Damage Formula
Behind every hit, the game compares your lead's stats against the region's difficulty and works out how many enemies it kills per hour. This page explains what makes that number go up.
What you need to know
- A critical hit deals +75% damage (the Brutal Strike talent adds up to +5 points to that, reaching +80%). Crit chance is capped at 75%: even fully invested, you can't go higher.
- Area moves group up to 4 enemies at once. Only the aimed target takes full damage: the splash on the others is 80%, dropping to 64% with distance. One more body is not one more full kill.
- Luck-based multipliers (stats, grouping, type) have a cap: a perfect roll is worth at most about 3x a neutral one. Luck helps, but it isn't bottomless.
- Trainer talents sit outside that cap: they boost your pace on top of it, because they are progression available to everyone, not luck.
- In an at-level region, with a well-equipped lead (no talents), the reference pace is about 900 kills per hour, or 780 kills per hour once you count the time spent walking between kills.
Every move uses one of your stats
Every damaging move is either Physical or Special. A physical move uses your Attack against the enemy's Defense. A special move uses your Sp. Atk against the enemy's Sp. Def. The class belongs to the move, not to its type: Fire Punch is physical even though it is fire, and Hyper Beam is special even though it is normal.
This changes how you build a team. A pokemon with high Attack and low Sp. Atk gets a lot more out of physical moves, and the other way around too. The class shows on the TM tooltip before you buy it, on the card of the move you already have equipped, and on the teach screen where you pick which move to erase.
Support and healing moves have no class: they deal no damage.
What makes you hunt faster
| Factor | Effect |
|---|---|
| Level above the region | Cuts the time it takes to kill each enemy a lot |
| Trainer talents | Boost your pace on top of the luck cap |
| Type advantage | Super effective moves kill faster |
| Better IVs | Higher stats speed up the kill |
| Moveset and TM | Better moves raise your damage |
This kills/hour figure is then multiplied by your survival: if the enemy hits back too hard, your lead faints and loses time (and exp). See Enemy Threat & Fainting.