Charge moves "lasting"
Can someone clarify what it means by the charge move can last a longer period of time in this sentence: "On the same note, sometimes a charge move that has lower DPS will be more optimal since it may require less energy or it may last for a longer period of time."
(Taken from the Moveset Grades Explanation page.)
Answers
Exactly. This ultimately gets back to the mechanics of defense: a defending pokemon will attack once every two seconds. Thus, for most pokemon, your goal is to minimize the amount of time they spend on primary attacks and maximize the amount of time they spend on secondary attacks, since almost all primary attacks do less damage than secondary attacks. Note that in most cases, the secondary attacks with three or four charge bars are preferred - these tend to have shorter cooldowns and lower energy requirements, so your defender can spam them and pretty much stop doing any primary attacks at all (this is especially good for defenders like Vaporeon, whose only primary attack does a pathetic 6 base damage).
Note too that the requirements for a good defending pokemon are different than for a good attacker; in the case of the latter, you generally want low damage (but fast cooldown) primary attacks and huge, slow secondary attacks.
Yes, I understand that, but the way this sentence is worded: "On the same note, sometimes a charge move that has lower DPS will be more optimal since [it may require less energy or] it may last for a longer period of time." If you read it with the part between the brackets taken out, it implies that the longer charge move is more powerful because it lasts longer, not because its base damage is greater like you're saying.
So what I want to know is there some benefit of a longer cd other than it (usually) comes with a stronger base damage? Or is this just some misconception coming from the word choice in the description?
Charge moves all have different lengths, so because of the way defenders work Pokemon with moves that take longer Do more damage over the course of the 99 second round the reason for this is that defenders spend I think between 1.5-2.5 secounds idle between each of their attacks so attacks that do heavy damage over a long period mean more time causing damage and less time at idle this goes for fast attacks as well
Okay, that semi-answers my question.
So of course, the follow up question is does the ~1.5-2.5sec idle period start at the beginning of the charge attack or after it ends? Because what I've noticed (very general assumption), the longer the cd, the more time between the charge move text and the yellow flash, meaning if the ~1.5-2.5sec timer starts when the text comes up, then ya, heavy damage over long period means less idle time. But if the ~1.5-2.5sec timer starts after the attack animation, then it's the opposite, longer attacks mean more idle time.
First of all: this applies to attackers as well, not only defenders.
For Snorlax (attack) Lick has slightly lower DPS than Zen Headbutt. But Lick is still better (for attack), because it charges the much more powerfull charge move faster.
And for the second part ("may last for a longer period of time") Hyperbeam takes 3.2x the time of Body Slam, but does only 3x the damage. So less DPS for Hyperbeam.
But in the saved time (0.32s for 2 BS vs. 1 HB) we can't even complete one Lick. That doesn't compensate the 120 Power of HB vs. the 2*40 of 2 Body Slams. (Dodging ignored).
For defense this is even more significant. Fast moves get a horrible delay and thus generate very low DPS and the time between the charge moves is almost wasted.
