Best defensive charge moves
http://letspokego.blogspot.ca/2017/03/dpe-vs-dps-and-new-moves.html
I've written something up with an analysis of the Damage-per-energy and cool down ratios of new charge moves. The end result is a list of the best charge moves for defending; moves that deal good damage and have short cool downs (implying short dodge-windows).
But it should be noted that moves like Crunch (cool down 3.2s) hit early in the animation, so it's also a great defending move despite having a slightly lower DPE/CD. But essentially... the top ~50ish moves here are likely a good representation of the best defending charge moves.
Also noted, many of the high DPE/CD moves have no good users (e.g. Cross Poison, Bone Club, Shadow Punch).
Answers
Dragon Claw has always been Dragonite's defending move that's most likely to hit an attacker. It just got better is all. Haha. Because it's legacy, yeah SW-DC Dragonite is the best defender with the dragon claw moveset. Perhaps the best overall defending Dragonite, but I don't know if I could say that without testing more against Dragon Tail variants.
This doesn't no. That said the calc also isn't DPS.
It's Damage-per-energy / Cool down, which just describes that, during the time spent during animation, here's how much damage you're doing for the energy consumed, over that time frame.
You're right though, that there are other factors like delay. Also, as a defending move predictor, it's not perfect. Something like Crunch is a fantastic defending move because its hit window occurs early in the animation, but its total cool down causes it to be ranked lower by this metric than its utility would suggest.
I think the strength of this list is that it highlights moves that people don't often think about (e.g. Discharge), but its rankings shouldn't be taken as an absolute scale. But if something sits in the top ~50, it's probably a very competent defending move. And if its animation is short, or you know its hit window is early, then it's even better.
Including a balance for the time-until-hit-window would also improve this metric.
The about 2s additional wait-time that defenders have for their moves is missing from the calculations so the results are only for attackers.
In the article there is the example of Close Combat versus Dynamic Punch: The first one a full bar move with 100 damage and cool down 2.3 seconds and the latter with 2-bar move with 90 damage and cool down with 2.7 seconds. The first one better DPS, the latter better DPE. The extra time may actually mean a missed dodge (and in my opinion more likely in this case). The dodgability is mentioned in the article but DPE or DPE/CD is the main interest of the article which I disagree with.
It's true that shorter cool downs are less likely to be dodged, but the hit window is the more important factor. e.g. Crunch has a cool down of 3s, but the attack hit window is very near the start.
As another interesting thought, what's better:
1. A single attack that's say... 50% likely to be dodged?
2. Two attacks that are each 70% likely to be dodged?
Just as food for thought.
