Spending rare candy to be the first (Flygon, Salamence, Metagross, Milotic...)
Say you have built up over 125 rare candies. There are several very attractive Pokémon you have not seen in gyms yet.
At which point do you bite the bullet to splurge the rare candy?
In my case, a month ago I spent rare candy for Milotic after walking a hatched female Feebas until about 82 candy. Of course, it came out as Lv 20, 1660 CP but I do not mind.
Now a more difficult dilemma. I like Flygon, but have found an 895 CP Trapinch (68% Lv 32, Attack 6) and hatched two, including 14/14/14. I accrued 82 candies and this time we need 125. The Lv 32 will become 2059 CP, the Lv 20 only ~1390 CP. Every day I may walk another candy, but 43 days from now everyone will have Flygons. I feel like I should do it now and go for perfection later.
But the same could be said for Salamence and Metagross, future Gorebyss, but none in sight yet. One can spend the rare candy only once... How would you go about it?
Answers
That is true, but my Legendary plan is undeveloped. I hardly raid enough to be able to compete with that. For example, I tried all Kyogre raids within my reach besides work, and got 3 out of the 7 raided. Raid partners often have 15-35 of them.
I cannot place them in gyms anyway. And my lack of Groudon is compensated by Golems and Rhydons.
Ultimately, this is just a game and everyone has their own goals and sources of enjoyment. Do what makes you happy. I personally save my rare candies to power up legendaries where candy is pretty much non-existent in the wild. Early on in the rare candy era I used it to get elusive mons but have changed course on this.
I only give rare candy to legendary and occasionally pseudo-legendary pokemon. So Salamence or Metagross would be okay. But I don't currently have a need for a steel attacker or another dragon, so I'm probably not going to splurge on them.
Trapinch is common enough in sunny desert biome, so I am not using rare candy to get Flygon faster. (I might actually already have enough candy...)
I see Milotic as just a fancy gym defender, so I'm not in a rush to evolve one. I have a good enough Feebas that I'll eventually walk with.
If that's what makes the game fun for you then go for it.
Being the first to have a particular mon isn't high on my priority list, primarily because with a scanner and some free time someone can do that in minutes or a few hours. I personally only use rare candy on legendaries. This is because if I try to walk a legendary for the same 43 candies you listed then I'm looking at about 200 days (at the rate you specified). By THEN the game will be totally different and I probably won't still be needing those 43 legendary candies anymore.
when someone has a mon crazy early I tend to think they might be spoofing. so it doesn't impress me at all. I saw someone had a 2,400+ CP Ursaring in a gym on the day that gen 2 came out. I was like "c'mon man". Now it's a nothing. So I would never waste rare candy like that. But I rarely have more than 30 rare candy around anyway. I don't raid that much.
Well, either spoofing or they indeed had rare candy (not at the time of Gen II). It's true that I have already seen a Wailord (400 candies) within one week after Wailmer was released.
Some local players with second accounts apparently went to New Zealand and southeast Asia for a few days because they placed Relicanth and Torkoal in gyms. Indeed, I am not impressed. But I play legitimately, and obviously so, then why not.
I need to point out that Teddiursa is crazy common in the right biome. It makes up like 40% of meadow biome spawns, so day 1 Ursaring is actually not too unbelievable.
But I do get what you're talking about, even with rare candy existing my first thought on seeing early Gardevoir, Salamence and Metagross was "I wonder if that person spoofed to get that".
"At which point do you bite the bullet to splurge the rare candy?"
When you can't meaningfully spend it on legendaries anymore. Personally I made a rule to power up only one of each legendary and am fast approaching the point where I can't meaningfully spend RC on legendaries at all anymore. If you could get significant improvements to your team by putting the candy in a legendary instead of a dex filler (which Flygon unfortunately is), you should put the candy in a legendary.
I always compare this to walking things for dex you'll eventually get anyway. I walked Omanyte, Kabuto and a bunch of other mons before gen 2 came out, then Adventure Week happened and I was swimming in hundreds of candy for both. And oh boy did I regret spending those km on ultimately useless dex entries a bit faster when I could instead have been walking more of Dratini for something of actual value.
I certainly understand this. I walked Mareep for a few months, fortunately they did not release Ampharos yet as raid boss or have mass Mareep spawns in some event.
But in the same line of thinking, everyone will get a decent powered up Legendary. Almost everyone has them, and they are visible on every corner of the map. To me, it's the Legendaries which are dex-fillers, as there is nothing you couldn't already do with other Pokémon.
This is a really easy question and not a new one. It used to be framed more around dust than rare candy but the principles of expenditure are all the same.
Only you know the rarity and likelihood for you in your area in regards to investment. Whether it is a legendary route or completion through evolution it’s all in how you want to play.
Related to this the whole “Op legendaries” thing is overblown anyway. In many cases we are talking about mons that perform very marginally better than their non legendary counterparts for WAY more investment. Until we have something that a crew of max revived Kyogre can solo that free caught lv 35 Karps/eevee-vapes/Garys cannot you have to be stupid to build giant expensive crews of those legendaries. It’s just not worth it and only online where imaginary crew deficiencies are magnified can such stuff be defined as game crippling. If one guy who is one in a million accounts has 6 Kyogre then half of those folks are ready to throw in the towel, their Gary’s are trash, and the game has been ruined.
Don’t be that guy.
Do what makes you happy. That’s why we play.
Just do your best to know and understand the best move to make with your resources and understand the sacrifice to do what you want to do.
As so many here recommend either to spend rare candy only on legendaries, or else on what gives you most fun, I checked my Kyogre. It's currently my most likable legendary.
This 10/15/12 H/A/D Kyogre appears to have an interesting power up sequence hitting round CPs at Lv 24.5 - 28 - 33 - 36.5, e.g. 3600 CP @ 33, so it's a really nice one for spending some rare candy. My original plan is still possible along with this one :)
I prioritize collecting candy for the current legendary raid boss. Once I get enough candy to max out one of this legendary, I switch to other things, either evolving rare mon to fill out my pokedex, powering up something with rare candy, or powering up a legendary counter to the current raid boss to somewhere between level 25 and 30.
I've actually already evolved all of the mon listed by the OP through a combination of rare candy, hatching eggs, wild catches and walking a buddy. In some cases, I may later regret not waiting for a higher IV one to evolve, but, if it turns out to be important to the meta, I will be more patient with one in the bag, already.
I've only considered powering up Salamance and Metagross. The Metagross I evolved is the only of these < 82% IV that I've evolved. I wild caught a level 33 6S/14A/14D beldum and figure it will perform better than a perfect hatch, if I limit my investment to 66 candies and 75K dust. Actually, it probably already performs better without any further investment.
