7-Star Raids - Strategies, Speculation & Discussion Thread

[Bolt the Cat]

Not sure how this is competitive. Most of the strategies being used against Cinderace aren't even what's "meta" right now. I grabbed a Slowbro I had in my box from my dex completion, gave it the aforementioned moves, leveled it up a bit, and won easily without worrying about EVs/IVs. Did the same with a Daschbun to help a friend. I don't think having to use some easily obtainable items to invest into a Pokémon for 1 battle is hurting anyone.

This is very simple strategizing compared to actual competitive. I can understand why it's seen as a bit too much and I agree it can be overwhelming though. Not a fan of the shield gimmick they somewhat kept from SwSh and the online often lags to where the Tera Pokémon gets hits in without me being able to do anything.

What Wulava said. It's far too limiting in terms of need specific combinations of Pokemon, movesets, stats, abilities, and items. If you've gotten to that point, you've gone too far in the competitive direction for the average player to keep up with. That's not just "simple" strategizing by casual standards. Again, I don't want to be locked into specific builds for specific Pokemon just to win something in-game. Let me use my favorites instead of having to worry about all of that.

And the items needed to maximize your movesets, stats, and abilities aren't really "easily obtainable" either. At least not to the point where you can casually dump them onto a Pokemon you weren't planning on using. I'm still trying to grind up my main team to Lv. 100 (and a few other Pokemon I think might be useful for Raids my main team can't cover) so I can't spare the EXP Candies for a new Pokemon right now. I have a few Mints, but not quite enough. And I only have 1 Ability Patch and a handful of Capsules and Bottle Caps. It's not like you can just get these resources with the snap of a finger, it'll take a few days worth of grinding to get them, and it's still fairly early enough since release that most players probably won't have stockpiled enough of them for something like this. And the mid-January re-run might not even be soon enough.

 

[Ignition]

What Wulava said. It's far too limiting in terms of need specific combinations of Pokemon, movesets, stats, abilities, and items.

Again you don’t need anything beyond the moveset and the Slowbro example is just one option.

If you've gotten to that point, you've gone too far in the competitive direction for the average player to keep up with. That's not just "simple" strategizing by casual standards. Again, I don't want to be locked into specific builds for specific Pokemon just to win something in-game. Let me use my favorites instead of having to worry about all of that.

I understand not wanting to deal with the raids or wanting to use anything you don’t want to use but having a Pokémon with high defenses, a type advantage, and stat boosts is not complex or “meta” in the slightest. The game gives you tips about all of these. It may be more than what casuals are used to but it’s far from competitive.

And the items needed to maximize your movesets, stats, and abilities aren't really "easily obtainable" either. At least not to the point where you can casually dump them onto a Pokemon you weren't planning on using. I'm still trying to grind up my main team to Lv. 100 (and a few other Pokemon I think might be useful for Raids my main team can't cover) so I can't spare the EXP Candies for a new Pokemon right now. I have a few Mints, but not quite enough. And I only have 1 Ability Patch and a handful of Capsules and Bottle Caps. It's not like you can just get these resources with the snap of a finger, it'll take a few days worth of grinding to get them, and it's still fairly early enough since release that most players probably won't have stockpiled enough of them for something like this. And the mid-January re-run might not even be soon enough.

Not sure how they’re not easily obtainable. I got all the items I needed in like 15 minutes after the event dropped and I haven’t been grinding for any of them (haven’t had the chance to even begin team building for actual competitive). I didn’t need Mints, Ability Capsules, or Bottle Caps. I just needed some candies and the TMs for Stored Power and Iron Defense. Looking at my Slowbro’s IVs, it’s far from ideal but still managed.

 

[Bolt the Cat]

Again you don’t need anything beyond the moveset and the Slowbro example is just one option.

Out of how many? Like 5-10? None of the Pokemon I want to use (Iron Valiant, Farigiraf, Corviknight) seem to be good enough anyway.

I understand not wanting to deal with the raids or wanting to use anything you don’t want to use but having a Pokémon with high defenses, a type advantage, and stat boosts is not complex or “meta” in the slightest. The game gives you tips about all of these. It may be more than what casuals are used to but it’s far from competitive.

The complexity comes into play with needing all of those things at once. It's difficult to balance and limits your options. The game gives you random tips scattered throughout the game yeah, but it doesn't really convey through any interactive tutorials or demos that those are things you need to pay attention to. 99% of the time the solution to anything in the main gameplay is either level up your Pokemon or find something with a type advantage. That's about the extent to which casual players are going to engage with the battle strategy. Whether or not further options are "competitive" is a matter of semantics, the larger point is that that kind of decision making is beyond what most players are going to know how or want to do.

Not sure how they’re not easily obtainable. I got all the items I needed in like 15 minutes after the event dropped and I haven’t been grinding for any of them (haven’t had the chance to even begin team building for actual competitive). I didn’t need Mints, Ability Capsules, or Bottle Caps. I just needed some candies and the TMs for Stored Power and Iron Defense. Looking at my Slowbro’s IVs, it’s far from ideal but still managed.

How are you beating the dozens of Raid Battles you need to even get a Pokemon from Lv. 50 to 100 in 15 minutes? That's like, a day's worth of grinding raids at least. For 1 Pokemon.

 

[Ignition]

Out of how many? Like 5-10? None of the Pokemon I want to use (Iron Valiant, Farigiraf, Corviknight) seem to be good enough anyway.

I don't know an exact number nor am I interested in keeping track of it but I've seen success with Azumarill, Daschbun, Armorogue, and Ceruledge just to name a few.

How are you beating the dozens of Raid Battles you need to even get a Pokemon from Lv. 50 to 100 in 15 minutes? That's like, a day's worth of grinding raids at least. For 1 Pokemon.

Who said it was level 50 or that i needed dozens of Raids? I had some already to get it to level ~85 and just did a few more.

 

[Bolt the Cat]

I don't know an exact number nor am I interested in keeping track of it but I've seen success with Azumarill, Daschbun, Armorogue, and Ceruledge just to name a few.

So you know of 4 Pokemon out of 400 that would be viable for this, plus maybe a few more. Yeah, that's very limiting. Friendly reminder than 4 Pokemon is just 1% of the entire roster.

Who said it was level 50 or that i needed dozens of Raids? I had some already to get it to level ~85 and just did a few more.

Most of the high level stuff you catch from scratch is going to be around Lv. 50-60. And again, I have been prioritizing my own team so I'm short on Ls and XLs. I would basically need to start from scratch raising a new Pokemon. If you've admitted you already had some set aside then that undermines your point, not everyone is going to have a few set aside to get to Lv. 85 right off the bat.

 

[Ignition]

So you know of 4 Pokemon out of 400 that would be viable for this, plus maybe a few more. Yeah, that's very limiting.

Yeah, as I said, Slowbro is not the only option not that the other options are plentiful and that I understand not wanting to use anything but your favorites. And, again, I’m not interested in keeping track of what people are using to beat it. I could give dozens and you’d write it off because it’s not what you want to use.

Most of the high level stuff you catch from scratch is going to be around Lv. 50-60. And again, I have been prioritizing my own team so I'm short on Ls and XLs. I would basically need to start from scratch raising a new Pokemon. If you've admitted you already had some set aside then that undermines your point, not everyone is going to have a few set aside to get to Lv. 85 right off the bat.

That’s just an assumption on your part. It really doesn’t take a whole day to get a Pokémon leveled up as there are guides to do it fast. It doesn’t undermine my point just because it’s not your situation. Not everyone is going to have an issue with getting them either.

 

[Bolt the Cat]

Yeah, as I said, Slowbro is not the only option not that the other options are plentiful and that I understand not wanting to use anything but your favorites. And, again, I’m not interested in keeping track of what people are using to beat it. I could give dozens and you’d write it off because it’s not what you want to use.

In this case I did catch a Shiny Azumarill that might be viable for this with training. In general though, they shouldn't be creating a situation like this in game where you can't use what you want to use. Being able to use what you want is pretty much the way the game's been designed, it's largely been flexible enough that you can get through the game with whatever team you want and it wants you to form bonds with and train up whichever Pokemon appeal to you. Now they unfortunately can't accomplish that in competitive because of the difficulty in balancing characters, and that's fine, but they should be keeping that kind of mentality out of everything that isn't PvP.

That’s just an assumption on your part. It really doesn’t take a whole day to get a Pokémon leveled up as there are guides to do it fast. It doesn’t undermine my point just because it’s not your situation. Not everyone is going to have an issue with getting them either.

Maybe closer to like, 3-5 hours, but some people only have about that much free time in one day, if even that. It's not just me, how many people do you think can and are willing to grind that much for something like this? Probably not many.

 

[Ignition]

In this case I did catch a Shiny Azumarill that might be viable for this with training. In general though, they shouldn't be creating a situation like this in game where you can't use what you want to use. Being able to use what you want is pretty much the way the game's been designed, it's largely been flexible enough that you can get through the game with whatever team you want and it wants you to form bonds with and train up whichever Pokemon appeal to you. Now they unfortunately can't accomplish that in competitive because of the difficulty in balancing characters, and that's fine, but they should be keeping that kind of mentality out of everything that isn't PvP.

Again, I said I understand that you don’t want to use anything that’s not what you want to use even if I don’t think it’s that big of an issue. You don’t need to keep telling me that.

Maybe closer to like, 3-5 hours, but some people only have about that much free time in one day, if even that. It's not just me, how many people do you think can and are willing to grind that much for something like this? Probably not many.

I’m not seeing how it takes that long to grind. Considering that we’re currently in a week that a lot of people are on break and this game has a large fanbase, it’s definitely more than you’re letting on especially with how many threads on various social media platforms are dedicated to planning for these raids.

Regardless, my initial point is that this is not making people abide to competitive just because they’re asking the fans to do a little more than just blaze through without much thought. If you don’t like having to use different Pokémon or having to grind, that’s a different matter. I’m dropping this here.

 

[Taodragon]

So you know of 4 Pokemon out of 400 that would be viable for this, plus maybe a few more. Yeah, that's very limiting. Friendly reminder than 4 Pokemon is just 1% of the entire roster.

I'm not going to go too deep into this, but I feel saying 400 Pokemon here is disingenuous considering a fair chunk of that is unevolved Pokemon. You could go through the main game with say, a Quaxly, but it's more limiting then using a Quaquaval, and that applies to most other content in the game.

Personally, I like using my favorites, so I do understand where people are coming from with their frustrations on not being able to use them, but I do feel the restrictions with raids are being exaggerated. I've seen more than four Pokemon used for these Raids and in terms of building you can slap together something like a Slowbro or Amarouge in even minutes and get the clear as it's not so demanding that you need the perfect ability, nature, and IV/EVs for all of those options. I wouldn't say it's any worse than some of the harder Battle Frontier Challenges which did push players to have more focused teams to get the highest medals.

 

[Red and Blue]

The Slowbro strategy was surprisingly effective. I didn't use it myself but I joined in on a raid where one of my allies used a shiny Slowbro that managed to beat Cinderace before time ran out. I almost thought it was too late.

 

[Noy]

apparently hidden ability Qwilfish with acupuncture, is an effective support for Slowbro; since, it can remove the need for it to use as many status moves, reducing turns.

 

[Copley Hill Gym]

No, that is my point. Competitive always just limits you to a handful of Pokemon that the metagame community decides is "good" because of combinations of different factors (stats, movesets, abilities, types, really... all of it) and nearly everyone uses the same Pokemon as a result. And I don't find any of that fun so I just don't bother at all. I don't want that playstyle bleeding into main game content like this.

I am in complete agreement.

Though it did feel uniquely satisfying this morning to 3-0 on single battles a Hydriegon, followed by kingambit and breloom with my throat-spray/hyper voice/pixalate/sylveon/fire tera. By complete coincidence (I didn't know this was a thing!) the Hydreigon used substitute and Hyper Voice still hits super effective when used.

My Sylveon has been a ridiculous source of online competitive battling fun, tbh! Highlight of my Pokemon year.

Team is:

Jolteon
Sylveon
Annilhape
Armarouge
Palafin
Baxcalibur

I reckon I see Baxcaliburs on one out of three teams, Annilhape the same. Not seen anyone else using Jolteon thus far. Palafin I saw early on but haven't seem him used much recently. I reckon the swapping out gimmick has probably restricted its use - my one certainly only gets used rarely.

Am I a hypocrite, maybe? Looking at my team again with fresh eyes, maybe it is a team of some of the most popular pokemon, but it's definitely not the same for strategy.

 

[1rkhachatryan]

For anybody worried about missing it and just want the prevos, just surprise trade, got both Charmander and Scorbunny this way lol.

 

[aerial_ace]

This raid is just so stupid. Had a team of 2 slowbros my ceruledge and Azumarill. I kept clear smogin this thing and slowbros were setting up. We almost one shot it and then LITERALLY nobody could move and ace spammed 4 bulk ups in a row and proceeded to ohko the entire team.....

 

[Copley Hill Gym]

This raid is just so stupid. Had a team of 2 slowbros my ceruledge and Azumarill. I kept clear smogin this thing and slowbros were setting up. We almost one shot it and then LITERALLY nobody could move and ace spammed 4 bulk ups in a row and proceeded to ohko the entire team.....

That's insane.

 

[Spider-Phoenix]

The raids are too bugged.

Yesterday, I had this one where the screen showed the attack menu but 'Ace unleashed the energy so... After all was done the attack menu was stuck there. It only went away after I entered another raid (yeah, that was a weird bug)

There was also one where the bunny knocked my pokémon out before I could even pick a move.


Right now, my biggest peeve is... checking stuff like buffs and the duration of stuff like Reflect.

In this sense, I miss the whole "finish it in a set amount of turns" Max Raids had. At least it was easier to keep track of time because the way it is now sounds like player either has a lot of time to use moves or not much much.

Really, the ideal thing is a half hour cap. Let people stall away the fight if they want as long as you know that even if you take too much time, you still get something rather than just wasting time for "Cinderace unleashed his energy"

Just gave it a try and didn't have a chance, even with Lv. 100 Pokemon. Doesn't help that all I have to use against it is Iron Valiant (which got destroyed by Acrobatics), Farigiraf, and Corviknight (which don't resist Fighting). Looking at some of the successful builds on here, this is some competitive tier BS that I don't want to be part of, I subscribe to the Karen philosophy and don't want to have to be limited to the handful of Pokemon the meta says are good and have to max them out, that's no fun. F this noise it's not worth doing, I'm just going to wait for Home to get a Scorbunny. Keep competitive tier battling like this to the tournaments, not in game stuff like raids.

Ceruledge is an interesting option if you can deal with Acrobatics. A Flash Fire one makes it so Pyro Ball and High Jump Kick are useless while fire typing grants resistance to steel.

Did some coordinated play with it on the Serebii Discord and it worked well. The problem is doing with randoms....

I'd say it also depends on teammates. People copy-pasting poketubers sets for solo runs complicate things further as those sets aren't optimal for team runs.

I don't know an exact number nor am I interested in keeping track of it but I've seen success with Azumarill, Daschbun, Armorogue, and Ceruledge just to name a few.

I use Ceruledge and failed a lot.

But then, it's kind of my fault. The one I'm using is attack-focused when I should've built a defensive one.

 

[Taodragon]

On paper I'd say I like Tera Raids more as the shield in Max Raids was a pain to deal with (Dynamax Adventures was better about this) and it was pretty clunky in certain areas. In practice, the glitchiness of it can make it harder to deal with as sometimes the opposing Pokemon gets multiple turns and screws up a run while other times you react to something, and the reaction doesn't get to play out in time. When it works it's actually good, so if they could finetune it I think it'd be better.

Tera Raids are better solo though, between the better partners and the partners not taking away from the timer it's much easier to do a run alone then it was in Max Raids.

 

[WishIhadaManafi5]

They should've just kept this as Mystery Gifts. Or at least make them 4-5 star raids. Not everyone plays competitively, nor have the time to train one and have it used only for these events.

I will never use them. I also don't like Charizard nor Cinderace. But the collector in me just had to do it for the sake of my peace of mind.

Same. I haven't gotten Violet yet. But the raids sound like a pain. I battle now and then, but I've never really been into the competitive scene. So I don't like that they're trying to push it.

No matter how easy they try to make building a competitive team, not everyone wants to do it. Add in younger kids who want to play with their favorites. It punishes them in a way.

Sword and Shield raids are imperfect, but at least they're fun.

 

[Ignition]

My finals thoughts on this "debate" is I wish people would stop trying to equate this to them pushing competitive on casuals. Hate the difficulty and limitations but this isn't anything that groundbreaking in terms of strategy and most of the talk about EVs and IVs isn't necessary at all.


With that being said, I am liking that there's some level of strategy here in terms of countering them even if I agree somewhat about not fully liking the execution. Definitely better than SwSh's.

I use Ceruledge and failed a lot.

But then, it's kind of my fault. The one I'm using is attack-focused when I should've built a defensive one.

The 2 I've fought with were using Bulk Up so they were tanks to take hits and deal damage.

 

[Sham]

Extremely difficult. Thankfully it only uses physical moves so a lot of my team members were using Iron Defense and since Tinkaton is weak to Fire Types I was just cheering until I could Terra. I wouldn't say it's the most difficult thing in Pokemon (took me three times) but wasn't a fan of the immediate bulk up. I understand how extremely difficult it is to others so I'm just gonna start breeding Scorbunny's to give to friends or surprise trades