Any use for P/HB Blissey?
I have 2 Blisseys.
First one has CP 2999, L35.5, IV96 15/13/15, ZH/DG. My most often used gym defender.
Second one has CP 1820, L20, IV89 15/10/15, P/HB. (Both IVs are A/D/S)
Blisseys are very important in my local gym meta, but only as defenders. Turnover is also high, so CP decay is largely irrelevant.
I also have 3 L20 hatched Chanseys, and a L34 Snorlax that I use as defenders.
Is there any use for the P/HB Blissey?
(Actually I used a fast TM on her to change ZH to Pound, thinking she would have some use. But fast TMs aren't a problem for me)
Answers
Since they fixed the Raid damage ball error and a few other things, there's no need to use an "anchor" in Raid battles. So I do not see any use of Blissey as an attacker in Raid.
It's OK to use Blissey to battle gyms but that is very very time inefficient. With so many better attackers around, I don't think it's very useful in everyday gym battles either.
Then the role for Blissey is simple - the best defender in current meta. And P/HB is the worst defensive moveset on Blissey (even with the worst moveset it's still the best defender though). So I do not see any particular use for P/HB in current game meta.
There are people who will tell you that Blissey with even the worst moveset is better than any other defender in the game. Those people are wrong. P/HB Blissey was a good but not great defender in the old gym system, and it's even less effective now, since you don't have to battle it multiple times at full strength. Blissey has a low base attack stat, pound is not a very hard-hitting quick move, and hyper beam is arguably the easiest move in the game to dodge.
You can use it as an attacker, but again, that was more of a useful application in the old gym system, when potions were scarce, and taking down gyms was a much longer process. If you had a lot of time, you could chew through a lot of defenders for the cost of a single max potion or max revive. Now, you can chew through entire gyms a lot quicker with Dragonites or Machamps or other generalists, and potions are more plentiful (although they have recently become scarcer again).
My best Blissey has P/HB, and I'm not changing it for now, because things are always changing in this game, but at the moment, it is not particularly useful.
"There are people who will tell you that Blissey with even the worst moveset is better than any other defender in the game. Those people are wrong. P/HB Blissey was a good but not great defender in the old gym system, and it's even less effective now."
So at full health, what is a better defender than P/HB Blissey? Blissey is the best defender mainly because of the time it takes to defeat it. And even with Blissey with P/HB, it still takes optimal attackers like Machamp MUCH longer to defeat it, than to defeat the next best tier defender, such as ZH/BS Snorlax, ZH/DG Chansey, etc.
Time is not the only factor in determining what makes a good defender. Predictability, potion use, etc., are also factors. If an attacker is prematurely knocked out, that can not only cost extra potions/revives, but it can also cause you to have to use non-optimal attackers against the remaining defenders.
This myth originated when the Gamepress defender tier list was updated after the gen 2 launch, and as part of the methodology, the guy who authored the list used a mathematical formula to give a numerical value to defenders. That formula put a high coefficient on time-to-win, which greatly exaggerated the importance of time over other variables. Then, in the article, he said "Blissey with its worst moveset is better than any other defender...," and everyone took it as gospel, and people continue to parrot that mantra.
The same tier list author also ranked Blissey as the best attacker in the game, despite saying something like "if time is important to you, don't use Blissey," which rather contradicted the logic about time being the most important criteria that was used in the defender tier list.
P/HB is not a great defender because it is very predictable. We know which mons can beat it, and there are no surprises. Simply spam away, and then when the hyper beam is coming, dodge, and then spam away some more. The extra 20-30 seconds that it takes is compensated for by the predictability. And with the new gym system, you only have to beat it at full strength once, which makes the time-to-win even less important.
I did not say P/HB Blissey is still the best defender tier because of gamepress list. It was because what in game experience exactly is. While you made a number of statements above, you didn't answer my question - what other Pokemon is a better defender than P/HB Blissey?
Time to beat was and still is the most important factor when considering how good a defender is, because with a team of six attackers, the only battle-related situation that a player fails to beat one defender Pokemon is time-out. At this stage pretty much everybody knows what the optimal attacker is, and Blissey is the only Pokemon (compared to other defenders at the same Pokemon level) that even if you use the best counter it still takes much longer to win.
Facing a level 40 ZH/DG Blissey and a same level P/HB Blissey, it takes the best counter (Machamp) around the same amount of time to win, which is why in this case other factors such as potion use come into play, and even if as you described, one can just spam attacks and dodge HB only, Machamp would still only have less than 1/3 HP left.
"Predictability" is not that useful at all in gym meta. We are not talking about Raids where different movesets could make such a huge impact. In gym battles if someone is gonna take a gym, the gym is going down whatsoever. The only realistic way to somewhat slow the process down is by feeding GRB, and once again, to do that you need the battle time to be long so that you have the time to feed - where Blissey shines.
These defenders are better than P/HB Blissey:
ZH/BS Snorlax
ZH/HS Snorlax
DT/DC Dragonite
SW/DC Dragonite
C/IB Slowbro
IS/IB Lapras
There are more. Basically, anything that has a charge move that is difficult to dodge and preferably, that is super effective against the best counters. They are better defenders than P/HB Blissey because they occasionally cause attackers to be knocked out prematurely, costing extra revives/potions, and forcing the use of non-optimal attackers for the subsequent defenders. A defender that costs a couple of extra potions and revives is better than one that makes a gym take 11 minutes to beat instead of 10, but at the cost of fewer resources. But I guess that is subjective, and if you care more about the extra minute than the extra revives/potions, then keep on using that P/HB Blissey.
Nobody that has a half-decent understanding of the game and is level 30 or higher is ever going to time out in the current gym system. Timing out against Blissey was a reasonable possibility when prestiging in the old system, which made Blissey the best defender against its own team's prestigers, but even then, P/HB was never a problem because of the predictability and reactability.
Where do you get the idea that Machamp takes just as long to beat P/HB Blissey as ZH/DG Blissey? From simulations that assume perfect dodging, or no dodging? Neither is the real world. ZH/DG has a reasonable chance of knocking out the Machamp. So does ZH/BS Snorlax. P/HB has close to zero chance of knocking out the Machamp. So, they are way better defenders.
We are talking about using the best counter to go against that defender, so using the best counter of Dragonite, Slowbro and Lapras, it's much faster and potion-efficient to take those three down than Machamp-Blissey matchup. But hey, just as you said, it's subjective. So go ahead with your version of better defenders.
No dodging or realistic dodging, the time required were not off each other by much (less than 10%). Similarly, ZH/BS Snorlax (even Machamp doesn't dodge) is much easier to take down (considering BOTH time and potion). If you don't believe it that's totally fine. We have totally different understanding of the game and that's just the natural part of it :)
It makes a pretty big difference if you plan to use it as a defender. Against DG an attacker actually has to pay attention, as even a maxed Machamp will not make it through a big Blissey if you fail one dodge on DG. Psychic is at least fast enough that it might sometimes surprise the attacker but HB is a joke.
Absolutely right. Psychic actually hits once in a while, because it has an early damage window. Hyper beam is so blatantly telegraphed by the text & animation, and it gives you so much time to react, that even a mid-level player should never miss dodging it.
ZH/P having a "D" defensive ranking on this site, while P/HB gets a "B," is an absolute travesty, and shows why people shouldn't just blindly trust oversimplified rankings.
If/when PvP comes out I plan to have either a P/HB or ZH/HB Blissey on the roster as a wall. Not sure which will perform better, Pound for the STAB and easy dodging or Zen for its type coverage against Fighting...
I used to use P/HB to take down level 10 gyms when we had a large enough party for potion efficiency but that's not a thing anymore. Basically, in the current meta, there's no use for P/HB but you never know what's around the far off corner.
