Quoted By:
Hello class I'm here to redpill you on why Hyper Beam and - by extension, Dragonite - is bullshit.
Hyper Beam is an ability with considerable windup time that razes a beam of energy along the ground in front of Dragonite, dealing damage to any targets it hits. It also does additional damage based on the target's max HP.
Depending on how many Dragon Dances Dragonite has set up, the move's base power increases.
After 3 DDances, its base power is:
>352% Atk + 14 x (Level - 1) + 656
Assuming our Dragonite is a healthy level 13, this means Hyper Beam does a base 2217 damage.
Hyper Beam's bonus damage increases by 5% per DDance, starting at 5% and ending at 20%. So if our level 13 Dragonite uses Hyper Beam on a Lucario of the same level, it will deal 3478 damage (just over half of Lucario's HP).
This sounds horrifying, especially when you take into account that Dragonite can hit multiple targets with the move. Additionally, as our Dragonite is level 13, he blocks 50% of all damage taken while the beam is charging, and that's not even counting an extra 20% from Multiscale if he has that up (which only lasts 2.5 seconds but that actually covers the Beam's windup).
I have no idea if or how Drednaw's HP scales, but considering it has 4320 base HP and Dragonite's Hyper Beam + 3 DDances at level 8 does 1676 damage... it's not easy to challenge.
