Chansey Community Day
I’ll be honest, I wasn’t looking forward to Chansey Community Day. I already had a bunch of shiny Chansey, Blissey’s shiny is the worst and since my egg space is full of 10 and 12km eggs, I didn’t expect to get a shiny Happiny (and I didn’t). Out of all the Pokemon we could have had for a Community Day, Chansey was so low down the list that I would have preferred Pikachu again. I get that maybe Niantic wanted something pink for February, to go with the Valentines Day event that they always do, but not only is Valentines Day a week away, but the Valentines Day event they’ve planned is mostly focused on flower Pokemon, not the colour pink. We could have had a Flabebe Community Day, would have been way, way more interesting.
But no, we got Chansey. A Pokemon that pops up somewhat regularly, all things considered. At least, it normally pops up around February, or any event involving eggs. And, aside from the 1/4 egg hatching bonus to give people a chance at getting Shiny Happiny, we didn’t get any interesting bonuses either. I kinda hoped we’d get extra catch XP or something, to match the fact that Chansey gives huge amounts of experience in the main series games, but no, we just got x2 catch candy, which seems to be a default feature of Community Days now.
Thing is, Chansey also just isn’t useful. The whole family isn’t useful. The only thing you can use Blissey for is gyms, because it’s annoyingly tanky, doesn’t seem to lose much health over time compared to other evolved Pokemon and, annoyingly, knows Zen Headbutt, which… well, it doesn’t hurt fighting types, but it annoys them. Doubly so if you’re fighting a max health one and it somehow manages to throw a Dazzling Gleam at you. That being said, Blissey’s attack stat is so low that it kinda just tickles you, and high-ranking fighter Lucario partially resists its moves anyway, due to it being a Steel type.
On top of that, Blissey’s Community Day move makes no sense. Wild Charge is an electric move which, in PvP, drops your defense stat when you use it. The whole point of Blissey is to be bulky, so why would you want a move that removes some of your bulk? If anything, Dazzling Gleam is still a better move, because it’s super effective against Blissey’s main enemy, fighting types. That’s assuming that you can even reach a charged attack, because Pound and Zen Headbutt are among the worst fast moves in the game, only beaten by things like Yawn and Splash, which do no damage at all.
Not that you can even use Blissey in PvP. It does so little damage that its only use is to compare it with two other tanky Pokemon and run down the clock. But, weirdly, in Great League, Chansey seems to somehow do that better, despite not even reaching 1500CP (I should know, I caught a hundo and it goes up to 1418CP at level 50). In fact, technically, Chansey is tankier than Blissey in Great League because of the weird way stats work as you level a Pokemon up – a Chansey at level 40 has more health than a Blissey at level 20 that just fits into Great League’s 1500CP limit.
Still, weirdly, I actually had a great Community Day. I caught 13 shinies and got a hundo from research. But I also just happened to run into a bunch of other people. I saw more people for Chansey Community Day than I did for Rowlet Community Day – then again, the weather was a lot better, it was raining in January. I tagged along with them for an hour and we did a Mega Latias raid and two Shadow Articuno raids. Two of them were kids, both only 13 years old (less than half my age – that hurts) and one of them was brand new, he’d started playing the day before and caught his first shiny today. The other kid was level 35, looking to get to level 37 so he could nominate Pokestops, and I traded my shitty Latias with him and got myself a 176cp wild Latias, which I adore. It was genuinely nice having people to play with, especially since I’ve mostly stopped playing with my brother and most of the local community has somewhat moved on.
That being said, Chansey was still a shit choice for a Community Day. Its ONLY use is to slow down gym attackers, but even then, attacking gyms is so easy that you’re only costing people an extra 30 seconds at most. And to make matters worse, we didn’t even get an interesting special move or anything. The whole damn thing was pointless.