With the newest update in Pokemon Go, players can now power up their Pokemon to level 40. It is quite tempting to use all your stardust to max out your strongest Pokemon. But it is smarter to only power up your attackers to their most relevant breakpoint, and save that stardust for Gen 3. Most Pokemon are as strong as their last breakpoint, a point usually met before level 40.
To explain, a breakpoint is a level where a certain Pokemon’s fast attack deals 1 more damage than before. This is co-relative with its IV. If the Pokemon has a higher attack IV, this means that the breakpoint will be reached sooner than you would with a lower one. Because of this reason, many trainers think that the high attack IV is determining the value of a Pokemon. These breakpoints can also be based on the defending Pokemon’s defense stat.
The breakpoints also depend on the fast attack that is used. They are not that often discussed. The charge moves are not that much used in battle. The fast move breakpoints can mean something, because an increase of 1 damage for a fast move increases your damage per second by more than 1 and has a greater impact on your total damage output where an increase of 1 damage for a charge move increases your DPS by less than 1.
Breakpoints are more valued when:
- Your fast attack has a low cooldown or low base power.
- You’re attempting a solo or low man challenge.
These points stand for a cut-off point, where powering up a Pokemon gets the whole benefit per dust spent. Without knowing about this, many trainers do not power up beyond level 30 because of gaining half CP. If a breakpoint is met at 30.5, this would increase their performance in a big way. Just as a breakpoint exists about when the fast move deals 1 extra damage to the raid boss, the raid boss also has a point where it will deal 1 less damage to you.
In general, explains GamePress, defensive breakpoints have value when:
- The raid boss is using a single bar charge move
- The raid boss is using an easily dodged charge move
- Your Pokemon has a low max HP
- You’re attempting a solo or low man challenge
All in all, most of the defensive breakpoints are met before the offensive ones. But the defensive breakpoints are far more important for glass cannons.
But, there is a small number of cases, where meeting a defensive breakpoint will lower the passive energy that is gained from the raid boss’s fast move damage. This can be insignificant, but some trainers under-level and try to find lower defense IV Pokemon, just to avoid these breakpoints.
This leads to the belief that is false, that low defense IV Pokemon are better than the higher ones.
The energy gains from the damage are divided by 2 and then rounded up.
If the damage goes from an odd number down to an even number, this means that you will not gain any extra energy per fast attack from the opponent.
The Pokemon that have some gaining from min/maxing, typically have quite high HP. The Pokemon we took as an example is Vaporeon. Note this, these breakpoints are relative to IV, level, and also the raid boss you are going up against. If a Vaporeon is powered enough, a 15/0/15 one could easily meet defense breakpoint as a 15/15/15 one.
Breakpoints are quite useful for maximizing your Pokemon’s performance in raids, while at the same time saving on Stardust and candy. In other words, they are a signal when you should stop powering up a Pokemon. Since the points are dependable on many factors, they are difficult to be found.
We have hopes that this article helps you a little to understand breakpoints. If you have a hard time doing some solo challenges, it would be nice to see if the Pokemon you are using could be powered up to their next breakpoint.
