Awaiting the Gym Rework; Keep Your Rivals Close and Your Battle Mons Closer

Recent APK data mines poise Niantic’s next big update to be the gym rework. Ok, I know, enough with old news and summations, but a gym rework is promised, coming, and Adventure Week is just the week to work on your Mon’s gym positioning. The last three events in Pokemon Go: Worldwide Bloom (5/5 -5/9thish), Eggstravaganza (4/13-4/20), and the Water Festival (3/22-3/29) shook up the longstanding meta game surrounding Pokemon Gyms and Adventure Week is too. It’s GO time Pokemon trainers and here’s why.

Whether or not you regularly battle for the control of gyms around you ask yourself this: Do I battle? If your answer was yes, you have a rival. Be it a gym occupied by an opposing team at your local baseball field, school, church, park, favorite diner, library, pier, etc., it should not be your current focus. Get out and explore new destinations, and when you do, make sure to battle as many opposing gyms as possible. Battling as many gyms as possible aligns with a current overarching goal Niantic is working towards for their Gym rework. Roughly speaking, that goal is to introduce a more collaborative and balanced battling system for its users. Battling that new gym you found while on your adventure will help to balance out territory held by the three teams. It will push existing turf boundaries and you may just become a rival to an opposing trainer on the other side of town.

Don’t worry if the Pokemon you placed in a gym gets ousted quickly. Flying your team color in a gym that has consistently been occupied by your rivals’ color may just be that glimpse of hope the under 30 community needs. For instance, I took down a dead level 10 gym in my adventure hat thus far and it is now being contested by all teams and a sizeable number of the trainers battling for coins are a part of the under 30 community. The gym is destined to become a level 10 soon, but trimming the gym down to a manageable size for trainers has transformed the arena. Top CP gym defenders still fill the arena but so do those tier 1, 2, and 3 Mon’s that needed some stardust / candies before being able to battle with the best of them!

Given the longstanding meta game within Pokemon Go, many trainers have opted to bench some of their best Mon’s in favor of upgrading Pokemon that currently serve as top CP gym defenders. Prior Pokemon Go events have increased the number of trainers getting out and catching Pokemon and gaining Stardust. Now, halfway into Adventure week and the trainers out exploring during this event are shaking up the gym meta again. This time it is not just a shiny Gyaradose, starter Pokemon, or an “Eggcelent” rare top gym defender that explorers are seeing out in gyms. 4X the candy awarded for walking a buddy Pokemon means trainers’ focuses will include their “Pocket Monsters”. These “Pocket Monsters” tend to be tier 1, 2, and 3 Mon’s as used for gym prestige or as a gym defender. These benched Pokemon wont remain domiciled in the smart phones of their trainers’ pockets too much longer because while out exploring and gaining stardust and 4X candies with our buddy we’ve all be asking ourselves the same question: Should I power it up?

Cheers to you Pokemon Go Hub and all the best from this level 34 trainer, SCArsenalGunner.

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