"Theory: The 400 candy requirement for Altaria is only to maintain the difficulty of obtaining the Dragon badge."

#PokemonGO: We now have confirmation that Wailmer does indeed take 400 candies to evolve into Wailord as the gamemaster had told us.The other Gen 3 Pokemon that needs this obscene amount is evolving Swablu into Altaria.Whilst Magikarp to Gyarados was a joke in the main series, from its moveset to design, there doesn't seem to be any reason for either Wailord or Altaria to have this distinction.Wailmer seems to be about as common as Slowpoke at the moment, which means though it's a bit of a slog, it's doable. However, the payoff is rather limited as Wailord isn't really good at anything. Was the only reason for this change to give Niantic more time to work on the gym design? (lol) Then again, I doubt the novelty lasts long.Now let's look at Altaria. All the dragons in the game will either be legendary or 3-stage which means 125 candy minimum. Altaria is the only 2 stage dragon, and Swablu isn't even dragon.CP-wise, Altaria is dead last among all fully evolved dragons and doesn't even reach 2000. It's actually behind Shelgon (1958) and over 500CP away from the next on the list Kingdra (2424).Stamina- At 150, it is last tied with Kingdra.Attack- Last at 141 and is 31 points behind Shelgon and 22 points behind Dragonair. It is also a whopping 122 points behind Dragonite.Defense- the only respectable stat with 208 points, it is 3rd behind the Lati twins and 40 points above Salamence. However, it is only 7 points ahead of Dragonite.With Dragonite getting massacred (as all Dragon/Flying types are) by Ice, Altaria will be basically toothless and will die faster.So, really the only logical explanation for the absurd amount of candies needed for a dex filler, is that it maintains the difficulty of the Dragon badge. This seems to be a pretty bad reason.The slight silver lining is that with buddy candy only being 1km, maybe Swablu will be as common as Natu/Murkrow once were.Any other theories as to why they made it this way? via /r/TheSilphRoad http://ift.tt/2BOzl56