>>53166917If you're going that route, Beautifly has better Attack and Speed, evolves more than 10 levels earlier, and also learns Silver Wind more than 10 levels earlier, and Swarm boosts the power of the move even more. Masquerain has better natural bulk, paired with intimidate, but that's not saying much on a Bug/Flying type.
For Masquerain to have an advantage you'd need to keep it as a Surskit for longer to learn Bubblebeam to compete with the Grass special attacks Beautifly gets access to. Either that or resort to TM moves, but you have to wait until pretty late to even have the option for Blizzard or Water Pulse, and if you can afford Ice Beam from the Game Corner there are much better mons to give it to. Or you could buy Psychic from the Game Corner for even cheaper and teach that to Beautifly.
And of course there's the advantage of Wurmple being plentiful in the early game while Surskit is a 1% encounter in Ruby and Sapphire while being totally absent in Emerald. It's not even like it has a niche of an early game Water type if you didn't pick Mudkip, because there's also Lotad and Wingull.
I'm not saying it's terrible or useless, but Gamefreak could have certainly made it better given how rare it is.
