Fireblast
this is mostly just a theoretical question concering the 1500 and 2500 CP leagues.
Assuming that they get rid of cooldowns, as it seems they have done, could fireblast actually become a good move? Given the predicted prominence of Registeel, and other steel types, could carrying fireblast on tyranitar as a second charge move actually be a very viable option, at least from what we know so far?
Answers
We'll see. We've seen different charge moves of the same energy bar have different rates of energy gain (the video showed Torterra with Earthquake and Solar Beam with EQ having a higher rate of energy buildup than SoB). I suspect factors like cooldown are played into this but again, we won't know until PvP becomes available.
Biggest Leaf has nailed it. Our ideas of a good move for gym attacks/defense and raids may be completely disconnected with the reality of PvP. I thought that Stone Edge would be good because it goes off so quickly and is very hard to dodge. But there's no dodging, so that idea of mine is garbage.
Once it's out (any day now, just got the new splash screen) and we can analyze it for a few days or weeks, we'll find out what's good and what's not. Who knows, Fire Blast, Petal Blizzard, and Shadow Sneak might be the next great thing, and those Giratina that looked like garbage might be world beaters.
Not gonna lie, I'm pretty excited for the possibility of Giratina becoming great. I've said it before that if this is how charge moves will work for PvP then a lot of strange/disappointing move assignments make a lot more sense. I still wish movepools get expanded to allow Pokemon to have a chance at being good at raids/gym and PvP and not just one or the other.
My only concern with expanding move pools is that it makes it harder to optimize with TMs as long as they are random.
Another thought I've been pondering - what will they do when they raise the level cap. What does one get for being level 42, or level 50? If the pokemon strength increase continues to get smaller with every 10 levels, and the costs go up on the same curve they are on now, one would be spending 30k-50k dust to get a CP increase under 10, which seems silly and wasteful unless one is playing in God mode where dust and candy are free (doesn't exist, just saying).
So my thought is that levels above 40 will give the trainer other things. Things like the ability to choose which move a TM gives the pokemon instead of it being random, or perhaps access to exclusive moves (Origin Pulse and Precipice Blades come to mind, as well as the CD moves, etc.) Or, possibly, the trainer could get +1 candy on catching, or extra stardust, etc.
Otherwise, if a level 42 trainer still has their pokemon capped at level 40 and gets nothing extra for being higher level, then it's just a vanity level. Even a pile of stuff for leveling up is just a one time bonus that doesn't mean much in the grand scheme of things.
It seems like optimizing with TMs will be somewhat easier now with the expanded movepools. Having 2 charge moves means one move it always removed from the possible pool (for example take weavile, you have avalanche already, and your second move is Focus blast, tm'ing focus blast will always yield foul play in this senario) that's actually going to make things a lot less tm intensive. the same applied for any 3 charge move pokemon, and for pokemon with 4 charge moves, odds go from 1/3 to 1/2 for getting the move you want.
