The description for the move Swords Dance says it "raises Attack by two stages". My questions is, how much is a 'stage'? Is it a fixed sum, or a multiplier (like the Choice Band) or something?

As the subject of this posting implies, I'm trying to judge the relative merits of using a CB with my phys sweeper as opposed to either Swords Dance or BPing Curse or something. But these 'stages' aren't making the comparison very straightforward. Any help?

The stage is 1.5 iirc.

As in you start at lets say 100 Atk. You use Howl(increase by one stage) and you'll go to 150. You multiply 100 by 1.5. Swords Dance, in a nutshell, doubles Attack after just one usage.

Whether to use Swords Dance or CB depends on the pokemon. If it is a pokemon with Staying power that you won't need to switch around like crazy, go with Swords. If it is less durable pokemon that is fast, then slap a CB on it.

Exceptions to the case are pokemon like CB Rhydon, Metagross, and other very slow yet defensive pokemon with very nice attack.

You can't look at it as "which gives me more attack" or "this Pokemon is fast so CB it".

You have to look at the metagame and how it applies to that Pokemon.

For example, Heracross. It has some very nice resists and will make most Pokemon switch out on it. It makes for an excellent choice bander but the fact that a lot of Pokemon switch out on it gives it a prime opportunity to get a Swords Dance in.

Then whatever comes in will be like "crap, I gotta kill this thing" and try to finish it off while Heracross uses Endure to get a salac boost. It can then proceed to sweep teams with +2 attack and +1 speed.

Tyranitar is on the rise lately so Endure Heracross is getting rare these days but it's still worth a try. Even without getting a Swords Dance or salac boost in, it can still hit stuff hard with STAB Megahorn.

So anyway, my point here is that you need to look at the metagame and how the Pokemon functions in that metagame when deciding between Choice Band and Swords Dance. Another thing to note about Heracross is that Megahorn doesn't have a lot of resists.

Even Pokemon who take NVE damage from Megahorn won't like switching in on a CB STAB'd attack. A CB Return is different - where you have Ghost immunity and it's not as strong as a Megahorn, as seeing that there's not a lot of Normal type Pokemon that pack as much attack as Heracross.

I've made this post a lot longer than I originally intended to so I will press 'Submit' now. Thanks for reading and I hope that my rambling got my point across.

This is what I should have said