VIDEO: To Defend That Gym in Pokémon GO, Look Beyond the CP

Are you just throwing your highest CP Pokémon into gyms?

If so, you might be making a mistake.

CP only gives you a snapshot of your pocket monster.

True, it’s the easiest and quickest way to size them up at a glance.

But according to the folks at Trainer Tips (who ranked the Pokémon based on an amazing spreadsheet from reddit-user profesor_kuki), CP can also be misleading.

For instance, the top 7 Pokémon that usually show up in gyms are also the 7 Pokémon with the top CP:

Dragonite
Lapris
Snorlax
Vaporeon
Exeggutor
Arcanine
Gyarados

But a Pokémon with high attack and low defense like Exeggutor might have a high CP that doesn’t necessarily help you hold a gym down. It all depends on how you want to hold that gym down.

Photo Credit: Niantic

It stands to reason that, if you’re trying to hold a gym, you’re probably looking for some solid defense.

But even then, there are plenty of options when it comes to which Pokémon you want to choose.

Are you looking to hold a gym down as long as possible?

Then you probably just want to leave in one these 20:

Photo Credit: Trainer Tips

Notice that, when it comes to keeping a gym for the longest amount of time, all 20 of those Pokémon outrank the infamous egg-tree.

But, if you’re looking to lay some damage down along the way, you probably want a good overall list, like this one:

Photo Credit: Trainer Tips

Hey! The egg-tree is back!

The next move, if you want to get real involved, is to factor in move-sets.

Now, you could go to that spreadsheet I mentioned earlier, but Trainer Tips has actually already done a pretty exhaustive job of ranking those out, using Dewgong as a floor.

And it turns out that move-sets really matter.

For instance, if you’re trying to decide which of your Lapras is going to fare best, you definitely want to compare move-sets, as its lowest-ranked set is actually 30% less effective than its top:

Photo Credit: Trainer Tips

You can see a more thorough explanation of everything I went through above – plus the move-set rankings for all of the top 20 – in this video from Trainer Tips: