7-Star Raid Event: Normal Type Eevee (+ Eevee Outbreak Spawns)

[SadisticMystic]

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1723842276999262433

Next weekend's raid will be...no, not H-Samurott, first we have to deal with Eevee. See, there's a tradition in Japanese to associate numbers with words, which explains a lot of the NPC uniform numbers in Sword and Shield, and it even extends to the calendar: 1121 = イイブイ = Eevee, so November 21st is celebrated as Eevee Day. Granted, this year it falls on a Tuesday, and the normal raid schedule has them ending on Sunday, but it's as close as they could get without going to a non-standard schedule. Eevee will get super-STAB on Normal type, marking the first repeat of types we've seen across 7-star raids (Rillaboom was also Normal).

Other than raid dens, they'll also have event mass outbreaks of Eevee spawning around the regions over the same timeframe. Each outbreak will have an elevated chance of one particular mark, with Paldea outbreaks choosing from a pool of 4 separate marks (Flustered, Intellectual, Intense, Jittery) and those in Kitakami choosing from among 4 others (Calmness, Excited, Rowdy, Unsure).

After what we saw with Pikachu, it seems like a given that Eevee will have to resort to an immediate full-bar shield. It doesn't have much in the way of boosting moves that would let it get supercharged use of Stored Power (unless they want to be cheeky and give it illegal scripted moves like Extreme Evoboost, or perhaps throw LGPE moves like Baddy Bad into the script for the comedy value), and you can pretty much count on them including Dark coverage just to have a move with no immunities, and prevent any possible picks like H-Zoroark, Spiritomb, or Gholdengo from being immune to the entire moveset and trolling Eevee for the whole time limit. What other gimmicks might they throw in?

 

[R_N]

I had already guessed that Samurott-H would be the early December raid, so I guess this is a nice "bonus" one.


Eevee doesn't really have any gimmick event moves like Pikachu does, so I could see them giving Eevee every move associated with its types even if it shouldn't have them. Just so it has....something? Anything.

Like I guess it could just have a bunch of timer stall moves instead and that'll be the gimmick? Yawn, Sand Attack, Wish, Charm, Protect, etc.

e: Man this thing's going to have Anticipation so it cant even have the gimmick of throwing out Tera-Boosted Adaptability

 

[Vengeance417]

I wonder if GF will take a break from having each 7 star boss use its hidden ability, and just say fuck it and use Adaptability. Double-Edge, Hyper Voice if it has any SpA boosts, or maybe even something as wacky as Last Resort (not sure how they'd make it work) would kinda sorta hurt off of (Tera) STAB and Adaptability.

Pikachu's raid had the boss at 50x health, so I can see Eevee being the same. I don't really know what else it'd do besides shield t0, could be anything. Stat debuff vs its opponents (Charm, Fake Tears, Mud-Slap), a stat boost for itself (Calm Mind, or an event-exclusive omniboost or something) or something dumb like Yawn on everyone.

Annihilape should handle this boss in theory. Ghost-type not weak to Dark and has Defiant for any stat-debuff moves. Galarian Zapdos could also be cool since it, too, has Defiant and Thunderous Kick to lower Defense with each hit. Will depend on the moves as always, though.

 

[doipy hooves]

What I could see happening is the Eevee holding Eviolite and trying to be a bulky damage race against the clock to contrast with Pikachu's Light Ball and full investment. Based on the original Eevee raid event and the vanilla 5 star Eevee raids, Calm Mind and Yawn could be common constants to be expected, but aside from that it's hard to say what gimmick it will be about.

Fortunately we don't have to worry about Game Freak giving normally unusable scripted moves to the Eevee (outside of a surprise patch), because there is an example in the base game that shows that it wouldn't work. The 5 star Eelektross is set to use Ion Deluge at the start of the raid, which is an unusable move so it just doesn't happen.

 

[SadisticMystic]

Some peculiarities for Eevee collectors:

-The Switch can only hold eight user profiles at once. So if you wanted to catch a bunch of these, leave one unevolved, and have the rest run the gamut of evolutions, you're one profile short of having enough to do that, unless you traded with someone else for theirs; or have both versions of the pair (so you can play 5 profiles on Scarlet and 4 on Violet, for example); or you can quickly catch one, stash it in Home, then delete that profile's save and rush through a new game to be able to play 7 star raids again all before the event timer runs out.
-Because 7-star raids are already level 100 when you catch them, if you want to evolve your Eevee into Espeon, Umbreon, or Sylveon, you'll have to take advantage of the fairly recent mechanic (introduced in Sw/Sh) where a Rare Candy can be used as an evolution stone on Pokemon that are already 100 and evolve by leveling up. (You'll have to raise the happiness and meet the other criteria for the particular evolution you want, of course.) Alternatively, you could drop the Eevee in Home and withdraw it in PLA, where that game doesn't have automatic level-up evolutions: instead, once you meet the requirements (happiness, location, or whatever), you unlock the discretionary ability to choose "Evolve" from the menu, and can just select that. (This method is also helpful if you want to move a newly hatched Eevee and evolve it into Espeon or Umbreon while remaining level 1.)

 

[Worldie]

Hear me out...

It's Normal type so people will bring Fighting types.

Regular moves:
Stored Power
Hyper Beam or Tera Blast
Body Slam or Double Kick (combined with Curse to discourage dark types)
Yawn or Tickle

Extra moves:
Curse + Calm Mind

Will have the ginormous shield like Pikachu. Will have several scripted casts of the Curse / Calm Mind or may actually have either as regular move like Mewtwo.

 

[Original Dragon Arkvelza]

Well, at least Koraidon will finally get his time to shine, assuming it doesn't have Stored Power.


Metronome
Tera Fighting
252 Atk / 252 Def or SpD
Adamant nature

Collision Course (Power Point Max just in case)
Drain Punch
Swords Dance
Sunny Day

 

[Scorpio]

Well, at least Koraidon will finally get his time to shine.


Metronome
Tera Fighting
252 Atk / 252 Def or SpD
Adamant nature

Collision Course (Power Point Max just in case)
Drain Punch
Swords Dance
Sunny Day

I was gonna say “Watch as Eevee gets a move to annihilate Koraidon lololololol”…but turns out the best Eevee can hope for here is Calm Mind + Stored Power, which is… unlikely, so Korai might have its day in the limelight after all.

 

[doipy hooves]

The fact that Eevee is repeating an already used 7-star tera type makes me feel like Hisuian Samurott will just end up as Water instead of Dark.

With nothing else to go off of, I will guess that Eevee will have a Serious nature/mint and either drop Iron/Zinc for defenses or have every vitamin available purely because of its balance and potential to specialize in any stat. On the other hand, the choice of TM representation for this raid is hard to predict because of it being Normal type, but going over them gave me some more potential gimmick ideas.

If we want to assume a damaging Normal move to match the tera type, then the only options are Swift, Facade, Tera Blast, Body Slam, Take Down, and Hyper Voice, and out of these I would expect either Body Slam or Hyper Voice as the main STAB if not Double-Edge. Tera Blast is an option more suited to the raids that have random typings, but even then it could try to pull off poor adaptive damage with raising Atk/SpA at different times to hit on different defenses. There are also Shadow Ball, Stored Power, Rest, Fake Tears, Charm, Protect, Substitute, and Calm Mind as other off-type and status options being raised, and if Substitute does work for bosses it could be interesting to see it using Substitute at each 25% HP threshold which would block stat drops and status on top of the shield. At the least I hope they don't reuse the Calm Mind gimmick on an Eevee.

 

[Terimas]

The thing about Eevee is that its movepool and stats are abysmal. The Unrivaled Pikachu needed 50x health bar, immediate 100% shield and held Light Ball to be threatening. Eevee doesn't have the luxury of a Light Ball nor Pikachu's stellar offensive coverage, meaning that if GF wants to make this raid hard, they will have to employ even more dirty tricks than they did with Pikachu.

Stored Power is a strong contender, but it is extremely susceptible to Clear Smog. Meaning that the only way Stored Power could be threatening is if Calm Mind is part of its regular non-scripted moveset and it gets to spam it regularly, perhaps via being able to use two moves per turn right from the get-go. Only that way Eevee could hope to outrun the Clear Smog strategy. Alternatively, the movepool of Normal STAB + Shadow Ball does threaten many Clear Smog users quite well, so Eevee might just try to overcome that strategy through sheer offensive spam.

Due to Stored Power, Dark types might become an optimal or even a mandatory choice for this raid. Spiritomb especially looks interesting since Eevee really struggles to hurt it outside of Shadow Ball.

Other dirty tricks that we could see include Last Resort, Sand-Attack spam or even Rest.

 

[pika pal]

For a trickery moveset, I wonder how many of them would be able to get around a Substitute. Eevee's not likely to have significant damage output to break them consistently, so if it's "Timer Stall" with Sand Attack and Debuffs, or Stored Power Boost Spam, putting a bulky Clear Smog user behind a Sub will probably impede it heavily, as would a Bulky Mist user for the former.

I wonder how much Eevee is supposed to be a challenge fight. Compared to Pikachu who they keep giving busted tool pieces to over the years, Eevee only recently got pseudo-mascot pushes. Plus this is more a push to celebrate a pun day with the wild swarms, so it might also just be "here's a strong Eevee while the wild ones are for Shiny hunting," with a 7* Raid ensuring max spreads for all the Evolutions.

 

[Original Dragon Arkvelza]

You know, if Eevee is gonna be stalling with Sand Attack Corviknight would probably be a good pick.

 

[Vengeance417]

I think it's the King of the Pocket Monster's time to shine:

Tyranitar @ Leftovers
Ability: Unnerve
Tera Type: Fighting
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Def / 4 SpD
Impish Nature
- Substitute
- Knock Off
- Iron Defense
- Body Press

Eevee could potentially do a ton of strategies; Stored Power CM sweeper, timer staller w/ Sand Attack or Yawn while holding Eviolite, or it'll just be a freebie and we're overthinking the hell out of this. So I tried to think of a mon that could potentially deal with all possibilities, and Sub PhysDef Tyranitar stood out to me.

Eevee has pretty much nothing in its movepool that can hurt PhysDef Tyranitar that much. Resists Normal, resists Shadow Ball, and immune to Stored Power. It has Double Kick, but unless it's running an Adamant nature (or some t0 setup), it won't break Tyranitar's Sub even without ID boosts, and I doubt it'd run Double Kick anyway. Tyranitar is also naturally faster than Eevee (again, without some t0 setup that would boost Speed), so it can get Sub off before Eevee does anything.

0 Atk Tera Normal Eevee Double Kick (2 hits) vs. 252 HP / 252+ Def Tyranitar: 80-96 (19.8 - 23.7%) -- approx. possible 5HKO

Tyranitar was blessed with Knock Off in the DLC, meaning it's capable of removing whatever item Eevee will likely be carrying, with Eviolite being the most obvious (an evolution-based item on the evolution-themed Pokemon). After that, ID+BP for good damage. Even without using Tera Fighting too early, BP does good damage at +6 with Defense Cheer and Eviolite knocked off:

+6 252+ Def Tyranitar Def Cheer Body Press vs. 252 HP / 128 Def Tera Normal Eevee: 1430-1684 (9.1 - 10.7% of 50x hp boss) -- possibly the worst move ever

You'd ideally pop your Tera once Eevee is weakened in the event it's running CM spam w/ Stored Power. I normally don't condone Leftovers in raids, but it doesn't seem like a bad option here since you'd want to have consistent healing to get Subs off while setting up.

 

[Terimas]

The more I think about, the more it looks like this raid will have potential to be incredibly devious.

Assuming Eevee works like Pikachu, it is immediately going to put up a 100% shield which has an extreme resistance to all damage except terastillized STAB damage. This means we are forced to Tera as soon as possible to deal any damage at all.

This results in a nasty outcome. The only super effective type against Eevee is Fighting, which is weak against Stored Power. If the theory of Eevee having Calm Mind in its main moveset is true, those Stored Powers will very quickly snowball to ridiculous amounts of damage.

For example:
+4 0 SpA Eevee Stored Power (180 BP) vs. 252 HP / 0 SpD Tera Fighting Tyranitar: 414-488 (102.4 - 120.7%) -- guaranteed OHKO

+3 252 SpA Eevee Stored Power (140 BP) vs. 252 HP / 0 SpD Tera Fighting Tyranitar: 402-474 (99.5 - 117.3%) -- 93.8% chance to OHKO

The above Tyranitar set gets blasted in an instant after a few Calm Mind boosts if it activates its Tera. And I'm assuming Eevee will have EVs (heh) just like Pikachu did, so the latter calc will be more likely to reflect the expected outcome.

And this is the core issue we are facing. People will undoubtedly try to bring either Fighting types like Koraidon, Iron Hands or Annihilape, or Pokémon that Tera into Fighting types such as Corviknight and these attempts will be guaranteed to fail due to how quickly Eevee can snowball.

What is the solution then?
Well, there are a couple ways to approach this challenge:
- Dark type neutral damage. However, this risks the damage output not being high enough due to the likely 50x HP bar. Still, I could see Kingambit being a good pick due to resisting everything Eevee can do pre-Tera (except Double Kick lol), having Swords Dance for set-up, Defiant for punishing debuffs, and even Kowtow Kleave for bypassing accuracy drops from Sand Attack.
- An alternative for team-based strategies is to dedicate one person for buff removal spam with Clear Smog while the others focus on Fighting type damage. Most Clear Smog users are weak to Stored Power or Shadow Ball, which makes this a risky strategy. Therefore, an interesting choice would be Alolan Muk who is immune to Stored Power and has Knock Off support in addition to Clear Smog.

Still, it's going to be unpredictable what nasty tricks Eevee will have up its sleeves but I'm expecting the worst and trying to think of these back-up plans for those outcomes.

 

[Vengeance417]

Something I completely forgot about the Pikachu raid that they could redo for this one is that non-Tera shield damage was set to like 1%, with STAB Tera set to 120%, which means you have to Tera to make meaningful progress, and Tera Fighting will indeed get eviscerated by Stored Power. RIP my T-Tar set lmao

Alolan Muk is a cool support idea, though.


Muk-Alola @ Iapapa Berry
Ability: Gluttony
Tera Type: Dark
EVs: 212 HP / 252 Def / 44 Spe or 212 HP / 252 SpDef / 44 Spe
Impish / Careful Nature
- Clear Smog
- Knock Off
- Acid Armor / Helping Hand
- Recycle

Doesn't really fear anything on the Special side from Eevee unless it also has Hyper Voice or something, hence the SpDef alternative spread.

 

[Worldie]

that they could redo for this one

oh unless they specifically plan to make a "free" raid like the event Chanseys, it's all but guaranteed. Even assuming a equipped Eviolite and 50x HP, eevee is made of paper, pretty much any strong fighting type would obliterate it (and remember, IDBP also exists and is fighting type offense, meaning it would brutally wall a phisical variant while also demolishing it)

Speaking of which, how do Unaware mons interact with Stored Power? I assume they still have to eat the 120 BP attack but without the +6 spatk factored in?
Cause if worse came to worse, a tera fighting unaware could also be a option. Unstabbed stored power off Eevee's pretty low spatk isn't going to be a big deal.

- Dondozo does get Body Press, and while no Iron Defense, it does get Curse to boost it. No recovery though
- Clefable can be "Iron Hands at home" by doing Belly Drum + Drain Punch
- Quagsire similarly to Dondozo can do Body Press + Curse while also having access to Recover and Drain Punch

Sadly the other Unaware users don't actually get any fighting attack worth using (and Clodsire being weak to Stored Power isn't helping it)

 

[Terimas]

Speaking of which, how do Unaware mons interact with Stored Power? I assume they still have to eat the 120 BP attack but without the +6 spatk factored in?
Cause if worse came to worse, a tera fighting unaware could also be a option. Unstabbed stored power off Eevee's pretty low spatk isn't going to be a big deal.

The increased base power is applied. So if Eevee gets the full six Calm Minds, it will be able to fire off 260 BP Stored Powers. I would say that Fighting types are going to have a hard time here even with Unaware.

To add onto the Clear Smog speculation, Gastrodon and Torkoal deserve a mention for their access to Amnesia. If this Eevee is a full special attacker, then Amnesia is going to be exceptionally valuable for survival.

Also, Espathra may have some potential. If it can use Opportunist to match the Calm Mind boosts, while also using Lumina Crash to take away the SpDef boosts, that could work out quite well. Just need to watch out for Shadow Ball. Perhaps Tera Dark with Tera Blast could yield results here?

 

[Original Dragon Arkvelza]

In regards to Dark Types, Krookodile seems like a decent pick. Intimidate to weaken Double Kick and he gets Power Trip, which is a physical dark version of Stored Power, as well as Bulk Up. And while it's pretty inconsistent, Snarl will be able to weaken any special attacks Eevee might have.


Leftovers
Intimidate
Tera Dark
252 Atk / 252 Def / 6 HP or 252 Atk / 129 Def / 129 SpD
Adamant nature

Power Trip
Snarl
Mud Slap
Bulk Up

 

[Vengeance417]

In regards to Dark Types, Krookodile seems like a decent pick. Intimidate to weaken Double Kick and he gets Power Trip, which is a physical dark version of Stored Power, as well as Bulk Up. And while it's pretty inconsistent, Snarl will be able to weaken any special attacks Eevee might have.


Leftovers
Intimidate
Tera Dark
252 Atk / 252 Def / 6 HP or 252 Atk / 129 Def / 129 SpD
Adamant nature

Power Trip
Snarl
Mud Slap
Bulk Up

Krookodile gets Knock Off, so you might want to consider it over Snarl or Mud-Slap in case Eevee plans to run Eviolite or some other item. Eevee resetting your stats could also prove to be troubling since Bulk Up is a pretty slow way to boost up. It'll depend on if or when it'll do that, though.

 

[pika pal]

Krookodile gets Knock Off, so you might want to consider it over Snarl or Mud-Slap in case Eevee plans to run Eviolite or some other item. Eevee resetting your stats could also prove to be troubling since Bulk Up is a pretty slow way to boost up. It'll depend on if or when it'll do that, though.

Does the buff cleanse only affect stat ups specifically, or does it reset the Pokemon to neutral? That might affect whether Eevee does either often if its entire gimmick has to stem from Stored Power and/or Debuff Timer Stalling

 

[Worldie]

Does the buff cleanse only affect stat ups specifically, or does it reset the Pokemon to neutral? That might affect whether Eevee does either often if its entire gimmick has to stem from Stored Power and/or Debuff Timer Stalling

Only affects stat ups (and stat downs for the reverse one)

If it affected both stats, spamming Close Combat and other similar attacks would actually be pretty stronk.

 

[AztecCroc]

Krookodile gets Knock Off, so you might want to consider it over Snarl or Mud-Slap in case Eevee plans to run Eviolite or some other item. Eevee resetting your stats could also prove to be troubling since Bulk Up is a pretty slow way to boost up. It'll depend on if or when it'll do that, though.

Knock Off doesn't remove items in Tera Raids.

 

[SadisticMystic]

Does the buff cleanse only affect stat ups specifically, or does it reset the Pokemon to neutral? That might affect whether Eevee does either often if its entire gimmick has to stem from Stored Power and/or Debuff Timer Stalling

This one's pretty interesting because back in SwSh raids, the shockwave effect erased all stat changes for the player team (positive and negative), and also erased the boss's negative stats, but left the positive ones intact. Now that they've separated the two kinds of wipes in Tera Raids, each one works symmetrically: any changes that are beneficial from the boss's perspective to keep (positive stats for them or negative stats for you) get kept, the rest get wiped. In any event, the raid battle script can only contain a maximum of seven scripted actions between all varieties combined, one of which is the shield.

Knock Off doesn't remove items in Tera Raids.

It does if the raid boss is the one holding the item (see Pikachu, where Knock Off was a useful tool for permanently cutting the attack power in half), but player-controlled Pokemon get a special immunity to having their own item removed if a wild Pokemon or raid boss tries to manipulate items with an item or ability, such as Knock Off, Trick, or the worthless Magician from Delphox's raid. They provide that immunity so that they don't get complaints about "I never knew this species got Knock Off in the wild, and now my only copy of the Lucky Egg is gone as a result".

 

[Original Dragon Arkvelza]

I looked up if Krookodile can learn Knock Off, but I didn't see it anywhere. Afterwards I looked up Knock Off to see it was a TM. It said TM 181, and Tera Blast, which is the last non DLC TM, is 171... He only learns it through TM, doesn't he? Ugh, I swear to Arceus. Well, even though I won't try it since I'm a Solo player I am curious how this support set could fair.


Leftovers/Light Clay
Prankster
No Tera
252 Def / 252 SpD / 6 HP
Sassy Nature

Knock Off
Snarl/Mud Slap
Recover
Helping Hand/Reflect/Light Screen

The reason I said no Tera is because this is one of those extremely rare cases of Terastallizing royally screwing you over. You turn into a Ghost to avoid those dreaded normal attacks? Prepare for a whole bunch of possible Calm Mind boosted Stored Powers, especially if CM is in the base moveset rather than the additional. Turn Dark? Enjoy getting kicked in the face, and even if that doesn't hurt much I'd like to avoid taking damage from bonus Tera Boosted Double Edge, Tera Blast, whatever normal move Eevee will have. And do remember, Eevee gets no offensive Fairy moves. Also, unless the boosts get out of hand, Eevee should be dealing paltry damage. Even though there's a very minuscule chance of Eevee having any offensive EVs (That sounds so weird when said out loud) and nature, I gave him them just to prove my point.

Shadow Ball with Leftovers

252+ SpA Tera Normal Eevee Shadow Ball vs. 6 HP / 252+ SpD Sableye: 48-57 (19.8 - 23.5%) -- possible 6HKO after Leftovers recovery

Shadow Ball without Leftovers

252+ SpA Tera Normal Eevee Shadow Ball vs. 6 HP / 252+ SpD Sableye: 48-57 (19.8 - 23.5%) -- possible 5HKO

In fact, after these calcs I'm starting to question if it's even worth bringing Recover.

 

[R_N]

I looked up if Krookodile can learn Knock Off, but I didn't see it anywhere. Afterwards I looked up Knock Off to see it was a TM. It said TM 181, and Tera Blast, which is the last non DLC TM, is 171... He only learns it through TM, doesn't he? Ugh, I swear to Arceus.

Bit surprised you looked up Krookodile's learnset and no where said it learned it or how but correct, it's only learnable through the TM.
4 Corphish and 4 Seedot materials

Though if you go online with raids you can get Kitakami raids even without the DLC so that's a nice option