Pokemon Go

[Firestorm]

Is it worth powering up Pokemon before evolving them?
I've been putting off evolving my Pokemon and focussing on powering them up instead but after seeing someone's Eevee jump from 400-something to over 1000 after evolving into Vaporeoen I'm wondering if I've actually been holding myself back by not evolving sooner

[1AZRAEL1]

I am testing it out myself to see which works better too. Maybe the higher you power up, the higher it will evolve.

[Paulbot]

Read something about how far your Pokemon is along it's arc before it evolves is where it will be when it evolves, which could mean a powered up first evolution will be on par with where a second evolution would be if you evolved first.

Best advice I saw was to not evolve any starter level Pokemon until you have enough candy to evolve it to the final stage. I've found that good suggestion as have definitely found more powerful Pidgeys and Ratattas than the first one I evolved.

[1AZRAEL1]

Other thing to note is if you've powered up as much as allowed, when you level up, you can power up more

[Firestorm]

I see.
Right now I've been raising a Pidgey
I've manged to get it to CP254 but now it won't let me raise it any higher at my current trainer level (despite not being at the end of its arc) is it worth keeping it a Pidgey and powering it up more when I level up do you think? Or would I be better off evolving it into Pidgeotto/Pidgeot?

[laproblematique]

I see.
Right now I've been raising a Pidgey
I've manged to get it to CP254 but now it won't let me raise it any higher at my current trainer level (despite not being at the end of its arc) is it worth keeping it a Pidgey and powering it up more when I level up do you think? Or would I be better off evolving it into Pidgeotto/Pidgeot?

I'd recommend never powering up a Pidgey/Pidgeotto as they're just so common.

Haven't played in a while but I'm level 22 and found 3 Pidgeys today that were all CP 250+. I'd suggest just catching as many of them as you can and grinding them into Pidgeottos for now for level exp.

When it comes to Pidgeys and Ratatas, I'd rather save my stardust for eventually powering up the eventual legendarys or rare pokemon like Dragonite or Snorlax - because chances are you'll find a higher CP Pidgeot/Pidgeotto/Raticate in the wild when you're a higher level. I've got just under 140,000 Stardust at the moment - just need to catch a Dragonite!

[Zippo]

Is it worth powering up Pokemon before evolving them?
I've been putting off evolving my Pokemon and focussing on powering them up instead but after seeing someone's Eevee jump from 400-something to over 1000 after evolving into Vaporeoen I'm wondering if I've actually been holding myself back by not evolving sooner

Neither
Only evolve "commons" in order to gain XP (while using a lucky egg) and do not evolve any others until you reach level 30 which means you should be finding the strongest versions in the wild.

Then you can evolve your best and then spend your stardust raising them even further.

[1AZRAEL1]

Okie dokie, did a small experiment to see what works best and here's what i found. I had 3 Pidgey at varying levels and here is how their evolving progressed.

CP 153 - 294 - 524
CP 155 - 297 - 529
CP 329 - 618 - 1089

So that 170 odd difference early on, makes for roughly 500 by 3rd evolution. So seems spending time to power them up early will pay off in the long run

[i_amtrunks]

Took some visiting friends and Pokemon go players on a tourist run through circular quay, botanical gardens, opera house, rocks and darling harbour. I only played a little yet still caught over 50 mons and filled my bag with poke balls at the ridiculous number of poke stops.

Catching ponytas and voltorbs at the opera house was fun, but really showed me that as nice as living in the suburbs is, if you want all the Pokemon, the city is the place to be!

My wife and our friends went from level 15 to 17 just from stops and catching, but will inevitably go higher once they crack a lucky egg and get evolving. My wife went from 46 caught to 80, again, before evolving.

Crazy!

[Seraphim Prime]

Okie dokie, did a small experiment to see what works best and here's what i found. I had 3 Pidgey at varying levels and here is how their evolving progressed.

CP 153 - 294 - 524
CP 155 - 297 - 529
CP 329 - 618 - 1089

So that 170 odd difference early on, makes for roughly 500 by 3rd evolution. So seems spending time to power them up early will pay off in the long run

Just did some quick maths - the ratio of the increase for each is the same
1 - 2 = 1.92
2 - 3 = 1.78

Which corresponds with what I've noticed with the progress bar, which appears to stay the same regardless of evolution. (ie - if your Pidgey is 25% of its max CP prior to evolution, your Pidgeotto will be 25% of its max CP after evolution)

The real test will be to get two pokemon at the same CP level and compare two training methods
1 - buff to a chosen CP then evolve it
2 - evolve then buff to the chosen CP

Time to farm some Zubat to test this theory...