#161-162: Sentret and Furret

Ok, so starters out of the way, now to the generic rodent!

Oh my... what is this? Sentret... Wow... 35HP, 46 attack, 34 defence, 35 special attack, 45 special defence and just 20 speed! Other than operating in a trick room, is there anything here? Run away is an awful ability, keen eye prevents accuracy being lowered, and the hidden ability, frisk, allows you to view all opposing Pokemons' held items. You're normal-type.

Macho, macho squirrel! He wants to be... a macho squirrel!

Now to the moves... The level list is surprisingly long. Scratch is the starter, base 40 normal physical, and you also get foresight, which resets the foe's evasiveness to normal, as well as stopping the ghost-type immunity to fighting and normal moves. Defence curl buffs the defence, and we all know quick attack as base 40 normal physical move that has a single stage priority boost. Fury swipes hits up to 5 times as a normal physical move with each hit hitting at base 18, and so is a possible sash breaker. That covers up to evolution, but there's a fair bit more... Helping hand has 5 stages of priority and buffs the power of an adjacent ally's move by 50%. Follow me, meanwhile, makes you the centre of attention as a +2 priority move, so moves that fall below this in priority will hit the user, rather than allies. You then get slam: base 80 normal physical but only 75 accuracy.

Moving swiftly on, you can learn rest to put yourself to sleep and heal up, and then this is followed by the base 80 dark physical move sucker punch, which will hit with priority but only if the foe is preparing a damage dealing move. Amnesia buffs your special defence, and the boosts from this can be passed on with the next move, baton pass. Me first is borderline useless on a Sentret unless in a trick room, since it requires attacking before the foe, stealing their move and bouncing it back at them with increased power, and finally we get hyper voice, a base 90 normal special move that can hit all adjacent opponents and hit through a substitute.

You get the standard array of TM moves, with the inclusion of hone claws, ice beam, solar beam (with sunny day), flamethrower, thunderbolt, shadow ball (huh?), dig, brick-break, shadow claw, facade, retaliate, charge beam (less power than thunderbolt and buffs your special attack at a decent probability), grass knot (you weigh virtually nothing so this should be a very good damage dealer), U-turn (to duck back out of battle with a decent base 70 bug physical damage output behind it), power-up punch, secret power, cut and surf. There are some ace moves here, which is a problem since you have no power to use them with.

You can breed in assist, which is interesting as it picks a random move to use from any other Pokemon in your party, so since you have no issue with movepool here, surely this would be better placed on another Pokemon to draw from Sentret? Hmm... You can get captivate (lowers the special attack of the foe if it is opposite gender from you and isn't oblivious), charm (same as captivate but on a physical side), covet (like a normal-type thief), double-edge (base 120 physical normal with huge recoil), focus energy (boosts critical chances but you'll be dead before this really happens), iron tail has to be chain bred in and so is pretty much not worth the effort since it has poor 75 accuracy, last resort (I hate this move, base 140, recoil, can only be used when you have nothing else), pursuit hits harder on switching foes (dark physical base 40 with no priority, but if the foe is switching then it will hit them first and hit as base 80), slash (base 70 normal physical with good critical chance) and reversal (hits harder as a physical fighting move the less HP you have).

Tutor moves! I'm just going to list these since there are billions! Aqua tail, covet, fire punch, focus punch, helping hand, hyper punch, ice punch, iron tail, knock off, last resort, shockwace, snore, super fang, thunder punch, trick, uproar and water pulse.

Sentret has an amazing movepool but no stats. Let's see what evolution does to this... Furret comes in at level 15 with big boosts to everything other than the special stats, which only get a boost of 10 for each. HP goes up by 50, physical stats go up by 30 and speed goes up by 70, leading to: 85HP, 76 attack, 64 defence, 45 special attack, 55 special defence and 90 speed. You stay as a mono-normal with the same poor abilities. You also keep the base level and TM sets, but you also add the higher power versions of some moves you had before, like thunder, blizzard and flamethrower, hyper beam, giga impact and focus blast also step in, along with strength and rock smash.

Why do so many Pokemon do the whole 'stare at the moon in wonder pose?

With no other changes, we may as well wrap this one up. Furret actually has some halfway decent stats (I mean halfway), but with such a cool moveset, it does seem like wasted potential. Brilliant moveset, awful stats and abilities, not really worth it unless you can really think of a good plan.

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