Raticate is this high up mostly for nostalgia's sake. No, not the nostalgia of Rattata (along with Pidgey) being the first wild Pokemon you probably captured, but because Raticate looks quite a bit like a hamster I had as a child. That hamster's name was Penny and his teeth became so ridiculous--imagine Raticate's but with each of them being three inches longer than they are. They were basically falling out of his mouth. Anyway, Penny ended up biting his way through a metal cage on multiple occasions, and finally ended up in the wall. I'd assume 14-19 years later he's probably no longer with us, but I like the idea of a rogue hamster terrorizing the suburbs. Penny also reminds me of another hamster I had named Teddy, and he was AWESOME. Rolling around in the little hamster ball and hamster wheel and hanging out in the pockets of hooded sweatshirts...just tremendous value all-around.
Raticate does not have so much tremendous value, but hey, nostalgia helps on this list. I think I also had an idea of a really cool moveset for the rat, but I'm pretty sure it's from Generation II or even later. It requires Raticate learning Thunder Wave, which apparently it doesn't do in Generation I. My bad, y'all!
Anyway, with good Speed, okay Attack and bad everything else, Ratty needs some help. It gets said help with a signature move known as Super Fang. The more exquisite of the two fangs (versus Hyper Fang) does 50% of the current HP of the opposing Pokemon, rounded up. So I'm pretty sure unless that Poke has 1 HP, you're not going to actually kill it, but you can do some good work out there. Also, I believe Super and Hyper Fang are the only Normal-type moves that can do damage to Ghosts, so you can surprise a Gengar with Raticate. I guess. Or they'll probably know you'll use Super Fang since it's Raticate's one thing going for it.
I wish Raticate's Special was even remotely...well, special, because then you could toss Thunderbolt, Blizzard and Bubblebeam on the rat and call it a day. But don't do that, because with that atrocious Special you won't be doing any damage. Instead, I'd put Double Team on there for annoyance sake and to try to make up for the poor HP/Defense. Double-Edge isn't a bad idea either, because two moves with "double" in their name must mean you do four times the damage, right? Maybe not, but since you have such little HP, who cares about a bit of recoil? I sure don't, that's why I'm recommending Double-Edge as a move. Plus you get that Same Type Attack Bonus, doe. The fourth move is litchral filler--throw Dig or Toxic on there for all I care. If you do decide to utilize a Special move, Blizzard or Thunderbolt would be the best choices. Just don't be surprised when it's super effective but only doing like 20 damage to your opponent's HP.
Battling Grade: C
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