3rd Gen What is the point of using Charge?

[maxson924]

Why not just use the electric move twice?

I understand that Nintendo made it also increase Special Defense in later gens, but it's learned so late by so many Pokemon in Gen 3 that there must be something I'm missing that makes it quite good here too. The closest reason I can think of is combining it with Helping Hand in a doubles battle, but that seems pretty flimsy.

 

[Brendino]

Like with any status moves, it really comes down to strategy. For example, if you've got a bunch of factors on your side (STAB, type advantage, critical hit), you could potentially do 600% the normal amount of damage from a single move. If you add Charge on top of that, it goes as high as 1200%. So, if you were to use a move like Volt Tackle right after Charge, it would deal damage of over 1400, compared to 120 in normal circumstances.

Like I said, it really comes down to strategy (and a bit of luck), but it could be useful. If critical hits weren't a thing, then there might not be much use to this move aside from saving PP on the attack, but I'm sure the idea of getting a double bonus on a single attack with a crit has led some people to using it.

 

[maxson924]

But you'll get the same multipliers twice if you use the move twice, right? And the critical hit will be twice as powerful, but you'll also only get half as many crits due to attacking half as often.

Although, this brings up another question, come to think of it: does Charge double the damage dealt or the move's base power?

 

[Elysieum]

But you'll get the same multipliers twice if you use the move twice, right? And the critical hit will be twice as powerful, but you'll also only get half as many crits due to attacking half as often.

Correct. And I agree with your point; using Thunder Shock twice is definitively more effective than using Charge and then Thunder Shock, since using Thunder Shock twice ensures that there's a chance to crit and paralyze on both hits. It takes some thought, but I believe Charge is effectively useless in Gen III. Perhaps if you were to time it perfectly with an opponent's blocking move or 1 turn evasion (such as Fly or Dive), but the chance of that happening successfully is negligible.

GameFreak was smart to add a Special Defense buff to it in Gen IV.

Although, this brings up another question, come to think of it: does Charge double the damage dealt or the move's base power?

Would the amounts not be equal? Using Charge means it is as if the second move had been used twice in succession. Or perhaps I don't understand damage calculation very well.

It's worth noting that there are a few moves that have no point in-game. We all know Splash, and more recently, Hold Hands was added. Maybe they considered it as more of a novelty thing for Electric Pokémon to do in the anime.

 

[maxson924]

"Would the amounts not be equal?"

Not quite. Base Power is only part of the formula. It's hard to see in plain text, but I'm not allowed to post links until I have five posts. Look up "damage formula" on bulbapedia if you need something with better formatting.


Damage = (((2 * Level + 10) / 250) * (atk/def) * Base Power + 2) * Modifier

Modifier = STAB * Type Effectiveness * Crit * other * random number between 0.85 and 1


Interestingly, from the few test numbers I plugged in, I actually got 2-5 less total damage dealt from Charge + Thunderbolt instead of Thunderbolt twice.

 

[illumine]

To be fair, sometimes moves get added later on as a bit of a balance thing, where rather than going for stronger moves than previous, they'll add less powerful or superfluous moves because what's already there is quite strong. You quite often notice Pokemon learning moves they needn't need at high levels. That they're concentrated might indicate that some of these Pokemon are quite powerful, though, which might make some sense because the electric type got a fairly underpronounced role in Gen. II, with Lugia, Ho-Oh, Entei and Suicune generally having more attention paid to them and promotion than Raikou and such. They might be worth looking through, in the game. In addition, in R/S/E, you might expect such filler to become more prominent and obvious.

 

[Sopheria]

Simplest answer: there is none in this generation. Adding the Special Defense increase as a secondary effect to the move gave it some utility, but for the most part, like Brendino said, all it does is save you some PP on the damage-dealing Electric-type attack in question. Just a poorly designed move, I guess.

 

[Sun]

It wasn't that bad, or at least I believe so. Stat boosting status moves like Calm Mind aren't accessed by Electric-type Pokemon from Gen I-III, Nasty Plot wasn't available back then so they can only resort to Charge, which wasn't a great move but still decent enough (for the Electric-type).

It's kind of a similar logic to setting up, the thing that sets it different from stat boosting moves is that it only powers up the user's offensive Electric move on the next turn.