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Thoughts on Snorlax's defending movesets

First, I want to clarify things after the move balance update:
"ZH + anything" is no longer all better than "Lick + anything" because the nerf of ZH.
BS can be spammed more often, HS makes Earthquake almostly useless.

Movesets:
ZH/BS (A moveset, legacy moveset)
ZH/HS (B moveset)
L/BS (B/C moveset)
ZH/HB (C moveset)
L/HS (C/D moveset)
ZH/Earthquake (C/D moveset)
L/HB (D/E moveset)
L/Earthquake (E/F moveset)

Lick is now better than Water Gun, despite only staying neutrally, and it provides good type coverages.

Zen Headbutt's nerf makes itself a little bit lower on the list, and affecting the charge moves.

Heavy Slam beats Earthquake in almost all common situations.

The gym AI will be only spamming Body Slams completely if the attacker uses charge moves often.

Hyper Beam has been buffed, but the quick moves are bad now to build up energy for it, because it is a move with only 1 bar.

Earthquake (120 power) may only be useful (here it means better than HB) in double super effective (while HB, 150 power, being resisted) situations, Magenton is a good example for it.

Asked by 333-blue8 years 5 months ago
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Answers

by pipjay 8 years 5 months ago

Zen Headbutt got +0.05s and +1 energy per use. Not a very big nerf, and a little bit of a gain as well.

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by amac 8 years 5 months ago

What was the stats for ZH before the update? Maybe I'm missing something but the damage and EPS havent been changed, only the CD that was reduced to 1,1s. I couldn't find the exact stats pre-update so I may be wrong.

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Was 12 damage, 9 energy, 1.05s
Now 12 damage, 10 energy, 1.1s

DPS is down slightly, but EPS is up slightly.

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Thoughts on Snorlax's defending movesets
First, I want to clarify things after the move balance update:
"ZH + anything" is no longer all better than "Lick + anything" because the nerf of ZH.

Before you try clarifying things, you should inform yourself about timing of quick attacks for defending pokemons. Was there something like +1,5 ... + 2,5 sec? Could these average 2 seconds maybe make ZH HUGELY better than Lick? Could this maybe make a defending ZH-Snorlax 30% more damage than a defending Li-Snorlax, assuming same charged attack?
Maybe?

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Could you elaborate on this? Some sources are still say that defending mons attack every 2 seconds, but moves like lick clearly come faster so more licks are received than zen headbutts, I guess why I'm trying to get at is: how do you come up with the 30% difference, I don't doubt it is, I'd just like to know how...

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If they changed the 2 seconds thing, forget about all i have been writing. Anyway, have they changed this?
BTW:
2,5 sec = 0,5 sec Li + 2 sec defense wait is still faster than
3,1 sec = 1,1 sec ZH + 2 sec defense wait.

The 30% come from a google-calc-sheet published from a silph-road-user, that calculates cycle damage for all attacking and defending movesets on all pokemon.

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They tested over thousands of gym battles on the silph road. The timing between quick attacks is slightly different for each Pokemon, and possibly each quick move. But if my memory serves me correctly it was generally about 1.5-2.0s between quick attacks. Faster quick moves did generally have shorter cooldowns, but the extra +/- 0.5 sec isn't enough to compensate for doing less than 1/2 the dmg.

In addition, there is built in variability for all Pokemon. So even if the base is +1.5 sec, they observed anything from like (making numbers up here) +1.3 sec --> + 1.7 sec

That's why you can count attacks in between defenders' quick moves and sometimes dodge in time, and sometimes not.

Certain Pokemon even had higher variance in times. I recall that Gyarados was one of the most unpredictable, which def makes sense from my experiences prestiging against him

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IIRC, the Silph Road team found overall there was a random ammount between 1.5s and 2.5s, with 2s being the average and most common value, added in between the moves used by a gym defender.

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by noxify 8 years 5 months ago

I don't completely agree with your ranking. Zen Headbutt hasn't really seen much of a nerf hammer imo. It's still a great defensive quickmove. You are also overestimating Lick, considering it's one of the weakest defensive DPS quickmoves without STAB.

Also, keep in mind that HB got a 1 second decrease in cooldown as well as dealing huge STAB damage even if dodged. Considering Snorlax' huge HP pool, a hyperbeam is charged relatively quickly. My personal opinion based on your list:

Movesets:
ZH/BS (A moveset, legacy moveset)
ZH/HB (B moveset)
ZH/HS (B moveset)
L/BS (B/C moveset)
ZH/Earthquake (C moveset)
L/HS (D moveset)
L/HB (D moveset)
L/Earthquake (F moveset)

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Yes, I agree with this list too, I only would say that ZH/HB is really close to ZH/BS, I consider this moveset as A.

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by SphiNx 8 years 5 months ago

Why nobody take into account that Zen Headbutt is SE on Machamp? So Lick Snorlaxes could be destroyed pretty easy and FAST.
So after Machamp buff I will rate any ZH snorlax higher than L. Because main purpose of snorlax is to waste time, and L one do not fulfil that.

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