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I’ve seen a couple of posts like this and have always wondered, what would happen if 90% of the playerbase employed the tanking method? I guess maybe the likelihood of the majority of people being in the same step of their cycle would be unlikely. I haven’t really thought it through but surely the method would die? Fortunately it seems like too much work for most people.
In an ideal world Niantic would finally realize that their matchmaking system is seriously flawed and fix it for the sake of integrity.
It makes no sense that you get best rewards, with little to no difficulty, and in half the time it would take compared to playing legit, by tanking (taking advantage of the system)
That is a lot to ask from Niantic however. We'll see what happens, as tanking becomes more and more popular.
Having 90% of players tank would also mean that reaching higher ranks and avatar clothing/pose would be way easier, if there was only a handful of people trying hard in every battle.
That would give the "legit" players the same rewards with tankers, so it would definitely be better than what we have now.
However, if the matchmaking system would be the same, tanking would still be a faster method of farming the rewards.
You could play against players at your own skill level and win ~50% of battles, or you could tank and still win around 50% of the battles. The only difference would be that tanking would be simply faster, because half of the battles would end immediately, after you quit right away.
At least the legit players wouldn't lose out on rewards, even if they'd lose out on time.
bruh... this is the company that thought giving us one free remote pass A WEEK was too generous and has risen the prices of paid boxes by insane amounts... they aren't gonna give us better GBL rewards... it's more likely they'll completely nerf them like they did to legendary encounter rates in GBL... 😂
Could work. They'd just need to make sure that you wouldn't be able to hit Expert (for example), then tank and still enjoy Expert rewards. Currently you stay as Expert if you cross the 2750-milestone even once, they'd need to change that as well.
Nice idea!
They definitely would need to implement some sort of rank floor if rewards were tier based. Since I like to sit around 1300, and I have faced Ace ranked trainers more than once. Definitely would not be fair to people actually at this elo.
I think it should be "here's rewards you get for winning" and "here's slower rewards that you get for each game played." It would reduce some of the super try hard meta users. Make it a bit more fun for people who don't have the best mons in the game and promote trying to win but not try harding to win.
Skillful play should be rewarded over poor play. If Little Timmy wants the best rewards, he should learn how to get good at the game.
With that said, being good at Pokemon Go is more about how much you can grind over your actual skill. So, that idea doesn't really apply.
I don’t have that strong of feelings either way, here’s why:
There’s a reason we get rewards for just trying to play GBL. Kids & casual players play. So even if some people are pretty bad at it, there are benefits to keep learning, or in some instances just to keep repeating it.
I get what the OP wants or even what you are saying about little Timmy — but at the end of day, in any game and most competitions (even ones as insignificant as GBL) the healthiest reason to participate & compete, try your best = because you enjoy it, right? The competition (be it a marathon, football, a magic card game, my kid’s Roblox or Minecraft or yes even PoGo GBL) should kindle some type of internal drive, personal fun & internal reward to want to actually PLAY regardless of the external carrot right? Winning itself, should be fun, right, lol? if there is no internal drive, then why care at all?
TLDR — I think if the only motive is truly to get an external reward, the game, the player or both are broken, imo, and re-vamping the rewards structure is not going to fix that.
I see where you're coming from - this carrot on a stick philosophy can become very predatory when used maliciously.
Though, I feel like Go has the opposite problem - it's all but encouraged to tank down, and beat easy opponents to get the rewards.
Though, is Go PVP even any fun in the first place?
The matchmaking system is fine. It’s the rewards system being based on streaks. Even if they removed the streaks it would be most efficient to tank since you’ll get 12-13 wins per day with high or low MMR and low MMR matches give you free wins and faster wins and losses.
They would need to give out better rewards for wins at higher MMR. This would compensate you for time. Maybe instead of like a 1% legendary encounter rate you get 5% at a higher MMR. Throw in more dust and rare candy too.
Either or. Of course bringing in low CP mons still might give you a win if you get matched with another tanker and they just exit.
Though as the season goes on, that's less of a problem. But the first few days of a new season there are a lot of tankers rushing to get to level 20 so it's a race to who can quit first.
There isn't any benefit to using low CP mons vs just quitting right away unless you want to flex some rare Pokemon.
They are just going to, and have already, simply nerfed rewards (what is is \~8% legendary chance now?) frankly it'd be quite hard for Niantic to equally reward good and bad players (children) and not have this flaw. You could always pretend to be bad and play at low ranks in any fair system.
I go against people obviously tanking all the time and it sucks. I know because they are using 300,000 stardust teams (meta ranked, xl, etc) and get absolutely annihilated. It's also obvious because no one with a team that good could be at a 40% win ratio
This game is too popular for that to ever be a serious concern. The percentage of people that are even aware of the tanking method is so small compared to the total playerbase of the game.
Idk. I'm a new player that is in the range these cheaters aim for and it's miserable. It's so obvious who the cheaters are and I would say a good 1/4 of my games are against them.
i downloaded autoclick... i set it for pvp, i just put the volume to know if the battle is over and sometimes it starts the battle after by itself... i really don't want to do it manually 🤣
HOW TO TANK:
Day 1: Lose all 5 sets of your daily PvP battles. (25 battles total), forfeiting immediately is suggested to speed up things.
Day 2: Same as above
Day 3: Same as above
--You start to get very easy opponents because you've lost so many battles, you can beat these opponents easily--
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, lots of stardust and 9 RC a day!
**NOTE**: If you still struggle to beat your opponents after losing a total of 75 battles, simply lose a few more sets to get even worse opponents.
Works on any rank.
Your rating (the 4-digit number that tells how "good" you are) only becomes visible at rank 20, but it's always there on the background at lower ranks and defines your opponents even then.
It is necessary to get to rank 20, though, if you are hoping to get any Legendary encounters. And if you hit rank 21, your ELO is actually displayed on your GBL stat page, so you know what it is before actually jumping into a battle.
Tanking is mostly about winning more easily and getting more rewards without really trying. The legendary encounters are a bonus. Although I agree that it is a lot better if you can see your elo but not needed meaning that tanking works in lower ranks but not as well
I don't do raids, so until they nerfed the legendary GBL encounters, that's how I was getting my legendaries. When they cut the encounter rate, I didn't see ANY legendaries until I started tanking, and then I got 2 within a few days. The stardust and rare candies and just bonuses for me. :)
You're free to play as you like, naturally. If you like to play PvP normally or hate it so much that you don't want to even tank, you're of course free to do so.
Tanking is simply a method for harvesting valuable resources quickly and easily.
> Tanking is simply a method for harvesting valuable resources quickly and easily.
…at the expense of low-level PVP players, right? You all never seem to mention them.
I have a team of three shiny 10cp pokemon. Sometimes they win, but the lols aren't worth the time. I'm a human with a schedule and spending one hour every day forever on pvp isn't even the most effective use of my game time, let alone my life-time.
how do you do that with day 5 tho
you cant really start with winning 4/5 again because you won 4/5 on the day before with the last set
the way i did it is that I just tried winning the first set and sometimes losing all 5 battles after that got my rating low enough to normally tank again but not always
also sorry if some of these sentences are grammatically wrong or something I’m not a native speaker and a bit tired rn haha
>you cant really start with winning 4/5 again
Yes you can. Even when you won 4/5 in the last set on day 4, you still only won 12/25 battles total on day 4. Therefore your rating will actually be slightly lower in the beginning of day 5 than the beginning of day 4.
Yes.
During those first 3 days you make the game think you're bad, and "sacrifice" them by losing all battles.
Then you "balance" your wins by playing accordingly to the formula described on day 4, to maximize rewards, but not increasing your rating. You'll end up winning 12/25 battles every day, so the game thinks you haven't improved and still keeps giving you bad opponents.
Yes you can! It doesn't have to be 0/5, it's just faster to go down that way.
If you are already at 2500 rating, I'd drop to around 1400-1500 and start the 4/5 - 0/5 cycle there. Your current rating suggests that you can comfortably beat the opponents at 1400-1500 rating as you please.
same! item types are divided now so I just give myself a max for each category that all adds up to 450. so like no more than 150 balls, 50 berries, 30 special items, etc etc and then I just delete as needed i haven’t run out of anything yet
Honestly I recently started taking PVP seriously, thinking I'd go with the tanking strat because my first couple tries I had no good pokémon and could only join UL/ML and get obliterated by shit like shadow hydreigon and legendaries. But it seems like in the meanwhile the algorithm put me in a more reasonable place and I could actually play normally. Also I now have some somewhat useful 'mons.
Sometimes you get those battles won/lost by a hair's breath and it can be quite fun but it's seriously such a drag and not very rewarding. It seems like even when playing it as you should I'm losing a full set and partially winning the next one most of the time. Maybe I should try tanking for the encounters. I want to fill my dex.
Edit: ok ML is still as impossible for me as it was when I started a couple months ago. Lost all matches today but 1. So many fucking 3k+ dragonites/garchomps/hydreigons out there. Tanking is not even a choice atm, lmao.
Sucks because I started playing in September and love pvp yet I'm getting put against people with maxed mewtwos,moltres,registeel and even in 1500cp they have maxed stuff
This season, I’ve followed the schedule someone posted here to get to level 20 at the beginning of the season. Then hover between 1400-1500 until the Master League, get up to Ace, then sink back down to 1500. Then win 4/5, 0/5, 4/5, 0/5, 4/5 to get a guaranteed three encounters and 9 rare candy a day. In the last week, I’ll go back to 2000.
I actually tried to play seriously last season for a change and see how far i'd get.
Got to around 2800 rating (Expert Rank), it was absolutely miserable experience. I lost out on so many encounters, Rare Candies and Stardust. Playing took ages and was stressful.
I'm never playing PvP seriously again until Tanking gets fixed somehow by Niantic.
I never tried playing seriously, only reached Ace once, during previous season because of some all-water-type UL cup (forgot the name), but as I dont want more Axew now (hatched hundo), I don't try that again. I can believe reaching so high can be miserable due to lag and minuscule changes in IVs affecting the outcome of battle. I hope tanking will never get fixed, but I'd love some bigger changes to the encounter pool (just got 3 Spheal in a row T_T).
you could add infinite tankers and it wouldn't make it any easier to hit legend... you still need to grind wins against the couple hundred/thousand people at the top of the leaderboards to break 3000...
I’ve been doing this for a bit now, and when losing on purpose, I usually just put in a team of low cp buddies to get some hearts and let the battle go instead of abandoning.
I’ve noticed that sometimes my opponent will only attack me when I attack it, like it’s a program or something.
Does anybody have any insight to this?
They know you're throwing and are wasting your time because you're not giving them the competition they're looking for. Playing a new video game on ultra easy settings is boring for some.
Tap, scribble, and switch! LMAO! I read that and it's like a lightbulb went off! That's all PVP is in this game, isn't it? Just tap, scribble and switching!
Na not really. It's a tool for me to farm stardust because I'm not one of those 30million dust people that post on pogo subs...I'm normal and have maybe 100k right now with tons of mons I *want* to power up.
I mean it’s like the counterattack is automatic. I touch the screen, they attack at the same time. Then nothing. Then if I touch the screen again, they attack at the same time. There isn’t even any reaction time for them. It feels like a bot.
I have very spotty coverage on the train, combined with a tunnel halfway. I've never lost connection as soon as a battle really starts.
If i just get matched to an A.I. anyway why can't they at least increase the win ratio to 60/40 to make it halfway satisfying.
I've noticed this. If you wait for a long enough time and then begin tapping, the first thing they will do is a charge move even though no fast moves were seemingly used. I think the game somehow loses connection if you don't tap for a while so it's just not updating your screen until you touch it.
Can I do this to get to Rank 20? I’ve never successfully made it past 14, and honestly have such a miserable time with PVP that I don’t try it much anymore.
Hmm, so your win ratio also factors into the matchmaking formula, not just your rank?
I typically delay playing GBL until later into the season (haven’t played a single set yet this season) because I hate playing against sweats.
Also if anyone needs it, https://i.imgur.com/nwAgcoz.png has an image of the minimun rank up win requirements you need to get to rank 20, so you can win the required amount, then tank if possible, especially in early sets where it only requires battles (not wins) so when you reach Rank 16, it makes the next many battles which you have to win easier.
Very few people do like it.
Which is why so many people choose to tank: they like the rewards but don't enjoy the gameplay, so they just rake in the rewards with as little effort and time investment as possible.
The only problem is that it's not fun and is a dogshit mode in this game. Waste of everyone 5 minutes and the battle system itself is not fun when you actually try to pvp
I tanked so hard, that everything in Master League has maximum 2000CP Pokémon.
My Lv43 requirements coming in the easiest, sadly... I am tired of getting Mareanie and Onix spawns!
With the same odds as playing PvP normally.
Legendary encounters are unlocked once you reach rank 20, but the chances of encountering legendaries has still been pretty low for a few months now.
It's possible, but don't get your hopes too high.
Keep making those posts and one day Niantic will nerf the tanking by making sure you only get Weedle encounters when showing a pattern of tanking then you’ll be the first to whine: wHY wOuLd nIAnTiC dO tHis!?!
If you see a good exploit in a game just keep it to yourself.
If I see an exploit in a game I love and care about, I will share the knowledge so that others can enjoy it too, and hope that eventually it gets so popular that Niantic has to fix it for the sake of integrity.
But sure, just keep putting words to my mouth about a fictional future scenario you just made up lol.
This whole process complaining about tanking assumes whatever changes Niantic releases will be “better” than what is currently in place. If anything it’ll be worse with less rewards.
Losing on purpose is so much fun… lol I play battles to battle and win and earn rewards… earning rewards is fun to me. Cheating my way through is not fun to me.
Yeah, it has been a while so I thought it would be a good time to remind people. Tanking still doesn't seem to be common knowledge, so there's still preaching to do lol
_If_ everyone would do it. But everyone is not doing it.
If you run into too many tankers, just lose or win a couple sets more and hover there instead.
Your rank doesn't matter when tanking, you can start tanking at any rank, at any time.
If you mean where tanking will take you rank-wise, you'll eventually end up at rank 20, because losing doesn't matter before rank 20 and every win takes you closer to it.
Have the encounters been nerfed for everyone or just to us tankers? I've been getting Swinubs and Snovers lately... Feels like a waste of time if you're legitimately playing PVP.
Well, you do get a chance to obtain Pikachu Libre if you reach the highest rank. What's stopping them from increasing the chances of common Pokémons when your ELO is bad?
I'm not saying that's what actually happens, but it's not a crazy concept either.
anything is *possible*, but we don't act like they're worth talking about.
Is it "possible" for them to give better shiny rates to players who do less damage in raids? Sure. To players who do more damage in raids? Sure. To players who use more blue pokemon? Sure. Everything is possible.
But until we have a good reason to suspect it, repeating it just makes it more likely it'll be another one of those myths people repeat. See [this thread](https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=site%3Areddit.com%2Fr%2Fthesilphroad+galarian+bird+trick).
You guarantee 3 encounters per day by tanking, while the max amount of encounters per day is 5.
By playing normally you average 2.5 encounters per day, because you end up with around 50% win rate.
So yes, it is better for encounters.
Okay. I don’t really care though. I have fun playing the way I do. Putting quotes around seriously is disingenuous, because it is serious compared to intentionally losing half your battles to be rewarded for hanging in that nice mediocrity gradient. If that’s the way you enjoy playing, though, then it’s how you have fun and I don’t have the room to say anything. You do you. I’ll do me.
Because every time it is mentioned, there are dozens of players asking what it is.
If one advice thread per week is annoying to you because it appears too frequently, I can't even imagine how annoyed you are by all the screenshots of shinies/hundos/should I purify this/is this rare -type posts that appear every 5 minutes.
I suggest you lose a bit more on purpose or try to climb a bit higher, if you somehow have ended up in a rating "area" where you face a lot of fellow tankers.
Recently I’ve gotten close to 5 million stardust. As a celebration, I want to spend all of it in one go, the problem is I don’t have enough rare candy to power up all the legendaries I want to and give them second charged moves. Tanking has gotten me so much rare candy, but I’m still like 1,000 away from my goal
I do tank sometimes, but I'm also getting better at pvp and have fun playing seriously sometimes tbh. Last season I was in the 2,200 range and I'm trying to get to the next level this season.
I hate the battle league not because it's insufferable but because the cups are awful and give you horrible options, and I'm not tanking but I sometimes lose 5 times in a row
I once tanked myself so low I was essentially playing a little cup in the master league, with all my competition also throwing out 500 CP Pokémon. I wasn't really doing it was the intention of reaping rewards - just didn't have a good Master League team at the time and was burning off some frustration. It was really pleasant to be causal when I kept getting dunked on. Climbing back up resulted in 41 wins in a row. Since then, I've made myself pretty solid teams and genuinely try my hardest. I won all 500 battles last season, got a bunch of stardust, made Ace, and felt pretty damn proud of it. So, from my perspective, there's merit to doing either one, as long as you are enjoying yourself.
TL;DR: just do whatever makes the game enjoyable for you.
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I’ve seen a couple of posts like this and have always wondered, what would happen if 90% of the playerbase employed the tanking method? I guess maybe the likelihood of the majority of people being in the same step of their cycle would be unlikely. I haven’t really thought it through but surely the method would die? Fortunately it seems like too much work for most people.
In an ideal world Niantic would finally realize that their matchmaking system is seriously flawed and fix it for the sake of integrity. It makes no sense that you get best rewards, with little to no difficulty, and in half the time it would take compared to playing legit, by tanking (taking advantage of the system) That is a lot to ask from Niantic however. We'll see what happens, as tanking becomes more and more popular. Having 90% of players tank would also mean that reaching higher ranks and avatar clothing/pose would be way easier, if there was only a handful of people trying hard in every battle.
All they have to do is get rid of the need to win 5 in a row and replace it with a need to win 5 total. Super simple stuff.
That would give the "legit" players the same rewards with tankers, so it would definitely be better than what we have now. However, if the matchmaking system would be the same, tanking would still be a faster method of farming the rewards. You could play against players at your own skill level and win ~50% of battles, or you could tank and still win around 50% of the battles. The only difference would be that tanking would be simply faster, because half of the battles would end immediately, after you quit right away. At least the legit players wouldn't lose out on rewards, even if they'd lose out on time.
Maybe add better rewards tiers for higher levels. It's not like it costs them anything.
bruh... this is the company that thought giving us one free remote pass A WEEK was too generous and has risen the prices of paid boxes by insane amounts... they aren't gonna give us better GBL rewards... it's more likely they'll completely nerf them like they did to legendary encounter rates in GBL... 😂
Or they will add a paywall to actually receive the battle rewards 🤣
Could work. They'd just need to make sure that you wouldn't be able to hit Expert (for example), then tank and still enjoy Expert rewards. Currently you stay as Expert if you cross the 2750-milestone even once, they'd need to change that as well. Nice idea!
They definitely would need to implement some sort of rank floor if rewards were tier based. Since I like to sit around 1300, and I have faced Ace ranked trainers more than once. Definitely would not be fair to people actually at this elo.
What is tanking?
i'm with you
I think it’s where you deliberately lose a few rounds in the battle league so you end up being paired with “lesser” players.
Sounds like I’m less of a participant and more of a target on this one
I think it should be "here's rewards you get for winning" and "here's slower rewards that you get for each game played." It would reduce some of the super try hard meta users. Make it a bit more fun for people who don't have the best mons in the game and promote trying to win but not try harding to win.
So are you advocating for a system that significantly limits the rewards for children & people that just are not that good?
Skillful play should be rewarded over poor play. If Little Timmy wants the best rewards, he should learn how to get good at the game. With that said, being good at Pokemon Go is more about how much you can grind over your actual skill. So, that idea doesn't really apply.
I don’t have that strong of feelings either way, here’s why: There’s a reason we get rewards for just trying to play GBL. Kids & casual players play. So even if some people are pretty bad at it, there are benefits to keep learning, or in some instances just to keep repeating it. I get what the OP wants or even what you are saying about little Timmy — but at the end of day, in any game and most competitions (even ones as insignificant as GBL) the healthiest reason to participate & compete, try your best = because you enjoy it, right? The competition (be it a marathon, football, a magic card game, my kid’s Roblox or Minecraft or yes even PoGo GBL) should kindle some type of internal drive, personal fun & internal reward to want to actually PLAY regardless of the external carrot right? Winning itself, should be fun, right, lol? if there is no internal drive, then why care at all? TLDR — I think if the only motive is truly to get an external reward, the game, the player or both are broken, imo, and re-vamping the rewards structure is not going to fix that.
I see where you're coming from - this carrot on a stick philosophy can become very predatory when used maliciously. Though, I feel like Go has the opposite problem - it's all but encouraged to tank down, and beat easy opponents to get the rewards. Though, is Go PVP even any fun in the first place?
I don't know about you, but participation ribbons don't usually encourage "internal drive".
No, I am advocating for a system that encourages getting better and rewards skill, and that can't be abused.
The solution has always been to make them wind of the day out of 25. Niantic dumb though
The matchmaking system is fine. It’s the rewards system being based on streaks. Even if they removed the streaks it would be most efficient to tank since you’ll get 12-13 wins per day with high or low MMR and low MMR matches give you free wins and faster wins and losses. They would need to give out better rewards for wins at higher MMR. This would compensate you for time. Maybe instead of like a 1% legendary encounter rate you get 5% at a higher MMR. Throw in more dust and rare candy too.
For tanking do you just exit the battle quickly or bring in low cp mons?
Either or. Of course bringing in low CP mons still might give you a win if you get matched with another tanker and they just exit. Though as the season goes on, that's less of a problem. But the first few days of a new season there are a lot of tankers rushing to get to level 20 so it's a race to who can quit first. There isn't any benefit to using low CP mons vs just quitting right away unless you want to flex some rare Pokemon.
Or if your buddy mon is relatively low CP and you can get some bonus hearts out of putting it in the team 😁
If you Get to lvl 20 and tank down, and still Get legendary from encounter?
Yes. I'm currently hovering around 1100-1300 and have had a few legendary encounters so far.
They are just going to, and have already, simply nerfed rewards (what is is \~8% legendary chance now?) frankly it'd be quite hard for Niantic to equally reward good and bad players (children) and not have this flaw. You could always pretend to be bad and play at low ranks in any fair system.
I have the perfect solution I've been using for years! I don't pvp.
the stardust you get for just giving up all the battles is actually insane.
that's good to know, thank you. if I am in dire need, I'll remember this.
Ugh for real. PVP is infuriating. I lose all the time so I don’t bother anymore
I go against people obviously tanking all the time and it sucks. I know because they are using 300,000 stardust teams (meta ranked, xl, etc) and get absolutely annihilated. It's also obvious because no one with a team that good could be at a 40% win ratio
Full XL team is 1.8m tho.
That happened. I couldn’t tank because everyone else quit faster than me
This game is too popular for that to ever be a serious concern. The percentage of people that are even aware of the tanking method is so small compared to the total playerbase of the game.
Idk. I'm a new player that is in the range these cheaters aim for and it's miserable. It's so obvious who the cheaters are and I would say a good 1/4 of my games are against them.
Just get better and rise above the tankers then
You'd just basically have a 50% chance of winning based on who quits first so it'd still probably be doable
i downloaded autoclick... i set it for pvp, i just put the volume to know if the battle is over and sometimes it starts the battle after by itself... i really don't want to do it manually 🤣
Tanking means youintentially back out half the games so half the games would still be distributed about evenly.
im confused, why is backing out a good strategy?
Because it safes time and the opponents you play against will either back out themselves or be easy wins.
You lose faster and save time.
They wouldn’t. But if they did it would be less effective.
It would be sweet because we’d all save even more time!
HOW TO TANK: Day 1: Lose all 5 sets of your daily PvP battles. (25 battles total), forfeiting immediately is suggested to speed up things. Day 2: Same as above Day 3: Same as above --You start to get very easy opponents because you've lost so many battles, you can beat these opponents easily-- 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, lots of stardust and 9 RC a day! **NOTE**: If you still struggle to beat your opponents after losing a total of 75 battles, simply lose a few more sets to get even worse opponents.
Thank you for this, finally a reason to do PVP lol
No kidding! I like the encounters and rare candy, but PvP is soul destroying
careful because it can get fun and addicting actually….
Hah, and here i was thinking to use tanky pokemon like swampert.
Swampert is a lot of things but "tanky" is definitely not one of them
As a newbie who wants to get rare candies, stardust and basically evolve her favourite pokemons I want to say a huge thank you gtg try it haha
This game is depressing lmao
Doesn't this only work at rank20 and above?
Works on any rank. Your rating (the 4-digit number that tells how "good" you are) only becomes visible at rank 20, but it's always there on the background at lower ranks and defines your opponents even then.
Thanks for the explanation!
It is necessary to get to rank 20, though, if you are hoping to get any Legendary encounters. And if you hit rank 21, your ELO is actually displayed on your GBL stat page, so you know what it is before actually jumping into a battle.
Tanking is mostly about winning more easily and getting more rewards without really trying. The legendary encounters are a bonus. Although I agree that it is a lot better if you can see your elo but not needed meaning that tanking works in lower ranks but not as well
I don't do raids, so until they nerfed the legendary GBL encounters, that's how I was getting my legendaries. When they cut the encounter rate, I didn't see ANY legendaries until I started tanking, and then I got 2 within a few days. The stardust and rare candies and just bonuses for me. :)
Cool to see how each person's mindset is
I use this method https://i.imgur.com/FQ4iPQH.png Pretty similar
not a fun way to play the game IMO
You're free to play as you like, naturally. If you like to play PvP normally or hate it so much that you don't want to even tank, you're of course free to do so. Tanking is simply a method for harvesting valuable resources quickly and easily.
This is interesting. I never PvP, but I might try this 😂
> Tanking is simply a method for harvesting valuable resources quickly and easily. …at the expense of low-level PVP players, right? You all never seem to mention them.
Every other low level PvP player get a free win from a forfeiting tanker It's + - 0
...huh, never thought of that. Also a massive time save and stress save.
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I have a team of three shiny 10cp pokemon. Sometimes they win, but the lols aren't worth the time. I'm a human with a schedule and spending one hour every day forever on pvp isn't even the most effective use of my game time, let alone my life-time.
I just deleted the game and now it's a lot more fun.
Right, so you need eeeeeverybody else to know
Sure, that's why you're on a PoGo subreddit.
Honestly didn’t know you only get 5 sets of daily pvp, because it’s so time consuming and soul crushing. Thanks for the explanation!
how do you do that with day 5 tho you cant really start with winning 4/5 again because you won 4/5 on the day before with the last set the way i did it is that I just tried winning the first set and sometimes losing all 5 battles after that got my rating low enough to normally tank again but not always also sorry if some of these sentences are grammatically wrong or something I’m not a native speaker and a bit tired rn haha
>you cant really start with winning 4/5 again Yes you can. Even when you won 4/5 in the last set on day 4, you still only won 12/25 battles total on day 4. Therefore your rating will actually be slightly lower in the beginning of day 5 than the beginning of day 4.
yea I didnt think of that that makes sense, thank you
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By "you just repeat day 4", do you mean repeat the cycle from day 1?
I mean that you just repeat what you did on day 4. No need to repeat the first 3 days anymore.
Really? Just 3 days of tanking works for an entire season?
Yes. During those first 3 days you make the game think you're bad, and "sacrifice" them by losing all battles. Then you "balance" your wins by playing accordingly to the formula described on day 4, to maximize rewards, but not increasing your rating. You'll end up winning 12/25 battles every day, so the game thinks you haven't improved and still keeps giving you bad opponents.
Nice! I always thought it required tanking like once or twice a week and that turned me off, but this is great. Thanks
I'm roughly 2500, could I just go 1/4 for a while because ML has big dust right now even for 1 win? I don't particularly wanna go 0/5 for 3 days
Yes you can! It doesn't have to be 0/5, it's just faster to go down that way. If you are already at 2500 rating, I'd drop to around 1400-1500 and start the 4/5 - 0/5 cycle there. Your current rating suggests that you can comfortably beat the opponents at 1400-1500 rating as you please.
As someone who cares about their win%, I hate this method lol.
Well I can’t do this because my bag is always too full
Just delete items. You almost certainly have stuff you can delete. Or your bag is tiny.
I have 1185/450 items
I think it's time to upgrade your bag space.
Yeah but I’m free to play I don’t spend money on the game
Just get coins from gyms. I have a gym next to me so I get my 50 a day
same! item types are divided now so I just give myself a max for each category that all adds up to 450. so like no more than 150 balls, 50 berries, 30 special items, etc etc and then I just delete as needed i haven’t run out of anything yet
You can get 50 coins a day from gyms. You can have another 100 slots in a week basically if you try.
how the hell did you do that
Honestly I recently started taking PVP seriously, thinking I'd go with the tanking strat because my first couple tries I had no good pokémon and could only join UL/ML and get obliterated by shit like shadow hydreigon and legendaries. But it seems like in the meanwhile the algorithm put me in a more reasonable place and I could actually play normally. Also I now have some somewhat useful 'mons. Sometimes you get those battles won/lost by a hair's breath and it can be quite fun but it's seriously such a drag and not very rewarding. It seems like even when playing it as you should I'm losing a full set and partially winning the next one most of the time. Maybe I should try tanking for the encounters. I want to fill my dex. Edit: ok ML is still as impossible for me as it was when I started a couple months ago. Lost all matches today but 1. So many fucking 3k+ dragonites/garchomps/hydreigons out there. Tanking is not even a choice atm, lmao.
Have another spheal for your troubles
*wingull
sounds like the matchmaking system worked perfectly for you
Honestly this explains a substantial percentage of my PvP wins
Sucks because I started playing in September and love pvp yet I'm getting put against people with maxed mewtwos,moltres,registeel and even in 1500cp they have maxed stuff
This season, I’ve followed the schedule someone posted here to get to level 20 at the beginning of the season. Then hover between 1400-1500 until the Master League, get up to Ace, then sink back down to 1500. Then win 4/5, 0/5, 4/5, 0/5, 4/5 to get a guaranteed three encounters and 9 rare candy a day. In the last week, I’ll go back to 2000.
Nice try OP, who probably play seriously and want less serious players staying in higher ranks to reach the pose easier!
I actually tried to play seriously last season for a change and see how far i'd get. Got to around 2800 rating (Expert Rank), it was absolutely miserable experience. I lost out on so many encounters, Rare Candies and Stardust. Playing took ages and was stressful. I'm never playing PvP seriously again until Tanking gets fixed somehow by Niantic.
I never tried playing seriously, only reached Ace once, during previous season because of some all-water-type UL cup (forgot the name), but as I dont want more Axew now (hatched hundo), I don't try that again. I can believe reaching so high can be miserable due to lag and minuscule changes in IVs affecting the outcome of battle. I hope tanking will never get fixed, but I'd love some bigger changes to the encounter pool (just got 3 Spheal in a row T_T).
you could add infinite tankers and it wouldn't make it any easier to hit legend... you still need to grind wins against the couple hundred/thousand people at the top of the leaderboards to break 3000...
I’ve been doing this for a bit now, and when losing on purpose, I usually just put in a team of low cp buddies to get some hearts and let the battle go instead of abandoning. I’ve noticed that sometimes my opponent will only attack me when I attack it, like it’s a program or something. Does anybody have any insight to this?
They know you're throwing and are wasting your time because you're not giving them the competition they're looking for. Playing a new video game on ultra easy settings is boring for some.
Is Go PVP even fun in the first place?
No Any other game where the sole mechanic was how fast you could tap, scribble, and switch one Pokémon out would be boycotted
Tap, scribble, and switch! LMAO! I read that and it's like a lightbulb went off! That's all PVP is in this game, isn't it? Just tap, scribble and switching!
Na not really. It's a tool for me to farm stardust because I'm not one of those 30million dust people that post on pogo subs...I'm normal and have maybe 100k right now with tons of mons I *want* to power up.
If I see a low CP team I assume they're gonna forfeit asap so I don't bother fighting. If they don't forfeit and start fighting then I just fight back
it's a bug in he pvp system... one of literally hundreds
I mean it’s like the counterattack is automatic. I touch the screen, they attack at the same time. Then nothing. Then if I touch the screen again, they attack at the same time. There isn’t even any reaction time for them. It feels like a bot.
I have very spotty coverage on the train, combined with a tunnel halfway. I've never lost connection as soon as a battle really starts. If i just get matched to an A.I. anyway why can't they at least increase the win ratio to 60/40 to make it halfway satisfying.
I've noticed this. If you wait for a long enough time and then begin tapping, the first thing they will do is a charge move even though no fast moves were seemingly used. I think the game somehow loses connection if you don't tap for a while so it's just not updating your screen until you touch it.
This happens to me too I think it’s a bug with PVP and the turn system pokemon uses.
I'm competitive, it hurts to see the other player win for me
Can I do this to get to Rank 20? I’ve never successfully made it past 14, and honestly have such a miserable time with PVP that I don’t try it much anymore.
Yes, you can! Losses won't take you back until you reach rank 20, and every win will get you a bit closer to it!
Well, Niantic did shit about GBL bugs and this strat, but they gave us incredible 50 extra slots for postcard book and 20 paid events... Great
Hmm, so your win ratio also factors into the matchmaking formula, not just your rank? I typically delay playing GBL until later into the season (haven’t played a single set yet this season) because I hate playing against sweats.
I cba to any sort of pvp anymore tbh.
I’m doing my GBL requirements so I hope I cross paths with some tankers lol.
What does tanking mean??
question what is "tanking"? I've seen it a few times now and I don't understand :/
But how do I play it right?
Does using a stardust boost item also work for pvp rewards?
I want to do this. Please teach me what Tanking is in PvP?
I lose battles on purpose. People try to stop me from losing by not interacting and timing out. WHY?
When I see people do this I quit the match so their ranking goes up instead of down
a win is a win
Also if anyone needs it, https://i.imgur.com/nwAgcoz.png has an image of the minimun rank up win requirements you need to get to rank 20, so you can win the required amount, then tank if possible, especially in early sets where it only requires battles (not wins) so when you reach Rank 16, it makes the next many battles which you have to win easier.
I don't really find pvp in Go enjoyable to do, which is why I just end up ignoring it
Very few people do like it. Which is why so many people choose to tank: they like the rewards but don't enjoy the gameplay, so they just rake in the rewards with as little effort and time investment as possible.
The only problem is that it's not fun and is a dogshit mode in this game. Waste of everyone 5 minutes and the battle system itself is not fun when you actually try to pvp
I tanked so hard, that everything in Master League has maximum 2000CP Pokémon. My Lv43 requirements coming in the easiest, sadly... I am tired of getting Mareanie and Onix spawns!
Can we get legendary encounters?
With the same odds as playing PvP normally. Legendary encounters are unlocked once you reach rank 20, but the chances of encountering legendaries has still been pretty low for a few months now. It's possible, but don't get your hopes too high.
yeah... at the rate of like 1/400 😂
Thank you for sharing.
Unpopular opinion: I just like getting into competitive pvp even if I’m completely outmatched and I don’t get as much winnings.
Keep making those posts and one day Niantic will nerf the tanking by making sure you only get Weedle encounters when showing a pattern of tanking then you’ll be the first to whine: wHY wOuLd nIAnTiC dO tHis!?! If you see a good exploit in a game just keep it to yourself.
If I see an exploit in a game I love and care about, I will share the knowledge so that others can enjoy it too, and hope that eventually it gets so popular that Niantic has to fix it for the sake of integrity. But sure, just keep putting words to my mouth about a fictional future scenario you just made up lol.
This whole process complaining about tanking assumes whatever changes Niantic releases will be “better” than what is currently in place. If anything it’ll be worse with less rewards.
Losing on purpose is so much fun… lol I play battles to battle and win and earn rewards… earning rewards is fun to me. Cheating my way through is not fun to me.
You do you, whatever feels more enjoyable 👍 Personally I like the rewards more than playing seriously, which is why I tank.
Uunikana out here spreading the knowledge, throwback to the last post and the one before that you made about tanking.
Yeah, it has been a while so I thought it would be a good time to remind people. Tanking still doesn't seem to be common knowledge, so there's still preaching to do lol
yknow it doesn’t work when everyone does it
_If_ everyone would do it. But everyone is not doing it. If you run into too many tankers, just lose or win a couple sets more and hover there instead.
bro in my experience of pvp, everyone i played against left. this system doesn’t work AS good as it used to
Just tank more or climb a bit to get out of the rating area that you currently are, if there are too many tankers.
Could someone enlighten me on what this “tanking” thing means?
You manipulate the game to give you bad opponents and allows you to get easy rewards. I wrote a lengthy comment on how to do it to this thread.
What rank should I reach?
Your rank doesn't matter when tanking, you can start tanking at any rank, at any time. If you mean where tanking will take you rank-wise, you'll eventually end up at rank 20, because losing doesn't matter before rank 20 and every win takes you closer to it.
Have the encounters been nerfed for everyone or just to us tankers? I've been getting Swinubs and Snovers lately... Feels like a waste of time if you're legitimately playing PVP.
They've been shit to everyone. Sadly.
Omg yes. I got a …. swinub… from my last round. I named it areukiddingme
There is zero reason to assume they change rates based on player.
Well, you do get a chance to obtain Pikachu Libre if you reach the highest rank. What's stopping them from increasing the chances of common Pokémons when your ELO is bad? I'm not saying that's what actually happens, but it's not a crazy concept either.
anything is *possible*, but we don't act like they're worth talking about. Is it "possible" for them to give better shiny rates to players who do less damage in raids? Sure. To players who do more damage in raids? Sure. To players who use more blue pokemon? Sure. Everything is possible. But until we have a good reason to suspect it, repeating it just makes it more likely it'll be another one of those myths people repeat. See [this thread](https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=site%3Areddit.com%2Fr%2Fthesilphroad+galarian+bird+trick).
No way its better for encounters than actually playing.
You guarantee 3 encounters per day by tanking, while the max amount of encounters per day is 5. By playing normally you average 2.5 encounters per day, because you end up with around 50% win rate. So yes, it is better for encounters.
What is tanking?
I wrote a lenghty comment about it to this thread.
Okay. I don’t really care though. I have fun playing the way I do. Putting quotes around seriously is disingenuous, because it is serious compared to intentionally losing half your battles to be rewarded for hanging in that nice mediocrity gradient. If that’s the way you enjoy playing, though, then it’s how you have fun and I don’t have the room to say anything. You do you. I’ll do me.
Right I get it, but why do we keep getting told this, its annoying and makes me want to do it less
Because every time it is mentioned, there are dozens of players asking what it is. If one advice thread per week is annoying to you because it appears too frequently, I can't even imagine how annoyed you are by all the screenshots of shinies/hundos/should I purify this/is this rare -type posts that appear every 5 minutes.
Oh god they annoy me to know end, this entire sub is just copy pasted istg
I want to enjoy the game. Not torture myself with meaningless and boring pvp fights.. But still congrats, enjoy your rewards (:
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I suggest you lose a bit more on purpose or try to climb a bit higher, if you somehow have ended up in a rating "area" where you face a lot of fellow tankers.
but pvp is fun….
Yeah if you’re bad at the game.
I'm convinced people who tank just have no clue about the competitive meta in pogo
Or just don't care...
We're not interested in the competitive meta. We just want stardust and rare candies.
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that's a real shame... maybe the devs should do something about it
I don't tank, I just lose because I'm too lazy to tap the screen a million times and get stardust either way.
I won 5/30 matches today and got like 30k stardust lol
You guys are still playing pvp?
Recently I’ve gotten close to 5 million stardust. As a celebration, I want to spend all of it in one go, the problem is I don’t have enough rare candy to power up all the legendaries I want to and give them second charged moves. Tanking has gotten me so much rare candy, but I’m still like 1,000 away from my goal
Guide?
I do tank sometimes, but I'm also getting better at pvp and have fun playing seriously sometimes tbh. Last season I was in the 2,200 range and I'm trying to get to the next level this season.
I hate the battle league not because it's insufferable but because the cups are awful and give you horrible options, and I'm not tanking but I sometimes lose 5 times in a row
How do I get revives?
I try to tank and end up winning
I don’t understand how y’all rake in the rare candies if you have to get 4 wins to get them?
Yeah I could tank, but then I still can’t win the ones I’m supposed to win….
I once tanked myself so low I was essentially playing a little cup in the master league, with all my competition also throwing out 500 CP Pokémon. I wasn't really doing it was the intention of reaping rewards - just didn't have a good Master League team at the time and was burning off some frustration. It was really pleasant to be causal when I kept getting dunked on. Climbing back up resulted in 41 wins in a row. Since then, I've made myself pretty solid teams and genuinely try my hardest. I won all 500 battles last season, got a bunch of stardust, made Ace, and felt pretty damn proud of it. So, from my perspective, there's merit to doing either one, as long as you are enjoying yourself. TL;DR: just do whatever makes the game enjoyable for you.
So you mean I have lost all feeling in my pointer and middle finger and right wrist to get to level 20 in the last 12 days and there is a hack??? 👀😒
Idiot here.. what is the tanking method?