I have a series of tests that are quite complicated. Unfortunately, the builtin Pycharm Debugger is waaay too slow to handle them. I tried making it faster, but any attempts failed, so I have to resort to using pdb. 
My problem is that the command line that appears if I run my tests with pycharm and come across a pdb breakpoint is quite annoying:

It does not support code completion (of course I googled it, but my attempts failed). 
I can't even press 'up' to get the last command again
Most annoyingly: When I already wrote some code in the command line and jump to the beginning of the line to edit it, the cursor automatically jumps to the end of the line.

I noticed that it is not the iPython console which I get when I go into pdb debug mode when I don't use pytest.
Do you have any idea on how to solve any of these issues? Ideally on how to speed up the Pycharm debugger, or how to get the iPython console also in pytest? 
Help is much appreciated. Thanks in advance.
A few things that might help you with debugging speed are: 

using Python 3.5/3.6. 
If you're running in linux/macos install the cython extension (you get prompted) 
Use the latest Pycharm, 2017.3 at this moment. 
Try to simplify tests. If not possible, just run those you need for the debugging process by creating a special runner in Pycharm and using the -k 'pattern' argument for pytest.

Moreover, I don't understand why you're invoking pdb if you're using the Pycharm debugger.
Debugging pytests in Pycharm with pdb shows annoying console