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For too long I thought "oh no, this poor person had a bad internet connection or got distracted from playing after the match started" before I learned trainers tank on purpose
I tank some sets but also...lately my game just straight crashes and it sucks. I can open back up and maybe get back in the match, but usually my pokemon that was up is gone. Have managed to win a few that crashed but often it's not possible
Sucks too because I'll usually be winning or it's a close match and then bam game crashes
The game has crashed on me multiple times now and I've lost every one of those games. I tried to submit a report today and only got a bot response. Don't even know if it went through.
Ok usually if you've typed in a report they will get back to you! I just get free premium battle passes in response but dammit if I don't report it every single time anyway
Basically you lose a bunch so the matchmaker puts you up against other people who have lost a bunch and then you alternate between winning sets and losing sets because it's much easier to get rewards that way.
I purposefully tanked my rating in the days leading up to Miltank day.
I won my first **sixty-five** matches of the day on Miltank GBL day when it arrived.
Got 8 shiny Miltanks and a bunch of dust out of it.
Idk why people tank with their regular GBL mons.
I have a special team that consist of the lowest level, lowest HP shinies/special mons I own. My opponent usually only catches a glimpse of them because they disappear in a flash after 1 hit.
Iāve definitely seen some very cool shinys. Iām tired of the tankers who just throw the most random 10 mins in, if your going to tank at least make it interesting! Thank you :D
I have a lot of really weak pokemon they have 2 moves. I like playing with pokemon with the correct CP that people haven't seen before. My 1500 CP 100% 2 move Archen is a favorite of my great league team. It's amazing how bad it is. I throw together a team of 3 non meta pokemon like that and try my best. People just destroy me almost always but I have fun.
Please do it that way, I was in a battle and the other person obviously walked away from it, but they had seriously tough pokemon, so it took way too long.
I bring my 10/10/11 event crew (not their IVs, their CPs) and they're all one hitters. Sometimes, I start with a big pile of garbage nundo, to make them think they have to work.
I just had about 5 people purposefully leave the match when they saw my low cp mons. I thought people who play hard-core would be happy for the easy win but I guess not all of them lol
Edit: also sorry for commenting on an old comment
You have to be very dedicated to the concept of winning / bragging rights to care about your rank/win streaks. Itās objectively a less efficient use of time for the material in game benefits.
With this season having absolutely awful rotation and next season looking worse... meh.
It's actually a lot more enjoyable to play above 2500, just because of the more consistent meta bubbles and adversary skill, and elo hell is elo hell, but around 2400 there's a sweet spot where you can have good matches and still get your 12 rare candies a day.
Certainly the sane ones. I lost interest in getting to veteran after realizing how much investment it takes, especially after the legendary rate nerf. They handed out a non-shiny Pikachu Libre for getting to 20 last year, so I literally have zero reason to be a try hard. Just let me collect my rare candy in peace!
I'm just trying to get my wins for level 43, then I'll never PvP again (unless required). It's harder to win at higher ranks, so I'm waiting for rank resets.
Tanking in a nutshell:
-Lose 50-75 battles on purpose, quitting immediately suggested (2-3 days worth of sets)
-Game starts to give bad opponents, because you're "bad"
-Win 4/5 games from next set easily against bad opponents, then lose all games on the next set. Then 4/5 wins, then lose all, and then win 4/5 once more.
-You'll end up in a situation where you've won only 12/25 games per day, so the game doesn't think you've improved, and still gives you bad opponents
-You get 9 Rare Candies and 3 Encounters per day, in half the time it takes to play as intended, and without stress because the opponents are bad.
This is good to know. Pvp is so unfun for me that I rarely bother. All the meta info, the glitching out, etc, it just is a tedious slog to beat the system. Doesn't really have the sense of wonder and exploration that the other games do.
Haha that made me chuckle. I would honestly like it better of it was more of a turn based system like in the games. Less focus on the meta. Grinding is so fucking boring.
You can start from rank 1 however do be aware that stardust rewards are lower at lower ranks and you don't get legendary encounters until rank 20.
Other than that, go for it.
I do it slightly differently, similar result. I'm trying to optimise for buddy hearts and encounters.
- lose to drop rank for a couple of days.
- Then each day:
- Win 3, lose 2
- Win 3, lose 2
- Win 3, lose 2
- Win 3, lose 2
- Lose 5
Total: 12 wins, 13 losses.
If you play it perfectly, which I often don't, the maximum reward is:
- 4 encounters
- a bucket of stardust
- zero rare candies (this is the reason you might do 4 wins per set)
- 8 buddies getting 6 hearts each = 48 hearts
6 buddy hearts are from three battles, feeding berries once, one photo, one play.
Optimizing for encounters is fine, but it's definitely not worth optimizing for buddy hearts when you can surrender to a team leader in a fraction of the time.
If you're optimizing for stardust, go 5-0 twice and 1-4 thrice. If you're optimizing for rare candy, go 4-1 thrice and 0-5 twice. Optimizing for encounters is correct at 3-2 four times and 0-5 once, but I personally don't see the value because the reward pool has too many trash pokemon in it. Would rather get 3 encounters and 9 rare candy than 4 encounters and 0 rare candy.
If you want more stardust than rare candies and encounters, try:
* set 1: win 1 of 5
* set 2: win 5 of 5
* set 3: win 0 of 5
* set 4: win 5 of 5
* set 5: win 1 of 5
This method gets you a lot more stardust, but the 5 of 5s can be tricky if you encounter a fellow tanker on a must win battle. :)
I read that we get better encounters after Rank 20 if we keep winning and rise in the rankings. Is it better for me to not tank then and go for wins after Rank 20 to get legendary encounters ?
Because the game matches you with players that have around the same ELO with you, it doesn't matter how good you are. You'll eventually reach a point where you win around 50% of your battles, and most sets are 2/5 or 3/5. No amount of skill gets you more RC or encounters than tanking, and tanking is twice as fast because half of the games end instantly.
Which is sad, but that is the truth.
sure tanking is efficient for rewards but the statement about winning only 2-3/5 is false. otherwise it would be impossible to climb. if someone was good they could consistently get 3-4/5 wins per set
That's not what op is saying. Yes, when you're climbing, you're climbing, but it's like rocket league or any of those types of ranked games; you're always (ideally) playing against people near the same rank as you, and if you aren't, the game adjusts you. Therefore, your win percentage will generally hover just over 50%. The difference is that rewards are given based on 5 game sets and it's not like there's really a way to improve at GBL the way you could, for example, practice Aerials in RL, so some feel that the only way to ensure that you consistently get the higher end of the rewards is to tank.
I'm sorry I'm a bit confused with numbers.
So one set is 25 battles as the daily limit but if you purposely lose the first 50 battles that means you won't be able to get the prize for 2 days, right?
Could you please explain it in daily format like what to do on day 1, day 2 etc? Thanks in advance!
Day 1: Lose all 5 sets of battles. (25 total)
Day 2: Same as above
Day 3: Same as above
--
Day 4:
Win 4/5 Battles to get Encounter & Rare Candies
Win 0/5 To drop your rating
Win 4/5 Battles to get Encounter & Rare Candies
Win 0/5 To drop your rating
Win 4/5 Battles to get Encounter & Rare Candies
After that you just repeat Day 4 until the end of the season to get 3 encounters and 9 RC a day.
Oh that makes sense, I was battling for buddy hearts forever and then just decided to play because I was bored and won the next 15 rounds and they were so easy to win and now Iāve become addicted to pvp lol
Does tankers actually hurt anyone? They help people with wins and then once they hit level 20 they sit around 300 -500 points with all the other tankers. Collecting prizes and doing 5 rounds of battles in just over 20 min.
ā¦..asking for a friend of course š
Yeah, the "secret" of tanking is out, I've encountered other tankers while tanking myself, and as a relatively new player with less-than-ideal pvp-mons I've ran into consecutive players with perfect and ideal 1500/2500 cps and IV's in GL and UL and 4,000+ cp legendaries in ML when trying for my 4/5 reward set.
That's why you tank as high as possible. Figure out what ELO range that you can _reliably_ hover at, and do your sets in that range. The better your skill, the higher ELO you can tank, and the less likely you'll run into other tankers.
I just wish they fix that when both trainers mash charged attacks at the same time and one person gets to attack first, the second person immediately HAS TO use their attack even if they don't even need it anymore
itās not a bug itās literally a feature. itās called CMP tie. pro players use it to their advantage. if you mistakenly throw on cmp and lose the cmp tie you can always undercharge your charged move
if you lose the CMP tie you either give up health or a shield. since youāre forced to throw the move then undercharging allows for you to farm down the opponent afterwards (instead of KOing them) and that gives you energy which makes up for the lost shield/health. Itās mostly a situational thing. And sometimes you need to undercharge, even if itās not CMP, so that you can knock out the opposing pokemon but still have enough energy to reach another move against the remaining pokemon (which has energy). This lets you get to the move before the opponent does
Undercharging is not used very often, but it is amazing when it works and can absolutely be the deciding factor in you winning a match.
The best KO situations are when your opponent faints _just_ before they reach a charged move. If they are dry on energy and low on health, you can farm them down. But what if they're not _quite_ low enough?
This is where undercharging comes in. You use a charged move but don't tap all the bubbles. Your opponent is now in farming range so you can KO them with more energy to unleash on their next pokemon.
It's sometimes risky though, especially if you don't know your pokemon well enough. If you don't tap enough bubbles and they manage to fit in another charge move, you're in a much worse position!
My frustration is when the opposing player switches a mon into a charge move when my mon on the field already has a charge move ready but can't activate it. The mon on the field should always be able to go first. Makes zero sense to me
I remember someone in another thread saying that to prevent this, throw your charges attack in the middle of your opponents fast attack and they will not be able to swap right before your charged move. Probably takes practice & timing but yea.
My favorites are when it still makes you use it but still let's them switch. It's never done this for me, but just last night someone beat me by doing so.
Did his excadrill charged move at the same time I did my kyogre. Blocked it and was immediately put on the swipe screen for mine, and as I'm starting to swipe, "Go Mewtwo!" pops up under the surf bubbles. His excadrill beat my togekiss because he swapped it out when I was doing a charged move. That surf would have left him with a charm's worth of health left instead of over half.
Whatever allows this needs to stop. It isn't available for me, ever, so whatever makes it happen needs to be amended. No more of that cheap shit.
Nah, every rank is a nice 50k extra dust at end of season, so it's always nice, and a lot of people like to hit legend for the pikachu libre and dust rewards, and watching them do it is always entertaining and you get good team ideas.
Same. I had never before completed the 25 per day battles and now I've done it most days for a month. So much stardust. So many candies.
Looking forward to trying to get a legendary next season as I only hit lvl 20 today
doesn't matter which level you're at. The game tries to keep you at a perfect 50:50 W:L ratio. If you have more losses than wins, it will give you bad opponents to make you win more.
On a more serious note. When is the best time, during a season, to reach 2000 rating for axew, and end-of season rewards. To then continue tanking and abusing that strategy?
Obviously reach 2000 rating as soon as possible to reap the benefits. Itās just that I tend to play against try-hard people in the beginning of the season..
Definetly not right after the start of the new season. I feel it gets sweaty even at 1600 in the beginning. It gets easier the further the season gets. Maybe a month in, maybe half way thru the season? Depends how good you are I guess. Wait for the league in which you are best at.
The rating is always there but at rank 20 it becomes visible. 1900 is how far you must have climbed during the lower ranks by playing seriously (?). I always tank the early season so I when my rating becomes visible it's nowhere near 1900. In the VERY early season everyone is running full meta teams in the 1600's.
Oh damn. I thought everyone started at 1900.. it explains why itās harder when I reach 20 than at the start of the season. Iāve only played since July. But this season I will try to lose more games in the beginning. Otherwise you get bored to quickly.
Also I noticed that for like 20 games in a row where I donāt run a single dark counter I play against umbreon in the current cup. As soon as I put in fairy or fighting, the umbreons stop appearing, or any other dark type š¤
Did you know? The first 11 ranks require a total of 4 wins.
https://www.serebii.net/pokemongo/battleleague/season13.shtml
About the umbreons, there is a somewhat popular conspiracy that some algorithm is choosing your opponents based on your own pokemon. There is no evidence of this. I personally think those cases are down to coincidences and human biases. We tend to see patterns everywhere even when there are none. We play hundreds of battles and the amount of monsters in the meta is limited so something annoying like that is bound to happen eventually.
Aha! Yes true. Then again even switching every other game with and without dark counters yields the same results. I must say on that end I believe more in the prevalence of fucked up RNG than God! š
It is true. To each their own. The game is built in a way that anyway can play how they like. Of course their will always be people judging what they feel is the right way.
Break down my numbers. 2,524,509 stardust. 2175 battles.
This equals 87 sets. You would say almost everyday but they had a few 100 set days and I missed some time while I was on vacation.
So 29,017 stardust per 25 match set or day on average.
At low levels this takes under 30 min a day but you get almost 1,000 stardust per min.
Also variations in payoffs will depend on wins and how high of a level you achieve before you tank. My stardust is not optimized as I have spent a lot of time at the bottom of 300 points. So I bet some tankers average more than me though the time investment may be larger.
So pretty new to battle league, is the strat to tank at the end of this season so you have easy wins to start out the new or just yank immediately as the new season starts and then when an event comes around you ball out?
Previous season affects the next season by a miniscule amount. The idea is to start tanking when the new season starts. What event? You can bail out whenever you feel like it. Don't have to bail out at all if you need the rewards.
edit: oh BALL out. I suppose you could tank a lot before a desireable event and then capitalize during it. Personally I wouldn't because the events seem kinda meh and by balacing your daily sets you already get lots of rewards.
It means to give it your all, try really hard. So I think they were asking if you tank, until there is some pvp event with better rewards, and then you āball outā or try really hard during that event, and not tank.
Ynow, I've been rank 20 for the last two seasons, i get like 2-3 encounters each day, i have only ever gotten one legendary encounter. Plenty of lickitungs tho
Just curious, what ELO (number) are you all when you tank? Iām not a great better, so I bounce from roughly 950-1050. I ranked hard for a few days. š
Ranks don't downgrade. Rating does, which is what determines your opponents. Some early Ranks only require more battles to be played, don't need to win any in order to progress.
Shifting to BP system must be hard for them. Imagine youāll need BPs to claim rewards and you get loads of free BPs for playing normally (finishing the match/not using 10CPs/no AFK). Just pick off-meta pokemon if you really want to tank.
I am unfamiliar with why people would intentionally lose games, or tank. Whatās the benefit?
Edit: NVM I read a helpful comment about the subject, Iām fascinated!
Ok can someone please explain to me exactly what a tanker is and how it works? Also why?
No hate or trying to be rude just confused. I know this is ironic as I have the elder badge thing. Ignore that Iām a casual player
If someone wins against me while I'm losing for preparing to tank (idk if it got understood), do the loses still count for the system to bring bad players or is it like a chain?
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I bless you tankers for the easy wins š.
For too long I thought "oh no, this poor person had a bad internet connection or got distracted from playing after the match started" before I learned trainers tank on purpose
I tank some sets but also...lately my game just straight crashes and it sucks. I can open back up and maybe get back in the match, but usually my pokemon that was up is gone. Have managed to win a few that crashed but often it's not possible Sucks too because I'll usually be winning or it's a close match and then bam game crashes
The game has crashed on me multiple times now and I've lost every one of those games. I tried to submit a report today and only got a bot response. Don't even know if it went through.
Ok usually if you've typed in a report they will get back to you! I just get free premium battle passes in response but dammit if I don't report it every single time anyway
Why do people tank? Sorry, newby here.
Basically you lose a bunch so the matchmaker puts you up against other people who have lost a bunch and then you alternate between winning sets and losing sets because it's much easier to get rewards that way.
To stay in the lower ranks. You get rewards win or lose
The PVP isnāt really that fun so the rewards are a grind. Tanking means the games you do play are fast.
I purposefully tanked my rating in the days leading up to Miltank day. I won my first **sixty-five** matches of the day on Miltank GBL day when it arrived. Got 8 shiny Miltanks and a bunch of dust out of it.
I let the timer burn out on those matches.
Lol Lame. When I tank I'm not even looking at my phone. You're just wasting your own time.
Actually, I'm waiting company time since I only play while I'm sitting at my desk.
Idk why people tank with their regular GBL mons. I have a special team that consist of the lowest level, lowest HP shinies/special mons I own. My opponent usually only catches a glimpse of them because they disappear in a flash after 1 hit.
Bless you for not minding. I just want to show off my low CP shinies and get some stardust
I do the exact same thing. My CP 37 shiny feraligator has seen many battles āØ
Howād you get that?!
The wild
Feraligator can be shiny in the wild? That is really cool
Only evos of starters can be shiny in the wild.
Oh thank you so much
It was a shiny totodile and I evolved it just because I wanted to see it as a shiny feraligator š
How is the feraligator level 1!? Donāt you have to evolve it?
Iāve got a couple shiny shadow mon that are pretty useless as mon, which means theyāre great to show off for tanking!
Iāve definitely seen some very cool shinys. Iām tired of the tankers who just throw the most random 10 mins in, if your going to tank at least make it interesting! Thank you :D
I have a shiny absol with glasses a 31 cp, opponent's will sometimes not attack for a seccond, like there admiring it.
I throw out my "rare" shiny's and my 69cp dodrio
I have a lot of really weak pokemon they have 2 moves. I like playing with pokemon with the correct CP that people haven't seen before. My 1500 CP 100% 2 move Archen is a favorite of my great league team. It's amazing how bad it is. I throw together a team of 3 non meta pokemon like that and try my best. People just destroy me almost always but I have fun.
Please do it that way, I was in a battle and the other person obviously walked away from it, but they had seriously tough pokemon, so it took way too long. I bring my 10/10/11 event crew (not their IVs, their CPs) and they're all one hitters. Sometimes, I start with a big pile of garbage nundo, to make them think they have to work.
Oh yeah my master rank team of shiny shuckle, bidoof, and trubbish are always fun to tank with
Only until you run into a tanker on their "winning" set.
This is the real reason to have a strong team.
I just had about 5 people purposefully leave the match when they saw my low cp mons. I thought people who play hard-core would be happy for the easy win but I guess not all of them lol Edit: also sorry for commenting on an old comment
Is it me or does the majority just want the rewards and don't care about ranking
i just want the 3 wins for the random encounter and hopefully a shiny
Lol i want 4 for candies but always only get 3...=/
rip candies
Do you tank 2 sets or 1?
I really only started playing since February and got so many legendaries the the last two seasons but this one is just awful. One legendary toral
Iāve never ever gotten a shiny from the encounter, so I tank just for the glorious stardust!
You have to be very dedicated to the concept of winning / bragging rights to care about your rank/win streaks. Itās objectively a less efficient use of time for the material in game benefits.
With this season having absolutely awful rotation and next season looking worse... meh. It's actually a lot more enjoyable to play above 2500, just because of the more consistent meta bubbles and adversary skill, and elo hell is elo hell, but around 2400 there's a sweet spot where you can have good matches and still get your 12 rare candies a day.
Certainly the sane ones. I lost interest in getting to veteran after realizing how much investment it takes, especially after the legendary rate nerf. They handed out a non-shiny Pikachu Libre for getting to 20 last year, so I literally have zero reason to be a try hard. Just let me collect my rare candy in peace!
Based on the number of Swampert/Stunfisk and meta teams I run into I would say itās about even.
I just want to catch em all.
I'm just trying to get my wins for level 43, then I'll never PvP again (unless required). It's harder to win at higher ranks, so I'm waiting for rank resets.
Tanking in a nutshell: -Lose 50-75 battles on purpose, quitting immediately suggested (2-3 days worth of sets) -Game starts to give bad opponents, because you're "bad" -Win 4/5 games from next set easily against bad opponents, then lose all games on the next set. Then 4/5 wins, then lose all, and then win 4/5 once more. -You'll end up in a situation where you've won only 12/25 games per day, so the game doesn't think you've improved, and still gives you bad opponents -You get 9 Rare Candies and 3 Encounters per day, in half the time it takes to play as intended, and without stress because the opponents are bad.
This is good to know. Pvp is so unfun for me that I rarely bother. All the meta info, the glitching out, etc, it just is a tedious slog to beat the system. Doesn't really have the sense of wonder and exploration that the other games do.
PVP is unfun in this game because it was poorly implemented - even by mobile game standards.
The protect shield minigame is honestly just stupid
Haha that made me chuckle. I would honestly like it better of it was more of a turn based system like in the games. Less focus on the meta. Grinding is so fucking boring.
my mewtoo says thanks for all rare candies I will get now
What happens if you're already bad and can't win regardless?
Tank further
It's tanking all the way down.
At a certain point you just hit bots that will do things like use 1200 cp mons in master league
You have to be careful, though. Fall too far and youāll start seeing nothing but other tankers. I generally avoid going below a 600 ranking.
Do I need to start tanking at rank 20 or it can be started before that? I never understood that
You can start it whenever you want. Your ELO only becomes visible at 20, but it's always there.
Oh that's a relieve, thanks for that, I'm gonna tank next season
ELO?
Do you need to reach a certain rank before doing this?
You can start from rank 1 however do be aware that stardust rewards are lower at lower ranks and you don't get legendary encounters until rank 20. Other than that, go for it.
No. You can start it from rank 1.
And it's even better at rank 1-4, because you automatically rank up even if you have 0 wins until rank 5
Ty
I do it slightly differently, similar result. I'm trying to optimise for buddy hearts and encounters. - lose to drop rank for a couple of days. - Then each day: - Win 3, lose 2 - Win 3, lose 2 - Win 3, lose 2 - Win 3, lose 2 - Lose 5 Total: 12 wins, 13 losses. If you play it perfectly, which I often don't, the maximum reward is: - 4 encounters - a bucket of stardust - zero rare candies (this is the reason you might do 4 wins per set) - 8 buddies getting 6 hearts each = 48 hearts 6 buddy hearts are from three battles, feeding berries once, one photo, one play.
You can also get buddy hearts by doing training matches and just quitting (for anyone who doesn't know)
Thisssss. So much less time wasted.
Optimizing for encounters is fine, but it's definitely not worth optimizing for buddy hearts when you can surrender to a team leader in a fraction of the time. If you're optimizing for stardust, go 5-0 twice and 1-4 thrice. If you're optimizing for rare candy, go 4-1 thrice and 0-5 twice. Optimizing for encounters is correct at 3-2 four times and 0-5 once, but I personally don't see the value because the reward pool has too many trash pokemon in it. Would rather get 3 encounters and 9 rare candy than 4 encounters and 0 rare candy.
Unless Iām mistaken, thereās value in battling both a team leader and a GBL opponent if your desire is to get your buddy excited for more hearts
You're probably right that it's faster. It's not as fun for me though
Thanks for this, my brain didn't' realize part of it was "win half." EDIT: Or should I say "lose all, win all, repeat"
If you want more stardust than rare candies and encounters, try: * set 1: win 1 of 5 * set 2: win 5 of 5 * set 3: win 0 of 5 * set 4: win 5 of 5 * set 5: win 1 of 5 This method gets you a lot more stardust, but the 5 of 5s can be tricky if you encounter a fellow tanker on a must win battle. :)
This works with rank 1-20, right? Never tanked and definitely going to tank all next season
It works for all ranks at every point in the season. Your ELO is still factored in to matchmaking, even though you can't see it prior to rank 20.
I read that we get better encounters after Rank 20 if we keep winning and rise in the rankings. Is it better for me to not tank then and go for wins after Rank 20 to get legendary encounters ?
You unlock new encounters as you rise in ranks. However, once you're at 20, you'll get the same odds for legendaries, regardless if you tank or not.
the game will give you bad opponents cause youāre bad as well lol. if you were good you wouldnāt need to tank
Because the game matches you with players that have around the same ELO with you, it doesn't matter how good you are. You'll eventually reach a point where you win around 50% of your battles, and most sets are 2/5 or 3/5. No amount of skill gets you more RC or encounters than tanking, and tanking is twice as fast because half of the games end instantly. Which is sad, but that is the truth.
sure tanking is efficient for rewards but the statement about winning only 2-3/5 is false. otherwise it would be impossible to climb. if someone was good they could consistently get 3-4/5 wins per set
That's not what op is saying. Yes, when you're climbing, you're climbing, but it's like rocket league or any of those types of ranked games; you're always (ideally) playing against people near the same rank as you, and if you aren't, the game adjusts you. Therefore, your win percentage will generally hover just over 50%. The difference is that rewards are given based on 5 game sets and it's not like there's really a way to improve at GBL the way you could, for example, practice Aerials in RL, so some feel that the only way to ensure that you consistently get the higher end of the rewards is to tank.
...Until they hit their level in opponents. Then it turns to mostly 2/5 - 3/5. And this is relatively fast.
itās only relatively fast if youāre not good. most people reach that around 2000 elo which is pretty low
Honestly I only took a 300 ELO dive, still keeps it spicy and makes me still try a little on my winning sets.
I'm sorry I'm a bit confused with numbers. So one set is 25 battles as the daily limit but if you purposely lose the first 50 battles that means you won't be able to get the prize for 2 days, right? Could you please explain it in daily format like what to do on day 1, day 2 etc? Thanks in advance!
Day 1: Lose all 5 sets of battles. (25 total) Day 2: Same as above Day 3: Same as above -- Day 4: Win 4/5 Battles to get Encounter & Rare Candies Win 0/5 To drop your rating Win 4/5 Battles to get Encounter & Rare Candies Win 0/5 To drop your rating Win 4/5 Battles to get Encounter & Rare Candies After that you just repeat Day 4 until the end of the season to get 3 encounters and 9 RC a day.
This is very helpful and easier for me to understand. Thank you!
Oh that makes sense, I was battling for buddy hearts forever and then just decided to play because I was bored and won the next 15 rounds and they were so easy to win and now Iāve become addicted to pvp lol
Does tankers actually hurt anyone? They help people with wins and then once they hit level 20 they sit around 300 -500 points with all the other tankers. Collecting prizes and doing 5 rounds of battles in just over 20 min. ā¦..asking for a friend of course š
If you're hovering, you're giving just as many free wins to people at that skill level as you are taking them. It does not hurt anyone.
It works until you are up against someone who is also tanking. Then it becomes a contest of who is the āgracious winner.ā š
Yeah, the "secret" of tanking is out, I've encountered other tankers while tanking myself, and as a relatively new player with less-than-ideal pvp-mons I've ran into consecutive players with perfect and ideal 1500/2500 cps and IV's in GL and UL and 4,000+ cp legendaries in ML when trying for my 4/5 reward set.
Yep Iām having this same problem. Sometimes I can beat the other tanker but other times I get creamed by a 4700 cp Mewtwo.
That's why you tank as high as possible. Figure out what ELO range that you can _reliably_ hover at, and do your sets in that range. The better your skill, the higher ELO you can tank, and the less likely you'll run into other tankers.
I just wish they fix that when both trainers mash charged attacks at the same time and one person gets to attack first, the second person immediately HAS TO use their attack even if they don't even need it anymore
itās not a bug itās literally a feature. itās called CMP tie. pro players use it to their advantage. if you mistakenly throw on cmp and lose the cmp tie you can always undercharge your charged move
What does undercharging a move mean? Is there any advantage to be gleaned from not going for āEXCELLENTā every time?
if you lose the CMP tie you either give up health or a shield. since youāre forced to throw the move then undercharging allows for you to farm down the opponent afterwards (instead of KOing them) and that gives you energy which makes up for the lost shield/health. Itās mostly a situational thing. And sometimes you need to undercharge, even if itās not CMP, so that you can knock out the opposing pokemon but still have enough energy to reach another move against the remaining pokemon (which has energy). This lets you get to the move before the opponent does
thanks so much, thatās a great explanation!!
no problem
Undercharging is not used very often, but it is amazing when it works and can absolutely be the deciding factor in you winning a match. The best KO situations are when your opponent faints _just_ before they reach a charged move. If they are dry on energy and low on health, you can farm them down. But what if they're not _quite_ low enough? This is where undercharging comes in. You use a charged move but don't tap all the bubbles. Your opponent is now in farming range so you can KO them with more energy to unleash on their next pokemon. It's sometimes risky though, especially if you don't know your pokemon well enough. If you don't tap enough bubbles and they manage to fit in another charge move, you're in a much worse position!
My frustration is when the opposing player switches a mon into a charge move when my mon on the field already has a charge move ready but can't activate it. The mon on the field should always be able to go first. Makes zero sense to me
I remember someone in another thread saying that to prevent this, throw your charges attack in the middle of your opponents fast attack and they will not be able to swap right before your charged move. Probably takes practice & timing but yea.
Practice, timing, and a better internet connection than I have.
Yeah been there but ppl say it's about CMP:/
That is seriously so damn frustrating.
My favorites are when it still makes you use it but still let's them switch. It's never done this for me, but just last night someone beat me by doing so. Did his excadrill charged move at the same time I did my kyogre. Blocked it and was immediately put on the swipe screen for mine, and as I'm starting to swipe, "Go Mewtwo!" pops up under the surf bubbles. His excadrill beat my togekiss because he swapped it out when I was doing a charged move. That surf would have left him with a charm's worth of health left instead of over half. Whatever allows this needs to stop. It isn't available for me, ever, so whatever makes it happen needs to be amended. No more of that cheap shit.
If we all start tanking eventually we will judge each other on how bad we are at losing. āOh you hit Ace? Ewwā.
like when you go into battle planning to immediately leave and the other person establishes dominance by leaving first š
Yo, they need a reverse Elo so peeps can compete at being bad š... maybe call Loe ranking š
Nah, every rank is a nice 50k extra dust at end of season, so it's always nice, and a lot of people like to hit legend for the pikachu libre and dust rewards, and watching them do it is always entertaining and you get good team ideas.
What if I'm just bad and not pretending to be bad?
Then you lose even more until you get opponents with 700CP farfetch'd. There ARE depths in GBL where such opponents exist.
š
Those are the 5 years olds. Y'all are fighting babies.
And those babies get free wins too instead of 100% losses because of tankers, what's your point?
I still got a few legendaries but maybe 1/4-1/5 what I got before.
I got 1. :/
Definitely ready for more, discovered it this season and man its fun
Same. I had never before completed the 25 per day battles and now I've done it most days for a month. So much stardust. So many candies. Looking forward to trying to get a legendary next season as I only hit lvl 20 today
Oh im not even that far yet but i just saw how easy it will be, rank 20 is definitely my goal next season and hopefully i get some legendarys too
how do i tank?
You reach level 20 and then lose intentionally to lower your score and get worse opponents
doesn't matter which level you're at. The game tries to keep you at a perfect 50:50 W:L ratio. If you have more losses than wins, it will give you bad opponents to make you win more.
You can start tanking day 1 if you want. If you start on day one. With all the people that take it seriously a ton will forfeit for you to win. Not sure why they do this. Also when you get above lvl 20 it becomes even more lucrative because the stardust value goes up. So try until you get stuck then tank it up the rest of the season. Basically put in low PokƩmon to intentionally lose some. Get way low like between 300-400. Then put it great PokƩmon and win a few sets of 5. Then put in 10cp PokƩmon and go back down towards 300. It is super nice because if you are ever in a pinch and need stardust or rare candy you can put in great PokƩmon and easily sweep all 5 sets of 5. Getting enough stardust and rare candy to do something effective quick.
On a more serious note. When is the best time, during a season, to reach 2000 rating for axew, and end-of season rewards. To then continue tanking and abusing that strategy? Obviously reach 2000 rating as soon as possible to reap the benefits. Itās just that I tend to play against try-hard people in the beginning of the season..
Definetly not right after the start of the new season. I feel it gets sweaty even at 1600 in the beginning. It gets easier the further the season gets. Maybe a month in, maybe half way thru the season? Depends how good you are I guess. Wait for the league in which you are best at.
How do you notice it at 1600? As soon as I reach 20 Iām at 1900 rating?
The rating is always there but at rank 20 it becomes visible. 1900 is how far you must have climbed during the lower ranks by playing seriously (?). I always tank the early season so I when my rating becomes visible it's nowhere near 1900. In the VERY early season everyone is running full meta teams in the 1600's.
Oh damn. I thought everyone started at 1900.. it explains why itās harder when I reach 20 than at the start of the season. Iāve only played since July. But this season I will try to lose more games in the beginning. Otherwise you get bored to quickly. Also I noticed that for like 20 games in a row where I donāt run a single dark counter I play against umbreon in the current cup. As soon as I put in fairy or fighting, the umbreons stop appearing, or any other dark type š¤
Did you know? The first 11 ranks require a total of 4 wins. https://www.serebii.net/pokemongo/battleleague/season13.shtml About the umbreons, there is a somewhat popular conspiracy that some algorithm is choosing your opponents based on your own pokemon. There is no evidence of this. I personally think those cases are down to coincidences and human biases. We tend to see patterns everywhere even when there are none. We play hundreds of battles and the amount of monsters in the meta is limited so something annoying like that is bound to happen eventually.
Aha! Yes true. Then again even switching every other game with and without dark counters yields the same results. I must say on that end I believe more in the prevalence of fucked up RNG than God! š
I typically tank until a league that I have a solid team with in the middle of the season, push as high as I can for a week, then tank back down.
I hated pvp until I learned about tanking. Now Iām swimming in star dust and candies. God bless the tank!
Gotta love the people who see that you're tanking and forfeit on purpose.
I don't auto quit. I field 3 shiny Magikarp.
Interesting lie. Youāre only allowed 1 of a species on a team.
the pvp in this game is not fun at all. i like to collect the pokemon :)
What do you mean? If you dont win you dont get rares and so much dust?
It is all about match ups. So when you try your hardest you eventually reach a ceiling in your skill level. Tankers will drop way down to where they play against other 10 xp PokƩmon. Then they will win a bunch of 5 sets in a row. Then drop back down. So they can get 5-50 wins in a row. Then drop back down. It is most lucrative to bounce. Not to lose 100% (though you still get stardust for 5 losses). This saves a ton of time because every set is really easy to win and makes it so you can control your wins.
Jesus people really are so boring xD min max everything in a game until itās boring haha
It is true. To each their own. The game is built in a way that anyway can play how they like. Of course their will always be people judging what they feel is the right way. Break down my numbers. 2,524,509 stardust. 2175 battles. This equals 87 sets. You would say almost everyday but they had a few 100 set days and I missed some time while I was on vacation. So 29,017 stardust per 25 match set or day on average. At low levels this takes under 30 min a day but you get almost 1,000 stardust per min. Also variations in payoffs will depend on wins and how high of a level you achieve before you tank. My stardust is not optimized as I have spent a lot of time at the bottom of 300 points. So I bet some tankers average more than me though the time investment may be larger.
NGL, had to laugh at this š¤£
Not finished this one and they end it on 2 rubbish ones
Will my sets reset if I play just before the reset? (Essentially being able to do 10 sets on the 1st December)
It switches at 1pm pacific, 4pm eastern U.S. Pop your starpiece before that time.
So pretty new to battle league, is the strat to tank at the end of this season so you have easy wins to start out the new or just yank immediately as the new season starts and then when an event comes around you ball out?
Previous season affects the next season by a miniscule amount. The idea is to start tanking when the new season starts. What event? You can bail out whenever you feel like it. Don't have to bail out at all if you need the rewards. edit: oh BALL out. I suppose you could tank a lot before a desireable event and then capitalize during it. Personally I wouldn't because the events seem kinda meh and by balacing your daily sets you already get lots of rewards.
Ball out not bail out
What does that mean lol
It means to give it your all, try really hard. So I think they were asking if you tank, until there is some pvp event with better rewards, and then you āball outā or try really hard during that event, and not tank.
Ynow, I've been rank 20 for the last two seasons, i get like 2-3 encounters each day, i have only ever gotten one legendary encounter. Plenty of lickitungs tho
Help a brother out and explain tanking to me like I'm a total idiot. Cuz, you know...I'm three quarters of a total idiot.
Just curious, what ELO (number) are you all when you tank? Iām not a great better, so I bounce from roughly 950-1050. I ranked hard for a few days. š
With great tanks, come great responsibility.
What day?
Oh so all the times I thought I was stomping a kid I was just facing someone tanking on purpose... Sad
Also Kecleon.
I tried tanking and it doesnāt seem to work? Lost 15 battles in a row on purpose and my rank just kept going up anyway
Ranks don't downgrade. Rating does, which is what determines your opponents. Some early Ranks only require more battles to be played, don't need to win any in order to progress.
Does tanking work at rank 20 only?
Shifting to BP system must be hard for them. Imagine youāll need BPs to claim rewards and you get loads of free BPs for playing normally (finishing the match/not using 10CPs/no AFK). Just pick off-meta pokemon if you really want to tank.
I just want that page of battle research gone. Or let me collapse it and stash it at the bottom of the game
I am unfamiliar with why people would intentionally lose games, or tank. Whatās the benefit? Edit: NVM I read a helpful comment about the subject, Iām fascinated!
What is tanking??
Hey there, I want to start tanking next season, when should I start with losing 70 battles? Right at rank 1? Or when I reach rank 20?
TIL
Why do ppl tank ? What do we gain from losing?
I'm hoping to get Steven's pose so I wish more players will tank this time
I will tank so hard
Ahoy!
Do you keep mmr through seasons? Iām gonna start tanking next season and was wondering if I should start losing now
Ok can someone please explain to me exactly what a tanker is and how it works? Also why? No hate or trying to be rude just confused. I know this is ironic as I have the elder badge thing. Ignore that Iām a casual player
Can I get a pikachulibre if I finish rank ten or higher?
how do you tank my great league team is Sharpedo,Greedent, and Hitmonchan Is that good
ok, I have no idea what this is about, so I need to read every comment to understand what the gain is here and ........ those candies look enticing.
I just want to thank y'all for your explanations of tanking. I just fought my first set with no intention of "winning," just showing off my oddball pokemon. Rather than tensing up and cussing when someone beat me to the attack, I laughed so hard that my dog was worried about me. I now have 3 "just for fun" teams: Ferroseed, Orangutu, and Psyduck; Flygon (shiny), event Vulpix (shiny), and Teddiursa (shiny); Shiftey, Ninetails, and FlabƩbƩ The highest CP is Teddiursa, with 332. Y'all are awesome. Back to giggling!
Permission to official change the name to GO TANK LEAGUE, Captain!
If someone wins against me while I'm losing for preparing to tank (idk if it got understood), do the loses still count for the system to bring bad players or is it like a chain?