First of all, you have to give Tauros both of his great STAB moves: Hyper Beam and Body Slam. Body Slam has good power and a 30% chance of paralyzing, (a godsend against a switched in Starmie or other faster Pokémon) while Hyper Beam has massive power and should only be used as a finishing move. Earthquake is almost entirely for Gengar, but also helps if you predict the move Counter (Counter only works against Fighting and Normal moves in the R/B/Y). Other OptionsLeer can help him in taking down Starmie and puts Chansey into the OHKO range of Hyper Beam. Thunderbolt / Thunder hits Cloyster quite hard, and Mimic is a gimmicky option which can be used over Blizzard. Realistically though, Tauros should always stick to the set mentioned above because it's the best available set, as it hurts just about everything; giving up one of these four moves makes him more counterable, which is the last thing you want. OpinionTauros is classified as a late game sweeper, usually finishing off poor, paralyzed Pokémon. Besides this, he has some other great uses. When someone is predicting him to use Hyper Beam, he or she may switch to Starmie, Exeggutor, or any other Pokémon that can take a hit. Instead, you can use your great predicting skills and use Body Slam. If you paralyze your opponent's newly switched in Pokémon, it's screwed. He's just so great at what he does that he should be an automatic entry in any competitive RBY Pokémon team. CountersTo be able to counter something, you have to be able to switch in safely, do something to screw up the plans of the opponent, and live to tell the tale. Fortunately for Tauros, Body Slam has a 30% chance to paralyze something, and any of its moves have about a 21% chance to critical hit, making it really easy for Tauros to beat any opponent with luck on his side. The only remotely safe switch-ins into Tauros are Cloyster and Articuno. Cloyster can Clamp Tauros—preferably when Cloyster isn't paralyzed and Tauros is. Blizzard will 3HKO Tauros, and Explosion takes out a huge chunk of health as well. Articuno's Blizzard is even more painful—with a Reflect up, and Agility to outspeed Tauros, Articuno needs to be worn down on switch-ins rather than being worn down by Tauros one on one. Starmie is a risky bet, since you do not want to switch into a paralyzing or critical Body Slam, but it is faster and can paralyze Tauros with Thunder Wave. Body Slam does less than 50%, which means you can Recover it off, but you do not want to try to stall a Tauros. Repeatedly Recovering is just begging for a critical hit or Body Slam paralysis.
With these "counters", it isn't a bad idea to switch in Gengar or one of the Rock / Grounds into a Normal attack first, and then switch Starmie, Articuno or Cloyster into the weaker Earthquake or Blizzard. This trick may not work twice on the same opponent because he or she might see it coming, opening up a whole new mind game. Another way to beat Tauros is to make sure he doesn't want to stay in by threatening with paralysis. Exeggutor and Chansey can Stun Spore and Thunder Wave respectively. Counter on Chansey or Snorlax can be very effective as well, though some Tauros tend to use Earthquake first to check. |
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
