Last night I passed a local gym and noticed a 10 CP Ledyba and a 2100-ish Vap in it, no surprise because I had left the gym empty about 30 minutes prior. What did surprise me, though, was that gym was over 17,000 prestige with 5 open slots.
"A-ha! Bubblestrat!" I thought to myself, and went on my way. But then I realized what a pain it was going to be once people dropped 'mons in the all the empty spots so I went back to take it out while the going was still easy.
When I got back to the gym a few minutes later, it was now over 21,000 and I noticed a car parked next to it. The car left shortly after I arrived, and I got a bunch of exp for couple minutes of effort. :-)
What I don't understand, though, is how they were leveling the gym so fast against a Ledyba. Both of her quick moves are pretty fast so I can't see how they could bubblestrat efficiently. Was the car just full of a bunch of people all banging away at the Ledyba for a few hundred prestige points per pass? Or am I missing something else?
Well, if it wasn't bubblestrat, then maybe it was some other half-decent way of leveling a gym, like magikarping. Looking at Ledyba's strong defense, I can only imagine that they might have been Shucklin' that gym. His double-SE STAB Rock Throw could take out a Ledyba without needing much healing. If Ledyba has Tackle, he's even resistant to her quick attacks.
Like you say, it might also have been 17 eskimos crammed together in that car, banging down the Ledyba for 100 prestige each.
At 10CP that's pretty poor - at best they're getting 500 prestige per kill (with another 10CP 'mon) rather than 1000 prestige that a bubblestrat would get you, and like you mentioned it's not really a resource-less strat.
I'd suspect it was someone using a load of other 10CP throw-away mon to train it up (or maybe a Shuckle repeatedly as proposed below). I HIGHLY doubt it was a bunch of people, as why would they not fill in the higher slots as they go? (I mean, last thing you want is to have a group of 10, prestige it all up without putting in, then you all go to put in and 3 spots are taken by passers-by that saw a bunch of empty slots and didn't think they were sniping anything...)
Shucklestrat definitely works and is more forgiving than Bubblestrat...
I've seriously been looking for bubble defenders since the start of my play and not being in a water biome, still have never found that ideal Horsea...or krabby or whatever.
I have tried shuckle stratting and you do use low purple potions, but can lose as low as 2 HP with the right match up.
I'm going to have to find more Ledyba since they should work better than a low CP Yanma I think...
Thanks for pointing this out!
