Is Tyranitar good for battling Red?

Question

So I have been wanting to use Tyranitar on my playthrough of Silver, but you can't get Larvitar until Mt. Silver. Still, I've been wanting to use it for Red since Tyranitar is just SO good. Is it good for Red though?

Comments

If you’re adamant about using tyranitar, X’s answer is great. However, I would recommend you get a female dragonair (iirc dragonair has to be female) to trade with the woman in Blackthorn city for her Rhydon (nicknamed Don). Since it’s a traded Pokémon Don will level up faster and it will handle Red’s Pikachu, Charizard and even Snorlax rather well. Heck, it’ll handle Espeon, too. Sure, T-Tar is immune to Espeon’s Psychic whereas Rhydon gets hurt quite a bit. Of course, you could just over level your team and make all of this moot.
But being able to level up more quickly and having an attack stat only four points short of tyranitar, I’d say Don is the way to go. :-)

Answer 1

Yes. It'll take a while to get it up to level with the rest of your team, but it's worth it. It has phenomenal Attack and solid Special Attack, meaning it can use both STABs well. Its STAB attacks cover Red's Espeon and Charizard, Earthquake takes down Pikachu, and Fire Punch can easily beat his Venusaur. It's completely immune to Espeon's STAB, resists both of Charizard's, Venusaur's Poison STAB, and Snorlax's STAB. The only Pokemon it would really have trouble against would be Blastoise and maybe Venusaur, making it well worth it. I'd use this set:

Tyranitar @ anything
- Crunch
- Rock Slide
- Earthquake
- Fire Punch

Hope I helped!

Comments

Gen 2 has no abilities.

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Oops :P

Answer 2

Tyranitar is good against Red's Pikachu, Charizard and Espeon but Larvitar comes at level 20 and it will take very long to train because it's in the slow leveling rate.

Answer 3

If you care about your own time, then Tyranitar is definitely not worth using. Even though Tyranitar has close to the best stats in the game, those stats do not make up for the fact that you have to grind it all the way from level 20 to around level 70. It's almost certainly several times faster to defeat Red by leveling up the highest level Pokemon you have now.

If you don't care about your own time, then you can defeat Red by using almost any 6 Pokemon and raising all of them to level 100.