"2017's Goal Completed: 100 Gold Gym Badges"

#PokemonGO: Firstly the gallery of the badges and the map of all the gyms' locations.StatsGym Leader: 58,707 hours defended, this is an average of 13 gyms defended over the 188 days that gym badges have been out. It takes 500 hours to get a gold badge by purely defending, so I would have gotten 117 gold badges from my hours defended if they were distributed across different gyms in the ideal way.Berry Master: 17,802 berries fed. The gym points gained from feeding account for less than 6 gold badges; however berries are very useful to level up gyms where it's difficult to get defending time.Battle Girl: 20,991 battles won. I started around 7000 battles when the new gym system was released. At an estimated average of 15 points per battle, the battles gave me enough points for 7 gold badges.Battle Legend + Champion: 191 + 98 = 289 raids completed, which accounts for almost 10 gold gym badges.Notable GymsSiemens Molen: 37 days defended. When it's already gold and nobody kicks you out for weeks...Spazio: less than 4 days defended. A heavily contested sponsored gym in the city center, where battling and raiding is the way to level up your badge.Promonade: 710 victories. This is our second sponsored gym and the gym I got the most victories on, partly thanks to the other team feeding the gym for hours before an EX raid started on two occasions.Maya Temple: 530 berries. Not even a particularly difficult gym to level up, but everything around it was already gold so I used lots of berries to speed up the process.Trophy: least effort. Cycled past and popped in a Pokemon twice. That's it.House on the Roundabout and Huis Op De Rotonde: two ghost gyms that have been removed due to their location on a roundabout, but thankfully only after I obtained the gold badge. Curiously, the gyms have the exact same name, only in a different language, leading to...Fontein, Blauwe Brug and Totem Pole: three pairs of twins.StrategyAs you can see in the stats section, the huge bulk of gym points is gained by defending gyms. This is good news, as it means you can level up your gyms efficiently without having to play all day. To level up badges, your aim should be to add 20 (or close to that at least) defenders to non-gold gyms when you're out playing. When I didn't have many gold gyms yet it often took me only 30 minutes to get "back" to 20 defenders from ~10, simply by being fast and making use of the many free spots your teammates leave you. Eventually I had to move further and further to new areas, which will take increasingly more time and effort. One thing that helped me a lot was making semi-regular trips to out-of-the-way gyms where my Pokemon would often last several days. This way I'd only have to "put back" about 5 Pokemon into gyms per day.Pokemon GO is a multiplayer game, and when it comes to gyms it's especially important to pay attention to what other players are doing. Focus on areas together with a group of friends to overpower and demotivate the other teams, and also because it's more fun that way of course :). Also take note of what your rivals are doing. If they massively focus on one area, try to find somewhere else to go. Besides that, try to learn at which time of day different gyms get taken and outsmart your rivals with this knowledge.TransportationBike. Nothing else comes even close efficiency-wise. Walking is fine for close-by gyms, but for me the distances started getting too large very soon. Driving is absolutely horrible inside the city, it takes forever to get from one place to another and standing still for 5 minutes to take down a gym isn't possible everywhere. For the further away gyms outside the city driving can be a little faster than cycling if the gyms can be reached by car, but why the hell wouldn't you take your bike and enjoy a nice trip through nature?!AttackersThe three important attackers needed to take down gyms as quickly as possible are Machamp, Dragonite and Raikou. Max out two Machamp and one each of Dragonite and Raikou if you haven't already. Now that battle parties are a thing you can just put those four attackers together with two fillers and use that team against every gym. For me the fillers are Mewtwo (which isn't that good but definitely useful sometimes) and Gyarados (who does well in rain and against against some defenders).DefendersMaxed out Blissey is a big deal. And maxed out means maxed out, you want to time people out and with level 30-35 Blissey this happens far less often. Try to find out at which locations your rivals can't defeat a maxed Blissey, put them there and keep them well fed.After Blissey other defenders are mostly "for show", although using good defenders (Chansey or Gardevoir usually for me these days) is still highly recommended to make attackers use up some more time and potions. I'm definitely guilty of putting in silly defenders like shiny Pichu sometimes though. via /r/TheSilphRoad http://ift.tt/2BMJ7kg