Greninja Raiding

 

Getting Hyped for Greninja Raiding

Intro:

The previous post was a pretty extensive breakdown of Tera Raiding. Using that background knowledge, this post will focus on the upcoming Seven Star Greninja Raid that will debut for round one this Friday on January 27th. The first round will end on Monday, January 30th. The second round of the event will take place Friday, February 10th to Monday, February 13th. 

Below are the details to the event:

I've been really excited about this event for three reasons:

1. I learned that Greninja is my son's favorite Pokemon
2. I don't know much about Greninja, which is exciting
3. The YouTubers have been hyping this event like crazy

There is a lot of content out there (example link) giving advice on what Pokemon to use and how to build them for success. The best video I've seen by far, is the one below:

In the video, Steve Sarumi breaks down in incredible detail the best Pokemon for the upcoming raid event. Steve Sarumi is the host of a Pokemon Podcast called "It's Super Effective" and had done a previous video for the Cinderace Raid where he led the meta to take down Cinderace with Slowpoke, Espartha and Armarouge:

My son and I used a duo of Slowpoke & Espartha to dominate the Cinderace Event, so Mr. Sarumi seems to know what he's talking about and the builds are really effective. From the intel I've gained in watching his video, reading through all the in depth feedback in the video comments, along with having tested the builds myself in six star raids, I've built and tested seven unique Pokemon that I think will be super fun to use against Greninja.

In the remaining post, I'll share with you my top three of the aforementioned seven I've built. The first two have amazing synergy with one another (as strategically designed by Mr. Sarumi), while the third is a favorite of mine from Generation 8 that I've yet to use in Pokemon Scarlet.

Body:

Clodsire Build

You might remember Clodsire as "Spears" from my Crikey Party used in the story mode of Pokemon Scarlet. In this build, Clodsire is a special attacker that still maximizes its incredible bulk to be a great support Pokemon that can also do some damage once it's setup.

The ability "Water Absorb" is important to neutralize Greninja's water attack move, since Clodsire is a Ground type and would normally take super effective damage from water moves. 

It is predicted that Greninja will be a special attacker and therefore, the EVs have been invested in HP & Special Defense. The cool thing about this build is the item "Assault Vest". It gives Clodsire even more Special Defense. 

In order to use Assault Vest, Clodsire is not allowed to have any status moves; all the moves must be attacking moves. This works out well though for Clodsire because it has really amazing attacking moves that are most effective for their secondary status effects.

Acid Spray is probably the best Tera Raid move in the game. It allows Clodsire to attack and do minimal damage (i.e. 40 base power) while simultaneously weakening the Special Defense by two stages. Most importantly, because Acid Spray is a damaging move, it can still be used after Greninja puts up its shield. In addition, every time Acid Spray is used, Clodsire is one move closer to the goal of terastalization.

Chilling Water is another attack move with a secondary status effect, as every time it lands it will lower Greninja's physical attack by one stage. This move is in case Greninja is a "duel attacker" instead of a pure Special Attacker. If Greninja has no "physical attacking" moves, then Chilling Water should be replaced by "Recover", a status move that restores 50% of Clodsire's health. Since Recover is a status move, Clodsire won't be able to carry the Assault Vest. In this case, you'll need to give Clodsire another item like Leftovers or Soft Sand. 

Mud Shot is another attack move that does minimal damage (i.e. 55 base power) but lowers the speed of Greninja by one stage. Outspeeding Greninja becomes important when using healing moves, as it can be the difference between your Pokemon getting knocked out or healing up significantly with a "Recover" or "Drain Punch". Alternatively, Mud Slap could be a viable option here. Mud Slap does less damage, but causes Greninja to be less accurate with its attacking moves enabling your Pokemon to avoid damage. 

Finally, Clodsire is given Earth Power. While there is no investment in EVs towards Special Attack, due to the weakening of Greninja's Special Defense from Acid Spray, this move will pack a punch with its 90 base power. 

This can be seen by using Pokesport's Damage Calculator to simulate a matchup between this version of Clodsire and an anticipated Greninja.

If Earth Power were to be used without Clodsire being terastalized with Tera Type Ground nor having lowered Greninja's Special Defense with Acid Spray, Clodsire would do only 48.2 damage.

However, once Acid Spray is used three times to drop Greninja's Special Defense by six stages and enable Clodsire to use Earth Power as a terasteralized Tera Type Ground Pokemon, things look a lot different:

Clodsire deals about 5 times more damage due to Acid Spray! This just goes to illustrate how valuable Acid Spray can be in the Tera Raiding format.

Gastrodon Build

Similar to Clodsire's Water Absorb, Gastrodon takes advantage of its ability Storm Drain to neutralize Greninja's water moves against Ground Types. However, not only will Storm Drain neutralize the water attacks from Greninja, but in addition it will increase its Special Attack by one stage every time it is hit by a water attack. 

The EVs have been invested in Special Defense and Special Attack. This Gastrodon has incredible synergy with Clodsire because Clodsire can hit Gastrodon with Chilling Water to further increase Gastrodon's Special Attack. Gastrodon has been given Soft Sand to make it an even stronger attacker with it's Ground attacks.

Gastrodon would likely start out the Raid by using Mud Slap three times.  This will enable Gastrodon to terastalize to a Ground Tera Type without doing enough damage to trigger the Greninja to activate its shield. All the while, Greninja's accuracy will have been significantly lowered by three stages. Hopefully, this will enable you and your fellow Raiders to avoid Greninja attacks in subsequent turns.

Gastrodon also has Recover, in case it needs to heal itself from damage it has taken over the previous three turns. 

Once terastalized, Gastrodon is meant to do massive damage with Earth Power as a Special Attacker. In an ideal scenario, the following will have happened in the first four turns:

1. Not knowing Gastrodon has Storm Drain, Greninja hits Gastrodon with a water move on the first turn, increasing Gastrodon's Special Attack by one stage. 
2. Mud Slap will have reduced Greninja's accuracy enabling Gastrodon to avoid at least another non-Water attack on turns 2-4.
3. Clodsire will have landed Acid Spray three times having lowered Greninja's Special Defense by six stages.
4. On turn four, Gastrodon will use Recover to heal and Closdsire will hit Gastrodon with Chilling Water to increase Gastrodon's Special Attack another stage.

This sets up Gastrodon on turn five to be terastalized with its Special Attack having been raised by two stages and Greninja's Special Defense to have been lowered by six stages.

Again using Pokesport's Damage Calculator tool, we can simulate what the damage will be in such a scenario. 

Gastrodon deals about 6 times more damage than Clodsire's best case scenario! The theory is that these two Pokemon working together might be just as good as the synergy between Espartha and Slowpoke against the seven star Cinderace.

Toxtricity Build

This build is mentioned by Steve Sarumi as his favorite and having used it I can understand why. The Toxtricity I'm used to takes advantage of its ability Punk Rock, so it can hit hard with its many sound based moves like Boomburst and Overdrive.

However, this Toxtricity is built around it being more of a Hybrid-Attacker and being able to leverage the most valuable move in Tera Raids: Acid Spray.

Mr. Sarumi therefore chooses Toxtricity's hidden ability Technician to synergize well with Acid Spray and the other moves being 60 base power and lower.

He also gives Toxtricity Assault Vest to provide extra Special Defense against Greninja. Like Gastrodon, the EVs have been invested in Special Defense and Special Attack.

Warning: This Toxtricity is highly obnoxious. If the NPC Tera Raid Boss had emotions, it would very likely break out in tears at the end of the raid.

The Toxtricity would start out with its Nuzzle. This is a physical attack, but is not used for the damage but rather to paralyze. It can also be used later in the raid to paralyze through a shield since it is an attacking move. Paralysis is important because it not only reduces the speed of Greninja by 50%, but 25% of the time the Greninja will not be able to attack due to being "fully paralyzed".

The fun is just getting started because Toxtricity can then start to Snarl. Every time its uses Snarl, the Greninja's Special Attack will drop one stage. If Greninja is a Special Attacker, this will be a very important move to ensure that Greninja doesn't deal out too much damage with it's powerful arsenal of Special Attack moves such as Grass Knot, Ice Beam, Gunk Shot just to name a few. Due to Technician, Toxtricity will also deal 82.5 base power damage instead of only 55 for each use of Snarl.

Depending on other Pokemon in the raid, Toxtricity can also use Acid Spray to reduce the Special Defense of Greninja.

Once Toxtricity can terastalize, it can then use Charge Beam. While Mr. Sarumi recommended Thunderbolt here due to the extra damage (i.e. 90 base power) Thunderbolt can initially deal out, I prefer Charge Beam for its potential and synergy with Technician. Technician increases the base power of Charge Beam from 50 to 75. However, Charge Beam has a 70% chance of raising the Special Attack one stage. If we remember from a previous post about stage-based stat increases referenced in this article, we're well aware that just one stage increase will increase Charge Beam to a base power of 112.5 and two stage increases will increase Charge Beam to a base power of 150!

Once terastalized, Toxtricity is meant to do massive damage with Charge Beam as a Special Attacker. In an ideal scenario, the following will have happened in the first four turns:

1. Nuzzle will have paralyzed Greninja and reduced its speed by half while also causing it to be fully paralyzed at least once on turns 2-4.
2. Snarl will have reduced Greninja's Special Attack by two stages and setup Toxtricity to terastalize.
3. On turn four, Toxtricity will land a terastalized Charge Beam, which will increase Toxtricity's Special Attack by one stage. It will do the following damage according to the Pokesport's Damage Calculator (assuming Greninja's Special Defense has been lowered six stages by another Pokemon):

On turn five, Toxtricity will land an even more powerful Charge Beam with it's Special Attack having been increased one stage from the previous turn: 

Do you agree with me now that Greninja is in tears by this point?

Conclusion:

While these three Pokemon were my favorites that I have built and tested in preparation for the Greninja Event, there are still four other super cool Pokemon to share with you! If you'd like me to follow-up this post with another similar post describing the remaining four Pokemon in detail, please leave a comment below.

Regardless, I'm looking forward to raiding with you come Friday!

Tera Types & Raiding

 

Tera Types Breakdown for Raids

Intro:

The previous post was all about Tera Raids. Since having written that post, participating in Tera Raids has been pretty much the only thing I've been doing in Pokemon Scarlet. The Tera Raids are challenging enough that a real strategy is needed before taking part. Most importantly, one needs to determine what kind of Pokemon to bring into the raid. If the team you're raiding with has all attackers, then it is vital that you bring in a support Pokemon. If the team you're bringing with has too many support Pokemon, then you'll likely not be able to dish out enough damage throughout the raid to defeat the boss.

Over the past weeks, I've had a lot of fun building up specific Pokemon to help me be successful in various raiding situations when taking on six and seven star raids. I think this article is the best online for given a nice overview of the different types of raiding Pokemeon to build and use in really competitive Tera Raids (i.e. six & seven star raids). They categorize Pokemon into three main types: Physical Attacking, Special Attacking & Support. They also grade the Pokemon in each of these types and assign them to a relevant tier based on how overpowered they view the Pokemon for that type. 

In my opinion, it would make more sense to have four types of Tera Raid Pokemon instead of just three. The four types I would recommended would be: Physical Attacker, Special Attacker, Special Support & Physical Support. However, this can be debated in more detail in another post. 

More interestingly for this post are the Tera Type recommendations that are made for each overpowered Tera Raid Pokemon. For example, they recommend giving the Chansey support type a Fairy build. While that might make sense in competitive Pokemon, the Tera Raid game dynamics are different than online competitive and therefore the assigning of Tera Types demands a slightly different different logic. While in theory Chansey might benefit from being a Fairy Tera Type, based on the moves recomended (i.e. all support moves) the Tera Type would never be able to be activated in a Tera Raid and therefore is useless.

In the remaining post, I will breakdown Tera Types for Tera Raids by providing a background on the Terastal Phenonemon, breakdown the Tera Raid game dynamics involving terastalizing your Pokemon and provide tips on choosing the proper Tera Type for Tera Raid Pokemon.

Body:

Terastalization

Wolfe VGC did a video shortly after Pokemon Scarlet & Violet was released. The 15 minute video can be viewed below:

By terastalizing in battle, your Pokemon's type will be replaced with its Tera Type. For example, a Dragon/Fighting type Pokemon that has a Steel Tera Type will become a Steel type after having terastalized.

A Pokemon's type is important due to STAB, which was mentioned in the post about Crikey. As a refresher, STAB stands for Same Type Attack Bonus. A Fire type Pokemon deals out 50% more damage to their opposing Pokemon when using a fire attack move.

One of the interesting insights from Wolfe's video on terastalization is its effect on STAB. 

A Pokemon that changes its type via terastalization will receive STAB for its new type, however, it will not lose its STAB for its original type. For example, a Dragon/Fighting Pokemon that has terastalized into a Steel Tera Type will have access to Dragon, Fighting & Iron moves that get STAB and deal 50% more damage. 

A Pokemon that changes to a Tera Type that is the same as its original type will have its STAB boosted for attacking moves associated with the Tera Type. For example, a Dragon/Fighting Pokemon that has terastalized into a Fighting Tera Type will deal out 100% more damage to their opposing Poekmon when using a fighting attack move.

While the Pokemon retains the offensive STAB for its original typing after having terastalized to a new Tera Type, it will only be vulnerable to incoming attacks based on the new mono Tera Type. For example, a Dragon/Fighting Pokemon that has terastalized into a Steel Tera Type will now only take 1/2 damage from Dragon moves because of the Steel type instead of 2x damage from its previous Dragon type.

Due to the aforementioned game mechanics related to terastalization, there are many offensive and defensive strategies involved in determining what Tera Type is best for particular Pokemon. In the video, Wolfe recommends that, first and foremost, one determines what the Tera Type will be used for.

Ideally, the Tera Type will improve your Pokemon both offensively and defensively. However, this is not always possible. Therefore, Wolfe suggests the following when determining what the most optimal Tera Type is for a given Pokemon:

1. Determine what role the Pokemon already fulfills on your team (i.e. fast physical attacking vs. slow bulky supportive)
2. Typically, choose a Tera Type that improves your Pokemon do what it already does well
3. If a Pokemon has poor defense stats, don't focus on a Tera Type for defense
4. If a Pokemon has high stat attack moves in its original type, strongly consider a Tera Type of that move to boost the STAB (example: Tera Type Fire for TorKoal)
5. Consider defensive Tera Type choices only for Pokemon with natural defenses that don't do damage in the first place or don't need more offensive coverage

Terastalizing in Tera Raids

The strategy behind terastalizing in Wolfe's video is mainly centered on using terastalization in competitive online play. However, the game mechanics of terastalization in Tera Raids is slightly different compared to singles / doubles online play. 

Information on the game mechanics of Tera Raids is very scarce However, this reddit post is the most detailed explanation I've been able to find and is an excellent resource.  The reddit post confirms that a Pokemon must land 3 damaging attacks to be able to terastalize in Tera Raids. In addition, the boss Pokemon in a Tera Raid can use a move called "steal charge" where it steals a charge from your count in order to terastalize. For example, if you've used two damaging moves, the charge count will be at two. However, if "steal charge" is used by the boss Pokemon, your count will be at one and the Pokemon will need two additional damaging moves (four in total) to terastalize. 

This mechanic is different from online play in singles or doubles where one Pokemon from a team can terastalize a single time at any moment in the game regardless of using a damaging move or not. This makes a big difference for support Pokemon. If a support Pokemon is given no attacking moves, it will not be possible for the Pokemon to terastalize in the Tera Raid, thereby making its Tera Type useless.

Tera Type Tips for Tera Raids

 Since the Tera Type can only be accessed in Tera Raids once at least three damaging moves have landed, it makes sense to identify how the Tera Type applied can enhance the Pokemon's role in the Tera Raid and how it will be activated.

Attacking Pokemon will frequently get their 3 damaging attacks off early in the Tera Raid. Therefore, it usually makes sense to go with the strategy of applying a Tera Type of a type the Pokemon already has in order to further boost its STAB. For example, if one is using the Tera Raid favorite Iron Hands, a Tera Type of Fighting will make the 75 base damage of Drain Punch land with not with just +50% additional damage (i.e. 112.5 base damage) but rather with +100% additional damage (i.e. 150 base damage). This will allow the Iron Hands not only to land more damage on the opposing boss Pokemon, but due to Drain Punch, heal more from the damage received by the opposing boss Pokemon.

Support Pokemon in Tera Raids, on the other hand, are often recommended to have no attacking moves. For example,  here are such recommendation examples for Gardevoir, Umbreon & Chansey. Changing the Tera Type for a Pokemon is not a trivial endeavor. It is time consuming to either hunt for the Pokemon with the exact Tera Type or even worse collect the necessary Tera Shards to change the Tera Type. Therefore, if a particular Tera Type is provided to that Pokemon, one definitely wants to have some option for application. Using the Tera Type is only possible if the Pokemon has attacking moves to land damage, so it is crucial that they are given at least one attacking move.

Tera Blast is always a great option to provide as an attacking move for special attacking support Pokemon with a small attacking moveset pool. For example,  if Umbreon has a Ghost Tera Type, there are no attacking Ghost moves this Pokemon has access to. However, Tera Blast will function as a Normal special attack move until Umbreon is able to terastalize and then it will become a Ghost move with STAB dealing 120 base damage. This strategy would be even better for Chansey, since Chansey is a Normal type and the Tera Blast will have STAB even prior to Chansey terastalizing. If Chansey has Tera Type Fairy, the move Tera Blast will become a Fairy move with STAB.

Conclusion:

The terastalization concept in Pokemon can be overwhelming. It becomes even more daunting when trying to determine the different applications of a Tera Type for a Pokemon being built for Tera Raids vs. competitive singles and doubles play.

I was surprised that some of the online recommendations were leading people, including myself, astray with the instructions to build Tera Raid Pokemon with Tera Types that were useless based on the moves they were recommending. 

Hopefully this post has made it more clear what the overall strategy should be when building Tera Type Pokemon and determining what Tera Types they should have. 

Currently, there is a Tera Raid even going on where rare Dragapult & Hydreigon Pokemon in various Tera Types can be challenged and captured. After having read this post, I'm curious what the best Tera Type for Dragapult and Hydreigon are when using them as Tera Raid Pokemon. What do you think? If you're struggling for ideas, I recommend that you watch the following video to gain even more insights and ideas.