Cloyster
Frost breath is better than ice shard at all, so why is ice shard better?
Answers
that's... not how it works.
The Defender AI takes the cooldown of the move and adds ~2 seconds to it. So the Defender cooldowns would be
Frost Breath: 2.81
Ice Shard: 3.4
Then to get the Defensive DPS... you divide the damage by the cooldown.
Frost Breath: 9 / 2.81 = 3.2
Ice Shard: 15 / 3.4 = 4.4
Because Ice Shard has a higher base damage, its DPS is impacted less by adding a flat 2 seconds to the cool down. That leads to Frost Breath being better for attack and Ice Shard better for defense.
https://pokemongo.gamepress.gg/gym-combat-mechanics
Scroll down to the section labeled Attacker and Defender Battle Mechanics.
There will be a row that says Quick move duration with +1.5~2.5 seconds for the defenders. I simplified slightly to +2 seconds... from there you have
Defender Quick Move Duration = Quick Move Duration + 1.5-2.5s.
The next line down is charge move duration and it says the same thing.
I hate the ubiquitous misuse of the term "cooldown"
Every move has a duration. The duration is the same for offense and defense.
Gym defenders begin a fight with two quick moves, then have a random 1.5s ~ 2.5s cooldown in between each move. (In defensive DPS calculations, this is just simplified to 2s.)
Actually i thought that all quick moves on defense had 2s cooldown fixed (except for bubble that have more than that). So the AI using a Vaporeon for example would attack water gun every 2s, but you're saying that in this case it would attack water gun every 2,5s? So bubble would attack every 4s? hahaha