#82: Farfetch'd

Finally! We get to the greatest Pokemon the series has to offer! Or is that a little... Farfetch'd! HAHA!

52HP, 65 attack, 55 defence, 58 special attack, 62 special defence and 60 speed basically makes for a slightly below mediocre Pokemon. At least with Weedle and those other train wrecks we've seen before you could evolve them...

Farfetch'd gets normal/flying-typing (not great, really), and three abilities: keen eye (lowers the chances of foes appearing in the wild, as well as preventing accuracy being lowered), inner focus (prevents flinching), and defiant (hidden, when it has stats lowered by enemies, the attack goes up two stages). There's nothing amazing here, but nothing per se bad.

This is my leak. Without it, I am useless! Without me, it is useless! With it, I'm pretty useless anyway!

Brave bird is a powerful move, but has heavy recoil (physical flying). Poison jab may not have STAB but hits for base 80 with a chance to poison, peck is a physical flying move (base 35 and no bonus), and sand attack lowers the foe's accuracy. Leer lowers the foe's defence by a stage, and fury cutter is a physical bug-type attack (base 40 but gets better with successive uses). Fury attack is basically worth ignoring, and aerial ace is a standard good move (base 60, perfect accuracy physical STAB). Knock off is knock off (dark base 65 physical that removes the foe's held item), and slash is a pretty good option with base 70 normal physical damage and a high critical hit ratio. Air cutter is special flying with flinch chance.

Swords dance boosts attack by two stages, agility boosts speed, night slash is like a dark version of slash, acrobatics is weak if you hold something but better without a held item (55 base, 110 without item, and is flying physical), feint hits through protect and other things whilst lifting their effects but for very low damage, false swipe will leave the enemy with 1HP (well, it cannot kill them but it doesn't just hack them all the way down as it only hits as base 40 physical normal), and air slash hits for base 75 with good critical hit chance as a special flying move.

The TM list is rather standard, but does offer facade, steel wing, retaliate, U-turn and both cut and fly. You can get quick attack, leaf blade and roost from breeding (but you don't really care about breeding this Pokemon, really), and the tutor offers covet, heat wave, last resort, sky attack, uproar, tailwind (for support) and iron tail.

If you want a verdict on this one: use it. Seriously, go ahead and make it an integral part of your team. Breed in revenge on a focus sash, or just learn acrobatics and get that doubled when the sash breaks, and inflict high damage for one turn, boosting your attack to the maximum by EV training. Failing that, throw it out as fodder for a free switch to a powerful retaliate killer. Just don't think of using Farfetch'd for any kind of normal team.

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