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Why aren't Ghost type moves being buffed?

Night Shade, Ominous Wind, Shadow Punch and the imfamous Shadow Sneak. Why are they all so inferior to Shadow Ball, and why hasn't Niantic buffed them? They've buffed other moves in the past. (Rock Slide for example)

Asked by DatLocalKarper5 years 2 months ago
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They haven't directly buffed any moves since generation ii. Brave Bird, Fire Blast and Close Combat are still atrocious.

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Fire blast isn't atrocious. Overheat is better. But yes, the other two flat out suck.

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Saying that fire blast isn't atrocious, just a bit worse than overheat, is like saying that psychic isn't atrocious, just a bit worse than future sight.

Fire blast sucks, and I don't know why people keep trying to argue otherwise. It takes 4.2 seconds to deliver 140 base damage. Let's compare it with some other single bar charge moves:

focus blast (140 damage in 3.5 seconds)
hyper beam (150 damage in 3.8 seconds)
zap cannon (140 damage in 3.7 seconds)
hydro pump (130 damage in 3.3 seconds)
draco meteor (150 damage in 3.6 seconds)

The list goes on. Blizzard, gunk shot, and even moonblast are considerably better for neutral damage than fire blast. I'm not saying your pokemon with fire blast are useless, but you can't possibly argue that it isn't a sucky move.

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They did actually directly buff a charge move after Gen 2: Sky Attack (from 70 to 80 damage).

Anyways, in PvE, yes, you are correct. In PvP, however, quite a few charge moves are better balanced. For starters, the animation times don't exist, so those instantly become a non-factor. Secondly, the energy costs are different than they are in PvE, which helps a lot in balancing moves.

For instance, in PvP, focus blast (140 dmg) costs 75 energy, close combat (100 dmg) costs 60, and dynamic punch (90 dmg) costs 50. Hurricane (110 dmg) costs 65 energy, brave bird (90 dmg) costs 55, and sky attack (80 dmg) costs 45.

These are just a few examples, but the point is that charge moves tend to be a lot more balanced in PvP than they are in PvE. When the animation times are removed and energy costs aren't all locked to 35/50/100 (like they are in PvE), we end up with a much better balance of overall charge move performance.

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I started reading this post, and knew who it was before looking at the name of the poster.
Always solid info...

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by pipjay 5 years 2 months ago

Because Niantic is not good at game balance.

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It can tell from the stats in main games.
Night Shade - damage equals to user's level (e.g. level 50 pokemon does 50 damage)
Ominous Wind - 60
Shadow Punch - 60
Shadow Sneak - 40
Shadow Ball - 80 (the second best non-signature ghost move, behind Phantom Force with 90 power)
It is reasonable to see Shadow Ball being the beast ghost move in the current move pool.

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You tried shadow sneak giratina in PvP? that moves amazing.

Since PvP's come out, I feel niantic will make certain moves good in PvP, and a different set of moves better raid wise. Good for us because diversify movesets and pokemon, and good fir niantic because spending more on storage and raids.

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