I'm far from the board's biggest fan as far as Pokemon battle knowledge is concerned (although I was pretty damn good back in 2005) but didn't Flareon get a decent boost in usability back when fourth-gen introduced the Attack/Special Attack-based individual moves? I seem to recall that people's biggest gripe with it back in the day was how it had an impressive Attack stat but it was a Fire type so it 'needed' Special Attack, which it lacked. But now there are a bunch of Attack-based Fire-type moves...
Or does its movepool/other stats still really suck?
I think people complained because it didn't get the one fire move it really needed aka Flare Blitz. I think all it got was Fire Fang.
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