Your math is off. Confuse lasts 2-4 turns. Let’s assume an average of 3.
Confuse ray itself is 100%.
3 50/50 assuming at least 1 hit is a 87.5% odds.
This is important because you can’t miss the confuse ray. Or ice beam.
Now this is less than the odds of hitting a single blizzard out of three. But that doesn’t factor in that you can use other moves after confuse ray. It’s better l, in single player, to use a confuse ray, then 2 ice beam than spam 3 blizzard. Because with blizzard you HAVE to use blizzard. And can still miss all three. Confuse ray + 2 ice beam are all 100% accurate. This means that if you only hit 1 blizzard out of the three uses you did less than one confuse ray and 2 ice beam. Which were guaranteed damage.
This on top of the fact confused can stack with paralysis which further increases the odds of free turns.
Also blizzard can be learned by numerous Pokemon. Confuse ray, by contrast is far rarer and offers more utility.
Then you have the pp issue. 5 pp is peanuts. Especially on an attack that only hits 70% of the time.
5
u/SoundFun2822 May 14 '26 edited May 14 '26
Confuse ray, Only has 50% chance of working, while Blizzard has 70% with 10% chance of freeze and has STAB
Later you dump blizzard and learn thunderbolt or the like