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Rock climb is stronger, has more PP and a chance to confuse, at the cost of accuracy. I don't get why its hated on so much.

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Both Strength and Rock Climb are severely outclassed by another move: Return. Return has more PP than both of them (even though PP has no relevance in competitive battling) a max of 102 power, and no chance to miss.

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Plenty of reasons:

  • Strength has been around as an HM for longer so people are more used to seeing it hence the bias
  • A 10 base power boost costs 15 accuracy. Not a great trade off. Were the moves of very high base power it would be over looked (Hydro Pump or Fire Blast for example) but it's not.
  • It's a Normal type move meaning it's super effective against nothing. As far as normal moves go, Return is generally preferred anyway.
  • PP might be higher but most matches end / Pokemon faints way before either PP runs out, so it's not that big a deal.

Sorry for format mistakes and other grammatical errors, on the phone right now.

Edit: As for confusion, that is barely worth it, either: there's only a 20% chance to confuse the opponent. Once confused, the opponent still has a chance of attacking, and if it switches out, it loses its confusion. Therefore, it's not as effective in practice as it sounds on paper. A 20% chance means there's 1/5 probability of confusion getting triggered every turn, not that confusion will definitely be triggered at least once if used five times in a row. Overall, it's not reliable to begin with due to the low chance of triggering confusion, but the low accurate compounds the unreliability of the move.

Edit 2: Inflicting confusion itself is about 20%. Once confused the opponent has a 33% chance of hitting itself. (Thanks KRLW890 and sumwun for pointing that out)

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Caan you mention confusion too?
Confusion has a 1/3 chance of being triggered every turn. But other that that, agreed.
Isn't 20% = 20/100 = 1/5?
Or is there other math involved in this? I took the most obvious conclusion, but if you're certain it's 1/3 I'll edit that in. Thanks (:
Confusion has a 1/5 chance of being inflicted and a 1/3 chance of activating each turn.
Thanks sumwun, that clarified it. I thought he meant affliction was 33%.

@KRLW890, I said triggering confusion, not hitting itself due to confusion. Sorry for the confusion.