Why Tauros Dominates RBY: An Analysis
Jan 26, 2013 2:54:02 GMT -8
Post by t3h Icy on Jan 26, 2013 2:54:02 GMT -8
This is more of a bloggish post, but I thought it could be a fun topic to discuss and go over. I've gone through all sorts of little details and tricksies in RBY, and thought something different might be fun. So, I'm going to break down the specifics of what makes Tauros the RBY legend he is.
Most people will start off saying Tauros is extremely powerful due to his rare combination of high Attack and high Speed, and while there are a few others, Tauros has some versatility and isn't frail. His stats are very well balanced, and his HP in particular is pretty high. His typing also allows him to avoid getting 2x'd by anything important, so he's very difficult to take out quickly. But after looking at things in more detail, I'm thinking that a lot of it is his movepool in tandem with his stats.
So for anyone that fell down some stairs recently, Tauros's moveset consists of Body Slam, Hyper Beam, Blizzard, and Earthquake. It's very rare to see any other moves, and if there ever are, it's usually Thunderbolt in place of Earthquake or Blizzard. Otherwise, his moveset is very static, and there's actually a lot of good reasons why that are hidden and not plainly obvious.
First off all, Blizzard and Earthquake are two of the absolute best moves in RBY. They have some of the highest expected bases at 108 and 100 (accuracy-factored), whereas anything higher has negative side-effects, which are Sky Attack, Hyper Beam, Solarbeam, Explosion, and Selfdestruct. The only other moves with average power that even break 100 are mostly CH moves, or generally unviable moves due to more negative side-effects (Double-Edge, Dig, Dream Eater, Skull Bash). The only other one that has a positive side-effect is Fire Blast, with an average of 102, but it has high variance due to only decent accuracy. So the moves Blizzard and Earthquake are great, having arguably the best side effect, and no strings attached respectively.
But on top of the moves themselves being superb, the typings are also two of the best offensive types in the game. There are only three types that are super-effective against four types, which are Ice (Grass, Dragon, Flying, Ground), Rock (Fire, Flying, Bug, Ice), and Ground (Electric, Poison, Rock, Fire). Of the possible pairings, only Ice and Ground have no overlaps as Ice/Rock double up against Flying, and Ground/Rock double up on Fire. So with Earthquake and Blizzard alone (which are again, two of the game's best moves), are super-effective against over half of the game's different types. When also considering things like dual types, Ghost always being partially Poison, etc, there is a very small list left of types that aren't weak to one of them. Those are Bug/Poison, Water/Flying, Ice/Flying, Normal, Water, Bug, Psychic, Water/Ice, Water/Psychic, and Water/Fighting. Many of which are unique typings, or of poor Pokemon (Venomoth, Pinsir, Poliwrath, Gyarados, etc). In fact, when considering theoretical types, the only two possibilities that resist both are Water/Bug, and Ice/Bug, as Ice is 2x against two of the three types Ground is weak against (Flying, Grass). So with those two moves alone, Tauros and destroy a huge majority of all Pokemon.
But why does that matter in particular? Doesn't it matter for others as well? And you might think why the Blizzard/Earthquake combo isn't seen more often due to its sheer power, and that's because Tauros is the absolute best user of them (with exception to Mew). A lot of Pokemon that have Earthquake have the problems of being a Ground type, which in particular includes a low Special, and often low Speed. And for Ice Pokemon, none of them learn Earthquake. So the only users are mostly poor Pokemon. Excluding Mew, the second fastest Pokemon to even learn both is Kangaskhan and Poliwhirl at a measly 278 Speed, both of which also can't use them for other reasons too.
The only other Pokemon that is dangerous offensively with both is Nidoking, who can also pair up other moves too. When including Rock Slide and Thunderbolt in his set, the only Pokemon that aren't weak to any of his moves are pure Normals and pure Psychics. Nidoking would likely be a very dominant Pokemon if it weren't for his poor typing and general lack of stats.
So why do those two moves really matter? They're rarely even seen much in battles. Well the thing is, they're always on every Tauros, as they're still very useful in OU against various Pokemon. If Tauros was only Body Slam and Hyper Beam, Pokemon like Omastar, Tentacruel, Moltres, and others could pop up occasionally as good Pokemon against him, but Tauros has them, always, so they don't (as those Pokemon are also meh in general too).
And that's only half his moveset so far. Hyper Beam and Body Slam are two other moves that are among the absolute best in the game. Hyper Beam has an average base of 135, which when used correctly, has no negative side-effects. 90% accuracy is also very reliable. And when considering STAB for Tauros, Hyper Beam is functionally doing 202.5, which is about double both Earthquake and Blizzard. Sure there's the lose a turn drawback for balancing, but if like most smart players Tauros finishes off Pokemon with it, it works like a regular move. This allows Tauros to put many Pokemon in "death range" MUCH earlier otherwise, which in turn means Pokemon have to KO Tauros faster, which is already difficult as he's very fast and has good defensive stats.
And his staple move, Body Slam does not have as much power as the other moves, but the strength is purely in its reliability and side-effect. Body Slam doesn't miss, so there's no worry, and being Normal, is can be used on basically everything. With STAB and his Speed, it's even more dangerous. But of course more importantly is the Paralysis. Since Tauros is so fast, he is victim to Paralysis whenever possible, which can give his opponent's an edge now that they have the turn advantage. But should Body Slam Paralyze, Tauros gets that right back. Not only that, but purely the threat of it means that switching into Tauros with just about anything, even Rocks, is a risk as anything that could hope to beating Tauros loses that shred after Paralysis.
Tauros's moveset is quite possibly one of the best combinations in all of RBY as it does nearly everything. He can hit anything that could try to counter him harder than they can, he has Pokemon in death range super early, he Paralyzes often. There's not much anyone could want in the moveset outside of say, Swords Dance, Explosion, Recover, etc. On top if desired, he is also the fastest Pokemon with both Horn Drill and Fissure.
So on top of his absolutely amazing moveset, his stats are spectacular. Tauros is not only very high in the total rankings (tied with Lapras for 11th), but his spread couldn't be improved by a whole lot. He has high Speed, he has great Attack, his Special is as high as it needs to be, and his HP is quite high too, keeping him from XHKO range on many, many moves. Not only them being high, but the combinations too. It's easy to say Tauros has high Attack and Speed, but there's much more to it than that. With exclusion of Aerodactyl, the highest Attack power that has higher Speed than Tauros is Dugtrio's 258 (and Mewtwo's 318). Of all Pokemon with higher Attack than Tauros, the only Pokemon with high Speeds are Mewtwo, Aerodactyl, Scyther, and Rapidash, all of which are poor Pokemon (or banned). Tauros not only has high Attack and Speed, but he's quite literally the only Pokemon with them that doesn't have major problems elsewhere (Dugtrio's frailty and Aerodactyl's everything else).
But why does the combination of Attack and Speed matter at all in the first place? RBY is clearly a Specialist's game, as Special types have better moves, better Pokemon, more widely available moves, and Special is dual function but balanced in a way where it's treated as a single stat. Sludge, Twineedle, Submission, and Drill Peck have stiff competition against Thunderbolt, Blizzard, Surf, and Psychic. Match-ups are also much better. Physical types have less type advantages, more weaknesses, and more Pokemon that resist them. They also don't overlap as nicely (for example, Thunderbolt and Ice Beam are at least neutral against everything, up to the theoretical type Electric/Ice). On top when Specialists have amazing support moves Thunder Wave, Recover, and Reflect, it's simply too much to keep up with, and Physicals are rather poor Pokemon. Tauros is the shining Pokemon that can actually keep up with them, and has almost no bad match-ups against any Pokemon. In a metagame without Physicals, Specialists are very difficult to stop. Tauros isn't used just for the sake of making RBY enjoyable, but he's actually viable as a whole in doing so.
Tauros is also the best Pokemon in the role of revenge killing. If a banged up Pokemon is ready to drop, Tauros can jump in and finish them off, or otherwise threaten with his lethal Paralyzing superpowered Body Slams, which very few Pokemon can withstand well in a fresh 1v1, let alone switch into. Revenge killing is also a very important strategy in RBY as it can take away the guarantees of Explosion/Selfdestruct, it prevents possible sacrifice-switches, and eliminating a Pokemon means permanently eliminating an option an opponent has at any given time.
There's also further perfection in his moveset when it comes to one of the few ways to countering him, namely Counter. Counter can slow down his spam of Body Slam, but he has the absolute best move to support it, Earthquake, which is uncounterable, 1-turn, no strings, etc. With it, he has a way to overcome Counter Pokemon as well. On top, the few Pokemon that can risk using Counter at all are either very frail on incorrect choices (Jynx, Chansey, Alakazam), or have trouble keeping up with even just Earthquake due to low damage output in a couple of turns (Poliwrath, Blastoise, Slowbro).
All of everything so far, and I haven't even started with CHs. Having every move he hits with have over a 1/5 chance of doing double damage tilts the already steep hill into basically freefall. CHs enhance all his best traits even further: revenge killing, threatening switches, taking out Pokemon 1v1, having a one turn advantage against nearly everything increases to more, and getting Pokemon into his Hyper Beam death range even sooner. 1 in 5 isn't the absolute highest, but it's a chance that has an air of being risky fighting against it.
With everything said, Tauros has Pokemon that give him problems, and has actual Pokemon that can beat him 1v1. First of all, Paralysis takes away so much of his strengths. Sure he can cause Paralysis back, but it's not guaranteed and isn't enough to keep him from being revenge KO'd. Tauros also has a small handful of Specialists that are physically defensive enough to handle his attacks and actually have an advantage beating him. Some of them include Starmie, Articuno, Cloyster, Snorlax, and Kingler, all of which however can be walled and stalled by many Pokemon except Snorlax (related to why Snorlax is another beast in RBY, but that's another story). Tauros is also not rambo and while he can destroy teams, the accumulation of hits against him adds up. Granted, if players were not to switch, Tauros could probably take out close to two full Pokemon on his own, but he's not capable of sweeping six fresh Pokemon. Still, going over one for one is considered a good job. This is related to why Tauros is generally used late-game, on top of wanting to avoid Paralysis as much as possible.
The most interesting thing despite all this is that Tauros is actually more replaceable than Chansey, Exeggutor, and others. Tauros is superb, but is not unique. He is the absolute best at the roles he performs, but a team without him is not as different as a team without Chansey and/or Exeggutor. Tauros has related competition with Snorlax, Persian, and Dodrio, but they can't match up to him.
With all this, I believe that RBY would have developed into a stally, boring metagame had Tauros not existed or be as powerful as he is. He's not only better than almost every Pokemon, but by a huge gap, and this is balanced out by being a Physical in a Specialist's game. While my personal definition of what makes a Pokemon good does not let Tauros be ranked the best, there's a whole collection of reasons why he's on ~100% of all teams beyond just being a fast and strong Physical.
Most people will start off saying Tauros is extremely powerful due to his rare combination of high Attack and high Speed, and while there are a few others, Tauros has some versatility and isn't frail. His stats are very well balanced, and his HP in particular is pretty high. His typing also allows him to avoid getting 2x'd by anything important, so he's very difficult to take out quickly. But after looking at things in more detail, I'm thinking that a lot of it is his movepool in tandem with his stats.
So for anyone that fell down some stairs recently, Tauros's moveset consists of Body Slam, Hyper Beam, Blizzard, and Earthquake. It's very rare to see any other moves, and if there ever are, it's usually Thunderbolt in place of Earthquake or Blizzard. Otherwise, his moveset is very static, and there's actually a lot of good reasons why that are hidden and not plainly obvious.
First off all, Blizzard and Earthquake are two of the absolute best moves in RBY. They have some of the highest expected bases at 108 and 100 (accuracy-factored), whereas anything higher has negative side-effects, which are Sky Attack, Hyper Beam, Solarbeam, Explosion, and Selfdestruct. The only other moves with average power that even break 100 are mostly CH moves, or generally unviable moves due to more negative side-effects (Double-Edge, Dig, Dream Eater, Skull Bash). The only other one that has a positive side-effect is Fire Blast, with an average of 102, but it has high variance due to only decent accuracy. So the moves Blizzard and Earthquake are great, having arguably the best side effect, and no strings attached respectively.
But on top of the moves themselves being superb, the typings are also two of the best offensive types in the game. There are only three types that are super-effective against four types, which are Ice (Grass, Dragon, Flying, Ground), Rock (Fire, Flying, Bug, Ice), and Ground (Electric, Poison, Rock, Fire). Of the possible pairings, only Ice and Ground have no overlaps as Ice/Rock double up against Flying, and Ground/Rock double up on Fire. So with Earthquake and Blizzard alone (which are again, two of the game's best moves), are super-effective against over half of the game's different types. When also considering things like dual types, Ghost always being partially Poison, etc, there is a very small list left of types that aren't weak to one of them. Those are Bug/Poison, Water/Flying, Ice/Flying, Normal, Water, Bug, Psychic, Water/Ice, Water/Psychic, and Water/Fighting. Many of which are unique typings, or of poor Pokemon (Venomoth, Pinsir, Poliwrath, Gyarados, etc). In fact, when considering theoretical types, the only two possibilities that resist both are Water/Bug, and Ice/Bug, as Ice is 2x against two of the three types Ground is weak against (Flying, Grass). So with those two moves alone, Tauros and destroy a huge majority of all Pokemon.
But why does that matter in particular? Doesn't it matter for others as well? And you might think why the Blizzard/Earthquake combo isn't seen more often due to its sheer power, and that's because Tauros is the absolute best user of them (with exception to Mew). A lot of Pokemon that have Earthquake have the problems of being a Ground type, which in particular includes a low Special, and often low Speed. And for Ice Pokemon, none of them learn Earthquake. So the only users are mostly poor Pokemon. Excluding Mew, the second fastest Pokemon to even learn both is Kangaskhan and Poliwhirl at a measly 278 Speed, both of which also can't use them for other reasons too.
The only other Pokemon that is dangerous offensively with both is Nidoking, who can also pair up other moves too. When including Rock Slide and Thunderbolt in his set, the only Pokemon that aren't weak to any of his moves are pure Normals and pure Psychics. Nidoking would likely be a very dominant Pokemon if it weren't for his poor typing and general lack of stats.
So why do those two moves really matter? They're rarely even seen much in battles. Well the thing is, they're always on every Tauros, as they're still very useful in OU against various Pokemon. If Tauros was only Body Slam and Hyper Beam, Pokemon like Omastar, Tentacruel, Moltres, and others could pop up occasionally as good Pokemon against him, but Tauros has them, always, so they don't (as those Pokemon are also meh in general too).
And that's only half his moveset so far. Hyper Beam and Body Slam are two other moves that are among the absolute best in the game. Hyper Beam has an average base of 135, which when used correctly, has no negative side-effects. 90% accuracy is also very reliable. And when considering STAB for Tauros, Hyper Beam is functionally doing 202.5, which is about double both Earthquake and Blizzard. Sure there's the lose a turn drawback for balancing, but if like most smart players Tauros finishes off Pokemon with it, it works like a regular move. This allows Tauros to put many Pokemon in "death range" MUCH earlier otherwise, which in turn means Pokemon have to KO Tauros faster, which is already difficult as he's very fast and has good defensive stats.
And his staple move, Body Slam does not have as much power as the other moves, but the strength is purely in its reliability and side-effect. Body Slam doesn't miss, so there's no worry, and being Normal, is can be used on basically everything. With STAB and his Speed, it's even more dangerous. But of course more importantly is the Paralysis. Since Tauros is so fast, he is victim to Paralysis whenever possible, which can give his opponent's an edge now that they have the turn advantage. But should Body Slam Paralyze, Tauros gets that right back. Not only that, but purely the threat of it means that switching into Tauros with just about anything, even Rocks, is a risk as anything that could hope to beating Tauros loses that shred after Paralysis.
Tauros's moveset is quite possibly one of the best combinations in all of RBY as it does nearly everything. He can hit anything that could try to counter him harder than they can, he has Pokemon in death range super early, he Paralyzes often. There's not much anyone could want in the moveset outside of say, Swords Dance, Explosion, Recover, etc. On top if desired, he is also the fastest Pokemon with both Horn Drill and Fissure.
So on top of his absolutely amazing moveset, his stats are spectacular. Tauros is not only very high in the total rankings (tied with Lapras for 11th), but his spread couldn't be improved by a whole lot. He has high Speed, he has great Attack, his Special is as high as it needs to be, and his HP is quite high too, keeping him from XHKO range on many, many moves. Not only them being high, but the combinations too. It's easy to say Tauros has high Attack and Speed, but there's much more to it than that. With exclusion of Aerodactyl, the highest Attack power that has higher Speed than Tauros is Dugtrio's 258 (and Mewtwo's 318). Of all Pokemon with higher Attack than Tauros, the only Pokemon with high Speeds are Mewtwo, Aerodactyl, Scyther, and Rapidash, all of which are poor Pokemon (or banned). Tauros not only has high Attack and Speed, but he's quite literally the only Pokemon with them that doesn't have major problems elsewhere (Dugtrio's frailty and Aerodactyl's everything else).
But why does the combination of Attack and Speed matter at all in the first place? RBY is clearly a Specialist's game, as Special types have better moves, better Pokemon, more widely available moves, and Special is dual function but balanced in a way where it's treated as a single stat. Sludge, Twineedle, Submission, and Drill Peck have stiff competition against Thunderbolt, Blizzard, Surf, and Psychic. Match-ups are also much better. Physical types have less type advantages, more weaknesses, and more Pokemon that resist them. They also don't overlap as nicely (for example, Thunderbolt and Ice Beam are at least neutral against everything, up to the theoretical type Electric/Ice). On top when Specialists have amazing support moves Thunder Wave, Recover, and Reflect, it's simply too much to keep up with, and Physicals are rather poor Pokemon. Tauros is the shining Pokemon that can actually keep up with them, and has almost no bad match-ups against any Pokemon. In a metagame without Physicals, Specialists are very difficult to stop. Tauros isn't used just for the sake of making RBY enjoyable, but he's actually viable as a whole in doing so.
Tauros is also the best Pokemon in the role of revenge killing. If a banged up Pokemon is ready to drop, Tauros can jump in and finish them off, or otherwise threaten with his lethal Paralyzing superpowered Body Slams, which very few Pokemon can withstand well in a fresh 1v1, let alone switch into. Revenge killing is also a very important strategy in RBY as it can take away the guarantees of Explosion/Selfdestruct, it prevents possible sacrifice-switches, and eliminating a Pokemon means permanently eliminating an option an opponent has at any given time.
There's also further perfection in his moveset when it comes to one of the few ways to countering him, namely Counter. Counter can slow down his spam of Body Slam, but he has the absolute best move to support it, Earthquake, which is uncounterable, 1-turn, no strings, etc. With it, he has a way to overcome Counter Pokemon as well. On top, the few Pokemon that can risk using Counter at all are either very frail on incorrect choices (Jynx, Chansey, Alakazam), or have trouble keeping up with even just Earthquake due to low damage output in a couple of turns (Poliwrath, Blastoise, Slowbro).
All of everything so far, and I haven't even started with CHs. Having every move he hits with have over a 1/5 chance of doing double damage tilts the already steep hill into basically freefall. CHs enhance all his best traits even further: revenge killing, threatening switches, taking out Pokemon 1v1, having a one turn advantage against nearly everything increases to more, and getting Pokemon into his Hyper Beam death range even sooner. 1 in 5 isn't the absolute highest, but it's a chance that has an air of being risky fighting against it.
With everything said, Tauros has Pokemon that give him problems, and has actual Pokemon that can beat him 1v1. First of all, Paralysis takes away so much of his strengths. Sure he can cause Paralysis back, but it's not guaranteed and isn't enough to keep him from being revenge KO'd. Tauros also has a small handful of Specialists that are physically defensive enough to handle his attacks and actually have an advantage beating him. Some of them include Starmie, Articuno, Cloyster, Snorlax, and Kingler, all of which however can be walled and stalled by many Pokemon except Snorlax (related to why Snorlax is another beast in RBY, but that's another story). Tauros is also not rambo and while he can destroy teams, the accumulation of hits against him adds up. Granted, if players were not to switch, Tauros could probably take out close to two full Pokemon on his own, but he's not capable of sweeping six fresh Pokemon. Still, going over one for one is considered a good job. This is related to why Tauros is generally used late-game, on top of wanting to avoid Paralysis as much as possible.
The most interesting thing despite all this is that Tauros is actually more replaceable than Chansey, Exeggutor, and others. Tauros is superb, but is not unique. He is the absolute best at the roles he performs, but a team without him is not as different as a team without Chansey and/or Exeggutor. Tauros has related competition with Snorlax, Persian, and Dodrio, but they can't match up to him.
With all this, I believe that RBY would have developed into a stally, boring metagame had Tauros not existed or be as powerful as he is. He's not only better than almost every Pokemon, but by a huge gap, and this is balanced out by being a Physical in a Specialist's game. While my personal definition of what makes a Pokemon good does not let Tauros be ranked the best, there's a whole collection of reasons why he's on ~100% of all teams beyond just being a fast and strong Physical.
). Thing is, though, it's not a reliable way to force the issue, because even if you do rack up enough Special falls, Chansey can switch out and come right back in. That's what I meant about Slowbro being the only specialist that can force Chansey out for good (particularly if it's paralysed and thus immune to sleep or freeze).
