#163-164: Hoothoot and Noctowl

Starters and generic rodent done? Cool, now to the birdy!

Hoothoot was the first shiny (other than the Red Gyarados) that I ever saw, and I caught it. I saw it was different and didn't know about shinies at the time (this was pre-broadband in our household), and nobody at school really knew, but then one guy managed to find out and we thought that it was pretty neat. All in all, however, this Pokemon has some dreadful stats: 60HP is ok, 30 in both physicals, 36 special attack and 56 special defence, with a pokey 50 speed. Normal/flying is ok, I guess, as is insomnia as an ability (prevents you from being put to sleep), keen eye also isn't too bad as it prevents accuracy loss, whilst the hidden ability of tinted lens, which doubles the power of 'not very effective moves', so that's actually rather good and can be well combined with choice items, I guess. Another positive is that it evolves at level 20...

Small, round, possibly bounces on the ground...

Leveling up time! I'm not going to insult you with tackle and growl being defined, but foresight allows you to hit ghosts with normal moves as well as reverting the foe's evasion to normal. Hypnosis will allow you to put the foe to sleep (60% of the time based on accuracy), whilst peck is a base 35 flying physical move and allows you to hit anyone. Uproar is a base 90 normal special move (blocked by soundproof) that prevents anyone from going to sleep whilst it's in operation (3 turns). Reflect boosts the team's defence by 100% (except across a triple battle team where it is 50% and it can be broken by brick break in all cases) with the effects lasting five turns. Technically at this point you could just evolve, but one level later you can get confusion, a base 50 psychic special move with the chance to confuse the foe.

Echoed voice is an interesting move: it's a base 40 normal physical move (also blocked by soundproof) that bypasses substitutes and gains power with successive uses up to a maximum of 200 and gets STAB here. Take down is next, a base 90 physical normal move, 85 accuracy and recoil. Air slash is arguably much better at base 75 as a flying special move, 95 accuracy and the chance to flinch, and can hit anyone in the battle. Zen headbutt is interesting as a fairly rare psychic physical move, with base 80 power and again the chance to flinch the foe, and this is followed by the move synchronoise, which hits hard as a psychic special move, base 120 power, and only damages adjacent Pokemon that share a type with the user, which is a little awkward, and despite only being base 80, extrasensory is probably more useful since it just acts as a psychic special move with a flinch chance. Psychoshift transfers a status condition from the user to the target, whilst roost offers decent healing to the user at the cost of the flying-type for a while. Finally there's dream eater, which hits as base 100 psychic (what's with all the psychic moves here?) only on sleeping foes, healing the user based on the damage sustained by the target.

You get some fairly standard TM moves, including hidden power, sunny day, rain dance, return/frustration, psychic and shadow ball. Aerial ace comes in, as does facade (which YouTube battler Pimpnite runs on his Noctowl with psychoshift to reasonable effect). Thief, round and steel wing all crop up, as well as rest, sleep talk, substitute and, naturally, fly.

Breeding can give agility and defog, feint attack, mirror move, feather dance is good for crippling the foe's attack with 2 stages drop each use, night shade hurts the victim based on the level of the user, sky attack remains a hyper powered variant of fly with a flinch chance, boosted critical hit ratio, ability to hit anyone and a charging turn, and wing attack comes up again as a good old standard, along with whirlwind, which acts like dragon tail in that it has reduced priority and knocks the foe out of the battle but unlike dragon tail it doesn't damage the foe. Moving on to the tutor, they can randomly give you heat wave, hyper voice (same type and power as uproar but no secondary effects other than bypassing substitutes and destroying background rocks), magic coat, recycle, sky attack (again), snore, tailwind, uproar and zen headbutt.

After level 20, I would seriously consider evolving in an almost emergency situation as Noctowl is a lot better: 100 HP, 50 in both physical stats, 76 special attack, 96 special defence and 70 speed, making it a decent special wall. Same types and abilities. The only other differences are the additions of hyper beam and giga impact to the TM list. That is all.

In truth, I think this pairing has been greatly boosted in my recollection due to that early shiny and the very good usage of Noctowl by Pimpnite on YouTube, but it really is a little indifferent. The moveset is ok at best unless you run gimmicks or weird strategies, as there isn't too much coverage other than normal, flying and psychic.

Sultry and refined... and an owl...

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