Pokemon Go: Is the Piplup community day worth getting excited about?

Piplup is headlining the first Pokemon Go Community Day of 2020 but is the popular water-starter worth getting excited about?

The January 2020 Community Day will mark the first time that the monthly event will start at different times in Northern and Southern Hemisphere. The date and time for each is as follows:

• Northern Hemisphere: Sunday, January 19, 11am to 2pm local time
• Southern Hemisphere: Sunday, January 19, 3pm to 6pm local time

Piplup headlining was hardly a surprise given the other Gen 4 starters, Turtwig and Chimhar, featured in September and November, respectively. Pokemon trainers tend to have a soft spot for the starters, across all generations, but is it strong enough to be a useful asset to your team?

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How strong is Empoleon?

The question isn’t so much how strong Piplup is but how powerful its final evolution, Empoleon, is. Unsurprisingly, it isn’t among the strongest Pokemon in the game, nowhere near it.

However, it is slightly stronger than previous generation water starters Blastoise and Feraligatr. It is a little weaker than Swampert, though. Its stats are as follows:

• Attack 210 – 149 of 688
• Defence 186 – 123 of 688
• Stamina 197 – 157 of 688

It also pails in comparison to Pokemon found in five-star Raid Battles, which may offer some further perspective. For example, the current featured legendary Pokemon in Raid Battles is Heatran, which Empoleon lags behind in each of the base stats.

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What about the move Hydro Cannon?

With that said, Niantic offer an exclusive move for headlining species during Community Days. It was announced that Empoleon’s will be the powerful water-type move Hydro Cannon.

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The exclusive move does make Empoleon a more viable attacker. Alongside Waterfall it is rated the best moveset combination for the Emperor Pokemon. So, yes, Hydro Cannon certainly improves it a lot.

You’ll need to make sure you get the exclusive move though, which can only be obtained by evolving Prinplup up to two hours after the Community Day finishes. In the past it has been one hour after but it looks like Niantic are feeling generous and giving trainers a little more time to perform the evolution.

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Bonuses and other reasons to be excited

As Pokemon Go players well know, Community Days offer more than just a headlining Pokemon.

Get those eggs ready

There is always some form of bonus to compliment the headlining species. This time around its the fan favorite 1/4 Egg Hatch Distance. Any eggs you put in Incubators during the Community Day window will hatch 4x as fast.

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So, have your eggs ready for whenever the monthly event starts for you. If you have saved up some PokeCoins you could also purchase an Adventure Box which will give you 15 Super Incubators and 3 Egg Incubators to use for the event.

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Shiny Piplup

The January 2020 Community Day will also see the arrival of Shiny Piplup – as is consistent with previous ones. If you’re playing Pokemon Go for the majority of the three-hour window, you’ll no doubt find at least a couple of shinies.

There you have it, Piplup may not evolve into the most powerful Pokemon but with its exclusive move its certainly worthwhile trying to find yourself a strong one. Alongside making the most of the egg hatching bonus and finding a shiny, the first Community Day of 2020 is well worth participating in!