Pokémon Go Gyms: How to defend, attack, earn coins, get stardust and more

How do you take over a rival Gym in Pokémon Go?

Once every rival Pokémon in a rival Gym has had their motivation drained, defeating them all will send them back to their trainers and set the Gym back to neutral. Then you have to add a Pokémon of your own to claim it for your team.

Fortunately, after many complaints, Niantic added a buffer period after a Gym is defeated in which only the battle winners can put a Pokémon in the Gym. Sorry, no more sniping Gyms while the battle winners wait for the screen to reload.

Can users feed a defender Berries in order to raise its Motivation while you attack?

Totally, though with diminishing returns. Each Berry will only restore roughly half of what the previous one did, and there's a 10 Berry limit per Pokémon. While, a Golden Razz Berry can be used to fully restore a Pokémon at any time, no matter what, most players don't want to waste many Golden Razz Berries on holding a Gym that is actively being attacked.

Are there any ways to take a Gym down faster?

The current Gym system is very different from the old one. Thanks to CP decay, almost anyone can destroy almost any Gym in a short amount of time. Still, you can destroy them even faster if you want to, even if defenders are being fed Berries.

It takes three rounds to take down a fully motivated Gym in Pokémon Go. If there's only one defender, that's three battles total. If it's a full six defenders, that's 18 battles. If you attack in groups, usually, you all go together, and it still takes three rounds or up to 18 battles for everyone.

If you attack in waves, though, you can get that down to one round each.

1. Attacker one enters the Gym and battles defender one.
2. When attacker one defeats defender one, attacker two enters and starts battling defender one.
3. When attacker one defeats defender two, and attacker two defeats defender one, attacker three enters and starts battling defender one.
4. When attacker one defeats defender six, they can either stop or jump in and help attacker three with defender four. Either way, by the time attacker three is done, the Gym should be done too.

This can be tricky to time, even resulting in players getting errored out of the battle entirely. Still, if it's timed right, you can avoid the risk of defenders being fed too many Berries and needing more than the three losses to be kicked.

If you have more than three people, you can team up for the waves. Two people can do the first wave, for example. You only ever need three waves, though, because that's how many battles you need to take down the Gym.

You can also focus on taking out one Pokémon at a time, making it less likely other defenders will get notifications and start feeding Berries as well.

1. Attack the first defender.
2. Drop out.
3. Attack the first defender a second time.
4. Drop out.
5. Attack the first defender a third time.
6. Drop out.
7. Make sure the first defender is gone. If not (if someone is remotely feeding it), attack it again. If so, move on to the second defender.
8. Repeat until all defenders are defeated, and the Gym is empty.

Combine the two methods, and you can wipe out any Gym quickly and effectively.

You will also get a bonus for attacking a Gym with friends. The higher the friendship level, the better the bonus.