Porygon Community Day Classic

I swear, they only ever seem to bring back the more useless Pokemon for Community Day Classic events. Hence why, on Jan 20th, we had the return of Porygon, which appeared in a Community Day back in September 2020. Which was a long time ago, but, well, Porygon isn’t exactly the most amazing of creatures.

This Community Day Classic was nothing special either. The bonus was x3 catch experience, meaning you can get a nice, easy 3k experience one excellent throw. Incense and Lure Modules lasted for 3 hours if activated during the event. Those were the only bonuses, we didn’t get extra stardust or candy, nor did we get the bonus special trade. There was also the photobomb thing, where a Porygon spawns if you take a snapshot of your buddy, but this doesn’t work if you do it at 16:59 – the Porygon immediately despawns alongside every other Porygon in the wild.

We also had a mini timed research, alongside the standard $1 Community Day ticket. The ticket wasn’t very good and required the evolution of multiple Porygons, meaning you had little resources to level up more than a handful. Thankfully, the mini timed research gave you 2 Sinnoh Stones and 4 Data Discs, which you need to evolve Porygon into Porygon2 and Porygon2 into PorygonZ, but you only really need a couple of Porygon anyway, they’re not that useful.

Annoyingly though, Porygon moves around a LOT, making it somewhat tricky to get those excellent throws. It’ll sit on one side of the screen for ages before moving again, and has a nasty habit of attacking just as you let go of your ball. I also had a LOT of Porygons instantly break out of excellent throws, despite being low CP – their catch rate was OK but they are just all-round a bit annoying. At least the shiny chance seemed pretty normal. I didn’t play much but I did stumble on a couple of shinies without even trying. The shiny is alright, a nice shade of purple, but I prefer normal Porygon. It just looks nicer and more varied.

Unfortunately, Porygon isn’t the most useful of Pokemon. For raids, it’s completely useless, since normal type isn’t super effective against anything. And even if PorygonZ WAS good for anything, there are better normal types you can use. Like Regigigas, for example. Only shadow PorygonZ has any real chance. But, again, when it comes to raids, normal type is useless.

While yes, normal types do have play in PvP, the problem is, you kinda need to be semi-tanky to do well. PorygonZ though is a bit of a glass cannon. If you look at the normal types that all do well, you can see that they tend to have more bulk and more damage in their spammy moves. Sure, Lock-On means that Tri-Attack CAN be spammy, but Lock-On does no damage in the mean time, meaning, well, you only do damage via charge attacks, and the opponent can easily block two of them. Meanwhile, more popular normal types like Lickitung and Snorlax generally deal actual damage with their fast attacks while charging up. Sure, you get fewer charge attacks overall, but you deal more damage.

But the annoying thing is, this event is completely pointless. Because Porygon2 is better than PorygonZ, and Porygon2 can get Tri-Attack without spending an elite charge TM! The move is in its default move pool, and you can just use normal TMs to get it. Porygon2 has more bulk and lives for slightly longer, while also having better stats that allow it to have more health and a higher level in Great League, the only place where normal types genuinely shine.

This was a very skippable event. The only reason I played was because I needed to go to the pharmacy and buy some painkillers and cough syrup. I suppose it’s a nice shiny, at least?