DPE vs. DPS and New Moves

Table of Contents

• Introduction
• An example of how DPE is useful
• Table of charge moves sorted by DPE
• Table of charge moves sorted by DPE/Cooldown
• Conclusion

Greetings Trainers!

Today's article is going to give a fresh perspective to the metagame. Trainers have previously been focused on moves based around things like damage-per-second (DPS). This made a lot of sense for both quick moves and charge moves, and DPS alone generally reflected a move's utility. Defending moves vs. attacking moves of course had unique DPS calculations, and move cool downs played an important role in how good a move was.

But in the new metagame, I think I'm prepared to say that DPS is not the most important factor in determining a move's utility. Quick moves especially have been largely balanced, and are more similar to each other than before; of course there are better and worse quick moves, but some of the higher-DPS quick moves have longer cool downs, while the slightly lower DPS quick moves allow you to dodge. Pick your poison, but unless you're dodging a lot (which some people do) they aren't all thaaaat different at the end of the day. Not to mention the Energy-per-second (EPS) rate of some of the quick moves is also more important now, and the weakest DPS moves tend to have higher EPS.

But today I'll go over a new concept that should help players understand how the new charge moves work in the current metagame. Damage-per-energy (DPE) is the ratio of base damage to energy consumed. So if you have a high DPE, that means you do lots of damage per charge bar.

DPE is your damage-per-energy consumed. 

If a move does 100 damage, and takes a full charge bar (100% energy = 1.0), then its DPE is: 100/1.0 = 100. 

If a move does 100 damage and takes half a charge bar (1/2 = 0.5), then its DPE is: 100/0.5 = 200. 

The higher the DPE, the more damage per energy consumed.

Given that some moves have ridiculous damage outputs now, DPE becomes a much more important factor in both attacking and defending. Simply put, the difference between DPS for charge moves and quick moves has only gotten larger, and you'd much rather be using your charge moves whenever possible.

An example of how DPE is useful

Close Combat

Machamp will crush you either way

Damage: 100
Energy bar(s): 1
Cool down: 2.30 seconds
DPS: 43.48
DPE: 100

Dynamic Punch
Damage: 90
Energy bar(s): 2
Cool down: 2.70 seconds
DPS: 33.3
DPE: 180

Note that Close Combat has a higher DPS (43.48), but a lower DPE (100). Sure, for those 2.30 seconds you get to do more damage-per-second than if you were using Dynamic Punch. But if you run the numbers of the course of a full ~5.40 seconds, Dynamic Punch's damage output leaves Close Combat in the dust. You can of course use your quick move in the meantime (e.g. Counter), which has its own DPS. But Dynamic Punch is still leagues ahead. Moreover, Dynamic Punch can be launched with only half an energy bar, meaning if you're approaching the end of a battle, you can more readily use Dynamic Punch to finish the defender off, than if you were using Close Combat. That energy efficiency is worth something too!

Hopefully this helps you see the value of DPE as a metric for deciding if a move is good. I haven't yet seen sites like Gamepress adopt this metric for sorting moves, but I would be quite happy to see the ratio added to their moves list.

Below is a table of the Gamepress move list updated with and sorted by DPE. What you can see is that all of the highest DPE moves are 2-3 charge bar moves, while the lowest DPE moves are the 1 charge bar moves. Sure, the highest DPS moves have one charge bar, but I think you'll find in testing that high DPE moves are better on both attack and defence (more on that later in the DPE/CD section).

Charge moves sorted by DPE: a metric that can inform players about how effective their moves are with a full charge bar

Just to give an example, here's the top of the list for charge moves sorted by DPE. But what I'd really like to get to is the next table: charge moves sorted by DPE/CD

Sorry for the awkward formatting!

Charge moves sorted by DPE / Cooldown: a metric for judging top-tier defensive charge moves; and it ain't half bad at judging attacking charge moves either!

But more informative than that, I think that the ratio of DPE to Cooldown time would be the best metric for ranking defensive moves specifically. What this metric does is it rewards moves for having a high DPE and a short cool down time, and finds a balance between having a high damage output and actually getting your attacks to hit the attacker.

You'll notice that moves at the top of this list are things like Body Slam. Body Slam has Base 50 power, 3 charge bars, and is definitively Snorlax's best defending charge move because it is so difficult to dodge, and hits fairly hard. Thanks to this list, you can also see that moves like X-Scissor and Cross Poison boast similar DPE/CD rates, with even lower cool down times. In practice, it is extremely difficult to dodge X-Scissor, making it a highly effective defending charge move. Dragon Claw is also a fantastic defending move now.

Conclusion

It'd be great to see Gamepress include the DPE stat! While DPE nor even DPE/CD isn't the be-all end-all to what move is best for what purpose, I think that it conveys a good deal of information that is lost when judging moves solely by DPS. For instance, Leaf Blade deals 210 damage over 7.2 seconds, and you can dodge in-between each Leaf Blade every 2.4 seconds. To me, that ability to dodge is far more useful than Outrage's slightly higher 220 damage over 7.8 seconds.

So keep in mind the cool down time when using DPE, and judge for yourself what's most useful! I've become a big fan of Leaf Blade, Discharge, Psyshock, Dynamic Punch, Avalanche, Power Whip, and pretty much all those 2-3 charge bar moves with ~2.5s cool down and ~180+ DPE.

Cheers,
Let's GO

p.s. Notice me senpai