Is Rock Blast Golem better than SE for these raids?

I can fire:
- consistently 3 SE with a maxed Golem vs. Thunder Zapdos
- a few times I did 3 vs. Zap cannon and I think Thunderbolt ones
- 2 SE with a level 30 one vs whatever charge move.
- quite a few RB with a level 30 one (maybe only RB as you said, but I did not payed such attention :) ).

But pokebattler disagrees with you, at level 30 a full set of SE Golem finishes Zapdos with around 30 seconds faster (related to the 820-850 total seconds needed to finish one in their simulation setup).
So SE one is around 3% faster than RB one at level 30.
https://www.pokebattler.com/raids/defenders/ZAPDOS/cp/42691/attackers/attackerLevels/30/strategies/CINEMATIC_ATTACK_WHEN_POSSIBLE/DEFENSE_RANDOM_MC?sort=OVERALL&dodgeStrategy=DODGE_REACTION_TIME#results (make sure to select No dodging and level 30 pokemons).

Honestly with this sort of thing...i say go with whatever feels best to you personally.

We can crunch numbers and compare damage numbers and whatever, looking for the 'optimal' option. BUt sometimes you find a certain move much pleasant or fun to use.

And hey...if you like the feel of RB more? Use it. Maybe you will even get into a better rhythm and land afew more dodges while using it, all depends what you feel your performance is better with.

It all Depends on your pokemons stats. The raiding boss stats etc. Even break points do a small diffrence on charge moves at diffrent scenarios etc.

There are som hardcore Rock blast lovers here that Love golem+rockblast

Imo Its to even to have a clear winner. My feeling is that RB does have a slight upperhand in Game.

Is it me but why both doing calculations that are based on 800+ seconds when a raid doesn't even last that long! Surely all comparisons should just ever be based on the total raid time and the maximum amount of damage you can deal within that time frame??

I feel I prefer RB to SE for raids given that you don't dodge at all. It seems that you can squeeze every attack quick or charge from every energy generated.

Yes I agree. I'm using 2 Lv 30 RT/RB Golems and 1 Lv 28.5 RT/SE Golem. I realised that the legendaries aren't as easy to dodge all the time as I don't see the yellow flash and the damage hits after the move name appears. So I fire RB, get hit by quick moves and keep firing RBs, sometimes up to 6 or narrowly 7 per Golem. The SE one has a higher tendency to die right before the 3rd SE. So RB is actually quite good in raids against legendaries esp Zapdos.

I've been using 4 level 33 golems. 2 with Rock Blast and 2 with Stone Edge. I like the fact that after the RB golem gets his first bar I can just continue holding down charge moves pretty much until he dies. To me it's more convenient than tapping a million times. The damage feels the same to my human eye so I've been happy with the move. Against articuno where if you didn't dodge you died in one move, it was great. I'd always get hit with articunos charge during my stone edge. Against zapdos I feel like stone edge is better because you don't worry about damage but I still like RB better. I've always favored two and three bar moves

I'm more impressed with how tanky Golem is vs Zapdos. Level 30/31 (no dodging) lasted ~40 seconds each. But yeah it seemed the RB golems were just spamming charge moves constantly. Somehow I only got +1 damage though.

Well that depends entirely on what you are figthing and wether you dodge or not, from a DPS perspective, given you can do full cycles, then SE is better, however if for some reason, you are unable to do full cycles, then 2 and 3 bar moves become more valuable, that might depend on the charged move of the boss you are figthing and wether you are able to dodge succesfully it's charged move. It also depends on the IV's and level of your pokemon. Here's an example:

Rock throw yields 10 energy per attack, and takes 0.9 seconds, this means you have to use RT 10 times to charge RT and 4 to charge RB (with 7 remaining energy), RB takes 2.1 s and SE 2.3, so here's the Cycle calculations for each:

RB: 4 RT(11Dmg/0.9 s) + 1 RB (44 dmg/2.1s) = 88 dmg/5.7 seconds + 7 energy = 15.43 dps (+7 energy).
SE: 10 RT(11Dmg/0.9 s) + 1 SE (87 dmg/2.3s) = 197 dmg/11.3 s = 17.43 dps.

Now Zapdos could kill a level 30 golem with the following attacks (note quicks attacks are set to 2 seconds, instead of the normal 1.1):
CB (2 s) * 28 + ZC (3.7s) * 4 = 70.8 seconds
CB (2 s) * 28 + TB (2.5s) * 7 = 73.5 seconds
CB (2 s) * 38 + ZC (2.4s) * 5 = 88.0 seconds

For ZC (Best defending moveset against golem), you could fit 13 full RB cycles and a small cycle (2 RT and 1 RB), fitting 1122 dmg over 70.8 seconds (really really tigth), however if you were using SE, you can in theory fit 6 full cycles and + 3 RT, giving you a total of 1215 dmg over 70.5 seconds.

Given the above math, I'd say SE takes the cake in this particular case, and given the fact that almost no energy was wasted with RB, I'd say that for other cases (at least for Zapdos anyway), SE edges RB.

Take this with a grain of salt, as you are inevitably going to have some wasted energy with SE because the bar is going to be full and most of the times one or two RT are gonna get thrown, wasting the corresponfing energy, this doesn't happend with RB, as whatever energy you over produce, goes towards charging the next rock blast.

Ancient Power. heheheh

I use a Stone Edge as my first, and then multi bar moves after that so you can spam them once Zadps starts spamming charge move damage on you.

I thought RB was better on moltress (and likely Ho oh) due to golems relative fragility in that raid finding SE better against zapados due to the increased longevity and subsequent reliability of delivering See before fainting