On best moves for attackers

When it comes to attackers I always suggest a fast primary attack, unless an available slow one has a huge advantage in terms of DPS and / or EPS.

For charge attacks I go for the one bar picks.

You should be aware my picks, especially for the charge attacks aren't the ones with the highest EDPS.


Let's have a look at two atackers, machamp and dragonite.

My suggestions are Close Combat and Hurricane respectively.

Close Combat:

• 100 power
• CD 2.3 sec
• DPS with STAB 54.4

Hurricane:

• 110 power
• CD 2.7 sec
• DPS with STAB 50.9

Almost any other guide would suggest Dynamic Punch and Outrage respectively

Dynamic Punch:

• 90 power
• CD 2.7 sec
• DPS with STAB 41.7

Outrage:

• 110 power
• CD 3.9 sec
• DPS with STAB 35.3

At a first lookt it would seem the one bar attacks have a higher DPS, but they are one bar attacks, and the more oftenly suggested attacks are two bar attacks.

For machamp it means that we're running Counter until we have enough energy to kick off the charge attack. Counter gives 8 energy for each attack. Five attacks give 48 energy, and it's reasonable to assume that your machamp has taken 4 points of damage during the 5.4 seconds it takes to fire off six Counter.

Dynamic Punch takes 2.7 seconds to go off, so the EDPS must be lowered by a third to compensate for the three Counter you can't use. This takes it down from 41.7 to 27.7, which is still almost twice as good as the 16.7 for Counter.

EDPS for a full cycle (six Counter and one Dynamic Punch) is 23.1.

Compare Close Combat.

12 Counter should fill the bar (in fact 11 will do, because you'll have taken 24 points of damage after eleven attacks, but for the sake of fairness.

Close Combat has a CD of 2.3 seconds, which is 2.6 cycles for Counter, but let's say 3 for the sake of simplicity.

EDPS for a full cycle (twelve Counter and one Close Combat) is 20.4.

Over time you inflict more damage with Dynamic Punch, and my advice that you pick Close Combat might verge on the over-cautious side.

For the dragonite the same calculations yield

EDPS 23.4 for Dragon Tail and Outrage (5 DT plus one Outrage at 9 DT cycles)

EDPS 22.7 for Dragon Tail and Hurricane (10 DT plus one Hurrivcane at 13 DT cycles)

I wrote over-cautious earlier.

The thing is that it's safer to fire off a 2.3 second Close Combat compared to a 2.7 second Dynamic Punch, but 2.7 seconds is probably fast enough to use.

In the case of dragonites we're talking a 2.7 second Hurricane versus a 3.9 second Outrage. 3.9 seconds for a two bar attack makes it likely that you'll take at least one charge attack in your face while waiting for Outrage to go off. That might very well be enough to off your attacker.

While I can see that Dynamic Punch is preferable over my suggested Close Combat, Outrage is simply too dangerous to use, unless you plan to just fire away and resurrect your dragonites after the combat anyway.

In short:

• DPS for charge attacks should be lowered by the number of primary attacks they steal, or rather the aggregated power of those stolen attacks
• Slow charge attacks are bad for your health