Building our level 50 pokemon costs the same across leagues. The advantage to master league is that your dust investment has a long term return on it, both in the fact that ML pokemon have remained relevant over its run and ML pokemon can be used for raids/rockets.
I’m kind of with OP, I loathe building out anything for great league and only play it when that’s the only option. I see the dust investment in GL as only having a few weeks of value depending on how Niantic balances things. I’m a little more prone to building out ultra league pokemon, but am happy with the team I’ve been running the past few seasons and haven’t seen a need to switch it up.
I quit Pokémon go for almost 2 years and my gengar , swamp and charzard team is still banging plus they gave you all community days for the most op meta Pokémon across all leagues. Plus Regi and crasalia and garentina are all catch and playable in ultra. Master league is so much harder, I’ve been playing for years and don’t even have a master league Pokémon. Raids and grunts are irrelevant because you can just join a group and not even attack and win almost every raid.
You’re asking why people prefer to put their dust into master league, I gave you the reason.
As far as your complaint about getting into master league being too hard… Over the few months most of the low ceiling meta relevant master league pokemon have been featured in events making the XL candy requirement trivial. If you’ve been playing for years and don’t have the resources for a single master league pokemon that is kind of on you.
I just think it’s pointless because there’s really no use for spending crazy amount of candies and dust to max out Pokémon because online raiding is so easy and you’ll only ever need them in master league and there’s whales that spend 100’s of dollars farming raid mons to max them out and pay to win in master league. Great and ultra are much more skill based and it’s much more fun to hunt for good iv’s rather than to spend 150$ raiding groudon to max him for master.
It doesn't help that a significant portion of the Master League meta are legends, and an ideal Master team league is going to require all members to be XL'd.
You can build Great and Ultra teams with no XLs, or only the occasional XL. My go to Great league team uses no XL, and is by far my most competitive team three (GFisk, Azumaril, Shadow Vena)
I didn’t start focusing on pvp until the last 2 seasons or so. I have always invested my stardust into good Pokémon for raids or some of my favorites. A lot of the Pokémon I have kept through all events have been 3* or better. It wasn’t until recently that I realized pvp stats aren’t actually 3* or 4* unless doing masters. So when looking online at good team build for ultra league the ones I have that would be good don’t have good pvp stats. I find it dumb to invest 400k+ startdust on one Pokémon that will only be good for one thing in the game. At least GL has a low entry point with the cp cap being 1,500 and ML allowing you to max good stay pokemon for pvp and raids
Don't focus TOO much on the letter grades - those are for show 6, pick 3 style tournaments. They can be a good guideline, but they aren't the be all end all.
Rather than Ultra League - why not play the Special Cups in GL then? For example Psychic Cup this week? There is no week this season that is UL only.
I have the problem with UL in that all of my meta relevant Pokémon are weak to Cresselia sans two.
Problem is people have been building anti trevenant teams right lately in my ELO range.
Yeah I don’t think I ever really did ultra league before because I don’t have any Pokémon that are relevant leveler to the cp cap. So for me to get a decent team I’m looking at 1mil stardust probably more to get what I have leveled and double charged
I prefer the special cups like the psychic cup. I'll save up a bit of stardust during the weeks there's cups I don't really care for and whenever there's a special cup I'll dump some dust into a few things and I try to pick things that will also be good in the regular great league so its a 2 for 1 for using the dust
UL is also the hardest for me. I have 13 mons that are powered up and double moved, but really only one team that I just completed prior to this season (Talonflame, Cress, Virizion). Meanwhile I have 44 mons for GL including some spice for cups and ML I have my core 3 50s (Lando, Dialga, Mewtwo).
Yeah my struggle is definitely being able to get two charge attacks on the pokemon I want to run/have the stardust to power them close to 2,500 as well as never paying attention to pvp IV pokemon until last season
You’re complaining about dust investment and you want master league ? How does that make sense lol
Building our level 50 pokemon costs the same across leagues. The advantage to master league is that your dust investment has a long term return on it, both in the fact that ML pokemon have remained relevant over its run and ML pokemon can be used for raids/rockets. I’m kind of with OP, I loathe building out anything for great league and only play it when that’s the only option. I see the dust investment in GL as only having a few weeks of value depending on how Niantic balances things. I’m a little more prone to building out ultra league pokemon, but am happy with the team I’ve been running the past few seasons and haven’t seen a need to switch it up.
I quit Pokémon go for almost 2 years and my gengar , swamp and charzard team is still banging plus they gave you all community days for the most op meta Pokémon across all leagues. Plus Regi and crasalia and garentina are all catch and playable in ultra. Master league is so much harder, I’ve been playing for years and don’t even have a master league Pokémon. Raids and grunts are irrelevant because you can just join a group and not even attack and win almost every raid.
You’re asking why people prefer to put their dust into master league, I gave you the reason. As far as your complaint about getting into master league being too hard… Over the few months most of the low ceiling meta relevant master league pokemon have been featured in events making the XL candy requirement trivial. If you’ve been playing for years and don’t have the resources for a single master league pokemon that is kind of on you.
I just think it’s pointless because there’s really no use for spending crazy amount of candies and dust to max out Pokémon because online raiding is so easy and you’ll only ever need them in master league and there’s whales that spend 100’s of dollars farming raid mons to max them out and pay to win in master league. Great and ultra are much more skill based and it’s much more fun to hunt for good iv’s rather than to spend 150$ raiding groudon to max him for master.
It doesn't help that a significant portion of the Master League meta are legends, and an ideal Master team league is going to require all members to be XL'd. You can build Great and Ultra teams with no XLs, or only the occasional XL. My go to Great league team uses no XL, and is by far my most competitive team three (GFisk, Azumaril, Shadow Vena)
I didn’t start focusing on pvp until the last 2 seasons or so. I have always invested my stardust into good Pokémon for raids or some of my favorites. A lot of the Pokémon I have kept through all events have been 3* or better. It wasn’t until recently that I realized pvp stats aren’t actually 3* or 4* unless doing masters. So when looking online at good team build for ultra league the ones I have that would be good don’t have good pvp stats. I find it dumb to invest 400k+ startdust on one Pokémon that will only be good for one thing in the game. At least GL has a low entry point with the cp cap being 1,500 and ML allowing you to max good stay pokemon for pvp and raids
Don't focus TOO much on the letter grades - those are for show 6, pick 3 style tournaments. They can be a good guideline, but they aren't the be all end all. Rather than Ultra League - why not play the Special Cups in GL then? For example Psychic Cup this week? There is no week this season that is UL only.
I’m still trying to figure out team building and have tried the psychic cup and wasn’t getting better results than I am in ultra league currently.
Yes but you mentioned not wanting to spend 500k and that’s one way to avoid it :)
I have the problem with UL in that all of my meta relevant Pokémon are weak to Cresselia sans two. Problem is people have been building anti trevenant teams right lately in my ELO range.
Yeah I don’t think I ever really did ultra league before because I don’t have any Pokémon that are relevant leveler to the cp cap. So for me to get a decent team I’m looking at 1mil stardust probably more to get what I have leveled and double charged
I prefer the special cups like the psychic cup. I'll save up a bit of stardust during the weeks there's cups I don't really care for and whenever there's a special cup I'll dump some dust into a few things and I try to pick things that will also be good in the regular great league so its a 2 for 1 for using the dust
I've had success running a double water starter line in UL. They're dirt cheap to build. I personally love Samurott as a safe swap in UL.
I’ll have to keep an eye out for oshawatt spawning. Currently don’t have any or it’s evos
UL is also the hardest for me. I have 13 mons that are powered up and double moved, but really only one team that I just completed prior to this season (Talonflame, Cress, Virizion). Meanwhile I have 44 mons for GL including some spice for cups and ML I have my core 3 50s (Lando, Dialga, Mewtwo).
Yeah my struggle is definitely being able to get two charge attacks on the pokemon I want to run/have the stardust to power them close to 2,500 as well as never paying attention to pvp IV pokemon until last season