I am continuing to experiment and decided to try something a little different.
I generally avoid repping pokemon that are hard to obtain until I have already recommended other more-available options, which is the case here. There are plenty of good mons readily available for this raid, so now I am just exploring the design space for 7* Empoleon. In past raids I have always kept my eye out for opportunities to leverage Rock Smash effectively, since it is one of the very few ways to relatively reliably lower the boss defense through the shield. With Empoleon weak to fighting, I decided to comb through the Rock Smash distribution list and found a winner in
Sneasler! It sucks that you have to transfer it from PLA, but once you have it in SV it's pretty darn good in online raids. And it looks super-snazzy throwing out that little-seen Strange Ball at the beginning of every raid lol !
Sneasler @ Shell Bell
Tera Type: Fighting
Ability: Poison Touch
Careful Nature
EVs: 252 HP / 252 SpDef
- Low Kick
- Rock Smash
- Swords Dance
- Screech
Sneasler can't solo because it needs someone else to remove Competitive. But there are many common Skill Swappers and other ability removers out there now, so I haven't had any trouble finding raids with the requisite support mons. Gallade has been very popular in these raids, and almost all of them are packing Skill Swap. Also because they are physical attackers, there's a lot of synergy with Sneasler being a defense-lowering beast. So I usually look for Gallades in online lobbies, but there are many others that get the job done.
Assuming someone gets Competitive removed, then Sneasler typically starts Rock Smashing to build tera and lower defense. If the beginning looks good, I sometimes Screech before the shield goes up, but it's just a nice to have. I like to Tera as quickly as possible, just so I get good Shell Bell recovery asap. Also because Swords Dancing before the first player reset is not an efficient use of turns. After the first player reset, I Swords Dance and pound it hard with Low Kicks. The combination of lowered boss defense and swords dances is devastating on Empoleon, so team raids are pretty easy if your teammates aren't dying all over the place. And like I said, if you have a Gallade or Iron Hands joining in the physical assault, these raids go super fast. I've cleared a few of them with 60-65% of the timer remaining!
Sneasler is EV'd for max special bulk, and with base 80/80 defensive stats, it gets pretty damn bulky while still packing a meaty 130 base attack. I could probably afford to move some EVs/nature over to Attack, since health hasn't generally been an issue for Sneasler. But I haven't had many raids where I haven't gotten at least a little help from teammates, so I might change my tune the first time I have to take care of myself healthwise in an online raid. And it's not like Sneasler has any trouble dealing damage, even with a build that is completely weighted for special bulk.
Nifty story -- I did have one awesome raid where a Grumpig hosted, so I knew it would Simple Beam the boss. We demolished that raid because I was getting -4 Def on every screech and -2 def on my Rock Smashes through the shield. And then the icing on the cake was the badass pro that was hosting the raid noticed what I was doing and they gave me Simple as well, making my Swords Dances +4 every time. Needless to say - ice penguin fall down and go boom... lol :-) Fun times