Daily Pokemon #002: Tauros

Tauros 

Tauros is pure Normal type, which means that its STAB will never get super effective bonus, but that also means that it only has one weakness. It's for this reason that Normal is a good type, even if it is limited offensively. It's not weak against anything other than Fighting. This is rather helpful when trying to switch in a pokemon like Tauros, as it probably won't be OHKO from whatever hit it will have to tank.

Stats:

Tauros has a very defined role in a team which is physical sweeper. Tauros is surprisingly fast; 110 base speed is more than enough to outspeed most pokemon during the adventure, and it's still very fast for competitive play. Additionally, 70/95/70 make Tauros a rather bulky physical sweeper rather than just a glass cannon like many other sweepers.

Although I mentioned that Normal type is a limited type in terms of offense, I was mostly refering to type advantage and I was not refering to their movepool. Most normal types have access to a wide variety of moves allowing them to covered a huge variety of types. It's offensive STAB is easily covered by Return, it's coverage moves include stuff like Earthquake, Stone Edge, Zen Headbutt, Wild Charge (Gen VI), Outrage (Gen VI), Pursuit, Iron Head (Gen VI) among many others. 

There are other options as well if you want to make a more gimmicky Tauros such as Substitute, Rest and Sleep Talk. However, these sort of moves are better left to specialized pokemon since Tauros is better used in other manners.

Abilities:

• Anger Point: maximizes the user's ATK stat when it is hit by a critical hit.
• Intimidate: lowers the opposing pokemon's ATK by one stage upon entering the battle.
• Sheer Force (hidden): raises the base power of all attacking moves that have an additional effect by 30%, but the additional effects are ignored.

Anger Point is an unreliable ability although a fun one I will admit. Try it when you are playing with your friends or in a local tournament, if you can pull off a sweep thanks to Anger point then you'll have one of the best laughs in your life.

Intimidate is a decent ability in Tauros, as it will help Tauros cripple those pesky Fighting types if they pose too much of a challenge and then proceed with something like Zex Headbutt. It is a situational ability though, so don't really expect much.

Finally, the true MVP is Sheer Force. This ability is truly amazing and it completely changes the Tauros' moveset. Now you can run moves like Rock Climb which gets stronger than Return after the 30% bonus, do keep in mind that it is less accurate. Other moves like Zen Headbutt are now buffed, or you could run Rock Slide wich actually now becomes almost as strong as Stone edge but more accurate.

Conclusion:

Overall, Tauros is a great pokemon and an underappreciated one at that. It has fantastic stats, fantastic moves and great abilities. It lacks certain thing like access to priority moves and it will also lag behind pokemon that are faster than it, but I truthfully believe that not enough people have tried Tauros which is a real shame