Every single site mentions solar beam as being the best grass move but petal blizzard, according to this website, has a lower cool down and higher dps. Wouldn't that make it way better? Why isn't that rated higher or talked about more? Unless I am missing something?
This isn't exact but hopefully you will get the idea
solar beam = 180 damage
petal blizzard = 110 damage
petal blizzard 2.3 seconds quicker. In that time you can get extra 30ish damage in quick moves.
That still only gives petal blizzard 140 damage (+ some extra energy)
DPS is bad way of representing charge moves
Because it's the overall DPS that matters, which is a combination of your quick moves and special moves. You can't use special moves without using quick moves so a special move DPS value isn't very meaningful on it's own.
If you were to spam attacks until you reached 100 energy then use your charge move immediately after ad infinitum, Solar Beam would do more damage in the long run.
Vine Whip with it's 0.6 cd and 10 EPS means it gives 6 energy per use, if we pretend that the opponent doesn't fight back to make calculations easier then it takes 17 uses to get to 100 energy, which takes 10.2 seconds, and has a total of 119 move damage (17 x 7)
If you then use Petal Blizzard which does 110 damage and has a cooldown of 2.6 seconds, then you've done 229 damage in 12.8 seconds or around 17.9 DPS
With Solar Beam, you'd do 299 damage in 15.1 seconds which is around 19.8 DPS
This number isn't exact for several reasons but it still gets the idea across.
I think the reality is that "best" moves are often a matter of preference to some degree. Different people may want different things out of their attackers/defenders. Petal Blizzard is potentially a superior move if dodging is important to you, as Solar Beam's cooldown window leaves you exposed a long time to possibly absorbing the full brunt of a defender's charge attack. If DPS is all that matters to you though, as has been detailed above, Solar Beam is better.
I have high level venusaurs with both, I actually preferred petal blizzard over solar beam back before the reworked the moves, and it was a two bar charge.
After the moves were changed, it took only one battle with either for me to declare solar beam the hands down winner.
There is something so satisfying about seeing half over half of a vaporeons hp vanish from a single hit.
