Pokemon Go’s upcoming Community Day round-up event from December 16th-17th is a bit daunting. It’s not just because the event regularly puts a year’s worth of CD ‘mon into the spawn pool for two days, nor just because it also involves the previous years’ CD pokés. This year, we also have multiple Community Day Classic ‘mon to consider plus pokemon with multiple evolutions, all made even worse by a historic low in terms of storage. Some pokés really may not make the cut this year.
For today’s Massively on the Go, we’re going to briefly go over the overall highlights but also discuss how the ones that didn’t make our generalized casual cut may still be worth it for some people.
Cream of the Pokécrop
Let’s start with those “Very useful” picks above, in the green diamond. All of those are raid relevant to some degree, in the upper non-legendary, non-mega, non-shadow tiers at the very least. All but Starly are also PvP relevant. If you’re a long time player, you many be “done” with some of them, such as Larvitar or Swinub. Similarly, some ‘mon don’t really need their CD moves to be relevant. This would be Swinub, Togetic, Grubbin, Larvitar, Timburr, and for the moment, Litwick. Those pokemon you can simply catch now and evolve whenever, you just have more chance to get them and their shiny variants during the weekend.
However, all but Litwick’s line may still want the CD move for PvP or Rocket battles. I personally keep Ancient Power on Mamoswine for Rockets, as it can burn a leaders’ shield and potentially give my ‘mon some stat boosts. Togekiss can use the CD move for PvP or gym defense, but you don’t need it for raids. Grubbin’s second evolution, charjabug, is a weird situation where it’s a mid-evolution that doesn’t want to evolve to be effective in PvP. Be careful to mark PvP charjabug’s so you don’t accidentally over evolve one like I have (RIP little guy). Larvitar’s evolution can go Dark or Rock but trends more towards Rock these days in its Mega and Shadow forms, so getting Smack Down, which is also useful in Master League, is pretty important now. Timburr won’t need its CD move for raids at all, and it can be a sidegrade in PvP, but it’s quite useful for taking down gyms, especially if you go the Fight’em All route described in our gym guide.
If you’re super limited on time and care only about raids, though, I would focus more on Sunday, as Timburr and Axew are new, accessible, and due to see a lot of mileage. Froakie is also a fan favorite and really up there in terms of raid potential at the moment, though you won’t need it this month.
Finally, a note about Charmander: It comes with both a Fast Attack (Dragon Breath) and Charged Attack (Blastburn). As is, you can just give it a second Charged Attack to make it a good Mega Charizard X to take advantage of STAB damage or use it in PvP. Normally, though, especially in raids where you need Fire damage, you can TM it away. Since it has two Mega forms, I keep one “Dragon”-themed Charizard and one “Fire”-themed one, though it also has Flying kits to take advantage of (but no CD Flying moves). While Elite Fast TMs can drop from Routes, I still wouldn’t advise anyone to switch a Charizard’s Fast Move on the go. Have two, just as you should with Larvitar and its Community Day Fast move for Rock and Dark focused Megas.
Picking a fight
Next are the PvP picks (red triangles). These are basically useful only for PvP and maybe Rocket battles. As much as I love Squirtle, it’s largely outclassed, and Mega Blastoise is outclassed in every way by Primal Kyogre. It’s got some use in Ultra League and is useable in Great, but overall it could be skipped at this point unless you have a specific team it’ll fit on.
Walrein, the Polis, and Quagsire all have strong uses in the scene now, while the others are kind of niche, either useful only in a single League or outside the top 20 picks. That isn’t to say they’re useless at all, as I personally use Obstagoon to break shields and soften up opponents, but these three are the ones you’ll probably want to focus on the most after the previous category.
Gym defenders and leftovers
Outside of Togekiss, the Useful Picks (green diamonds) should not be left in gyms unless you’re doing a gym theme or really need candy from feeding them berries. Even with Togekiss, leave it in the gym only if you’ve invested in it as a gym defender. The other Gym Def picks (blue circles) are basically in the same situation: You evolve and invest in them only to drop off in gyms.
Any Slowpoke evolution works. They’re a bit less useful now that Conkeldurr has a 2-bar Dark attack, but Galarian variants are especially still quite annoying for him when they’re fresh. None of the traditional Fighters have a good answer for Clodsire either, though Conkeldurr also has to use its CD move against it for non-STAB damage. Clodsire doesn’t need its CD move either, though you may want to keep it if you also unlock a second, faster Charged Attack for it, as Mega Horn could catch an attacker off-guard for some good damage.
That’s most of the high value ‘mon this event, but that doesn’t mean everyone else is trash. Noibat is a fan favorite, especially the shiny, so you could grab some extras for trades. Fennekin and Stufful are in a similar situation. Mareep’s final form, Ampharos, isn’t the strongest pokemon, but don’t forget that its Mega has a unique Dragon/Electric typing, so if you’re stingy about Mega Energy as I am, having one or two of these to Mega during certain events/raid days is very useful. We just had the Mega Garchomp Day (Dragon) when Tadbulb (Electric) was new, so I got a lot of mileage out of my Mega Ampharos that day. And finally, if you’ve missed out on Rhyperior’s multiple CD opportunities and lack other strong Rock picks, Roggenrola’s final form, Gigalith, is a solid choice, outranking Shadow Alola Golem as a Rock type. Tyranitar isn’t bad at this either, but Giga edges it out, and if you’ve got limited space and candy, the Tyranitars are better for their Mega forms.
Anything else that’s unmarked is basically up to you. As much as I love Alolan Golem, I know it doesn’t have much use. Just the same, my friends know they can dump them on me if they have nothing better to trade, so check in with friends, especially if you have old ‘mon to discard in preparation for this Community Day. Even if it’s not great, someone may want it, and you’ll need all the storage and trades you can get!
Massively OP’s Andrew Ross is an admitted Pokemon geek and expert ARG-watcher. Nobody knows Niantic and Nintendo like he does! His Massively on the Go column covers Pokemon Go as well as other mobile MMOs and augmented reality titles!
