Gym degradation

So you and your friends built that level ten gym a week ago, and it hasn't been the target of a rival raid yet.

It's still level ten, or occasionally nine. Five of the original pokemons are still inside.

When you built it you put in five snorlax, two vaporeon and three lapras, ranging from 2600 to 3100 cp.

Now there's one 2800 lapras left, and one vaporeon at 2900 cp. Three snorlax, all above 3000 cp are also still inside.

The other five slots are: one gyarados at 3000 cp, one rhydon at 3100 cp and three dragonites at 3000, 3100 and 3200 cp respectively.

While the aggregated combat power of the gym increased it became a house of cards. In another day there will be an addition of two more dragonites and after that the gym will come crashing down.

This is gym degradation. Out of the five top cp pokemons in the game three are poor defenders. In that top five list the good defenders, snorlax and vaporeon, come in at place two and five respectively. Dragonite tops the list, and slot three and four belong to rhydon and gyarados respectively.

To make things worse, a high cp rhydon is even easier to come by than a high cp vaporeon. In reality the same goes for gyarados, because even though it takes an absurd number of magikarps to evolve one, by the time you do you're more or less bound to have a really high IV magikarp to evolve.

While dratinis aren't found left and right, it's still a lot easier to get yourself a high quality dragonite than the snorlax counterpart.

And high cp slots in above low cp in a gym. So solo players drop by a level nine gym, prestige it back to ten and insert the highest cp pokemon they have available -- most certainly not a lapras.

And the gym degrades.

The absurd version of gym degradation occurs when a lonely snorlax protects nine squishy dragonites just before the gym comes crashing down.