How would Gen 4 impact the gym offence and defence metagame?
Of course, this question is about areas where gyms are highly competitive, not areas where a Pidgey can easily earn 50 coins.
Does Gen 4 introduce new Normal-type tanks or better counters to them? Could Rhyperior and Mamoswine make certain existing defenders (such as flying dragons) less viable? Likewise, could new second-tier defenders (such as Togekiss and Magnezone) make certain attacking types more viable?
Answers
It is good against machamp but will be wrecked bad by a dark ttar while being really good against Rayquaza/Dragonite (a popular gym sweeping team)
It's gonna force a switch but won't do much after that.
Basically you are not gonna overpower an attacker, so make them not want to attack the gym in the first place or waste his time with blissey, something he needs to switch from machamp, snorlax, something he needs to switch again and so on, while adding an anti ttar and an anti dragon somewhere in the mix.
There are no new normal type tank in Gen 4, but Drifblim (ghost/flying) could act as anti-fighting defender who treble resists fighting.
Togekiss is weak to poison, steel, electric, ice and rock. She can learn Aura Sphere to counter steel, ice and rock, while Psychic moves counter poison as usual. So electric mons are the safe options to counter her.
The fundamental problem with all these arguments is that gym attackers get six different pokemon to attack with. Only an idiot would take six machamp to attack a gym. Putting in something that resists fighting just means that the attacker has to switch pokemon for the fight. Just like when Dragonite was a top gym sweeper, any sane attacker always had a good Fire mon (Arcanine, back then) on the team to take out the Ice pokemon.
Gym defense, right now, is all about remote GRBs. If the defender is feeding GRBs, you need three attackers who coordinate properly to take down the gym; it doesn't matter if it's Blissey-Snorlax-Chansey or Pidgey-Rattata-Sentret (although the former is a lot easier to defend with than the latter).
I do just fine with 6 Machamp, including Gardevoir etc. It's more because I don't want to bother with a separate sweeping team when it turned out that I was primarily using Machamp to sweep because of the normal tanks anyway.
Also, if they're razzing, focus on taking out one defender at a time. May not work for Singapore, works fine for urban Britain.
I Agree, anyone who goes in with 6 machamps is likely asking for problems. I generally use a diverse lineup of attackers in order to pluck out each threat as effectively as possible, like Machamp to take out Blissey, Latios to take out Dragonite and Snorlax, Zapdos to take down Gyarados or Milotic...and so on. They are easily beaten by this way and the only problem i've faced are multiaccounters having a seemingly infinite amount of GRBs to restore the defenders to full motivation (It didn't happen in Toronto or Manhattan).
It absolutely matters what the defenders are. If the defending lineup is Pidgey-Rattata-Sentret, it doesn't matter if all 6 defending players are feeding razzes, a single attacker will take the gym. If there are 2 feeders, a single attacker will take the gym unless there's a big Blissey/Chansey, anything else will fall before the 30 minute timer is up.
Disagree. The attacker can go through all six defenders twice, no matter how low their CPs are, and then if they get fed GRBs, the attacker has to start over. Even if all the defenders are CP 10, the attacker won't take any damage, but will be faced with fully motivated defenders after two trips through the gym.
Granted, it's a stupid gym defense strategy, but it demonstrates beyond any shadow of a doubt that GRBs are the thing that matters the most in gym defense.
There is a berry feeding cap of 10 berries per 30 minutes per pokemon per player. Against feeding, you don't run through the gym but you kick the defenders one-by-one. This means a solo feeder can't defend against a competent solo attacker. Two feeders and a big Blissey or Chansey can wall a solo attacker for as many hours as the feeders have GRB left, but not if they don't have the Blissey or Chansey. Anything else can be defeated 42 times within 30 minutes and thus forced out. I'm actually not sure if the 10CP Pidgey can be defeated 126 times in 30 minutes, it might require a very good phone. 5 feeders feeding a 10 CP Pidgey is easily defeatable though.
Granted, spending that much time to take a gym is pretty stupid, but it all contributes to your badge points. I've done it more times than I care to remember.
With the loading screens and inbetween time 3 defenders feeding garbage is enough.
Take it from me. I have personal experience dealing with a guy notorious for using 3 accounts (when hes not coordinating with spoofers increasing his numbers even more)
He was able to feed a slowpoke indefinitely while i was attacking alone. He fed 26 gold berries to that slowpoke in 30 minutes effectively removing the cap.
Sure it only takes 8 seconds or less to kill a fully motivated slowpoke at the highest level you can catch them in the wild. However when you factor in the time it takes to select your team, go in, read how you've been fighting a slowpoke with 0 battles won. For half an hour, get thru the GO! start screen, then back out and start again, that comes out to pretty close to 1 minute per fight.
Its a very unfortunate combat system.
You're exaggerating how long the loading screens are, if it was 1 minute per fight for a less than 10 seconds TTW defender it'd be impossible to 1-v-1 feeded Blisseys. But we know for a fact that a good phone and connection can kick a maxed Blissey in less than 25 minutes through one person feeding. That means 9 fights against it at full motivation (50s), 9 at 2/3rds motivation(40s) and 1 fight at zero motivation(25s), which comes up to 14 minutes, meaning for 19 fights you have less than 11 minutes of loading screens and time spent healing (which against Blissey is pretty significant). That means the loading screens take 30s per fight at most and I'd wager they take a bit less than that from personal experience. Would need to go test with a timer to get any more concrete numbers.
Choosing attackers is a nonfactor because of battle parties. Tapping the edge of the screen once and pressing Battle takes 1 second.
There is no such thing as a Gym line up stopping someone.
BUT Gym line ups can do 3 things:
1) Force the Attacker to switch pokemon, which wastes left over energy (leading to more of 2/3 below)
2) Cost the Attacker more Potions
3) Cost the Attacker more Time
Ideally, the point of a line up is to make Potion/Time cost high enough that someone either doesnt bother in first place, or gives up at the first or second golden razz.
Since ideally the most costly defenders in time sense or Blissey-Chansey-Snorlax and thier counter is Machamp. This creates for me the current ideal defense
Blissey - Gardevoir - Snorlax - Clefable - Chansey leaving one spot for something like Gary, Dnite, Eggy, Slowbro, that last spot might be upgraded with Gen4. Even Clefable might be updated but I'm not as confident about that.
What matters is which gyms offer the most resistance. Most players fight mainly for the coins and aren't hardcore about their gym badges and they will almost always go to the gyms that are the most convenient for them. If your gym looks like it'll take them more effort to down, they might go to the next one.
Sure enough, but even the threat of berries works to your advantage sometimes. If nobody is around to berry, your only hope is to mindgame the potential attacker into thinking they don't want to bother with your gym.
Personally I dislike this whole idea that we need to try keeping gyms for hours and keeping watch so we can defend them when we aren't even present (although I do understand that Niantic made it rely on GRB because they need to make money). POGO has many things Ingress lacks, but Ingress has so much of a better battle system for an AR game that it blows my mind how Niantic came up with this steaming turd we currently enjoy in POGO.
New Normal-type tanks: No. There is never going to be anything even close to Blissey/Chansey bulk in all generations.
Better counters for normal type tanks: Only if Lucario gets Focus Punch and it's better than Dynamic Punch. It'll be slightly glassier than Machamp against psychic and fairy attacks though.
Rhyperior and Mamoswine: Dragons do become slightly less viable if Mamoswine gets ice/Avalanche moveset since this makes it a beast. Rhyperior isn't going to do anything to fliers that SD Tyranitar didn't already.
Viability of attacking types: Yes. Expect Togekiss to replace Gardevoir as the go-to Machamp wall between Blissey and Chansey. This makes electric, rock and ice more viable than they used to be. Magnezone is weak to fighting, so people are going to plow through it with Machamps, nothing new there (in fact I think Magnezone is not even close to tier 2 defender because of this. It's not particularly tanky and completely relies on its resistances. Being weak to the most common attacker is a death sentence.)
A potential meta shift would be if Dialga gets a great double steel moveset. This would be a huge hit to Fairy-types and people might move on to other Machamp counters for forcing switches.
On Magnezone, many regard Steelix s a good defender despite its weakness to Machamp, because it walls other elite generalist gym attackers, especially Dragon-types and Raikou, as well as Tyranitar and Mewtwo.
Fairy-types wall not only Machamp, but also Dragon-types and Tyranitar, so the meta is certainly crying out for better counters to them. If only Metagross had better moves!
I wonder if this whole Singapur thing is just a myth or at least you guys seem to be exaggerating. I dont hear things like that from any other city. Dont know anybody who would attack a motivated gym yet ones who get GRBed. Personally, going through more than once is already too much for me.
Even if there are some gyms like that (maybe a train station or city centre) why dont u just target gyms a little less central?
As a Singaporean, I would like to hear from players in Hong Kong, Tokyo, New York, etc. about their gym metas.
It is true that in Singapore, if you attack a gym during normal hours (not when most Singaporeans are asleep or at work/school), 90% chance that the defenders (especially Blissey) will be fed golden razzberries (and usually multiple times). There are many players who attack or feed the same gym for over an hour (even with multiple accounts).
