Our gym attackers and gym defenders tier lists are widely popular. For these lists, we put rating explanations for each of the Pokemon. Make sure you read these and consider how they apply to your local meta-game and play style. The fact that a Dragonite on defense is countered by Lapras may mean very little in places where most players do not have a high quality Lapras but be a bigger problem in coastal cities with known Lapras spawn points. This also applies to our move ratings on Pokemon pages.

One question we get often is how a lower tiered Pokemon with its best moveset compares to a higher tiered Pokemon with a subpar moveset. These Pokemon are likely used for different purposes so comparisons do not always make sense. However, an approximation you can use is to consider each letter worth a fraction of a tier. For example, if a Pokemon is one full tier above another one, its D moveset probably performs similarly to the lower Pokemon’s A moveset. Any Dragonite should be a better attacker than Pokemon not on our attacker list but the best Vaporeon is marginally better than a Dragonite with Steel Wing. While this generalization can be helpful, we strongly recommend trainers to consider each situation and not apply it too broadly. You can find out more about our rating system from this page.

Another list that many people like on our site is the highest DPS by type. Damage per second is easy for most people to understand but there are a few things to keep in mind. This list does not account for energy gain due to health lost and thus, underweights charge moves relative to real life battles. We also assume neutral damage against a defender with 100 defense which is not what most attackers will be facing. Finally, these rankings only compare Pokemon in the attacker position since defensive AI leads to different DPS numbers. Nevertheless, this list is not a bad place for people to start getting familiar with what attackers are good in the game.

Remember that while we think our tier lists are very good, the best trainers will make adjustments to form strategies for themselves!