To answer above question is subjective, it is also depend on the player's will to play it. With references of Pokemon Origins the mini series about Red's Journey to capture all Pokemon and become the Pokemon Monster just like the classic Red & Blue game, there are typical two options for players to play Pokemon Go:
- Red - catch them all to complete the Pokedex
- Blue - select 6 most powerful Pokemon in a team to counter any opponents.
Red Path:
If you choose to be Red to complete the Pokedex, in fact, there are not many consideration to play Pokemon Go. All you need to do is travel other places across your neighbourhood to catch them all. No doubt that higher trainer level will have higher chance to capture higher level Pokemon so you still need to capture the same Pokemon in order to level up or like pidgey spam evolution with lucky.. Hence, the main consideration for you to select which Pokemon to stay in your bag is the IV. The higher the IV, the better the Pokemon. In the case of catch them all, every Pokemon is unique.
Depend on Player's will, some may consider to collect Pokemon with good IV and best moveset as well. Some might prefer to be have specific type collection like those who completed the Pokedex, they will just keep hunting rare Pokemon like Lapras, Snorlax and Dragonite as many as possible to make a beautiful collection.
Blue Path:
Completing the Pokedex is not necessary for you but you want to be a Pokemon Master who can counter every opponents with 6 of your best Pokemon then you really need to familiar with the gaming/battle mechanic behind Pokemon Go better than Red style player.
Unlike the classic Red&Blue and Trading Card series, Pokemon Go ignore many beauty from the original Pokemon Game. All the battles are defined by base damage and DPS alone. As compared to original game, Fire and Electric Pokemon may have less HP however they are very popular choice as fast attacker whereas Pokemon Go introduce DPS to decide the attack speed that ruins Fire and Electric Pokemon and Water Pokemon is known as slow attacker has a fair chance in Pokemon Go. Furthermore, Psychic Pokemon and Chansey has a move to heal or recover their hp that make them strong defensive Pokemon. In addition, special condition like asleep, confused, paralyzed, etcs are gone in Pokemon Go.
Therefore, Pokemon Go only focus on pure Base stats (Attack, Defence and Stamina) and Type Advantage to determine how strong the Pokemon and DPS to determine the attack speed.
These are the major criteria to be the most powerful Pokemon in the game:
- Base Stats
- Base Damage of Moveset and DPS
- Type Advantage from Movesets included (STAB)
- Hidden Pokemon Level
- IV
In stackexchange gaming forum, part of the crucial formula in gym battle as shown below:
0.5 * (Atk/Def) * (CpM_Atk/CpM_Def) * TYPE * STAB * Base Damage
In a gym battle, there are Pokemon that defend the gym are known as Defending Pokemon whereas trainers send Pokemon attack the gym are known as Attacking Pokemon.
Based on the formula above, (Atk/Def) we need to compare the Attacking Pokemon's Atk stats (included IV) against the defending Pokemon's Def stats. An example, Charizard Atk stats is 212 whereas Venasaur Def stats is 200.
Hence, Charizard damage for (Atk/Def) will be 212/200 that yield 1.06.
On the other way round, Venasuar damage on Charizard will be 198/182 that yields 1.09 for (Atk/Def).
Similar to CpM stand for Combat Power Multiplier that is fixed and based on Pokemon's level. (CpM_Atk/CpM_Def) just means that a higher level Pokemon has advantage against a lower level Pokemon..
Type and STAB are both well defined in the terminology based on the previous topic.
With formula above, IV played insignificant role to determine the strongest Pokemon. In addition, Type advantage also do not guarantee a victory. Here are a few case studies.
Case Studies#1: Poliwrath Moveset and IV
Poliwrath is both fighting and water type Pokemon but it can perform either water, fighting, ice and ground type move. By judging STAB advantage and DPS, Poliwrath's best movesets are Bubbles and Hydropump so I compared a Poliwrath with 0% IV but has the best movesets against with other Poliwrath with 100% IV with no Bubbles and Hydropump.
To simplify the formula, assume Pokemon Level are the same so CpM will be ignored and we only want to figure out which yield greater damage so there will be no defending pokemon's stats and advantage consideration.
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| Poliwrath Movesets analysis with Stats, STAB and IV |
It is very clear that Poliwrath will deal more damage with Bubble and Hydropump to earn DPS and STAB advantage although the IV is 0%.
Case Studies#2: Ice Pokemon Frost Breath vs Dragonite's Dragon Breath
Dragonite is both Dragon and Flying so it is much more effective to use ice type move to against it such as Frost Breath to earn STAB and Type advantage that yield 1.875 damage since both Dragon and Flying type weakness is Ice but that is just a theory that ignore bases stats.
Same formula with assumption of each Pokemon has same level, here are 4 Ice Pokemon that can use Frost Breath against Dragonite's Dragon Breath.
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| Frost Breath vs Dragonite's Dragon Breath |
Consider that both DPS are quite close so I don't really think it will affect the attack rate very much. With the analysis above, it is no doubt that Lapras is the best Ice Pokemon to counter Dragonite. It deals the second most damage and received the third least damage from Dragonite with 30-50% more hp than Dragonite.
Cloyster and Dewgong are plausible to counter Dragonite but they have stamina disadvantages so it will be better that trainer used dodge during the battle.
Jynx has the slightest chance to win Dragonite as it received the most damage from Dragonite and it has only 60-80% hp of Dragonite for the same level. Hence, the only way to increase the chance of victory for Jynx is has significant higher Pokemon Level than Dragonite.
Similarly, Dragonite has the chance to defeat Lapras when it has higher level since Ice Pokemon didn't earn the advantage that reduce Dragon type damage so it is still a fair fight.
Case Studies#3: Blastoise vs Grass Pokemon
Blastoise is one of the most powerful Water Pokemon with a well balanced stats such that it has chances to defeat grass Pokemon that has advantage against it. Three of the most powerful Grass Pokemon are Vileplume, Venusaur and Exeggutor.
With same formula and same level for each Pokemon assumption, the calculated results as shown below.
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| Blastoise vs Vileplume, Venusaur and Exeggutor |
With STAB and Type advantage, Blastoise has no chance to defeat Venusaur with any possible moves combination due to Venusaur has similar stats and better DPS moves unless its level difference is significantly greater. However, there is a slight chance that Blastoise can defeat Vileplume and Exeggutor.
For Vileplume, it is both Poison and Grass type and it also able to perform fairy type move. With poison move and fairy move combination, it didn't earn the type advantage against Blastoise with Ice beam that is able counter grass Pokemon with 25% more damage and Blastoise has slightly greater stamina stats. In short, Vileplume with acid and moonblast are not the best move combination such that a Water type has chance to defeat it.
Exeggutor is both Grass and Psychic type and it is unfortunately that all of its fast move are psychic that has no advantage on Blastoise whereas Blastoise fast move, Bite is a dark type that has 25% damage bonus due to type advantage on psychic. As long as Blastoise's charge move is not Flash Canon and Exeggutor move is not Solar Beam, Blastoise has the slight chance to defeat Exeggutor but there major problem will be Exeggutor's hp will be significantly greater than Blastoise so Blastoise with higher level should have higher chance to win.
1. Dragonite
2. Exeggutor
3. Arcanine
4. Vaporeon
5. Charizard
6. Lapras
How do I get the list above?
First of all, sum up the stats value for each attribute in the base stats of each Pokemon. From Charizard with 550 total stats to Dragonite 644 stats.
Second consideration will be which Pokemon has the highest chance with higher DPS movesets. Both Dragonite, Vaporeon, Charizard and Arcanine have a common 12 DPS move which are Dragon Breath, Water Gun, Wing Attack and Bite move make them fast attacker, only Vaporeon has a lower attack stats. Similar to Exeggutor, its highest DPS move is Zen Headbutt, 11.4 DPS but it has the third highest attack stats.
Lapras may not have a high DPS fast move and high attack stats but its Blizzard is the second highest DPS charged move.
Each of the six has its unique type advantage and large base stats make them a powerful team. With Dragonite alone, it can handle all Pokemon except itself, Lapras, Dewgong and Cloyster.
To counter these Ice Pokemon, Fire Type Pokemon has higher chance to counter them. Those Ice Pokemon is also Water Pokemon that make fire type move not their weakness nor resistance hence Fire Type Pokemon like Arcanine has a fair chance to fight it.In addition, Arcanine gains advantage when Ice type moves is used since Fire type resists ice type attack.
These Ice Pokemon has no water type fast move that make them a slow attacker against Arcanine. Dewgong only water type charged move is Aqua Jet with 8.8 DPS. Compared both base stats, Arcanine has higher chance to defeat Dewgong with Aqua Jet. On the other hand, Cloyster has a surprisingly high stats on Attack and Defence make it has a slight chance to defeat Arcanine. In addition, Cloyster's only water type charge move is Hydropump. However, the major disadvantage for Cloyster is its low HP which is a bad choice to handle Arcanine that is both powerful and fast attacking Pokemon. Charizard is another alternative choice for fire type Pokemon.
Similar to counter the fire type, Vaporean with Water gun, 186 attack stats, Type advantage and STAB bonus make it a strong water type Pokemon to overcome fire type. Its extreamly large stats on stamina make it able to endure more damage from powerful fire type attackers.
Snorlax and Chansey have total bases stats of 680 and 600 but they are not really good attacker. First of all, there are no Pokemon has weakness on Normal Type so its attack didn't get benefit from type advantage. Normal type is capable to resist ghost type but there are only three ghost Pokemon that are unlikely used in gym battle.
Both attack and defence stats are below 100 for Chansey make Chansey's attack very weak against any Pokemon with defence stats above 120 (that will be 50% reduction on Chansey attack). So, how about Blastoise defence stats, 222? (60/222) would be 73% damage reduction against Blastoise.
Snorlax may have a better combat ability as compared to other normal type but its available fast move has a relatively lower DPS as compared to Water Gun and none of the fast moves are normal type that Snorlax didn't get advantage from STAB. Meanwhile the available fast move is effective against Ghost and Psychic type or Poison type. However, Snorlax has the second strongest Hyperbeam charged move and second highest stamina stats with a well balanced atk and def stats that makes it able to endure a lot of damage. However, 4 Pokemon above except Lapras and Vaporeon have higher chance to defeat Snorlax due to fast and powerful attacker.
Therefore, these six Pokemon are the most ideal Pokemon team to counter any Pokemon by considering its base stats, type effectiveness, available type and DPS moves.
Second consideration will be the Pokemon should have less weakness and more resistance because trainer will never know what will the attacking Pokemon. A good example of less weakness Pokemon would be Snorlax, only has a weakness which is Fighting Type. Pokemon with less weakness and more resistance would be Dragonite.
Pokemon like Exeguttor would be a bad example for second criteria.
Its Grass type makes it vulnerable to Flying, Fire and Ice
Its Psychic type makes it vulnerable to Dark and Ghost
When combined both type, Bugs are super effective against Exeguttor.
Due to its dual type nature, it makes itself has 6 weakness.
Another worst defending Pokemon would be Rhydon.
Ground type makes it vulnerable to Ice
Rock type makes it vulnerable to Fighting and Steel.
Dual type makes Grass and Water Type super effective against Rhydon.
Consider that Grass and Water Type are strong, common and popular choice.
For Chansey, it is only a time buyer without damaging the attacking Pokemon. Clefable and Wigglytuff would be a better choice with 2-3 weakness such as Fighting, Poison and Steel which are not popular choice in Pokemon Go.
Lastly, defend the gym together in a group would be a wiser choice than consider an individual Pokemon alone. An example:
Gym Level 1: Snorlax
Gym Level 2: Lapras
Gym Level 3: Vaporeon
Gym Level 4: Arcanine
Gym Level 5: Dragonite
Other than Fighting type, no Pokemon has type advantage against Snorlax. With insanely large HP and relatively higher atk stats and def stats, Snorlax is able to buy time while reducing the attacking Pokemon's HP.
Lapras did a similar with its high stamina and defence stats followed by Vaporeon. Then both Arcanine and Dragonite would be applying "Offence is better Defence" to defend the gym.
In reality, it is very hard to level up the Gym more than Level 3 when the competition is high but the ideal example above is just a concept about the advantage to have a group of trainers from the same team played together.
The Best Six Pokemon
You are allowed to bring 6 Pokemon to challenge a gym. As mentioned before, Base Stats and DPS played more important role to determine the strongest Pokemon in the game.1. Dragonite
2. Exeggutor
3. Arcanine
4. Vaporeon
5. Charizard
6. Lapras
How do I get the list above?
First of all, sum up the stats value for each attribute in the base stats of each Pokemon. From Charizard with 550 total stats to Dragonite 644 stats.
Second consideration will be which Pokemon has the highest chance with higher DPS movesets. Both Dragonite, Vaporeon, Charizard and Arcanine have a common 12 DPS move which are Dragon Breath, Water Gun, Wing Attack and Bite move make them fast attacker, only Vaporeon has a lower attack stats. Similar to Exeggutor, its highest DPS move is Zen Headbutt, 11.4 DPS but it has the third highest attack stats.
Lapras may not have a high DPS fast move and high attack stats but its Blizzard is the second highest DPS charged move.
Each of the six has its unique type advantage and large base stats make them a powerful team. With Dragonite alone, it can handle all Pokemon except itself, Lapras, Dewgong and Cloyster.
To counter these Ice Pokemon, Fire Type Pokemon has higher chance to counter them. Those Ice Pokemon is also Water Pokemon that make fire type move not their weakness nor resistance hence Fire Type Pokemon like Arcanine has a fair chance to fight it.In addition, Arcanine gains advantage when Ice type moves is used since Fire type resists ice type attack.
These Ice Pokemon has no water type fast move that make them a slow attacker against Arcanine. Dewgong only water type charged move is Aqua Jet with 8.8 DPS. Compared both base stats, Arcanine has higher chance to defeat Dewgong with Aqua Jet. On the other hand, Cloyster has a surprisingly high stats on Attack and Defence make it has a slight chance to defeat Arcanine. In addition, Cloyster's only water type charge move is Hydropump. However, the major disadvantage for Cloyster is its low HP which is a bad choice to handle Arcanine that is both powerful and fast attacking Pokemon. Charizard is another alternative choice for fire type Pokemon.
Similar to counter the fire type, Vaporean with Water gun, 186 attack stats, Type advantage and STAB bonus make it a strong water type Pokemon to overcome fire type. Its extreamly large stats on stamina make it able to endure more damage from powerful fire type attackers.
Snorlax and Chansey have total bases stats of 680 and 600 but they are not really good attacker. First of all, there are no Pokemon has weakness on Normal Type so its attack didn't get benefit from type advantage. Normal type is capable to resist ghost type but there are only three ghost Pokemon that are unlikely used in gym battle.
Both attack and defence stats are below 100 for Chansey make Chansey's attack very weak against any Pokemon with defence stats above 120 (that will be 50% reduction on Chansey attack). So, how about Blastoise defence stats, 222? (60/222) would be 73% damage reduction against Blastoise.
Snorlax may have a better combat ability as compared to other normal type but its available fast move has a relatively lower DPS as compared to Water Gun and none of the fast moves are normal type that Snorlax didn't get advantage from STAB. Meanwhile the available fast move is effective against Ghost and Psychic type or Poison type. However, Snorlax has the second strongest Hyperbeam charged move and second highest stamina stats with a well balanced atk and def stats that makes it able to endure a lot of damage. However, 4 Pokemon above except Lapras and Vaporeon have higher chance to defeat Snorlax due to fast and powerful attacker.
Therefore, these six Pokemon are the most ideal Pokemon team to counter any Pokemon by considering its base stats, type effectiveness, available type and DPS moves.
Best Defending Pokemon:
Most people will consider that Pokemon with both high defence and stamina stats are strong defending Pokemon but I believe in "Offence is a better defence". So, the Pokemon either has a relatively high stats on both Attack and Defence or Attack and Stamina are good choice to be a Defending Pokemon.Second consideration will be the Pokemon should have less weakness and more resistance because trainer will never know what will the attacking Pokemon. A good example of less weakness Pokemon would be Snorlax, only has a weakness which is Fighting Type. Pokemon with less weakness and more resistance would be Dragonite.
Pokemon like Exeguttor would be a bad example for second criteria.
Its Grass type makes it vulnerable to Flying, Fire and Ice
Its Psychic type makes it vulnerable to Dark and Ghost
When combined both type, Bugs are super effective against Exeguttor.
Due to its dual type nature, it makes itself has 6 weakness.
Another worst defending Pokemon would be Rhydon.
Ground type makes it vulnerable to Ice
Rock type makes it vulnerable to Fighting and Steel.
Dual type makes Grass and Water Type super effective against Rhydon.
Consider that Grass and Water Type are strong, common and popular choice.
For Chansey, it is only a time buyer without damaging the attacking Pokemon. Clefable and Wigglytuff would be a better choice with 2-3 weakness such as Fighting, Poison and Steel which are not popular choice in Pokemon Go.
Lastly, defend the gym together in a group would be a wiser choice than consider an individual Pokemon alone. An example:
Gym Level 1: Snorlax
Gym Level 2: Lapras
Gym Level 3: Vaporeon
Gym Level 4: Arcanine
Gym Level 5: Dragonite
Other than Fighting type, no Pokemon has type advantage against Snorlax. With insanely large HP and relatively higher atk stats and def stats, Snorlax is able to buy time while reducing the attacking Pokemon's HP.
Lapras did a similar with its high stamina and defence stats followed by Vaporeon. Then both Arcanine and Dragonite would be applying "Offence is better Defence" to defend the gym.
In reality, it is very hard to level up the Gym more than Level 3 when the competition is high but the ideal example above is just a concept about the advantage to have a group of trainers from the same team played together.
Water Pokemon are dominating in Pokemon Go:
As explained, most Water Pokemon possessed Water Gun as fast move that make them fast attacker that breaks the Pokemon Tradition. When we sum up the base stats, there are five Pokemon are water type in the top 10 lists, they are:- Lapras (Ice-Water) = 636 base stats
- Vaporeon (Water) = 614 base stats
- Gyrados (Water-Flying) = 578 base stats
- Slowbro (Water-Psychic) = 572 base stats
- Blastoise (Water) = 566 base stats.
Vaporeon, Slowbro and Blastoise has 184-186 attack stats and the only three in the lists can use Water Gun that make them fast attacker.
Vaporean has the highest stamina stats (260) to receive more damage.
Blastoise has the highest defence stats (222) to endure more damage.
Slowbro only better stamina stats than Blastoise, defence stats than Vaporean but just slightly little attack stats difference.
As long as the attacking Pokemon are not Dragon, Grass and Electric type, these 3 Pokemon managed to defeat most of the Pokemon in this game. Even with type disadvantage, the attacking Pokemon need to have good base stats to overcome these water type Pokemon. As analyzed with Blastoise, Blastoise has the slight chance to defeat Vileplume and Exeggutor.
Gyrados has a very balanced stats on each attribute that make it the best attacker among the 5 water Pokemon and it is the only Water Pokemon has no weakness on Grass type due to Flying Type. However, there is a price, electric type will be super effective against Gyrados. The major drawback about Gyrados is only Hydropump allowed it to gain STAB advantage.
Lapras is not really a Water Type since it has no available water type move. Its ice moves make it super effective against Dragonite and it has a fair fight with grass type as both side apply 1.25 type advantage against each others. With STAB alone, Lapras is still strong enough to handle most of the Pokemon except pure Fire Type Pokemon.
No doubt that Grass type is able to handle these Water Type Pokemon but why aren't they be the dominating Pokemon in the Game? Grass are super effective against Water and Ground only but Grass type alone has five Weakness, Flying, Bug, Fire, Poison and Ice. These five type Pokemon are very common in the early stage of the game like Pidgeot.
Eevee Evolution: Vaporeon vs Flareon vs Jolteon
With similar analysis with Blastoise, the results are presented below
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| Pokemon Go: Vaporeon vs Flareon vs Jolteon |
With many case studies here, I believe it makes sense that Vaporeon is overpowered as compared to Flareon and Jolteon. Even though Flareon may have type disadvantage, its available charge moves has higher DPS than Vaporeon but its fast move was 25% slower than Vaporeon. With Fast Move alone, Vapourean could have defeated Flareon effortlessly.
Jolteon may gain both type advantage and STAB to defeat Vaporeon however Electric type Pokemon does not resist Water Type Moves at all. For fast move, Jolteon is 10% slower than Vaporeon but most of its charge move has higher DPS than Vaporeon in general. However, Jolteon fast move is only deal 18% more damage on Vaporeon and maximum 32.3% more damage with Charge Move. This additional bonus on Jolteon attack does not really help it to overcome Vaporeon that has 100% more HP.
For the same level and 0% IV consideration, Vaporeon may have 180 HP but both Flareon and Jolteon only have 90 HP theoretically. With Water gun alone, it only takes 10s for Vaporeon to defeat Flareon or 5s with combination of Water Gun and Hydropump. With Ember and Fire Blast, Flareon only deal 26.9 and 70.83 damage respectively in 6s but Vaporeon has 80+ HP left. Similarly, Vaporeon takes 12s to defeat Jolteon with fast move alone or 5-6s with Hydropump. However, both Jolteon and Flareon has the chance to defeat Vaporeon if both of their charge move has greater DPS.
Therefore, Vaporeon is the champion among the three Eevee's evolution followed by Flareon has an insanely high attack stats and higher defence stats than Jolteon. On the other hand, Flareon charge move is much stronger than Jolteon's.
In Conclusion:
Vaporeon > Flareon > Jolteon
Best Charge Move for Dragonite:
Case#1: Dragonite vs Other Pokemon
Assumption: Same Level and Defence Stats is ignored
Results:
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| Dragonite vs Other Pokemon Scenario |
Both Base Damage and DPS make Hyperbeam as one of the most powerful charged move and Dragonite has the strongest Hyperbeam among other Hyperbeam users due to its high Atk stats although it has no STAB advantage.
When compared to its own charge moves available, Dragon Claw has a slightly higher DPS due to STAB. Theoretically, Dragon Claw will be performed three time before a Hyperbeam was launched.
With STAB consideration, Dragon Claw is slightly more powerful than Hyperbeam.
Case#2: Dragonite vs Dragonite
Assumption: Same Level and Defence Stats will be Dragonite's stats.
With Defence consideration, the scenario become more realistic. Since Dragon Type move is more effective against Dragon type, Both Dragon Claw and Dragon Pulse earned a type advantage such that Hyperbeam is Dragonite's weakest charge move against another Dragonite.
Conclusion:
Best Charge Move is Dragon Claw
Best Charge Move is Dragon Claw
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