Pokémon GO's Top Gym Defenders Have Just Been Nerfed As Part Of The Gen 4 Update

R.I.P. to my collection of cleverly named 666 and 420 CP pokemon. You will be missed.

I was wondering why my Chansey and Blissey showed to be missing HP yesterday, guess this was it.

YES! I have been dreaming of a Chansey/Blissey nerf ever since I picked this game back up in March!

I wasn't keeping exact numbers, but the overwhelming majority of gyms I encountered had at least 1 of the 2, but more often than not, BOTH. They weren't impossible to knock out, but they were so much bulkier and slower to kill than any other Pokemon! Whether I even bothered fighting a gym often came down to "Is there I Blissey and a Chansey?"

No other Pokemon, I mean NO OTHER POKEMON even came close to their bulk! Snorlax, Slaking, Rhydon, Tyranitar, Metagross, Dragonite? Quick and easy KOs. Chansey and Blissey? 2-3 times as long to knock out...

@Desrever Same. I had a 666 Pinsir & it was awesome. Now it'll be different.

This is honestly part of the reason I dislike this game. Not the big one by a long shot, but it doesn't help. If I ever wanted to get "competitive", I'd do so knowing that my Pokemon might get nerfed at any time. While the meta of the mainline games changes, it doesn't do so by clumsily directly nerfing Pokemon. Then again, with how simplistic Go is, they don't really have the same tools to knock specific Mons out of the meta with new introductions, without flat-out powercreeping things.

i want a better candy multiplier for walking with your buddy

@Desrever Same. RIP my 420 CP Oddish.

Don't play Pokemon Go anymore, but when I did it irked me how the HP boost in gyms made certain Pokemon extremely good defenders, do the detriment of 98% of the roster. Glad to know it's been worked on.

@AlexOlney
Open my gift lol

Finally! The campus' champion will be dethroned!

@AlexOlney

As mentioned, the Pokemon games themselves don't tend to flat-out nerf things. For a mobile comparison, neither does Fire Emblem Heroes. Because in any game where you can exchange money (and in any case, lots of time and in-game resources) to make something the best it can be, it feels awful to see that thing directly nerfed. But money is the key factor here that makes direct nerfs suck in this sort of game moreso than a fighting game that sees changes regularly.

Just because other games do it, doesn't make it a good idea, and it's rather telling that was your only argument.

For an example of a better way to do it, when Psychic was ludicrously OP in Gen 1, they didn't just nerf all psychic mons to the dirt. Rather, they introduced new types to curb it.

But again, Go is really too simplistic in its battle system to do that, and of course doesn't have the luxury to introduce new types. If it inroduced a new mon to take out Blissey, it'd just be raw powercreep that would murder everything else too. There's no room for them to introduce a Blissey-specific counter, so clumsy nerfs are their only viable instrument of change.

Well, these Pokémon were already incorrectly stat-wise compared to the core series.
We Pokémon Go players, at least the ones of us that plays the core games too, knew this was coming.
I mean, we KNEW about Rhyperior, and you don’t really have to be a genius to figure out that they would have to change Rhydon’s stats to add Rhyperior without totally tipping the scale.

That said Blissey is supposed to be one of the best special tanks out there together with eviolite Chansey.

@Heavyarms55 well, you know Blissey has the highest HP stat in the entire core series, not even legendaries come close. And not only that, Blissey has such a high HP stat, it’s the highest stat of any one category. Meaning no Pokémon has an attack/defense/speed that is as high as Blissey’s HP stat. To make up for that, Blissey has almost no physical defense at all, making it incredibly exposed to physical fight attacks. But it has a decent special defense and an unique healing move, making it a very good special tank.

I actually think it should require a lot of effort to take down Blissey, but that’s my opinion.

@Phle Yeah, but ever since Gold and Silver, Pokemon has physical and special defense stats, and Chansey and Blissey are famously frail on the physical side. Meaning almost any decent physical fighting type move just devastates them. However in Go, no such distinction exists, so you just sit there with your Machamp smashing them for almost the entire timer just waiting for the stupid pink ball to die.

I am not saying they should be nerfed into oblivion, but in the core game, there are ways to deal with them reasonably. In Go, NOTHING compares with them. 4000CP Slaking is faster to KO than 800CP chansey.

@Heavyarms55 yes, do agree without you.

However, I think there should be a difference between attacking Pokémon and defending Pokémon in Pokémon Go.

The defense and HP bulky Pokémon should be the best gym holders and the Pokémon with the best attack stats and super effective moves should be the best ones to bring them down.
I want to see strong wall Pokémon like Skarmory, Bronzong, Umbreon, Gastrodon and Slowbro holding gyms in the future.

@Phle I completely agree about having strong attackers and defenders. But there should be a balance. Some Pokemon are better than others, but right now, some are overwhelmingly so. Like I have said before, there is a reason Chansey and Blissey are on almost every single gym, because nothing else comes close. On a scale from 1-10, 10 being the best, Blissey is 11, Chansey is 10 and the next best is like a 6.5.

@Heavyarms55 that’s why some classic walls need to get the defensive bulk they are meant to have. Skarmory is an excellent example, it’s equally difficult to get as chansey, as it’s rare and comes in 10 km eggs. It’s also a classic wall in core games. But right now Skarmory is ridiculously weak. Umbreon is the weakest eeveeloution, although it’s actually supposed to be a decent defensive Pokémon.

They don’t only need to nerf Blissey, they need to buff a lot of Pokémon. Almost no Pokémon is supposed to be strong overall, except for legendaries, and as long they aren’t allowed in gyms, they need more defensive Pokémon.

@Heavyarms55 and, I think they should add immunities. Ghost Pokémon are supposed to be immune to normal and fight moves , flying is supposed to be immune to ground moves and so on. Right now, this is not in effect in Pokémon Go, and this creates an unbalance.

@Phle Yeah I agree. I honestly think it might be good to divide the stats up. Instead of one CP and individual stats that the player can't reasonably see. They could have AP (attacking power) and DP (defending power). I know they want to keep things as dumbed down as possible, but if that's too complex for someone to understand, then they are either really really really young, or really old and somehow never played another game. Not even talking about video games, just any game.

@Heavyarms55 I really like the AP and DP idea, that should still be easy enough for most people, and give a better picture of the Pokémon, at least much better than just CP.

@Phle Personally I'd prefer just to have the same spread of stats that you'd have normally in the core games, I guess minus speed since that's not a thing in Go.

But heck, NintendoLife has even done videos talking about how most people are too casual/ignorant to understand things as simple as:
Attack
Defense
Special Attack
Special Defense
Speed

That core Pokemon games are too hard for new players... Personally I think that's a load of bull, but hey:

Attacking Power and Defending Power are pretty straightforward!

@Heavyarms55 I wouldn’t mind bringing the core game stats to Pokémon Go myself, I would consider that ideal, but I don’t think that’s going to happen anytime soon. There are too many of the players in Pokémon Go who are young kids, old people or just people who otherwise doesn’t play games. So I pretty sure they are go to keep it as simple as possible, at least for now.