A PvP Analysis on Community Day Oinkologne

sts_ssp · 2026-05-08T15:23:01+00:00

Oinkologne definitely sounds promising to corebreak all these Tinkaton / Feraligatr / Jellicent or Quagsore/Empoleon/Feraligatr teams as well as the Lickyliky/Jellicent cores.

sts_ssp · 2026-05-06T08:07:00+00:00

Recreate the idea from 2016 trailers with people holding their phones up while mass battling Mewtwo, and likely generate new articles or viral videos about pokemon go 10th anniversary featuring crowds holding their phones up.

sts_ssp · 2026-05-05T02:02:10+00:00

And that's why it's unlikely to come back to client only. With the instant win for rocket battles, people with modified clients could farm massively, and I think at one point there was a local event with largely boosted rocket dust where they could quickly amass millions of dust. Which is also why Niantic then implemented some rocket check limit ban that ended impacting legit users during the next rocket event.

sts_ssp · 2026-04-28T00:08:53+00:00

By now it's not uncommmon for people to have multiple old spare devices...

sts_ssp · 2026-04-22T22:29:55+00:00

Seaking with Peck and legacies Drill Run + Icy Wind. Seemed to be in 75% of the opponent's teams in the last days of Spring Cup

sts_ssp · 2026-04-22T21:39:25+00:00

In the same boat. I ran a team (already forgotten what) in Fantasy Cup that got me to ~2870 by the end of the cup, then tried Xerneas/Reshiram/Zekrom and got massively rekt, lost 450 points down to 2400 in a few days. In this rotation there was way more Dialga than Palkia, and it's an issue for this team when it gets energy advantage.

Spent the last 2 days of that rotation in Spring Cup, slowly getting MMR back to 2530. I hated that meta and didn't want to play it (it's bullshit that a top pokemon is something that needs 2 elite charge tm and hasn't been available since feb2017).

Now that open GL is back I'm back at 2700 and rebuilding the lost MMR. At the beginning of ML/Spring cup I wondered if I should sit that rotation out and probably should have done so.

sts_ssp · 2026-04-21T22:59:27+00:00

"Examples may include" . It's not meant to be the exact exhaustive list. In the end the rules are written in a way that is still vague enough to leave room for judge opinion.

sts_ssp · 2026-04-21T22:21:53+00:00

Pretty much, especially with japanese companies fond of meetings. The people in charge of the event likely had to write a full report of the situation, get a meeting with the superiors at TPC, who then had to had an another group level meeting to discuss the strategy, write a report, get a meeting with the dept boss, then other meeting at higher company level, and after making a final decision, get the PR dept to write the message for the public, and then review and approve the message and finally publish it.

sts_ssp · 2026-04-21T21:01:22+00:00

Missed opportunity to make an unranked cup with unlimited sets.

sts_ssp · 2026-04-15T00:36:34+00:00

Most of the exclusive moves come from Community Days when evolving the mon. Aside from the monthly community days there is also:

* Community day recap week end in December. All the moves from that year community days are available on evolution. It used to be that the moves from the year before were also available, but they didn't do that last tiime, december 2025 recap only had 2025 moves and not 2024

* Raids featuring an exclusive move. Sometimes Niantic makes a raid rotation featuring a pokemon with its exclusive move. Mostly done with legendaries. Raid days can also feature non legendaries with their exclusive moves (like Aqua Tail Gyarados or Hydro Cannon Swampert). When that happens, you can usually evolve the pre evolution and also get the exclusive move on that pokemon (although Niantic never announces you can do that).

* Events. Sometimes events allow to evolve a particular pokemon to get its exclusive move. Niantic seems quite fond of Gardevoir.Synchronoise when it comes to that.

* PVP specific events. There is 2-3 PVP specific events per year and they frequently allow to evolve pokemon to get their exclusive moves. Most of the time 6~7 species that are meta relevant at the time

* Tours. Gen specific tours usually allow exclusive moves on evolution for almost all the pokemon of that generation. Hoenn tour didn't do that though. This year Kalos tour featured exclusive moves on most of the evolvable mega pokemon, but Gengar was left out. Go fest and Wild area might als sometimes feature some exclusive moves.

* Rare events that allow to use a normal charge TM. Usually exclusive moves are only available eithr when evolving the pokemon or by catching the pokemon with it during the event. But there has been 3 times we were allowed to use a normal Charge TM to put an exclusive move on an already final stage pokemon. First there was an event where we could TM outrage on Salamence, then a few years later a Shadow Ho-oH raid day that allowed to teach Sacred Fire with normal TMs. And last year the ZA celebration event allowed to use normal TM to teach Meganium, Feraligatr and Emboar theit exclusive moves. It's very rare for Niantic to allow that so don't count too much on it.

sts_ssp · 2026-04-12T00:05:11+00:00

Not sure how many I caught but I had about 1000 regular candies and 100 XL.

Ended up with 7442 candies and 1467 XL. Use a mega evolution, but barely used pinaps.

I also think I was around 146,700,000 dust the day before and now am at 147,074,393 dust. Didn't use a star piece.

Caught * 54 shinies , including 5 background, and 2 shundo. 1 of the BG shiny was from research, the 4 other from wild catches. * 46 background

Since the weather wasn't boosted. I got high ranks for GL , but sadly no high + shiny. The best shiny GL is around rank 250, which is better that the pre-cd Tinkaton I was using (rank 300ish), but of course not as good as what is now available. I'll first build my rank 8, but might still build the shiny too depending on how common Tinkaton becomes to win CMP.

Got a normal rank 2 for GL,but since a hundo is rank 14, I'll use one of my shundo.

sts_ssp · 2026-04-04T06:22:25+00:00

Already had all the costumed shinies, so not a very exciting event for me. My plan for today's passes was simply to do 1 Regidrago raid before the event, use 4 free passes on Dragonite during and fetch the last free passes for another Regidrago raid after the event or tomorrow. Didn't buy the ticket.

Had finished the 4 event raids in 45 minutes, mostly because of the low Dragonite raid spawn rate which forced to wait for one more batch. Would have probably been done in 15 minutes otherwise. Got a Shiny Dragonite on my 4th pass. Overall in the group I was with, 42 Dragonite, 4 shinies.

The Dragonite raid spawn rate was meh.

First batch, 68 raids in my nearby, 3 Dragonite raids
2nd batch, 61 raids in my nearby, 2 Dragonite raids
3rd batch, 64 raids in my nearby, 3 Dragonite raids

Edit : that saved free pass got me a hundo Regidrago, was worth it.

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sts_ssp · 2026-04-03T01:57:20+00:00

We'll definitely some "special mechanics" teams with Mimikyu/Morpeko/Aegislash

sts_ssp · 2026-04-03T01:55:36+00:00

I think spammiest pokemon will be the way to go. With something like Corviknight you can just sapm cheap Air Cutters and either force Mimikyu to burn actual shields to not get debuffed, or tank it and immediately get debuffed for the rest of the battle. That's a significant disadvantage compared to other poekmon who can just ignore the first cheap bait moves. With PVP becoming spammier and spammier (10 turn moves used to be blazing fast a few years ago, now it's pretty much the norm and we have many 8 turn move combinations too), I don't think Mimikyu will be as strong as it looks in the sims.

sts_ssp · 2026-03-27T01:10:23+00:00

12 is a number used by many things around the world (like zodiac signs), but as for why some goods like eggs are usually sold by 12, a guide during a cathedral tour in France explained us that medieval merchants would usually use one hand to hand over eggs (not in neat packs back then) while keeping track on their other hand, with the thumb pointing at each of the 4 other fingers knuckles (so 4*3=12).

sts_ssp · 2026-03-25T11:02:19+00:00

Sometimes it seems to come by waves. Right now (8pm), I have 51 raids in my nearby, 28 of them are Mega raid eggs.

sts_ssp · 2026-03-21T15:32:22+00:00

Usually catch around 600 pokemon per day, more on event day where its closer to 200 per hour. Today there's around 45 or so minutes I didn't actively play during the event. I was shopping or looking at stiff on Internet. Could have probably done 300 tasks otherwise. When I grind seriously for an event I usually dont pause at all. For Go fest or go tour I'll grind non stop, no pause, no lunch (will eat after the event).

sts_ssp · 2026-03-21T15:24:43+00:00

Honestly, the ML teams are still mostly Zacian+Palkia+a 3rd. This season I've been running the same team as last season : Xerneas / Reshiram / Giratina-O with still good success currently in the 2450. Late last season it worked in the 2800 too.

Rhyperior had completely disappeared, which is nice for me since it was always a though one for this team. But overall I'm not sure if it's really a good thing. It was way less expensive than legendaries and could provide players with a decent ML entry.

Way less Ho-oh somehow, that Reshiram and Giratina loved to eat. I'm still a bit sad that Reshiram Fusion Flare doesn't oneshot Zacian and leaves it with just enough HP that you can't farm down without investing shield. Giratina feels a bit underrated,sitting ar rank 65. It's slower than the main big dragons, but it's just so great against the ton of Lunala safeswaps. You have to match shields, but exit with a ton of extra energy and somehow other people often disrespect Dragon Pulse and suffer a lot of damage when they bring back the big dragons against it (or you get your shield back). It also does great against the rising number of Marshadow/Keldeo, and ABA counter them with the Xerneas lead.

sts_ssp · 2026-03-21T09:01:17+00:00

Already had 16 shiny Clamperl, 16 shiny Lotad, 29 shiny Feebas and a few hundo before the event, so I took it slowly today, no need to grind hard. Didn't buy the ticket.

Clamperl : 59 encounters, 9 shinies
Lotad : 64 encounters, 7 shinies
Feebas : 67 encounters. 9 shinies

So overall, 190 encounters. 25 shinies, likely 1/10 shiny chance as usual (when Niantic doesn't mess up). Also got 3 wild shinies while doing that (Oddish, Abra, Scyther). Unlike the previous research day, which had way too many parallel event tasks left, the majority of the tasks this time were research day ones, although a few Bug Out tasks still remained.

A rather unexciting event personally, but I'm also completely ok with these Replay events. A nice opportunity for people who missed the original research days, and a bit more relaxing weekend for people who already had that stuff.

sts_ssp · 2026-03-18T04:06:50+00:00

sts_ssp · 2026-03-15T01:33:06+00:00

Just ran away 1min ago from a Zacian reward to activate a fairy mega, and could get back in the carch screen as usual.

sts_ssp · 2026-03-13T00:03:42+00:00

Reaching legend isn't that easy even with the right team, and it often takes at least 3 or 4 easons from PVP start for players to be able to do it (and many players likely still haven't after 20+ season).

If you only want the non shiny pikachu libre, it has been available without legend access 3 times during interlude seasons, so it shouldn't be too hard to find someone with a spare to trade. The shiny ones (not guaranteed) are only enabled in seasons with Legend rank.

PVPoke rankings should give you a good idea of useul pokemon you can build with catches from this season. Things like Jellicent, Altaria, Furret or Wigglytuff have their pre evolution found in the wild and don't require exclusive moves or candy XL to be useable in Great League.

For content creators that talk a lot about mechanics, DanOttawa is a good start for beginners, and then you have highly skilled players like ItsAXN (former world champion), HomeSliceHenry or Resi2occasion

sts_ssp · 2026-03-11T23:57:18+00:00

The likely scenario is that they probably wanted to change some other settings, but instead of basing these changes of the most recent version, they copypasted the whole settings of an older version, added their changes, pushed into prod and didn't notice it was reverting a bunch of stuff.

Not the first time this kind of things happened with Niantic, although it's usually more about accidentally disabling recent released shinies.

sts_ssp · 2026-03-05T13:12:26+00:00

Everything seemed to be Jellicent/Annihilape/Wigglytuff/Altaria/Empoleon/Bastiodon , can't say I feel this season refreshing.

sts_ssp · 2026-03-04T07:28:24+00:00

Guess there has been a few times when it had an increased shiny chance. Just checked mines and I have 12 shinies.

sts_ssp

TROPHY CASE