In max battles, charged moves can be a double-edged sword: they do damage to the boss, but they can slow down the rate of meter charging and increase your risk of taking hits. So how do you decide if it's worth it? In this post, I recommend using your charged attack if (1) using it increases your DPS, and (2) only if it doesn't cause you to take extra hits from the boss. In other words, "it depends." I include data tables and formulas to help you evaluate these two conditions.

This post includes tentative recommendations for specific combinations of move speeds and group size, based on an improving understanding of the timing details of max battles. Preliminarily, in 4-trainer groups it seems likely that it will often be a good idea to avoid your charged attack, but in smaller groups it becomes more advantageous.

The old wisdom: don't use charged attacks in G-max battles

Max battles can be terrifying because of the sheer damage done by the boss. In some cases, your only hope for survival is to sprint to the max phase: the faster you charge the meter, the more quickly you get access to resources like healing and shielding that help you survive. You also get the option of using your max attack, an extremely powerful attack that typically does most of your damage.

Why does this argue against using your charged attack? The rate of meter charging is dependent on the damage you do, but the formula uses rounding, and as others have pointed out, no move in the game (fast or charged) will add more than +1 meter charge against a G-max boss. Consequently, the advice has been to use only your fast attack, as it typically has a much shorter duration than your charged attack. A 0.5s cooldown fast attack will charge the meter at twice the rate of a 1.0s cooldown fast attack, regardless of the damage they do, and it will charge at 5× the rate of a 2.5s cooldown charged attack. Meter-charging rate is so important that many trainers (including this author) aim to use only 0.5s fast attacks, and only make rare exceptions.

It's worth noting that the advice to avoid your charged attack was given specifically in the context of G-max battles. But what about D-max? And is it always true even for G-max?

A caveat: what if using your charged attack doesn't threaten your survival?

It's essential to race to the max phase to avoid taking more damage from the boss. But simply maximizing "meter charging rate" neglects one important detail: damage from the boss doesn't arrive continuously, it comes in big chunks when each boss attack lands. From the standpoint of the amount of damage you take, charging the meter full in the turn just after taking a hit from the boss is the same as charging the meter full just before the next attack lands. Once you enter the max phase of battle, any attack that hasn't landed is canceled. So as long as you get to the max phase before getting hit by the next attack, you haven't compromised your safety.

The simplest strategy for deploying charged attacks, therefore, is to wait until the meter is almost full and you can be confident (based on when the previous attack landed) that there's still some time before your team gets hit with the next attack. A more sophisticated strategy involves planning ahead, and knowing how much spare time you'll have and thus how many charged attacks you can safely throw. (More on that below.)

If you're going to use your charged attack, a key issue, aside from avoiding extra attacks, is to prevent conflict between using your charged attack and needing to dodge targeted attacks. Some particularly good times to throw your charged attack are:

1. when the meter is almost full and you aren't currently targeted
2. when the announcement "boss is preparing a large attack" appears (large attacks cannot be dodged, and the next attack can't start until the current one finishes)
3. when you see that some other trainer has been targeted

In these cases, you can usually be assured that your charged attack will finish before you get targeted by the boss and need to dodge. Again, it's critical that you not take an extra hit. For example, in cases 2 and 3, you should only throw the attack if you know either that (1) the attack is going to land anyway, regardless of what you do, or (2) you'll finish charging the meter before it lands, even if you throw your charged attack. To make such decisions easier, some predicted timing computations follow at the end of this post.

But it's still not clear that using your charged attack is actually a good idea, because there's a second concern: the implications for your DPS against the boss.

How does using your charged attack affect your DPS? A bit of math.

There is a second argument to avoid using your charged attack: your max attacks do a terrific amount of damage, with powers ranging from 250 to 450. These are bigger than any charged move in the game. So, if you're stretching out the duration of the normal phase of battle, it's taking you a little longer to reach those max attacks, and there's a genuine chance that (despite the damage of your charged attack) you'll actually reduce your net DPS. When does using your charged attack increase your DPS, and when does it decrease it?

To answer this question, let's explore it with a little math. The formula for DPS is

DPS = D / T

where D is the amount of damage you do in a given interval, and T is the duration of the interval. Here we'll use a full cycle, normal phase + max phase, as the interval. Let's define DPS₀ = D₀ / T₀ as your DPS when you use zero charged attacks.

Let's explore what happens to your DPS if you replace one of your fast-move-taps with a tap on your charged move: this will change the total damage by ΔD = (charged damage) - (fast damage) and the time by ΔT = (charged time) - (fast time). So if you do this once, your DPS becomes

DPS₁ = (D₀ + ΔD) / (T₀ + ΔT)

Now, for many charged moves, ΔT is just a couple of seconds. By contrast, a whole cycle of battle is several tens of seconds. So ΔT is quite small compared to T₀, and in that case we can approximate the above (dust off those calculus skills!) as

DPS₁ ≈ DPS₀ * (1 + ΔD / D₀ - ΔT / T₀)

If the term in parentheses is bigger than one, your DPS goes up; if it's smaller than one, it goes down. What this shows is that you should use your charged attack if

ΔD / D₀ > ΔT / T₀

or, in words, if the fractional increase to your damage-per-cycle exceeds the fractional increase to the duration-per-cycle.

A nice thing about this criterion is that it uses damage ratios. This means that if you ignore small details like rounding, most factors cancel: the boss's stats, your IVs, how powered up you are, and whether you're using magic mushrooms. It comes down to only three factors:

• move powers and deployment (e.g., how many max attacks you plan to use in the max phase)
• type effectiveness
• weather bonuses

An example: Excadrill vs Articuno

Let's look at some numbers. Against Articuno, Excadrill's Rock Slide is a 75 power move that's doubly-effective, whereas Metal Claw is only 6 power and singly-effective. The max attack is power 250 (level 1), 300 (level 2), or 350 (level 3), and also singly-effective.

First, suppose you're in a group of 4, and that each trainer hits with 25 Metal Claws during the normal phase (4 * 25 = 100, enough to charge the meter) and 3 max steelspike during the max phase. Suppose the max attack is at level 3, and thus 350 power. Then

ΔD / D₀ ≈ (1.6 * 75 - 6) / (25 * 6 + 3 * 350) ≈ 0.095       (4 trainer group, max attack at 3)

What about time? Rock Slide is a 2.5s move, so ΔT = 2s. Unfortunately, what to use for T₀ is a bit of a mystery. There's a strong argument that we should include only elements that count against the enrage timer: while real world time matters if you're late for an appointment, in most cases the only "time" that matters is that which gets you that much closer to having the boss enrage. Unfortunately, currently there is not enough publicly known about the enrage mechanics to know how to choose T₀. So let's make some guesses. In a group of 4 Excadrill, you'll charge the meter in about 12.5s, and the max phase tends to last about 20s. Thus we're left with

ΔT / T₀ = 2s / 12.5s ≈ 0.16     (4 trainer group, normal phase time only)

if only normal-phase time matters, and

ΔT / T₀ = 2s / 32.5s ≈ 0.062    (4 trainer group, whole cycle time)

In the first case, there would be a big disadvantage to using your charged attack, whereas in the latter case there is a somewhat smaller advantage to using it. So until we understand the mechanics of enragement better, we can't even decide whether it's worth it or not. Since the upside is smaller than the downside, right now I might recommend against using Rock Slide in this particular situation.

But what if you're trying to duo Articuno? In that case, you'd expect to charge the meter in about 21.5s (45 fast attacks per trainer, plus one orb). Then

ΔD / D₀ ≈ (1.6 * 75 - 6) / (45 * 6 + 3 * 350) ≈ 0.086     (duo, max attack at level 3)

but

ΔT / T₀ = 2s / 21.5s = 0.093                    (duo, normal phase time only)

or

ΔT / T₀ = 2s / 41.5s = 0.048                    (duo, whole cycle time)

Here even the worst case is a near-tie, so it might make sense to give it a whirl and see how it works out. If you're trying to solo Articuno (which is possible!), it's a clear win to use your charged attack even under the more pessimistic scenario. Aside from group size, other factors can also make it more favorable to use your charged attack. Examples: if your max attack isn't at level 3, or if you're going to need some of your max moves for healing or shielding.

The bottom line on DPS is "it depends," but with the formula here, it's pretty easy to determine for yourself as long as you're willing to live with some uncertainty (for now) about what we should be choosing for T₀.

Having learned how to make the determination about DPS, we can now return to the first issue: will using your charged attack compromise your survival?

How many charged attacks can you use safely?

Regardless of DPS, I suspect a useful principle is the following: in high-tier max battles, never use your charged attack if it costs you an extra hit from the boss. Below I show "charts" (in graphical form) that estimate how many hits you'll take from the boss, and how many charged attacks you can "sneak in" without taking an extra hit.

This analysis depends heavily on recent, important work, with credit due to u/eli5questions and "Big Cocoa Puff" on the PokeBattler discord. While their analysis is still preliminary, I've tried to incorporate their current understanding by making the following assumptions:

• D-max battles (regardless of tier) have a gap between boss attacks of 10s + the duration of the move
• G-max battles have a gap between boss attacks of 3s + the duration of the move, plus an extra 2s before a targeted attack lands
• Possibly due to lag (or maybe a random element in the game), the boss can start as much as 1s ahead (so in a D-max battle, the first attack lands at 9s + duration of the move, rather than 10s + duration of move)
• Your group gets one orb every 15s, and it costs you 1s if you collect it

The analysis is simple: if my group is going to take at least n hits regardless of the strategy we use, what's the largest number of times I can use my charged attack while avoiding taking n+1 hits? This analysis does not consider constraints like having enough energy or "don't use your charged attack while being targeted," as it is based just on adding up times. (So treat these estimates as upper bounds.) I'm also unclear on what happens in case of a tie, i.e., you charge the max meter to capacity on the same turn as a boss hit lands. To be safe, this analysis requires that you charge the meter to capacity no later than the turn prior to the next boss attack. Finally, the game is a bit laggy right now, and it's possible that none of this will be reliable in the face of lag. That said, on with the graphs!

In the graphs, I've capped the color range to at most 3 charged attacks, as it seems unlikely that you'd be able to accumulate enough energy for more than this even if it were safe from a timing perspective.

First, D-max battles:

D-max battles: how many hits your group takes, and how many times you can use your charged attack

And for G-max:

Same as the above, but for G-max

Surprisingly, there appear to be cases where it might be safe to use a charged attack even against a G-max! Again, whether it makes sense from a DPS perspective needs to be analyzed separately.

Complexities: multiple attacks and dodging

Bosses have two attacks, so which move duration do you use in the figures above? In principle you can plan your strategy in advance (e.g., "if the first attack is Ancient Power, ..."), but this is admittedly quite complicated. Perhaps a more likely scenario is that, just as sophisticated trainers count moves in PvP, the best max-battlers will keep track of timing during the battle and make decisions on the fly.

If you do want to make estimates ahead of time, then note that in G-max battles, you can handle the extra 2s delay for targeted attacks effectively as adding 2s/n to the duration of the boss move, where n is the number of trainers in your group. Conversely, dodging costs you some fast-attack time; if we guess it sets you back 2s (probably a conservative estimate), you might effectively subtract 2s/n from the boss move duration. Done this way, these two corrections cancel in G-max battles, but not in D-max battles (which do not have the extra 2s delay).

If you want to contribute to testing

These predictions are based on our current (limited) understanding of the mechanics of max battles; if those predictions are wrong, it means we need to adjust our understanding of the mechanics. Here are some examples of things that might be wrong, and relatively easy to watch for:

• Against a D-max with a 2.5s large attack (Articuno Hurricane; Zapdos Thunderbolt, Thunder, and Drill Peck), a 2-trainer group using 0.5s fast attacks should not be able to sneak in a charged attack of any duration without sustaining a second hit. Conversely, against a 3.0s large attack (Articuno Blizzard), with 0.5s fast attacks you should be to sneak in one charged attack of duration 1.5s. Testable examples include Inteleon's and Lapras' Surf or Gengar's Shadow Punch.
• In a 4-trainer group against Moltres running both Fire Blast and Overheat, it should never be able to attack at all if your entire group is using a 0.5s fast attack. If this holds, Moltres will be the easiest of the legendary birds, if you're patient enough to wait for the right moveset.
• Against a G-max with a 2.0s large attack (like Kingler's Crabhammer and Vice Grip), a 4-trainer group using all 0.5s fast moves should be able to sneak in one 1.5s-duration charged attack without sustaining a third hit. The same examples (Surf and Shadow Punch) apply here.
• Against a G-max using a 1.5s large attack, even a team of 4 using 0.5s fast attacks can sustain 3 hits (all large attacks) during a single max phase. Since Kingler has two 1.5s moves (X-Scissor and Razor Shell), we should soon have a chance to test this.

If you see violations of these predictions, please report them, particularly if you have video!

Errata

- The original version of this article mistakenly duplicated the dmax data for gmax in the figure. It has been corrected.
- The section on "complexities" and dodging was added after initial publication