One bar charge moves
I think the DEVs are overestimating the power of one charge moves. They are ridiculously weak and easy to counter despite being the STAPLE moves of the pokemon series.
Wild Charge is stronger than Thunder. Avalance or Ice Beam are stronger than Blizzard. Heavy Slam is stronger than Flash Cannon. Drill Run is better than Earthquake. Grass Knot is better than Solar Beam. Dynamic Punch is stronger than Close Combat or Focus Blast. And for currently they like to replace the useful 2 bar moves with useless options (Such as Lapras' ice beam replaced with SURF), making one bar stab the only thing going on them. The only thing that saves earthquake and solar beam from being strictly worse is that the pokemon who learnt drill run and grass knot are garbage.
Most of them are not especially powerful and they like to stuff these moves onto random pokemon and think it will make those any pokemon stronger but in fact make them jokes, like say on Salamence or Aggron. The only good ones are Stone Edge and Future sight as far as things count.
If the STAPLE MOVES OF THE ENTIRE FRANCHISE become jokes, you know your game is out of balance.
Answers
Gyarasos, Vaporeon and Kyogre don't learn Surf, so as I see it this move is not relevant in the meta. If you want to attack with a surf pickachu feel free^^ Maybe that's how Niantic wants/trys to balance the game...same goes for grass...Victrebeel with Leaf Blade is not really a part of the meta. Exeggutor does the Job with Solarbeam. Rhydon and Groudon learn EQ not Drill Run... Rock Slide is not really the better move on Golem. It has advantages for dodging but dps wise SE is better. Muk is probably the best Poison Type with Gunk Shot but yes, Victrebeel and Gengar give him a run with Sludge Bomb. The point I wanted to make is that there are a lot of good 1 bar moves in the game too.
Last 3 legendary ho-oh , groudon and kyogre has only 1 bar moves..think if they have 2 or 3 bar move they will destroy any gym and not a single pokemon can hold his place for even few mjnites.. it's good that we dont have that much multibar moves.. otherwise gym defence would be nothing to compare..
I wholeheartedly agree. Two-bar moves should not be the best DPS of many types, often with a significant difference too. The basic principle should be that less bars gets you better DPS, while more bars offers less DPS in optimal situations but carries less risk of wasting energy. Overheat and Flamethrower are my favorite example because they're balanced very well in relation to each other.
I don't think it would be that hard to balance the existing moves either, it's just tweaking numbers without major changes in the code and the tweaks can be figured out in an afternoon with a spreadsheet.
On defense, 1-bar charge moves also lost value. There were times when you were level 25 and your attackers got knocked out by something like Stone Edge. At level 32+ with powered up attackers plus enhanced type effectiveness bonus (1.4x instead of 1.25) you can get most ones down before any 1-bar move, usually coming when dropping dead. If you do take a hit, you often survive.
