The Best Attacks: An Objective Review of the Top Attacks for Raids

So how exactly do we go about ranking every single move in Pokemon Go? Right now we have 253 different moves available in-game, not including identical moves that show up in different types like Hidden Power, Technoblast, or Weather Ball, so it's going to be a bear to compare every single one of them... right? Actually, no! As is usually the case with the stupidly complex complications that we occasionally subject ourselves to here at Gamepress, we've left the majority of this work to our very own Comprehensive DPS/TDO Spreadsheet. How exactly did we manage this task? Simple; we made a custom Pokemon on the sheet and used the following parameters to help us compare Applins-to-Appletuns, so to speak: 

• A Pokemon with no types to keep the STAB bonus from skewing our results
• 300 Attack
• 300 Defense
• 300 HP
• Every single Fast and Charged Move in the game, barring identical moves with different types as outlined above.

We went with insanely high bulk for the initial experiment in order to get a more realistic view of the long-term theoretical performance of each move. Using this setup, the DPS/TDO sheet is capable of generating the rankings of every single move in the game without much bias (more on that point later), and give us the answers that we're hoping to get. 

Want to repeat this experiment yourself? Well, here's a handy text-string containing every single move in the game as outlined above so that you can give it a try yourself and so that I don't have to go insane from losing it in the event that I happen to need this list again in the future:

So stop right here and don't scroll down for a moment... okay, so saying that probably forced you to scroll down immediately, but hear me out; think about all of the top attackers in the game, future/current. What moves stand out in your mind as the best, and what do you think we're going to see in the upcoming section? Are you picturing Mega Mewtwo Y and its Psystrike? How about Primal Groudon or Primal Kyogre with Precipice Blades and Origin Pulse, respectively? How about Fast Moves? Hard-hitting attacks like Confusion and Charm are probably the first on your mind, but how about the quick-hitters that generate massive energy like Snarl? Take a second and make your guesses, then drop them in the Comments below, as I'd LOVE to see that you expected at this point in the article!

Have your moves in mind? Great, because it's time to unveil the absolute best possible moveset in all of Pokemon Go! 

...oh no... NONONO, I KNOW WHAT YOU'RE THINKING, SO STOP IT! DO NOT HIT THAT PURIFY BUTTON, JUST HEAR ME OUT FIRST!!

...yeah, these results are.... problematic. Fury Cutter showing up as the best Fast Move can definitely be a bit surprising for some, but the real problem is Aeroblast++. For lack of a better term, this is a forbidden move in Pokemon Go. It's only usable by a Lugia that's been purified from an Apex Shadow Lugia, but Shadow Lugia is still objectively better than a Lugia packing Aeroblast++, meaning it will basically never be the better option.

But with that note out of the way, just how much better is Aeroblast++ when compared to the second-strongest Charged Move? Well, Aeroblast++ pairs up with the top 19 best Fast moves before we finally reach the second best Charged Move! Wow, Niantic shoved a lot of raw power into this move!

So now comes the real question of the day; what exactly are the other top moves in Pokemon Go? Well, let's take a look! 

Paired Charged Move: Aeroblast++

Paired Fast Move: Fury Cutter

Some of these entries and the order that was revealed legitimately surprised me on a few points, in particular the fact that the big-name Fast Moves like Confusion and Charm didn't make the cut (more on those later, don't worry) while moves that are occasionally overlooked like Metal Claw, Karate Chop, and Crabhammer are waving at us as we scroll by

Overall, this is a really interesting set of data... but it feels a bit skewed, doesn't it? Well, that's because of the base stats that we gave our theoretical Pokemon: 300 Attack is fine, but 300 HP and Defense is downright absurd! Using that base-line, the only Pokemon in the game that beats our mutant Pokemon in terms of TDO is Eternamax Eternatus, which was a boss-Pokemon that doesn't really exist for use outside of a single move cutscene in the main games due to just how stupidly broken it is! Because of this, the above list has a very strong bias towards long-term Charged moves and quick energy generation because that would be the ideal strategy if your Pokemon was fighting a punching-bag that would never faint, but also never attack. So let's take another look at our data after making one small yet important change....

This time around, we're going to take the same stats outlined near the beginning of the article, and drop our theoretical Pokemon down to 100 base HP and Defense. This severely lowers its TDO/time on the field. So given these changes, what's our new best possible moveset?

The glorious move that is Fury Cutter retains the lead, but this time it's joined by Flying Press, which was the #2 move on the high-bulk rankings. This is a perfect example of how having a lower energy requirement makes a much bigger difference for Pokemon who aren't on the field for as long a time. This is beacuase it's better to squeeze out as many hits as possible into their short lifespans rather than trying for risky big hits that they may only come out once or twice if they're lucky.

So what do our top attack lists look like given the new data? Take a look:

Paired Charged Move: Flying Press

Paired Fast Move: Fury Cutter

Two very interesting bits to point out here:

• The Fast Move tables for both High Bulk and Low Bulk are identical
• The Charged Move table has far fewer 1-bar moves on it

In our theoretical example above, it seems that the sim still prefers picking fast moves with high energy generation over damaging fast moves. Again; we'll definitely talk more about that in a second, but for now we can see a lot more 3-bar moves this time around, with the classical 2-bar moves still tending to rule, all while short attack windows tend to be in the forefront among both. This is because the difference in energy needed to reach a 2-bar move Vs. a 3-bar move is only 34%, which generally won't make a significant difference. Anyone remember 5-bar moves back when the game was young? Those were always fun...

Either way, this demonstrates just how variable attacks can be; the best possible choice can frequently depend on the Pokemon using it. Frequently, the best Charged Move for one Pokemon might not always be the best for another, even if they both have identical typing/moves to utilize.

So many of you are probably looking at the data outlined above and thinking "hold on, some of those rankings feel really suspicious...", and you'd be right to harbor some doubts! While these are the best moves on paper, they will generally shift quite a bit in practice, and here are a few of the reasons:

On Paper Vs. In Practice

What we did for our example is give the DPS/TDO Spreadsheet the ability to deal neutral damage to a theoretical raid boss with every move in the game while ignoring any form of STAB bonus. The ability to utilize STAB and deal Super Effective damage would have resulted in a large damage boost, which tends to greatly benefits some moves over others; namely those with higher base power. The prime example here is the fact that Psycho Cut made the top-20 while Confusion was left out in the dust, but all of our Raid Guides recommend Confusion over Psycho Cut when the target is weak to Psychic. This is because the boosts outlined above benefit Confusion far more than Psycho Cut due to the former's higher base power. Despite the fact that Psycho Cut will allow for more damage from super-charged Charged Moves due to its superior energy generation, the added damage on Confusion is significant enough to offset this difference in practice. 

To summarise: the main advantage of energy-generating Fast Moves is their energy generation, which is not boosted by SE/STAB/Weather/Mega boosts. The main advantage of damaging fast moves is their damage, which is boosted by SE/STAB/Weather/Mega boosts.

On top of that, we also have the additional bulk variables. We could change up the bulk total for our theoretical Pokemon that was featured in our experiments infinitely, ranging from making Eternamax Eternatus look weak, to wishing that it could be as bulky as Deoxys - Attack Forme. The ideal moveset will tend to change based on bulk, as outlined above, and every Pokemon may be best using a different attack, as we've already touched on. The best example of this is with Pokemon like Mega Gengar which is frequently called on to take on Pokemon utilizing attacks that it's weak to or conversely facing Fighting Type moves that it triple-resists. In this example, these artificial changes in relative bulk can, at times, shift which Fast Move is a better option between Lick and Shadow Claw, with the primary variable being if Lick's superior energy generation can allow for an additional use of Shadow Ball. though the former tends to pull ahead in this right, both remain completely viable regardless.

In the end, none of the moves that we've outlined above are bad by any stretch, but they're not necessarily the best within their given types in all situations either. This article is more a fun thought experiment than a resource that states "these are the objective overall best" like with our Attackers Tier List or Best Attackers by Type list, so take this data with a grain of salt.

Alright, so we've got the best moves out of the way, but this naturally raises the next question: What are the WORST moves? Well, we're only going to highlight them using our high-bulk metric this time, but here are the bottom-20 of our 13,032 possible movesets!

So in the end, it turns out that a completely objective look at moves is interesting, but, ironically, not the best metric by which to come up with some sort of an objective rating. Looking at moves in this way can definitely give us an idea as to which moves are "good" and which ones are "bad", but there's a lot of gray area in between where the situation can really do a number on the data!

Either way, I hope that this was a fun little look at the best attacks in Pokemon Go. Don't forget to let me know what moves you were expecting to see in the top ratings for each of the headings, and also let me know which moves surprised you the most!

Now that I've written an entire article and halfway through explained away the actual utility of said article, I think that I'm going to go for a walk in the woods and proceed to scream at the top of my lungs until I pass out. I hope that you have a great day, too!