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

[doipy hooves]

What i really want to hear is horror stories of failing this raid online.

We know the average Pokemon player, we have all witnessed the atrocities people bring to raids, share your nightmares

Aside from the usual Belly Drum deaths, the worst set I've seen so far is dealing with an Annihilape just using Outrage/Close Combat/Leer and also maybe a Dynamic Punch Urshifu and Tera Flying Focus Punch Iron Hands in the same battle, with honorable mention to a Poison Jab Lucario who at least also had Iron Defense and Drain Punch itself. I would say it's pretty hard to lose to time even with a few deaths in most cases as long as there are 2 damage dealers in the room to balance it out. I've stopped even trying to Belly Drum before the 80% reset at this point and just trying to build tera instead.

Until I played with a Cloyster that had Aqua Ring/Rain Dance/Razor Shell/Liquidation and constantly died. There was also an Aura Sphere Lucario that somehow managed to die too. The worst part is me and the other Hands almost ended up taking out its health bar anyway in the short time left after setting up, but Eevee just ended the raid without giving us another input at this point.

Another note about the timing of this Eevee raid is that it does have an extra day to last up until the Tuesday of Eevee day unlike the other 7 star events.

 

[Worldie]

Until I played with a Cloyster that had Aqua Ring/Rain Dance/Razor Shell/Liquidation and constantly died.

honestly i wonder how exactly this one managed to get nuked, maybe it was underleveled. I've seen my share of people queueing with level 75 just-caught raid mons (or worse)

 

[Terimas]

I'm really disappointed how underwhelming this raid is. They really should have done something to make this more challenging, whether it's the Stored Power set, or a troll set.

Since this raid is pretty much the easiest one so far, now begins the hunt for the weakest Pokémon that can still beat the raid solo.

I present to you my contribution:

Nosepass @ Shell Bell
Ability: doesn't matter
Tera Type: Fighting
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Def / 4 SpD
Bold Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Body Press
- Iron Defense

The Hyper Voices pack a moderate amount of punch after losing the resistance to them, which made the final stretch of the raid challenging, but I still did it pretty conveniently on my second attempt. I suppose you could put Zap Cannon in there to fish for free turns with para.

 

[DHR-107]

I cleared pretty easily with 3 Iron hands and I was using the Bronzong set I used a few raids ago for something else. Set up Reflect, Iron Defence, heal cheer a few times and spam Body Press yourself and it was down pretty quick.

No huge surprise, I don't think anyone went into this raid expecting it to be difficult, but I am surprised it didn't have max bulk + a way of buffing defences. I think there is a difficult raid in Eevee's moveset somewhere - but it being forced into Anticipation kinda sucks as well.

 

[formula4speed]

Doug beat me to it, but Soundproof Kommo-o breaks this raid. Not that it's difficult to begin with, but I actually got 75% through a raid without taking any damage at all. Kept spamming Charm into my Clear Amulet.

I think if my partners were doing actual damage I could've cleared that one without taking a single hit.

 

[doipy hooves]

honestly i wonder how exactly this one managed to get nuked, maybe it was underleveled. I've seen my share of people queueing with level 75 just-caught raid mons (or worse)

Hyper Voice does 2HKO the average uninvested Cloyster to be fair.

I'm really disappointed how underwhelming this raid is. They really should have done something to make this more challenging, whether it's the Stored Power set, or a troll set.

Since this raid is pretty much the easiest one so far, now begins the hunt for the weakest Pokémon that can still beat the raid solo.

I don't want to call Marill weak here, but it may be the mon with the lowest BST and Attack stat that can go for an effective OHKO strat.

I was attempting some Marill runs and found that Marill can't outlast Eevee in a raw battle of attrition just like Azumarill, still taking major damage even with Eviolite, not being able to bulk up to handle both attacks simply, and lacking Shell Bell's sustain. The best chance Marill would have is to finish it in one shot, and for maximum power we need to resort to a new build around a certain super-effective DLC TM.

+6 252+ Atk Huge Power Tera Fighting Marill Atk Cheer Focus Punch vs. -6 0 HP / 0 Def Eevee: 17238-20282 (137.3 - 161.6% of 50x hp boss) -- guaranteed OHKO

Even with a 50x HP multiplier, Marill has all the tools it needs to stack enough offense multipliers to break through with the power of raw focus, Huge Power, terastallization, cheering, drumming, and opening up every weak point we can get. With the shield reducing damage to 70% from STAB Tera hits, this punch with everything behind it will do about 96% of Eevee's health at worst, which will be covered by the chip damage by the time we get to this point and I knew we were at 80% with Eevee resetting our buffs right before this. Alternatively you could use Superpower but it is slightly weaker (might not kill with a low roll) and not as cool. As an aside, Azumarill with its 50 Attack only needs -3 Defense to reach similar thresholds with teh same set, but I felt this was Marill's only shot so I decided to just give it the chance to prove itself.

Marill's goal is to set 6 Mud-Slaps ASAP after the first reset since we won't be seeing them reset again, and fish for the 6 defense drops from Liquidation + Mudsdale's Rock Smash (which it seems to only use after all 10 High Horsepowers and can still randomly pick Low Kick). I got a lucky Bellibolt draw here in a solo test, but it decided to use all its Mud Shots before starting to consider Discharge so I didn't actually get the paralysis until very late. While Eviolite bolsters survival and allows you to take 3 Double-Edges without an Intimidate, I did still take 2 deaths here, but Marill doesn't care about having extra time left when you just need 3 turns to Belly Drum, Attack Cheer, and hopefully land the finishing blow successfully with Focus Punch.

With all the setup fulfilled, all that's left is to terastallize and hit the first and final punch to finish Eevee from the green.

Let's go, Marill.

 

[PyProd]

Woah some of these online people just like to spam Close Combat and feed like goddamn monkeys, it's insufferable. Like how do you lose to an EEVEE?!

Anyways, here's what I had success with:

Speaking of monkeys... My first clear was with monke over here. Its Ghost side-typing and Defiant only allow the weak Bite to damage you, letting you set up Bulk Ups without much to fear. I essentially just set up two because Eevee steals a tera orb charge on turn 2 and I don't want to waste pp.
Because of the shield, non-tera damage output is pitiful, and you have to be wary if you are terastalized when Eevee attacks two times in a row later in the fight, but it works well if you just set up you Bulk Ups fast enough because tera damage gives you higher recovery.

This I experimented with later, but Iron Defense + Body Press + Shell Bell means Eevee does nothing to you and it's very easy to just set two IDs each time stat buffs are wiped to be strong and unkillable. Howl is an idea I toyed around with to help Annihilape, but I find myself rather wanting to ID and Body Press for a huge chunk of damage. Still, I find that Howl support could be interesting for this raid.

I must admit I'm pretty curious about Zapdos-Galar with Bulk Up, Thunderous Kick and Roost. I would love to use it, but I fear it would be too squishy sadly...

 

[doipy hooves]

With another raid loss comes my latest report on the best worst picks of the day.

I switched my Iron Hands set a bit, adding Swords Dance and Electric Terrain over Belly Drum for safer setup and to also support other Hands who usually don't have Quark Drive activated. Here we have Koraidon, Mewtwo, and Kommo-o which would mostly seem like a great party, and we almost won this one but Kommo-o threw by pressing Close Combat with no time left and dying.

Koraidon was actually pretty solid, setting up Swords Dance and Breaking Swipe to try to save the game. It had Big Root for Drain Punch healing but didn't protect itself against Charm.

I didn't know what to expect from the Mewtwo but it was just the raw 7 star Mewtwo, still holding its Chesto Berry and with the exact same moveset. Even with its default EV investment, it was just a liability that didn't do much to Eevee at all even with Psystrike or Aura Sphere. I can understand the average SV player bringing an untouched Charizard or Greninja from the early days where you could get carried, but if you went through the Mewtwo raid then I have higher expectations for you to be a good player.

The Kommo-o was the biggest offender to me, because it tricked me into thinking it would be the good set that people have been talking about, but it didn't even have Soundproof or a held item, and even worse it was shiny with a website name and a bad tera type. It just spammed Clangorous Soul and Close Combat to die repeatedly. It goes to show that having 2 players throwing marks the line between victory and death here, and if the Koraidon had Clear Amulet then we might just have the damage to win that.

On the other hand, I got wins with a Gengar who survived for a while thanks to Cursed Body blocking Bite, a Trevenant with Harvest Sitrus and Horn Leech + Bellibolt with the Metronome Parabolic Charge set being pretty sustainable, a game with a Tera Bug Mew support and a Rock Smash Corviknight that was actually doing alright, and an Iron Valiant constantly fainting and spamming Close Combat until it had to use Moonblast that almost lost us the game thanks to the other Hands taking a late death with Belly Drum. Sometimes SV giveth and sometimes SV taketh, but on average I feel like the odds of finding a decent random team are in your favour with counting yourself as a damage dealer and the prevalence of the usual accessible Fighting type counters, so the moments where you do manage to lose like this one really stand out.

 

[doipy hooves]

Today's Eevee raids felt more loseable than usual, probably because it's the weekend.

low quality sets of the day

A strange variety of item choices, which stand out when most mons are holding nothing at all. The Scope Lens could have been better if the Scizor had Focus Energy, but it was just using Brick Break and Close Combat. I've also noticed Punching Glove Iron Hands as the most common pick in my experience instead of Clear Amulets or even Booster Energy proccing, which just makes me think of the guide on Pokemon.com. I feel like people see the specialized item effect and think it adds more than it does, or at least why it's being chosen over the Muscle Band. The Miraidon here at least sustained itself decently with Parabolic Charge. Also that Honey Koraidon game is with another Mewtwo.

The host being a fresh uninvested Level 75 Blissey using Helping Hand and dying on every turn made for the worst progress I've had in a lost raid. On the other hand, I had an Eviolite Chansey be an effective support with Life Dew/Helping Hand/Light Screen that could actually take hits and buff up allies, while Heal Pulse/Helping Hand Calyrex-Shadow was a more frail choice of support, but both raids still ended up winning because they weren't dying every single turn and I had other competent allies. A note about Helping Hand in tera raids is that it doesn't stack on use, but the boost doesn't seem to be consumed until you actually use an attacking move, so you can spread it around ahead of time.

Seeing someone bring in their own Tera Rock Rollout Azumarill in the wild. I approved of the effort, though they were unfortunately a hindrance as they had no held item, ran Aqua Ring over my choice of Mud-Slap, and mostly just died after using Belly Drum multiple times, only using Aqua Ring and Defense Curl once early on but not after respawning. This was still barely a win even with Tera Dark Annihilape (100% crits) and Nasty Plot Gholdengo not being the best of partners.

I've seen some Metronome and Focus Energy Annihilape do work, and I've noticed that most apes are at least Defiant too. Then I saw this Annihilape spend 3 Bulk Ups and a Focus Energy just to send a Seismic Toss out. It did also have Drain Punch, which begs the question of why you even leave Seismic Toss in the moveset at that point.

It wasn't even the first Seismic Toss Annihilape I had today, and "emo david" didn't seem to have a better move in this case. I can't decide if Close Combat would have been better off here. We actually barely won this one because 1's Iron Hands on red HP somehow managed to make a move (I think Eevee used Charm) and land its Belly Drum Drain Punch, but if Eevee had finished it off then that would have been a loss.

Body Press Tauros. I guess that's one way to get around Charm on a budget. The Kommo-o here had no held item, but it at least had Iron Defense and Soundproof with Tera Fighting, though it didn't end up using the tera.

Finally, I managed to lose in a party with 3 Iron Hands because nobody terastallized and just threw away their lives with Belly Drum and Close Combat, and even then it was still close. The Ceruledge was doing its best with an actual item trying to Swords Dance and Bitter Blade, but it was shiny and didn't have the STAB tera type to hit the shield with 70% instead of 20% damage, and I just noticed that one of the Hands was Level 87. Also one of these was a Booster Energy and one of these just didn't have an item.

After this, I feel like trying out a debuff set to see if it would make a bigger difference for the team's damage and survivability in these situations where Iron Hands can't do all the damage on its own. I was making a Galarian Zapdos from the posted set, and it's convenient that it gets all those moves by levelup, as well as Focus Energy which has been pretty good for me in general.

EDIT: For a more unique support set I saw today, Reflect/Lunar Blessing Cresselia was just being a solid healer for healer standards which might be appreciated for the Belly Drummers and general frail mons, while also able to debuff Eevee's SpA with Moonblast. I wouldn't say it's the best mon for the job but he was notable for being the first person who I've seen use the ingame chat messages in a long time.

 

[doipy hooves]

Today was a better day for raids. I took no losses all day with Galarian Zapdos, and I think the defense drops gave us key victories that Iron Hands couldn't have won out on its own by increasing the damage of the whole team. It fits in nicely with the usual randoms using physicals that might not have the right tera type. I like that Zapdos can both be a supporter to set debuffs while also allowing itself to be a damage leader as well.

My general gameplan was to set Bulk Up and Focus Energy, and start kicking after Eevee steals tera charge and roll from there. Heal and defense cheers from allies are appreciated to stay alive to do damage, but sometimes you just end up being on low HP and taking a faint to set a defense drop. Eevee doubling in the lategame can still hurt without support but ideally at that point the whole team is able to take it down. I noticed that Eevee refused to ever naturally waste a turn using Charm on me, which could have helped Zapdos get away with more setup. Usually I did not have a good chance to click Light Screen unless I was with a Mirror Armor Corviknight.

Highlights:

Another Gapdos and me had to do all the damage with an Eviolite Chansey keeping us alive with Life Dew, Chilling Water, Helping Hand, and Light Screen, while an underleveled Koraidon used Outrage. Having 2 Zapdos both dropping defense was actually very efficient.

Metronome (the move) Lucario, also using Tera Blast and Aura Sphere. Fortunately we had another Gapdos and an Iron Hands here so it didn't really cost us much.

Nobody else used any setup moves in this game, including an untouched 7 star Charizard that was also taking damage from Solar Power thanks to Koraidon. This was a pure Zapdos carry game that came very close to a loss and might have hinged on Charizard getting a random burn early.

Probably the worst team combination that I've gone in with and checked details of, just because there were no other properly built Fighting teras. I had a Shiny Tera Water Psychic Seed Revavroom spamming Steel Beam all game and using Sunny Day once, a Life Orb Gengar using Acid Spray and Nasty Plot to no effect, and a suboptimal Belly Drum Tera Dragon Kommo-o that was actually doing decent damage thanks to its Metronome and my defense debuffs. We had so little damage earlygame that my first Bulk Up actually lasted long enough for me to terastallize with it. I almost ended up dying from a crit Double-Edge + Hyper Voice, but I did re-set Bulk Up and got a crit on the next turn to heal me enough to survive Eevee's next Hyper Voice.

Azumarill used Superpower at the start and I thought that was going to be all it did, but fortunately it switched to Helping Hand support, while Mew used Aura Sphere and then Transform on me a few times (depicted here about to use Thunderous Kick).

Reversal Zapdos finishes a health bar from the red. At this point I was just dead and had to watch Zapdos go through the whole tera animation and do its attack animation after the health bar had already disappeared.

Body Press Koraidon. Other legendary honourable mentions include Dynamax Cannon/Recover Eternatus at least not dying, and Swords Dance/Dragon Ascent Rayquaza being a poor man's Close Combat spammer.

After a year of SV's online, I feel like these Eevee raids were probably one of the more tolerable co-op experiences they've settled on, and it may be because they were lenient enough to beat that almost no lobbies ended up abandoned. It was a fair difficulty for the average raid player to not instantly lose with one or two suboptimal sets and supports are still viable, even with the random chance of double attacks being unpredictable. The rewards were also pretty nice compared to other 7 stars, with 6 guaranteed and equal chances for drops of 5 L and XL candy. I still don't like that checking ally details still defaults to targeting them on the move selection screen though.