeballs in inventory.

I ended up getting two solid Snorlax. One was around 80%, but I caught it at level 35, so it's basically all ready to defend gyms. One was only level 28, but maxed in both attack and defense, so I'm debating what to do precisely with it (outside of the obvious "use a fast TM on it"). At the moment, its moveset is Lick/Outrage - I'm thinking of buying the extra move and seeing if I can get Hyper Beam to make it a solid general attacker.

For the current event... while I appreciate the chance at a Cranidos encounter, I wish the quest involved fewer than 25 Pokestop spins. Also, I'm hearing rumors that, despite not appearing in the announcement, shiny Lileep is live. Anyone got confirmation on that?

The in-app announcement includes shiny Lileep, Anorith, and Onix.

I didn't get as good an IV one, but I did get a level 35 Snorlax. That's good enough to annoying when thrown in a gym and used as a berry-for-dust/candy battery. I did get a few better IVs in the high 80s, but I'd rather not spend the dust when Blissey is a much better defender, so meh.

Took advantage of the temporary legendary second move candy discount. RIP 200k dust, but my 100% level 40 Rayquaza and my second level 40 Mewtwo now have Aerial Ace and Psychic, respectively. I thought about trying to get Thunderbolt for Mewtwo, but with a move pool that dense, I'm really not up to spending that many Charged TMs when Psychic is perfectly viable.