"The weather multiplier for fast moves: a straight 1.2x, or what the game tells you?"

#PokemonGO: IntroductionUnlike mechanics such as STAB, Niantic is transparent about the magnitude of the bonus conferred by having weather on your side - it's displayed on a Pokemon's stat page as a blue addend to their moves' base powers. For charge moves, it's obvious that the weather multiplier is 1.2x (e.g., Overheat, a 160 power move, gets +32 power in weather). All charge moves have a power divisible by 5, so there's no ambiguity.Fast moves, on the other hand, do not all have power divisible by 5. The bonus displayed on the stat page is rounded to the nearest integer, so a move like Vine Whip with 7 base power only gets +1 while a move like Bullet Seed with 8 base power gets +2.The question is, does this actually happen, or is the game lying to you?MethodsThe specific problem at hand is, when damage is calculated, whether fast moves have their power multiplied by 1.2x or if they use the power displayed by the game. In order to test this, we need to select a fast move with base power indivisible by 5. We then need to select a matchup where 1.2x power does a different amount of damage than in-game displayed power.For this experiment, I chose the following scenario:Vs. Porygon raid bossL40, 13+ atk IV Machamp as attackersCounter as fast moveCloudy weather (Fighting-type bonus)This scenario had the following notable advantages:Counter does 21 damage with in-game power (14) but 22 damage with 1.2x power (14.4)Machamp can solo Porygon using only CounterI could outsource the video work to someone else (u/biowpn)I then analyzed the video, counting the number of times that Counter was used, and comparing it to the expected number of uses assuming the different damage breakpoints.AnalysisOn 4 separate watchings of the recording, I counted 139, 140, 140, and 140 uses of Counter.If Counter did 21 damage (14 power), Machamp would require 143 uses to win.If Counter did 22 damage (14.4 power), Machamp would require 137 uses to win.So the problem here is that under no circumstance does it make sense for Machamp to require 140 uses of Counter to win. Either Machamp should win in exactly 137 uses or exactly 143 uses, not somewhere in between. There were several potential causes of this error:u/biowpn didn't use the correct Machamp as specified, using some that would meet the 14.4 power, 22 damage breakpoint and some that didn't. This would support the 1.2x power hypothesis, however.Some Counter uses were refunded due to in-battle glitches. On further review, each time a Machamp fainted (3 times), a Counter use appeared to be refunded on Porygon's HP bar. This glitch has been well documented with charge moves that were queued prior to an attacker fainting but not "hitting" until after the attacker faints. This would also support the 1.2x power hypothesis.I just miscounted 4 consecutive times.ConclusionIt is likely that the displayed weather boost for fast moves is incorrect for moves with power indivisible by 5. The weather boost is actually 1.2x when applied to damage calculations. This can ideally be corroborated or refuted with further study.Thanks for reading. via /r/TheSilphRoad http://ift.tt/2BZwxhQ