Gym question

[lilacsigil]

I have a question about gyms!

There is only one gym in my town and it rotates fairly evenly between the three teams. Yesterday morning we happened to be going past and noticed it was Mystic (my team) and only had a weak Caterpie and an even weaker Magikarp in it.

Thinking that the gym had just been taken over by Mystic and needed shoring up, we went to it and found that actually it was a Level 6 gym. But how could it be a Level 6 gym with only two weak Pokemon guarding it? If someone else had been fighting to raise the prestige, why wouldn't they leave a Pokemon there?

Comments

[serpentine]

Probably because two people left their pokemon there to level it up themselves, but since they already had Pokemon there, they couldn't leave another. They probably leveled it up so that others could leave their stronger Pokemon there.

[lilacsigil]

That's what confuses me - why would they not leave strong Pokemon there to hold the gym longer?

[inkstone]

Because it's faster to level it up when you leave weak mon and you don't necessarily have to use your strongest attackers to train up the gym (therefore wasting potions and revives). Instead, you can use, like a pidgey or rattata to train up the gym and then either transfer the fainted mon for candy or evolve them for the XP. (The evolved mon will have full HP. No potions or revives necessary.)

There are lots of strategies for taking over gyms and training them up. This pair of players were probably hoping either members of your team would drop by and leave defenders and then when those slots were filled, new players would still be able to train up the gym to leave a defender.

That...and they were probably trolling. You only karp a gym when you want to taunt the other teams. Not speaking from experience or anything.

[lilacsigil]

Oh, I get it! Because you can beat super low level Pokemon easily, that's how you quickly level up the gym. I only regularly see the one gym, so it's not a technique I had witnessed before.

Also, trolling is highly likely!

[serpentine]

My therapist, who is awesome (and plays Pokemon Go), told me that one of her friends left a Magikarp at a Gym to "make a statement". I am not entirely sure what this statement was, but it is amusing.

[inkstone]

Basically, the statement is -- especially if you leave a karp after tearing down a high prestige gym -- "You seriously thought you were going to hold that gym? Come on."

Karping was something started by my team (Valor) and it's typically done by those of us who simply attack gyms to collect the bonuses and don't care about holding them. Either because we don't have a squad of friends to take over and hold gyms with or because the area we live in is so competitive that it's very difficult to hold gyms in the first place.

Occasionally, it's also done by those of us who see high prestige gyms stacked with 1600+ CP in places like playgrounds and libraries and are like WTF, how are kids going to compete with that?

[recessional]

Karping around my area is not necessarily a good idea because it can mean you literally don't have time to claim gold/stardust before you've had your butt kicked out.

So. Many. Kids.

(I mean if you don't care about the gold/stardust, but just want the XP or want to make one of the other statements, fine! But yeah the gym can literally get stolen again before you have time to load the shop, if you're not careful here. XD)

[inkstone]

Yeah, if it's competitive, you're better off putting something a bit higher level. When I'm trying to train up a gym versus being a jerk, I usually put in one of my 1500CP flareons and use my 1200CP water gun/hydro pump starmie to train up the gym.

But if it's hyper competitive, eh. It's probably better to take over gyms in off hours. There's a reason why lots of gyms turn over in the middle of the night.

[recessional]

Yeah I usually do my Early Morning Walk and take both, hit up the shop for my rewards, and then go home.

[monanotlisa]

Hehe.

Either because we don't have a squad of friends to take over and hold gyms with or because the area we live in is so competitive that it's very difficult to hold gyms in the first place.

I haven't stooped to Magikarp level, but I have left, what, random Jynxes...

[dickgrayson]

I think people have said and I agree. It was nice of them as when the lowest pokemon has a CP of 1200 I have no way to beat it and can not join the gym. This way they leveled the gym up and gave a way for people who want to join a gym to join when they only have low pokemon. Or that is what I would think.

[ephemera]

I have to say, I really appreciate it when people leave something low-powered as at least one tier of a gym - it's almost impossible to level a gym up to create a slot when the lowest tier is a 2k Snorlax! (They may also have been at the end of a run and run out of revives, esp if there's more gyms than pokestops in the area - if it will stay taken long enough to pay out coins, that might be good enough.)