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I have two Pokemon, a Poliwag (CP 281) and a Poliwhirl (CP 471). Poliwag evolves into Poliwhirl. However, I'm unsure whether I should power up my existing Poliwhirl, or evolve my Poliwag.

What do you think? This is really confusing.

I am Level 15 in Pokemon Go, if that matters.

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  • look at the XP arc, whichever is further along will be higher level. However you may want to hold off evolving so that you can get a polywrath from the candies instead, it depends on if you want a strong pokemon or are trying to fill out your pokedex
    – Aequitas
    Commented Jul 25, 2016 at 9:56

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Your Poliwag will evolve into a Poliwhirl with ~485 CP. So it makes no sense to evolve it. It'll be cheaper to keep the current one and feed 1-2 candy later on.

Anyway, it's usually better to wait. In this case I'd wait for enough candy to get a Poliwrath. Don't evolve too soon. Always wait until you have the resources to evolve the Pokémon to its final stage. This way you can evolve the best Pokémon you currently have and don't risk evolving a weak one when you still have the chance to get a better one while farming candy. Maybe you even find a Poliwrath to spend your candy on.

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I would suggest you avoid Powering up anything until you're certain that you are going to use that pokemon. Afterall, you need a lot of stardust to fully upgrade 1 pokemon.

Evolution on the otherhand is somewhat different (with exception of Magikarp).

  • If you think you can catch 15~20 without putting much effort in, then you can easily get candy and essentially make those pokemon evolve for "free".
  • If you only see 0-3 of it per day, then getting candies when you need them might be hard, in which case I would suggest to hold back on evolving until you're certain you're gonna use the pokemon.

Few notes:

  1. You get stronger pokemon when your character is higher level
  2. Pokemon CP is only representation of it's current "Power", they have hidden growth rates which means you can have 2 Poliwhirls and 1 of them can have double the CP at the same level. (look into Individual Values (IV) for details)
  3. Reason I say you shouldn't power up: Look into final CP you can get by fully upgrading a pokemon. At this point 1000 CP is on the low side of what most people have and if you live in an area where the game is popular you really need to make sure that your pokemon can pass those numbers or it might end up being useless. (Again, you can look at pogotoolkit website to estimate max CP and look into IVs to figure out how powerful your pokemon can get)
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  • Magikarp = Sucks (Except the fact that It evelves into a gyarados)
    – user150878
    Commented Jul 25, 2016 at 11:43
  • Offtopic, I was just saying that magikarp is the exception to the the "free" evolution (because it needs 400 candies).
    – Zero
    Commented Jul 25, 2016 at 11:49
  • But theres a ton of Magikarps out there.
    – user150878
    Commented Jul 25, 2016 at 11:50
  • @MatthewRoh not everywhere. In my region you can hardly find Magikarp.
    – dly
    Commented Jul 25, 2016 at 12:17
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On pogotoolkit.com you can get an estimate of the CP of your evolved Pokémon. In your case, these are the expected CP:

- Your Poliwhirl will evolve into a Poliwrath with 894-923 Combat Power (CP).
- Your Poliwag will evolve into a Poliwhirl with 483-486 Combat Power (CP). Your Poliwhirl can then be evolved into Poliwrath with 917-952 Combat Power (CP).

Since the difference between the two Poliwraths is quite small, it is cheaper to power up your Poliwhirl due to evolution costs (unless you have a lot of Poliwag candies and don't have much stardust). As dly mentions, it is probably better to wait until you have enough candies to evolve it or wait for a Poliwrath.

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  • I doubt it's safe to evolve this Poliwag. Feed 1-2 candy to the current one and it'll be better right away. That's way cheaper than evolving.
    – dly
    Commented Jul 25, 2016 at 10:03
  • @dly You're absolutely right, I neglected the costs of evolving. I'll edit it in my answer if you don't mind.
    – Wu33o
    Commented Jul 25, 2016 at 10:04

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