I remember reading somewhere that it has been confirmed that defending Pokemon at a gym attack every 1.5 seconds (except it attacks twice at the beginning). Considering this, is the damage normalized so that slow and fast attacks have no DPS (damage per second) advantage over each other? For example, Fury Cutter is a very fast move, while Confusion is really slow. Does Fury Cutter's damage from a defending Pokemon increase to match the 1.5 second interval, or is it very weak in DPS?
Pokemon-go – Is damage from defending Pokemon normalized for slow and fast attacks
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Related Solutions
Given the same sum of individual values, the most powerful distribution is the one that compensates for a Pokémon's weakest base stats.
Let me begin by introducing two premises:
Every Pokémon species is characterized by base statistics. For example, Pidgeys have a base attack of 94, base defense of 90, and base stamina of 80. Any particular Pokémon's stats are the three sums of its individual value plus its species' base stat, so the actual stats of a Pidgey with IVs of 10-10-10 would be 104, 100, and 90.
Attack, Defense, and Stamina have almost* strictly proportional importance. Regardless of the numeral value of a particular stat, doubling it will make you twice as effective and halving it will make you half as effective. Defeating your opponent twice as quickly, taking half the damage from their attacks, or being able to take twice the damage on the nose all result in the same capacity to fight and win against an opponent who is 200% as strong as otherwise.
* (I say "almost" because stamina actually has a knock-on effect that results in more energy for charge attacks. Also, while defense and HP will enable you to win a more difficult fight, attack will help you finish it faster, and I assume your time has value.)
Observe that though the first premise describes an additive relationship, the second describes a multiplicative one. The magnitude of these values is all relative. What you want are not the biggest numerical additions, but the greatest percent increases.
By way of example: Chansey is a Pokémon with extremely unbalanced base stats; she has only 40 base attack and 60 defense, but a phenomenal 500 base stamina. Getting an attack IV of 15 would constitute a 37.5% gain in actual power over the having an attack IV of 0, but a stamina IV of 15 would only be a 3% gain over the base. Literally, just two points of attack IV will eclipse the worth of a maxed out stamina IV. Same goes for defense. Yes, that means a 10-0-0 Chansey rated at only 22% "perfection" will outshine a 0-5-15 specimen rated 44% "perfect."
HP and Defense are more important for Pokémon you intend to train at friendly gyms.
In this, there are, again, two premises:
More Prestige is awarded for using a Pokémon with less CP. Ideally, you want your Pokémon to have half the CP of the defender for the greatest prestige gains. You're assisted in this endevour by dodging, exploiting type weaknesses, deliberately placing a defender who sucks, and by understanding that...
The CP formula overvalues attack quadratically, compared to stamina and defense, and, um... cube-root-zenzically, compared to the level coeffecient. The CP formula question is (ATK*sqrt(DEF*STM)*CPm^2)/10
, but a better approximation of a Pokemon's power would be ATK*DEF*STM*CPm^3
, where CPm is the level coefficient.
I dunno why Niantic based CP on such a skewed approximation, but you can exploit it by favoring stamina and defense and minimizing attack, which will result in the greatest (favorable) disparity between your CP and your actual combat viability. Yes, this means a 0-15-15 Pokémon, rated only 66% "perfection," is actually the ideal candidate for raising prestige.
Among your Magnificent Six, Attack has the greatest utility.
When you attack an enemy gym, you get to bring six entire Pokémon and there is literally no single defender who can stand up to that kind of heat. With enough potions and time, you and your boys can raze absolutely any enemy gym, period.
Since merely winning is assured, the strategy is in minimizing the resources you're burning, which, as stated, are potions and time. To to this, you need to shorten the fights, which you can achieve by emphasizing offensive power.
The reason "low DPS" moves are better is not because they are low DPS. And in fact, not all low DPS fast moves are better for defending; it depends on the move.
It's because, with the attack speed penalty defenders suffer (as discussed in Venomous' answer), they are actually higher DPS. This is true both for fast moves and charge moves.
A generic example might be the following. (These numbers are taken from a calculator I have, and I'm not sure they're right, but they give the right idea anyway.)
Let's say we have a pair of Slowbros. One has Confusion, one has Water Gun. Water Gun does 6 damage every half second, for 12 DPS (ignoring STAB for now). Confusion does 15 damage every 1.5 seconds, for a 10 DPS (again ignoring STAB, and rounding).
Now add the 1.5 second delay. Water Gun now does 6 damage every two seconds, or 3 DPS, while Confusion does 15 damage every three seconds, or 5 DPS. Confusion is now clearly the superior attack for a defender.
Another consideration that some of the calculators take into account is energy. If a move generates more energy, it's better (since you get more charge attacks). But again, fast moves are penalized by the 1.5 second delay here too. So a move that gives higher EPS on offense will now give a lower EPS bonus on defense relative to the other attack; so if the DPS calculation you're looking at actually includes EPS as part of it, that may be relevant.
Now, the same for Charge Attacks, for completeness:
Let's say we have a pair of Blastoise. One has Hydro Pump, one has Flash Cannon. According to my calculator, Hydro Pump has a DMG of 90, DPS of 23.7, which means it takes around 4 seconds to fire. Flash Cannon has a DMG of 60, DPS of 15.4, meaning it takes around 4 seconds to fire. Both have Water Gun as their quick move, which has a DMG of 6, DPS of 12, so it takes 0.5 seconds to fire.
For a defender, though, these numbers are a bit different. Hydro Pump now takes 5.5 seconds to fire, as does Flash Cannon, and Water Gun takes a whopping 2 seconds! So now look at their stats:
Hydro Pump: 90/5.5 = 16.36
Flash Cannon: 60/5.5 = 10.91
Water Gun: 6/2 = 3.0
Hydro Pump is still better of course, but it is fired one time for every three times Flash Cannon is fired. That one time you get a +13 DPS, but Flash Cannon gives you +8 DPS three times. Thus, you're really comparing 13 to 24 (over 5.5 seconds of course).
On Offense, meanwhile, your Flash Cannon only had a tiny 3 DPS advantage over Water Gun, while Hydro Pump has a huge 11+ DPS advantage. So those three Flash Cannon firings give you +9 DPS while one Hydro Pump is over 11. Hence, hydro pump being the better move. (If you're a dodger, it's an even bigger advantage, as you have less time that you can't dodge, by the way.)
Now, I'm simplifying this some (ignoring STAB for one, which makes Hydro Pump better), but this gets the gist across: on defense, the DPS calculation is different due to the slower moves, and in particular the quick attack is very slow - so there is a significant advantage for the moves that charge more quickly.
One thing that's ignored here, by the way, is difficulty to dodge. That's something not taken into account by most calculators; but some charge attacks are much harder to dodge than others - think Body Slam versus Hyper Beam. Any idiot can dodge hyper beam, it's almost hard to dodge because it takes SO long to show up, but Body Slam is much harder as it has a very quick animation. See this thread on Reddit for example.
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Best Answer
The damage isn't normalized I believe - the only proof I have is that it wasn't ever stated otherwise and therefore implicitly stating it.
According to the Pokemon Go Database, Fury Cutter has a damage of 3 with an attack speed of 0.4 while Confusion has a damage of 12 with an attack speed of 1.51. This again means Confusion's DAS (Defense Attack Speed) is 3.01 while Fury Cutter's DAS is 1.9. By dividing the damage with the DAS, we conclude that Fury Cuter has a Defense DPS of ~1.58 while Confusion has ~3.99.
This would suggest that an attack that usually has a 5,3% higher dps actually has a ~152,5% higher dps when defending.
While those certainly are 2 extreme examples, it shows that you should use Pokémon with high Base Damage over Pokémon with high DPS to defend your Gym.
I hope I answered this to your satisfaction ~Crowley