Probably getting somewhat a conscience about these community days. Some places (Niantic Is part of a bougie culture) President’s Day weekend is a made-to-order snowboard/ski holiday. Easy candy, easy dust means you can play 45 min to an hour and keep up with the game, or you could win the (a PvP) game.
GamePress
The double candy and triple dust for the event
These make a lot more sense in the context of the event being for a PvP move.
When we first heard about ancient power, a lot of us were underwhelmed preformance wise, as it didnt really help mamoswine. Then niantic put out this Valentines day event with the double candy, a lot of people I knew were baffled, a community day on double candy for the best ice attacker, and 10 guarenteed sinnoh stones when ancient power wasnt going to amount to anything and its ice set would have been much better wouldnt really have made sense. A lot of us were thinking it was going to be a lot like the dragon pulse ampharos or eevee days again, just a novelty with the bonus effect of the 3 hours being the bigger benefit (triple dust in this case) but now with the context of ancient power giving the stat buff, this makes so much more sense.
Ancient power is seemingly going to be useless in PvE, but could make mamoswine even more lethal in PvP if it gets that boost off paired with its other mazing moves. Giving one mamoswine for each league ancient power (I know most wont do this, but just for example) would be 150 candy (not really a lot, I started a year a go and already have 2k candy before the event) but the 150k dust is price-y expecially if powering up other PvP pokemon. It's more or less helping to deal with the stardust cost (as niantic likely is aware of the complaints of how much dust it costs to power things up for PvP). Ive known people who spend upwards of a million dust for various PvP reasons in tournaments, and this events been exactly what they were hoping for to replenish those stocks (even as a player who likes to optimize, and having 750k dust saved, this dust would be great for misc reasons, as with trading, and the new releases, we will likely want to power up a lot more pokemon, as up till now, whats been best for most things has generally been what we got from gen 1), plus the move expansions they added recently giving new PvP or PvE utility to pokemon. It was a pretty smart move on niantics part
Report
Answers
Obviously typing isn’t his talent, but I had more people try to PvP with me today than the previous 6 weeks combined (85 friends; 60 PvP eligible). I only agreed to do a couple of them bc I had my 10 completed, then I was catching during event, then battery low/driving home. A small step to get people wanting to PvP challenge and maybe some enjoyed that foreign aspect.
Not trying to brag, but I caught a 98% Swinub during the event, and knowing that Ancient Power has stat boosts in PVP, I bought a second move (I was swimming in Swinub candy and still am) so I have a Mamoswine with Powder Snow, Ancient Power and Avalanche. I only did this just to be safe if they add stat boosts to moves in PVE and not just PVP, although unlikely. I can now use mine for PVP and PVE. Also, you never really know with Niantic, stat boosting moves may become a gamewide thing and not just PVP in the future.
I’m actually a little more excited for my Togekiss with Ancient Power and Dazzling Gleam in PVP. I wanna try that out soon and see how it is with AP having a stat boost.
