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Ho-oh moves Fire blast or Solar beam?

I got a good IV Ho-oh today with Extrasensory and Solar beam.
I looked up in the site about the grade of the move sets and found out it is a tie with Extrasen and Fire Blast.
My question is will it worth to use TM to change Solar beam to Fire Blast? Since Fire Blast will get the STAB damage rather than the grass type.

Or the Solar beam is worth keeping like the Shadow Ball Mewtwo case.

Asked by SchwarzHertz7 years 4 months ago

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By the numbers, Solar Beam is more worth keeping for Ho-Oh than Shadow Ball is for Mewtwo.

Solar Beam - Power = 180
Fire Blast - Power = 140 + STAB (28) = 168

Both are good, strong attacks. Solar Beam does a bit more base damage (12 power), even after STAB. Now, here's where they differ.

Solar Beam is strong against Rock, Ground, and Water. Three important attack types. Solar Beam is weak against Fire, Grass, Poison, Bug, Dragon, Steel, Flying. That's also a lot, many of which are very important in the meta. And doubles like Dragonite and Salamence (Dragon Flying), Scyther (Bug Flying) and Crobat (Poison Flying) doubly resist Solar Beam. That means that the base damage against Scyther is 90, while the base damage against Golem is 360. Huge swing.

Fire Blast is strong against Grass, Ice, Bug, and Steel, and Weak against Fire, Water, Rock, and Dragon.

Bottom line, IMO neither is better or worse. They are different. I'd prefer to have one (or more) of each. Additionally, Extrasensory and Brave Bird is probably the weakest combination, but will be very effective against Machamp and other Fight types.

So I'd definitely hold off on the TM, especially since Gen3 is imminent, and if a new (or old) mon gets a killer move, everyone will have to use TMs for those. You can always TM the move later if you decide Solar Beam isn't useful for you.

Damage vs cycle damage though. I Don't claim to be an expert on those calcs, but you can't simply use the damage listed.

Cycle damage (roughly):
Fire Blast 16.90
Solar Beam 18.79

That's base, wiithout STAB. When you look at move charge times and cooldowns and lost quick attacks you get a better picture of how they perform.

True. Here's my CDPS calcs against neutral typing:

ES/BB 18.15
ES/FB 19.57
ES/SolB 19.46
SW/BB 18.91
SW/FB 19.94
SW/SolB 19.84

So Brave Bird is a little weaker than Fire Blast and Solar Beam, and Steel Wing does a little more damage across the board, but more of it is Steel and less of it is the Charged attack. As a result, if you attack something weak to the Charged attack, CDPS is higher for Extrasensory (singly weak to all charge attacks):

ES/BB 21.78
ES/FB 24.34
ES/SolB 24.32
SW/BB 21.67
SW/FB 23.71
SW/SolB 23.72

Don't read anything to difference in the hundredth's place, they don't mean much. By comparison, for Dragonite, against neutral opponent:

DT/O 25.17
SW/HB 19.37

That's why DT/O (mainly Dragon Tail) is so good, it does more damage neutral than most attacks do against single weakness. Final note, none of these calculations factor in attack or defense, they are just about power per second, which scales linearly with damage. They won't help with is Ho-Oh better than Eggy against Golem, just with is Ho-Oh better off with Solar Beam or Fire Blast against a given mon.

I'd say that its more akin to focus blast mewtwo as a niche role.

Agreed, but a slightly bigger niche (Rock, Water, Ground, vs. Things weak to Fight). It's also nice that the things it hits hard are things that resist fire, so the two attacks compliment each other well.

Yet Focus Blast Mewtwo has the greater use in the current meta - when considering attacking gyms and the common high bulk defenders (Snorlax, Blissey, Chansey).

When they finally allow Legendary's to become Gym Defenders, Solar Beam is going to be the most evil thing that an Ho-oh can have, since it DESTROYS their major counters. (I still cry myself to sleep over trying to take on a Ninetails which had Solar Beam - I got myself into the "Specialist" mindset for Raid Bosses and ignored my Dragonites, so I've only got 1 that is useful. Ttars? 4. Vaporeons? 9. Gengar and Alakazam? 4 each. Dragonites? 1. ARGH! Damn you Raid bosses and Ninetails, damn you.)

I'd keep it as is, just in case, and hold off on TM'ing it until Ho-oh is no longer available.