This is the second post in the Underrated Prestigers series (first post here: Lanturn and Poliwrath).
Before Gen2 release, everyone knew that catching Rattata was not only useful for the Youngster medal, but with Bite / Hyper Beam it was actually a good neutral-matchup prestiger.
The bad news is that now Bite / Hyper Beam sucks. The main function of the non-STAB move Bite was to charge the energy bar, and now Bite only charges 4 energy per move, i.e. 8 EPS.
The good news is that Quick Attack is now really quick. 8 power and 10 energy in just 800 milliseconds => 10 DPS (12.5 DPS with STAB) and 12.5 EPS make it one of the best fast moves in the game.
So Raticate now has TWO good movesets for prestiging: Quick Attack / Hyper Beam and Quick Attack / Hyper Fang. (Dig still moderately sucks.)
Here is Raticate’s relative performance (in terms of combined time and revive efficiency) against some of the most common defenders gym sitters according to my CP efficiency calculator:
| Defender | Raticate performance range % | Benchmark (best prestiger) |
||
|---|---|---|---|---|
 | Vaporeon | 47-57% |   | Tangela/Parasect |
 | Snorlax | 67-78% |   | Poliwrath/Machamp |
 | Dragonite | 47-52% |  | Cloyster |
 | Blissey | 73-79% | | Machamp |
The numbers don’t look incredibly high, but they are referred to the very best specialized prestiger for that specific defender. Raticate has a decent to good CP efficiency against 4 of the Big 7, therefore being a good backup solution if better prestigers are rare (or much less common than Rattata) in your area. Worst case, a throwaway Raticate can be seen as a free revive + super potion.
Hyper Beam and Hyper Fang have similar performance, Hyper Fang may be slightly better due to its greater flexibility as a 2-bar charge move and the shorter duration that may allow to dodge more charge moves.
Final warnings:
- Do not use against Rhydon or Tyranitar because Rock resists Normal-type moves, and do not use against Gyarados or Exeggutor because Electric and Bug moves respectively (even with weakness to Psychic) are so much better.
- Raticate’s drawback is its relatively low CP (typical level-30 CP = 1204). In practice, only Rattata with 4 candy cost for power ups (i.e. level 26 or above) are worth evolving to Raticate and it’s hard to get a Raticate in the 1300CP range without spending stardust.
- These rankings are done with a 0%-70%-30% dodge setting, i.e. dodge only specials and more likely to dodge if using a non-Super-Effective fast move (because it doesn’t delay the “Defender used Charge Move” message). Anyway Quick Attack is quick enough that you can fit 2 or 3 between most defenders’ fast moves.
TL;DR: Catch every Rattata you see, evolve level-26+ ones and keep Raticate with Quick Attack / Hyper Something in prestiging range.
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