Kirise
OG
Thanks to my niblings getting me back into Pokemon Go, I found out twinking exists there, in a 1v1 arena kind of way, and thought I'd pass on the info to anyone looking for a twinking corollary and to get more exercise.
Normal Pokemon Go resembles a microcosm of WoW. Grind the heck out of leveling and collecting Pokemon with the absolute best of the three stats (attack, defense, health) and give them the best movesets, similar to a super basic talent system. Vendor everything you don't use, to earn currency. Some drops are common, some are super rare.
Pokemon get "rated" as a combination of their three stats. When they reach max level, those stats dictate their maximum rating, which could land anywhere between ~600 and ~6600 depending on the pokemon. Most people aim for pokemon in the 4000s.
However, different battle leagues (basically 1v1 arenas) cap the max rating of allowed pokemon. 2500, 1500, even some leagues at 500 rating appear during certain weeks. Because of these caps, pokemon with less than maximum stats often perform better in these leagues. A pokemon with perfectly maxed stats can only level so high before reaching a 1500 rating cap, but that same pokemon with e.g. no attack stat and maximum defense and health stats can level higher before reaching that same rating cap. The power of a pokemon's higher level more than makes up for the absent attack stat.
There's a lot of math behind figuring out twink pokemon stats to land under a certain rating cap, as well as for choosing optimum talents. A lot of player-made web and video-based resources help.
I'm sure I'll drop Pokemon Go once my niblings move on to the next thing, and maybe someday I'll return to WoW. Regardless, I find it hard to believe that a casual mobile game developer figured out how to leverage community interest in sub-max-level PvP for the betterment of the whole community (and the company's profits), long before Blizzard.
Normal Pokemon Go resembles a microcosm of WoW. Grind the heck out of leveling and collecting Pokemon with the absolute best of the three stats (attack, defense, health) and give them the best movesets, similar to a super basic talent system. Vendor everything you don't use, to earn currency. Some drops are common, some are super rare.
Pokemon get "rated" as a combination of their three stats. When they reach max level, those stats dictate their maximum rating, which could land anywhere between ~600 and ~6600 depending on the pokemon. Most people aim for pokemon in the 4000s.
However, different battle leagues (basically 1v1 arenas) cap the max rating of allowed pokemon. 2500, 1500, even some leagues at 500 rating appear during certain weeks. Because of these caps, pokemon with less than maximum stats often perform better in these leagues. A pokemon with perfectly maxed stats can only level so high before reaching a 1500 rating cap, but that same pokemon with e.g. no attack stat and maximum defense and health stats can level higher before reaching that same rating cap. The power of a pokemon's higher level more than makes up for the absent attack stat.
There's a lot of math behind figuring out twink pokemon stats to land under a certain rating cap, as well as for choosing optimum talents. A lot of player-made web and video-based resources help.
I'm sure I'll drop Pokemon Go once my niblings move on to the next thing, and maybe someday I'll return to WoW. Regardless, I find it hard to believe that a casual mobile game developer figured out how to leverage community interest in sub-max-level PvP for the betterment of the whole community (and the company's profits), long before Blizzard.
