Which is better, Energy Ball or Grass Knot? The official answer!

[umbarsc]

But what is Vaporeon doing in return? Worst case is Yawn or Roar. I guess is conserves Rain Dance turns, if you're using that.

[X-Act]

Originally Posted by Fat TVboyCanti

X-Act, could you please include the base power of knot and ball when only counting pokemon that are weak and nuetral to grass attacks? I don't think it matters what the base damage is against things that resist grass moves, since people won't be using either knot or ball on grass resisters.

But the opponent can switch into a grass-resisting Pokemon.

Also, I hope you counted the BP for both moves as 0 when used against shedinja. Otherwise that would raise the BP of energyball in relation to knot.

Yep, I took Shedinja into account. :)

[IronGross]

Depends how much risk you are willing to take, and who you are batteling of course. Lanturn makes terror for UU Grass Knots getting only 80 base damage including his weakness, as compared to 135 Psychic base damage from the same Starmie.

[Syberia]

Originally Posted by Fat X-Act

It's alright, no worries. I just thought it was kinda funny, actually. Don't worry about it.

This list is not a bad idea at all. I've actually found myself asking the exact same question you answered before. More out of curiosity than a need to know, but still...

[TVboyCanti]

Originally Posted by Fat X-Act

But the opponent can switch into a grass-resisting Pokemon.


Yep, I took Shedinja into account. :)

Figured you would, just thought I'd mention it.

I am aware that people will switch into knot/ball making it NVE, but it would be nice if we had multiple statistics comparing knot/ball damage when looking at all targets(your statistics), and looking at nuetral/SE targets, as well as purely SE targets. There wouldn't be any harm in showing these statistics, unless you are predetermined to prove that Energy Ball are Grass Knot are the same. That wouldn't be very scientific, but I doubt very much that that was your reason for dredging these statistics (I'm guessing from your other projects that it's just your desire to provide for the community and your affinity for statistics in general).

If finding these statistics is too time consuming, then just forget I asked, it's really just a matter of curiosity.

[Thunderpup]

When you multiply damage (as in super effective) a small amount of BP difference can become more noticeable, unlike resisted hits, where slight differences in BP is more negligible. (I don't know why I thought of this, but looking over this again, it seems trivial, but if someone else sees what I saw when I thought of this, maybe it will help you?)

I would like to see some calculations on purely non-resisted hits, but to be honest, it would just be eye-candy. If one wants to see how much damage each will do to the main threats in OU, it would be better to just enter it in a damage calculator oneself.

[Kibbles]

I'd almost say comparing Grass Knot and Energy Ball is an unfair comparison. Grass Knot is used specifically on Pokemon such as Celebi, many Roserade sets, and the likes for certain aspects to the team, Celebi to get rid of Bulky Waters for Heatran to attempt to create a situation for a mid-late game sweep for Garchomp, Lucario, Deoxys-S, Gyarados, and other highly-used sweepers. Energy Ball is used in stuff such as Little Cup, and UU/NU at times because it seems like the weight of Pokemon is lower there than in the OU/Ubers Metagame.

I'm not critisizing or anything along those lines. I'm just saying that certain teams and situations call for Grass Knot, and others for Energy Ball.

[Aldaron*]

What about Pokemon that you expect to hit with a Grass Attack?

This list would be:

Dugtrio, Gyarados, Hippowdon, Mamoswine, Milotic, Starmie, Suicune, Swampert, Tyranitar and Vaporeon?

I guess I should be including a few neutral threats (besides Gyara which is already included) like:

Azelf, Cresselia, Deoxys-S, Dusknoir, Electivire, Gallade, Garchomp, Gliscor, Jolteon, Machamp, Snorlax, Spiritomb, Tentacruel, and Weavile.

I guess if I had to choose specifically from this list for neutral Pokemon I might leave something like say Celebi in against, it would be Cresselia, Dusknoir, Garchomp, Gliscor, Jolteon (to break subs), Machamp, Snorlax, and Tentacruel.

[Aldaron*]

Yea I figured, it always "seemed" to me that Grass Knot was better on average in OU than Energy Ball.

The only Pokemon I might want to hit as hard as possible that resists Grass would probably be Bronzong, as it is just a 2* resist and doesn't have any recovery and usually needs to be brought down to like 80% to be OHKOed or 2HKOed by various specific threats.

[X-Act]

What do you mean by power? Isn't Energy Ball's power 80 no matter what?

[Aldaron*]

I am assuming he means he is averaging out the final result, like 160 BP for Hippo, 320 BP for Swampert, 40 BP for Bronzong etc. etc.

[TVboyCanti]

Hey guys figured I'd post the average damage for knot vs ball in OU when not very effective pokemon are taken out of the picture. This is only for the 45 pokemon that X-Act considers OU based on the June stats. I did not include all the UU and NU and crap that is never seen in OU, because that would skew the statistics and make them less helpful for people playing OU. It's also very time consuming for me.

Average damage for Energy Ball against the 25 pokemon that do not resist grass and/or are weak to it, out of 45 total OU pokemon: 112

Average damage for Grass Knot against the same 25 pokemon: 120

And the average damage for Energy Ball against the 8 pokemon that are weak to grass: 180

Average damage of Grass Knot against the same pokemon: 200

I'll do the same thing but with BL pokes included later.

[X-Act]

June's statistics say that Grass Knot has an average of 79.3 move power, down from the 79.9 move power in May.

Considering Grass Knot versus Energy Ball hitting against only the 46 OU Pokemon, Grass Knot would have an average of 82.2 move power against the 80 of Energy Ball.

Against the top 100 Pokemon that are not OU (basically the Pokemon from 50 to 100 with Donphan and Ninjask added), Grass Knot would have an average of 74.8 move power against the 80 of Energy Ball.

[Taylor]

Grass Knot's average damage against the 46 OU Pokemon may be unsignifcant, on average, but it still shows that it inflicts higher damage generally more than Energy Ball. On the other hand, when we include the top 100 Pokemon altogether and Energy Ball's damage it deals is higher than that of Grass Knot's average, it doesn't influence anything to me personally - I'd rather hit the top 46 OU Pokemon slightly harder more often than the top 100 for reasons that are understandably obvious.

[X-Act]

Yeah. I posted the post above yours to show that Grass Knot is the better option against overused Pokemon, while Energy Ball is the better option against underused Pokemon.

[Aldaron*]

But what about the UU Pokemon you are expected to hit, like all the ones SE and certain obvious neutral ones?