#52 + #53: Meowth and Persian

Now we have another one of the most well known Pokemon out there, the mascot of (and some may even say brains behind) Team Rocket.

Meowth is a pretty cool Pokemon in the anime, the only one that speaks English, and he gives some sass, being generally entertaining and a weird counterpart to Ash's Pikachu. In the games you can use him and an odd exploit to become super rich.

It's kinda cute, but I think it'd try to mug me if I stroked it...

Following on nicely from Diglett and Dugtrio we have another stupidly fast pairing (not quite as fast but still pretty quick). Meowth's best stat is definitely the speed at base 90, with all the other stats being mediocre 40s, with the exception of 45 attack and 35 defence. Pretty underwhelming so far, so let's think about abilities... Pickup has nice utility in the field, finding random items whilst walking around (better chance of better items at higher levels), and since generation five it now allows Pokemon to reclaim used or thrown items at the end of a turn. Technician is arguably the pick of the abilities as it gives a 50% boost to moves of power 60 or lower, so things like mach punch and quick attack have a sudden level of utility. The hidden ability, unnerve, is decent, I suppose, so it shuts down things like a belly drum Slurpuff that relies on its sitrus berry consumption to double its speed as well as healing the health lost to make it go nuclear (more on this in a distant future post). You get to be the most vanilla of typings as a normal-type.

Moves wise and you get a lot of ones 60 or under that could make use of technician. You really need to consider this when picking moves, since something with base 70 will miss out on the boost and could easily be surpassed by a weaker move. You start with scratch, normal-type and thus STAB and also technician can apply here, but the move still sucks. Growl can be used to drop the foe's attack by a stage, which means that they'll just kill you anyway that turn because of the actually woeful base 35 defence. Focus on bite as a nice coverage option: base 60 with a chance of flinching, dark-typing isn't too bad, but you get technician as well, so this is better than crunch in a way (you don't get crunch by level up anyway). Despite a low base power, fake out gets STAB and technician boost, and will cause flinching, BUT it is only viable on the first turn in battle.

Fury swipes is an odd one, since it can hit 2 to 5 times with 18 base each time, and will get STAB and technician, so this could be very good for basically the first time ever. Screech will lower the foe's speed by a decent two stages, and feint attack will pretty much always hit, with the technician boost on the base 60 power, this becomes pretty nice as a dark attack, so you have to decide between this and bite (with the chance of flinching). The last move before the evolution level of 28 is taunt, which means that the foe can only use attacking moves. This could go great for killing a setup Pokemon, stopping a potential baton pass chain or killing something which only has traps and screens by struggling or switching. Decent utility there. Further moves include pay day (base 40 and throws coins that equals five times the users level, which boosts with amulet coin, happy hour and the prize money o-power), slash (good but no technician), nasty plot (double stage boost to special attack so is basically worthless here), assurance (can get technician boost like bite and feint attack BUT won't get both technician and the conditional doubling together), captivate (gender based but can lower the foe's special attack by two stages), night slash (generally a good move, but if you have technician then go with bite or feint attack or whatever), and feint (base 30 but gets technician and STAB and can hit past protect).

Shadow ball, thunder(bolt) and hidden power on the TM list could make nasty plot viable since you didn't get any special moves by level up despite attack only just out-doing special attack by stats (even when you evolve). Round and echoed voice offer decent power as special STAB moves, both also getting technician boosts. Dark pulse is a nice special dark move that is base 70, so no boosts and no STAB but a chance at flinching and goes well if you want to be special based or have one of the other abilities. Dig and U-turn allow for interesting physical coverages or utility, and you can also carry retaliate and act as a revenge killer (like my Terrakion) since the 70 base doubles if a teammate was killed on the previous turn. Payback and aerial ace are decent ideas, as are STAB return and facade. Other move choices include the general array of TM moves like torment and toxic, as well as dream eater (but nothing to put them to sleep), rest/sleep talk, and shadow claw.

Foul-play, iron tail and punishment are the zirconia in the rough (not really good enough to be diamonds) from the egg moves list, but the tutor is a busy man with a lot of moves available, too many to really go into, but several do fit with technician like water pulse, so consider a trip.

Upon evolving, the speed goes to a nice 115, with the other stats at 65 other than attack (70) and defence (60). This isn't too bad, but you don't really hit hard enough to sweep. You'll need to consider secondary effects on the lower powered moves that get technician boosts. As you may have guessed, Persian keeps technician and unnerve, but pickup is lost to limber (cannot be paralysed, so not bad, but technician is still the best option).

Just don't hurt me! All I have is a 10p coin... Wait, why did you throw it at me?

New moves coming in include the fairly powerful play rough (fairy-type with 90 base), switcheroo (allows you to swap items with your foe, so you could take a really horrible item and swap it onto them, or whatever). Other new moves: swift (60 base normal attack that basically never misses and gets technician boost), power gem (rock special attack with 80 base, which is an interesting choice for coverage) and that's it for levelling.

Going for the TMs which we didn't have before then you could waste your time with hyper beam and giga impact, with nothing else to really write home about that wasn't there before. You may as well go to the tutor to plug the deficiencies, going with stuff like shockwave and icy wind.

All in all, this family isn't brilliant. The saving grace that makes it potentially worthwhile is the ability technician, which covers up for the rather weak attack stats. The defences aren't bad per se, and fit well with the decent HP. Speed it terrific, but you can't live on that alone, so with the right ability you could make a go of it. However, a good use would be using pay day at level 100 with an amulet coin and the money o-power to just farm some coins in wild battles, for example.

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