#35 + #36 + #173: Clefairy, Clefable and another baby, Cleffa...

Oh no... not again... I hate baby Pokemon, and like Pichu, Cleffa was added in generation two, and evolves by high friendship, which is more annoying since this requires not letting it die, which is no mean feat when it sucks this much...

Why? Just WHY?

Cleffa is terrible: it looks like Princess Rosalina from Mario Galaxy/Smash Bros WiiU had a pink Luma and beat it. It has a silly little tail, it's ears and legs look like the points on the star, with a silly little thing at the top... So it looks rather pathetic, and then we go to the abilities: cute charm can mess up opposite genders that make contact, infatuating them and making them paralysed by love 50% of the time, whereas the other option is magic guard, which is actually good. Magic guard prevents damage from weather (like sandstorm and hail, not thunder of course), and it also negates the damage from life orb whilst allowing the power boost, poison and burn can still be status effects (burn still drops attack) but they don't take the sustained damage per turn, so this could work with astonish but still leaves you open to massive venoshock damage, and recently paralysis now works properly again.

The hidden ability is friend guard, which reduces damage to allies in multi-battles, so it's only worth it for multi-battles and running a support set.

Stat-wise you get decent HP (50) and special defence (55), but truly atrocious speed (which actually is good for trick room runs). Attack and physical defence suck badly (25 and 28), so attacks wise use the special stat (40). With the changes in generation 6, Cleffa is now pure fairy-type, which works quite nicely since lots of people underestimate them since they don't quite get the coverages yet (avoid poison and steel, but fighting, dark and bug are ineffective, and dragon can't touch you).

Looking at the learnset, if you want an attacker, then just cry in a corner... Pound sucks, especially since it's physical, and you don't get anything else attacking by level up until 16 with magical leaf. You do, however, get some support stuff like charm (lowers the enemy attack by two stages), encore (traps them to the same move, with some exceptions, and if you couple this with torment or disable, you can make them struggle, but at the very least you can stop them from doing anything they would want to do for three turns), sweet kiss causes confusion (except if they have own tempo), sing (low chance of putting your foe to sleep) and copycat, which just copies the last move used on it.

TM wise, you get some decent options, like psyshock, which uses your special attack against their defence, toxic, hidden power (which is always interesting), sunny day and solar beam, and fire blast (or the less powerful but more reliable flamethrower), psychic, shadow ball and round all as special options (other than toxic). You get some physical options, but ignore them for now since you have NO physical power... Instead, just look at stuff like protect, light screen (reduces damage from special attacks on your team, so setup and swap out, maybe), safeguard (protects the team from status conditions for 5 turns), reflect (like a physical version of lights screen), confide (drops opposition special attack by a stage), grass knot (drops heavier opponents harder) and substitute (uses your HP to make a substitute that takes the hit in your place, or the place of a baton passes in 'mon). You can also get thunderwave.

Breeding wise, there is fake tears (drops their special defence), wish (heals the Pokemon in play when it comes into effect by half the HP of the user), aromatherapy (heals status conditions on your team), splash (which does literally NOTHING!), heal pulse and belly drum. There is a huge array of options from the tutor including wonder rooms (swaps defence and special defence stats for a while), recycle and a few other status things, as well as some OK special attacks like uproar, hypervoice, water pulse, shockwave, signal beam and icy wind.

Moving on (if you're friendly or just catch it in the wild) comes Clefairy, which is of course now a fairy. You keep the same abilities, and get some nice stat boosts, giving pretty good HP again up to 70, speed more then doubles (but still sucks at 35), special attack is now 60, with 65 special defence, and the physical attacks are now just poor, rather than very poor (45/48 for attack/defence).

This is the best looking of the line, which is rather damning... Just terrible...

You now suddenly get a lot of moves made available by level up, so you could now more focus on damage output if you really want. Moves like disarming voice and moon blast (the best fairy move, hits very hard, animated pretty well, can lower enemy special attack) carry STAB and are special. I want to give special mention to stored power, which on first look looks awful: a base 20 move that's off type (psychic): why bother, right? Stored power can hit like a train if you let it off with something that has fully setup or been fully setup by a baton pass team: for each stat boost you have, it gains power, so it can max out at 860 (so this means with speed, defence, whatever boosts, you hit harder, so this is great if you're tanking it up).

Looking at other level up moves, you get some physical options if you must, such as meteor mash at higher levels (this is pretty decent, really, but you won't use it), double slap is dire beyond belief, and wake-up slap, which hits hard, and double the base 70 on sleeping targets, waking them in the process (unless you kill them), oh, and there's body slam, which can paralyse. Further options present themselves with cosmic power (boosts both defensive stats and gives a nice boost to stored power), metronome (which is a risk since it uses a random move from a nearly exhaustive list, there are exceptions of course), healing wish (the ultimate sacrifice to bring in and fully heal a party Pokemon at the end of the turn), follow me (making the user the centre of attention as a priority move, but doesn't stop pursuit on a switching Pokemon and if you get abducted by sky drop then the targetting goes back to normal), and after you (makes the target go straight after you), as well as defence curl, but you should use cosmic power instead, really...

TMs are pretty much the same (thunder/bolt, ice beam/blizzard, dazzling gleam being another good fairy move), and you can get strength and rock smash if you're just using it in the overworld. The tutor list is incredibly extensive, but other than the covered ones, they are physical, so I don't know... You could use drain punch? Since you can have substitute you could use focus punch? Endeavour is basically the only other real option, except maybe stealth rock...

Moving on up (not to the East side...) to Clefable by use of a moon stone, and you get another raft of decent boosts, probably more than this deserves, really. HP is now 95, supported by 73 phsyical and 90 special defence, but the 70 attack and 95 (pretty good) special attack aren't supported too well by the 60 speed.

What's with the new frills? Why is this cute? WHO THINKS THIS IS CUTE?

Evolution means no more moves in the movepool, so learn everything as Clefairy and then evolve for the boosts and the new hidden ability unaware (or stay as you were, use eviolite and look a little cuter...). Unaware means that you ignore their stat changes when calculating damage on attacks, whether positive or negative, so if you have this ability, don't bother lowering their attack or defence unless you're bailing to something else to take advantage of them. Unaware also doesn't affect stored power or punishment.

All in all, this one is for lower tiers, and offers some versatility, but doesn't really offer too much in anything. Not bad, but just too average for anything, really. Also, I don't really like the design, and I hate the baby Pokemon aspect: why add this in? It could be tempting to use it as a support Pokemon, or use cosmic power, wish, whatever, buff it up, take some hits and then ravage the opponent with stored power...

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