Hydro Pump, Fire Blast, Focus Blast - is the risk worth it?

S

Starboard Driger

fml
Member
It's clutch time - one Pokemon left and one to go. Your Sharpedo is faster than your opponent's Metagross, who is locked into Earthquake by its Choice Band. If you don't take out Metagross with this last move, you will lose.

You only have one attack capable of getting the job done: Hydro Pump. You select it, hold on to your lucky coin, kiss a picture of Michael Jackson, and...

It misses.

This happened to me several times yesterday. It got me thinking about whether these high-damage-questionable-accuracy moves were benefiting the team more than their less powerful, more reliable counterparts could (Surf, Flamethrower)... there are obviously many team/tier specific factors that could influence you to choose one option over the other, but I'm just curious to hear some general discussion about the topic (i.e. which way do you tend to lean towards (reliability/damage) and why?).
 
It often depends on the pokemon using the move. Obviously if the user has sky high special attack, you can get by with the more reliable, weaker moves. In many cases, though, weather plays a deciding role. In the sun, for example, Flamethrower can hit just about as hard as a Fire Blast with no weather, but on a weather-less team, you'd need Fire Blast to keep up the damage output. I personally lean towards reliability in greater proportion than most, but I'm usually attracted by an added effect (primarily Scald's 30% burn chance). With 70-85% accuracy on the more powerful moves, the odds that you will hit are usually in your favor anyway. Ultimately, it's your preference in a risk/reward decision. No one is forcing you to use or not use any moves if it's not explicitly banned (like Fissure, etc.)

I was attempting to explain the first half below V
 
It really depends on if you will miss any key KOs by running one move over the other. I tend to prefer Flamethrower and Surf for their increased PP as well, not just accuracy. Part of that can be attributed to my main tier being Ubers where many Pokemon have Pressure.
 
Among those moves, there are differences. For one, Fire Blast runs at 85%, much better than the 70% Focus Blast. This is why many don't really bother with the accuracy of the first two but are afraid to use the latter. In fact, Focus Blast often becomes strictly a coverage move to be used in tough spots e.g. a Water-type without Hidden Power Fire taking on Ferrothorn. Plus, there is no other move to use in order to replace Focus Blast, or it would be much more rare.
Generally speaking, Hydro Pump and Fire Blast are often used as main damage tools. Same happens with Thunder, Hurricane and Blizzard due to weather abuse. In fact, the only moves of this sort which aren't used as primary attacks are the never-used Gunk Shot and Focus Blast, for reasons I explained before.
 
Fire Blast: I pick this 100% of the time. If my Fire-type poke has a need for a special Fire attack, I sure as heck ain't gonna pick the jokey Flamethrower since the goal is to do as much damage as you can. The accuracy is perfectly acceptable too.

Hydro Pump: Use unless you are a boosting Pokemon (at which point the higher accuracy of Surf is preferred) or are named Latios.

Focus Blast: Doesn't count. There are no other reliable alternatives, and anyone who can learn Aura Sphere will choose it every time because 70 accuracy is -terrible- and if Aura Sphere were more widely distributed (or if we had a 90-100 BP special Fighting move with 80-100 accuracy that was), Focus Blast would never be used, ever. There is a reason you don't see Thunder being recommended on sets that don't suggest rain support.

And while I'm on the subject of Thunder, I know I've been pretty crazy and used dry Thunders. The damage is great but the 70 accuracy is a turnoff. I would not suggest using Thunder outside of rain unless your goal is to lose.
 
I realize Focus Blast has no replacement move, but it was frustrating me at the time of writing so I threw it in the title.

I've come to accept that, being a weatherless HO team user, I have to deal with the accuracy and be smart with when I use them. I've tried making Sharpedo physical, but I think not having Ice Beam and being completely walled by dragons has lost me more matches than Hydro Pump has. Same with Heatran - Flamethrower just doesn't work out.

maybe I should just give up and run politoed/ferrothorn/scizor/rotom-w/thundurus-t/keldeo
 
Heatran doesn't need to be running Fire Blast often anyway. Lava Plume's decent base power and 30% burn chance is enough to make it desirable in most situations, not to mention its accuracy.
 
iSharingan said:
Heatran doesn't need to be running Fire Blast often anyway. Lava Plume's decent base power and 30% burn chance is enough to make it desirable in most situations, not to mention its accuracy.
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I'm running an offensive set. The burn chance isn't something I'm particularly interested in, and the damage won't get the job done. I mean, if Flamethrower can't do it, then Lava Plume certainly can't.
 
Well burn halves the victim's attack, so it's actually quite useful. The goal with Lava Plume is both to reliably hit AND to potentially cripple the foe.
 
Yeah, but for Pokemon like Heatran, crippling the foe isn't among their duties. Other members of the team can do that. A sweeper needs to exterminate everything quickly. And personally, I think that Overheat/Fire Blast, Hydro Pump and Draco Meteor are by far more useful than their weaker alternatives when used by monsters such as Heatran, Keldeo and Latios. When you wanna sweep, you don't look at crippling but go for the best combination of power and accuracy.
 
ChillBill said:
Yeah, but for Pokemon like Heatran, crippling the foe isn't among their duties. Other members of the team can do that. A sweeper needs to exterminate everything quickly. And personally, I think that Overheat/Fire Blast, Hydro Pump and Draco Meteor are by far more useful than their weaker alternatives when used by monsters such as Heatran, Keldeo and Latios. When you wanna sweep, you don't look at crippling but go for the best combination of power and accuracy.
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That's some valid stuff.

If you are running the offensive sets of Pokemon (any non-CM Keldeo, LO Latias, Offensive Heatran, etc.) (Latios is a poor user of Dragon Pulse imo, needs the DM power), then you need to use the powerful move. I favor them due to damage output, and that is what matters. With things like CM Keldeo, SDef Heatran, and CM Latias, you're going to go with the more reliable move (Surf, Lava Plume, and Dragon Pulse respectively) because it gets more use out of it, and it has more power with accumulating boosts/has great utility/something else.

Each has their reasons, but I like power-on-offense, utility-on-nonoffense.

~AoH
 
Starboard Driger said:
I realize Focus Blast has no replacement move, but it was frustrating me at the time of writing so I threw it in the title.

I've come to accept that, being a weatherless HO team user, I have to deal with the accuracy and be smart with when I use them. I've tried making Sharpedo physical, but I think not having Ice Beam and being completely walled by dragons has lost me more matches than Hydro Pump has. Same with Heatran - Flamethrower just doesn't work out.

maybe I should just give up and run politoed/ferrothorn/scizor/rotom-w/thundurus-t/keldeo
Click to expand...

It's fairly weak, but Ice Fang is a somewhat viable option, especially considering Sharpedo's much higher physical attack stat.
 
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