Transfer or keep?
If you have pokemon that you are not going to evolve/powerup, is there any reason to keep them or should you transfer all /battle pokemon you are not going to use. Example: 900 CP Butterfree. No battle/evolve/powerup. Just keep or transfer?
Solution 1:
As the question suggests, there will be not just one correct answer, as it will heavily depend on your play style and on the area where you play, but I would like to share my reasoning mechanism of transferring just in case it might help someone with the similar goals. Level 35 here.
Couple of statements first:
From the collector perspective, all I want is to have full Pokédex. I don't need a "living Pokédex" (each Pokémon kept at least once no matter how rare/useless it is).
I battle and train in gyms a lot.
I am an end-game optimizer (when doing decisions, I am always favoring long-term gains over short-term ones).
Basically, I am keeping four kinds of Pokémon and getting rid of everything else. Let's go through these groups one by one.
The best of the best. Best ranked Pokémon with good IVs and good movesets. These are the only ones that I am spending stardust on. These can be used for both battling in gyms and putting as a defender. When deciding which one to pick as "The Chosen One", I am taking its rarity into an account. E.g. in case of Gyarados (where there are tons of Magikarps) I could wait for 100% IV one, while in case of Dragonite (where I am struggling to find enough Dratinis), I was happy enough to invest into the 93% IV one, or Chansey also 93%. Still waiting for decent Snorlax and Lapras or even Vaporeon (with over 1000 caught Eevees I believe a good IV one is just begind the corner).
High CP defenders. The difference between a good IV fully leveled Pokémon (level 36.5 for me) and a bad IV Pokémon caught in the wild (up to level 30) is visible, but is not that high, that would render the weaker ones useless. So I am keeping everything above 2200 CP and putting these guys into the gyms as defenders.
Prestigers. This is the biggest and the trickiest group. Battling a gym is usually much faster and easier than training. For battling, I am using only like 10 Pokémon in total, but for prestiging I am using over a hundred. Also for battling, it's kind of obvious which ones to pick, but for training it's much harder. In this group, IV don't matter at all (unless doing bubble strat, which I am not), the important part is level (aka CP) and movesets. In my city, gyms usually start around 2000-2200 CP range, so I am keeping all Pokémon with CP from 900-1200 CP if they have good movesets. Unfortunately, there is no easy way of learning which Pokémon is worth keeping, but at least comparing movesets is possible. Since gyms are plagued by Vaporeons here, most frequently I am using Parasects with Solar Beam (at least they are so easy to get). Very often I am using also all Eevee evolutions, Ratticatte with Hyper Beam and Cloyster with Blizzard. And if I find some rarer Pokémon (e.g. Dragonite, Snorlax, Lapras) that falls to this range, I keep it too.
Future use. Anything that is useless now, but might be useful in the future, falls to this category. Like good but not great IV candidates where I haven't spent any stardust yet, but I also haven't found anything better, or Gen2 Pokémon (Onix, Scyther, Porygon). Or even couple of region exclusives in case trading would come true one day.
Any Pokémon that is not in any of these categories is transferred or evolved and transferred. Obviously in case of any of them you may say "but maybe I would use it in a gym one day or it will get buffed or ...", but in that case you would have to keep them all. And indeed, lots of my friends are keeping tens of Vaporeons in range 1600-2000 which they never used, but what if they really needed all of them one day? :)
Solution 2:
It depends on many factors, which include your choice, how good the pokemon is, and how common it is.
- Commonality
- If you have a whole bunch of common stuff such as Eevees and Rattatas, then obviously you will want to transfer them to be able to evolve it into something better
- If you have multiple rarer stuff such as Dragonite and Aerodactyl, then you will want to keep those unless they can also evolve (i.e. Graveler -> Golem)
- Your choice
- If you plan on battling with something then obviously you will want to keep them, or if you plan to evolve them
- How good the pokemon is
- Usually I just keep the one or two highest CP pokemon(s) of that certain type
- For example, if I have (all numbers are CP) 357, 207, 150, 17 CP Rattata and 444 CP Raticate, then I would keep the Raticate and the 357 Rattata.
(My opinion: I usually just keep everything unless I want to evolve something, in which I will then transfer, or if I'm running out of space in my Pokemon storage)