Does a burn affect Strength Sap, or is it just stat changes?

Question

I know burn cuts attack, but does strength sap become affected by that as it isn't affecting the stats, but rather base damage.

This is Sword And Shield btw.

Answer 1

Strength Sap takes into account changes to the raw stat number caused by Transform, Power Split, or Power Trick, as well as boost changes such as Swords Dance, Charm, or previous uses of Strength Sap itself, but nothing else. Choice Band, Light Ball, Huge Power...all of those modify the attack stat, but none of them factor into the number that Strength Sap gets to read out. Burn isn't an alteration to the attack stat at all, and certainly doesn't factor in.

Comments

I'd like to second this answer with the following PS! battle replays as proof:

https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen7ubers-1086373585
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen7ubers-1086374322

Note that "50 Attack" Smeargle regained an equal percentage of HP (~40%) in both cases, regardless of whether the opposing "100 Attack" Smeargle was burned or not.

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This was done in Gen 7 Ubers for convenience as Smergle is currently unreleased for Gen 8. However, as I found no evidence that the move was modified between the two generations, I feel the proofs can be accepted as holding true for Gen 8 as well

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Thanks!