#16 - #18: Pidgey, Pidgeotto and Pidgeot

Do you ever get the sense that your honesty will upset people?

Pidgey, one of the early flying-types, a staple of many a team, especially when you get the HM for fly and don't have to backtrack manually. A nice, cute little bird. As the first evolution, it is actually pretty fast (above 50 base speed) and hits physically rather well since it's very early game (45 base attack). It doesn't offer much by way of bulk (40 HP and defence and 35 in both special categories), but it isn't so bad. Flying/normal typing means that it covers the weakness to fighting, yet it does suffer to electric and rock (stealth rock claims another victim) and ice, the latter of which you won't find in every battle.

If this is the Messiah, we're boned...

As far as abilities go, they aren't bad. Keen eye prevents it from having its accuracy lowered, and tangled feet means it gets more evasive if it's confused, so neither is great, but then neither is awful. Hidden ability big pecks means that it cannot have its defence lowered unless the foe has mold breaker or is Reshiram or Zekrom (and if you're against either of these two, Bird Jesus had better perform some miracles for you!).

Onto the moveset, and since you'll no doubt be levelling up to getting Pidgeotto pretty fast, I'll only go over what it gets early, and that's not much. Some decent moves come up later but they really don't work with the poor special attack other than the physical based wing attack and a few decent support moves. Best bets early on are to keep tackle (with STAB), quick attack (also with STAB), sand attack and gust, which uses special attack, so even with STAB it sucks.

As I previously mentioned, you get fly (which rocks since it's useful in the overworld, gets STAB and is phsyical) as well as aerial ace if you need that guarantee of hitting at reduced utility and power. You also get access to return, which goes well with being normal and physical, or, if you prefer your Pokemon to despise you, you can run frustration. U-turn, protect and facade also offer decent alternatives (the latter especially if you predict getting poisoned or burned or something), and digging into egg moves and ignoring the special attacks for now, you can get brave bird if you don't mind the recoil. Also available through breeding are steel wing and feint attack, along with the lovely pursuit (low damage, but hits opponents switching out with a little more clout than normal).

Pidgeotto gets nice consistent boosts across all stats, meaning that you hit a little harder and faster, nothing really amazing there. There's also no change to learnsets unless you're staying unevolved, in which case those later moves like wing attack are now not stupidly high level, and you may as well pick up the tutor move sky attack if you don't like fly (nice damage, less accuracy though, and very low PP, it does, however, hit anyone in multi-battles with a decent critical hit ratio).

Here we see Pidgeotto catching trainers unaware of how useless it really is...

Moving on and we get to Pidgeot, and considering the love this birdy gets, it really isn't worth anything. It's reasonably fast (101 speed), but it doesn't hit too hard (80 physical and 70 special). HP is decent but not reliable at 83 with frankly worthless defences (in the realm of 70) and this is all with the boosts it got into generation six! It still has the same decent movepool that lacks a bit of coverage, but now you'll certainly have access to wing attack, and you could run hurricane if you don't care about the 10 point deficit special attack carries and the frankly awful 70% accuracy.

How are those talons a) going to catch anything and b) not causing self-mutilation?

With ORAS, however, came a new thing, probably because of Twitch Plays Pokemon and the ludicrous Bird Jesus crap: Mega Pidgeot. I must say, I'm not sold...

So we get 121 speed? Not bad, but you can still get outrun by Mega Beedrill among many others (hell, Venusaur in the sun). The really stupid thing is, the attack doesn't change, which you would expect, but the special attack nearly doubles, shooting up from 70 to 135, which is pretty good. You also shed the mediocre abilities in favour of the interesting no guard, which will either make or break you...

Splash on a little colour, a silly headcrest and change it in weird ways, but I still won't use it

No guard, formerly the signature of Machop and family, means that any move you use, or any move used against you, will hit (unless they are protecting, but will still hit even if the Pokemon targeted is flying, digging, bouncing, diving, phantom forcing or whatever). So hurricane is now a good option, really, since you have special attack that can actually be used, and you also can't miss. Just a shame all those rock slides and thunders coming your way will kill you.

Overall, the immunities to ghost and ground are pretty sweet, but you have to be good to pull off Mega Pidgeot, and since I feel that the change to special attack, as well as the obvious fan service involved, I won't really use it. Regular Pidgeot is not great and is easily outclassed by the usurper Talonflame, and even as a mega, it just doesn't do it for me. You can't build it as a regular and then on the off-chance mega it, it has to be built for the mega, and so there's no question which Pokemon will be carrying that duty on the team. I guess you could use it as a defogger for Mega Beedrill or Mega Charizard and get rid of those contemptable stealth rock if you have them laid on you or you somehow survive coming in on them anyway, or be used as fodder for a devastating retaliate?

(All artwork presented by Ken Sugimori, taken from the Bulbapedia image archives)