Gible Community Day
What’s that? A Community Day with a very popular Pokemon? It can’t be! But it is! After months of unusual choices, we have returned to a Pseudo-legendary Pokemon.
Gible Community Day!
And because we’ve got such a good Pokemon for this Community Day, we all went a bit crazy. The bonuses were x3 catch experience, 3 hour incense and 3 hour lure models. Spawns were plentiful and incense did spawn plenty of Gibles. About half way through, I noticed some other spawns leaking in, like a Rhyhorn, some Whismur from my incense and some Arons (of course). But the spawns were mostly Gible, as advertised.
There was a €1 research ticket as well, called Just a Nibble. Honestly, it wasn’t really worth it. I can get a rocket radar whenever I’d like, and any other premium item would have been nicer. 2 incense at least carries me through the whole event. But none of the Gibles in the research I got were particularly good. Worst of all, the “power up pokemon” task came back, meaning you only just break even on stardust if you power up a cheap lucky pokemon.
Great for PVE
Garchomp’s move this time is Earth Power. It’s actually the same move that Flygon got for its Community Day. But unlike poor Flygon, Garchomp has the strength to back it up. It did already have Earthquake, but for PvE, Earth Power charges up way quicker, meaning you can throw out more attacks.
But, more importantly, Garchomp will have a mega evolution in the future. That mega evolution will put it ahead of all ground types, and also be great for dragon types as well. In fact, Mega Garchomp will be the best ground type for a long time, unless Groudon can pull out the stops later on. But Groudon does have a signature move AND a primal form that are unreleased yet. So Garchomp is sitting pretty for now.
Ground is also a pretty useful typing. Not as useful as rock, fighting, dark or psychic, but there are plenty of tough guys that are Electric, Poison or Steel and could do with a good beating.
Good for PvP too
For PvP, Garchomp finds its power in Master League. However, unlike Rhyperior and Rock Wrecker, Earth Power isn’t a complete upgrade. Earthquake in PvP is used as a massive nuke to finish off enemies and take out steel types. Earth Power doesn’t do nearly the same amount of damage. However, Earth Power is a two-bar move that uses less energy. So instead, this move allows you to play a bit differently. Rather than having a nuke that requires time to charge up, you have less damage but can potentially throw off more charge attacks.
This is quite nice, because it means you’re not automatically at a disadvantage for missing out on a community day move. Instead we get some different tactics to play around with.
I ran out of Pokeballs
The biggest downside really was a lack of Pokeballs. Sure, there’s a box in the shop for 30 Ultra Balls. But Gible is a jumpy Pokemon with a funny attack animation. It’s easy to get an excellent throw on a Gible when it’s stationary, but Gible really moves around. For me, Gible was also weather-boosted, which meant they were extra hard to catch. Plus, no one wants to use Nanabs on these Gibles, not when we want to use Pinaps on everything. And unlike Electabuzz and Magmar, Gible didn’t get a catch rate increase.
So yeah. There were a lot of wasted Pokeballs.
However Niantic predicted we’d all go ham and not only did they increase the maximum Pokemon storage, but they also added an amazing deal. A one-off offer for 100 storage space was available in the shop for 200 coins, double the normal storage cost increase. So at least we had space to put all these Gibles.
A good day overall
I mean, how can I really complain? It’s a Community Day with a super cute Pokemon that has a great shiny. AND I get to catch lots of dragons, which are probably my favourite type.
I honestly only have three complaints. Firstly, still needed more Pokeballs. I struggled, even with having a Pokestop nearby and opening gifts and having the Just a Nibble research. Goodness knows how people without those coped.And the Just a Nibble research was very lackluster. Yes, I like rocket radars, but an incubator would have been nice.
The other complaint though isn’t Niantic’s fault. Normal Garchomp’s shiny is just very lackluster. Sure, the Mega Evolution goes pink, but we all know that’s temporary.