Lapras Legacy
I finally hatched a Lapras before Gen 2, and I was fortunate to receive the best defensive moveset, ice shard/Ice beam. I almost have her maxed out, and then gen 2 rolls out and she gets the nerf bat. Is she still worth maxing out and using as a viable defender? I'm 100k until level 30 by the way.
Answers
Depends on its IVs, you should mention those when asking. Most will tell you it's not worth powering up a Lapras anymore; I personally love Lapras so I would go for it if it had high (86+) IV with that moveset, but it's not really worth the effort for you to gather the candy for that.
Not only did Lapras have its stats hit, but its type counters (Electric, Fighting, Rock) are all much more present now than in Gen1. On top of that, Ice Shard also had its damage reduced. So while Lapras is still a good defender if powered to a very high level, it's nothing compared to what it used to be, and likely can't even be considered top 10 anymore.
Her max cp is too low to be a defender now. Dont get me wrong, she is still hard to deal with, but she can not place very high in the gym anymore. This is not just a problem for you to collect more reward, but also a problem for your teammate when trainning, as we all know is a pain to train against a lapras at the bottom of a gym. So no, dont max her, she does more dmg than good now. Just throw in a 2800 cp vap rather than a 2200 cp lapras if you dont have anything better.
I've maxed 2 previously and would love to get all my dust back...if we could...The CP is just too low and any hatched Lapras can easily destroy any Dragonite so IMO, powering up is simply not necessary.
I honestly feel with the limits of how dust can be gained vs spent in later levels (you have far more stuff that could stay longer in gyms) makes me feel the only things worth spending dust on are defenders AND things that can take care of Blissey.
Super high level Blisseys can be a problem if you don't have any counters due to timeout since a lot of her counters require 125 candies (Dnite/Machamp/Gengar/Alakazam, etc...)...
You only have 162k dust so I'd definitely wait. I don't know what you spent your dust on already, but
All this said, I get that powering up can be fun and all that so do what makes the game "fun" for you as well which is the most important thing.
For me, a goal now is sitting in 10 gyms in my area...very hard with gym shavers and spoofers and very very limited open slots available so I play the way that makes the game "fun" for me also.
