What is tanking in Pokemon GO PvP and how to do it? (March 2023)

Winning is one of the driving forces of competitive gaming, and it's no different in Pokemon GO. The satisfaction of seeing ranks increase, LP gains, and new ranking icons is one of the major reasons why competitive gaming is as successful and addictive as it is. However, there will always be a few players who try to tip the scales in their favor.

Tanking has become one of the more unfortunate ways trainers have turned to mitigate grind time in Niantic's mobile game. Farming ranked rewards sounds like an easy task on paper, especially for newer players looking for a reason to get into the game's competitive mode.

However, hardcore players have found a way to make playing the most high-stakes mode even less fun.

While it borderlines turning on the game and just letting it run, there are some players who may want to try tanking to reap the rewards it has to offer. But how can trainers take advantage of this method? Is there anything players need to know about tanking before they try it for themselves?

---

Tanking in Pokemon GO: Everything to know

Tanking is a great way to turn Pokemon GO into a total snooze-fest (Image via The Pokemon Company)

Competitive gaming as a landscape is one that is filled to the brim with healthy competition and a drive to be the greatest. However, there are bound to be a few bad apples that spoil the bunch.

Botting has been a problem in games like Team Fortress 2 and League of Legends for years now. Hacking and cheats have also been a serious problem in the first-person shooter genre since its introduction.

While ways players can get better and climb a game's ranked ladder have always been under innovation, the same can be said for players looking to make the experience worse for others. Deranking has become one of the most infuriating behaviors in online gaming and has sadly found its way into Pokemon GO.

Deranking is when a player queues for a ranked game only to either refuse to participate or throw the game on purpose for the sake of lowering their profile's rank or MMR (Matchmaking rank).

This brings us back to what "tanking" is in Pokemon GO. Players queue for Battle League matches and purposely throw them to derank their account's MMR.

Bluntly, tanking in Pokemon GO is the act of queuing for repeated ranked Battle League games, then losing them on purpose for the sake of lowering one's MMR as low as they can possibly get it. Once they have tanked their MMR, they use Premium Passes to reap the best rewards possible by participating in and winning ranked games in these lower ranks.

This can develop into quite an issue since there are players legitimately trying to improve at the game, only to be matched with some player with a team of full Legendaries trying to farm for rare candies.

Not only does this discourage players from playing the ranked mode, but this does little to offer any sort of engaging and fun challenge for the players doing the tanking.

It is highly unlikely that Niantic will do anything about these players ruining the ranked experience for new players. The only thing these newbie trainers can do is hope that they get matched with a legitimate opponent, but how long will it take for them to be matched against a tanker with a team of perfect metagame picks?