May 7* Raid Event: Tera Rock Chesnaught

[Original Dragon Arkvelza]

Wow, and here I thought this thread was dead and would stay that way until Friday when people start fighting him. Regardless, for online Toxapex may be kinda decent for support.


Leftovers
No recommended ability, though I suppose you can try Merciless if you want to use Toxic. Just don't expect much.
You're not gonna be relying on damage, so Terastallizing won't be necessary
252 Def/252 HP
Bold Nature

Acid Spray
Chilling Water
Iron Defense/Mud Shot
Recover

0 Atk Chesnaught Earthquake vs. 252 HP / 252+ Def Toxapex: 82-98 (26.9 - 32.2%) -- 45.9% chance to 4HKO after Leftovers recovery

The reason I added Mud Shot as an alternative option is because Iron Defense may be kind of overkill considering with Leftovers Earthquake isn't even a guaranteed 4HKO and you're already gonna be weakening his offense with Chilling Water. Though with how slow Chesnaught is, odds are you're gonna be using it no more than 2 times.

(Edit) Never mind, thread's still dead.

 

[Terimas]

Wow, and here I thought this thread was dead and would stay that way until Friday when people start fighting him. Regardless, for online Toxapex may be kinda decent for support.


Leftovers
No recommended ability, though I suppose you can try Merciless if you want to use Toxic. Just don't expect much.
You're not gonna be relying on damage, so Terastallizing won't be necessary
252 Def/252 HP
Bold Nature

Acid Spray
Chilling Water
Iron Defense/Mud Shot
Recover

0 Atk Chesnaught Earthquake vs. 252 HP / 252+ Def Toxapex: 82-98 (26.9 - 32.2%) -- 45.9% chance to 4HKO after Leftovers recovery

The reason I added Mud Shot as an alternative option is because Iron Defense may be kind of overkill considering with Leftovers Earthquake isn't even a guaranteed 4HKO and you're already gonna be weakening his offense with Chilling Water. Though with how slow Chesnaught is, odds are you're gonna be using it no more than 2 times.

(Edit) Never mind, thread's still dead.

Bulletproof blocks Acid Spray.

 

[Original Dragon Arkvelza]

It's times like these where I wish Weak Armor would lower both defenses rather than just physical, Reflect Skill Swap Polteageist could've been so effective online.

 

[Vengeance417]

Bulletproof blocks Acid Spray.

I had to fact-check this, and of course the Japanese translation is "Acid Bomb". Damn.

Well, it's a good thing we have two goofy goobers that can get around this with the help of Gastro Acid. The point of the following two Pokemon is the self-sufficient ability to nullify Chesnaught's Bulletproof while having access to Acid Spray itself.

On acid. (Swalot) @ Iapapa Berry
Ability: Gluttony
Tera Type: Grass
EVs: 180 HP / 252 Def / 76 Spe
Bold Nature
- Gastro Acid
- Acid Spray
- Acid Armor
- Giga Drain

On acid a bit less (Eelektross) @ Sitrus Berry
Ability: Levitate
Tera Type: Grass
EVs: 140 Def / 252 SpA / 116 Spe
Modest Nature
- Gastro Acid
- Acid Spray
- Giga Drain
- Coil / Bulldoze

These two play similarly, but have different advantages. Swalot resists Grass and Fighting, has access to Gluttony so Iapapa Berry can be activated at 50% health as opposed to 25%, and can boost its Defense with Acid Armor to alleviate the Ground / Psychic weakness (EQ or Zen Headbutt). Meanwhile, Eelektross has Levitate to remove its Ground-weakness with the exception of the ability-nulling turn, and is a lot stronger than Swalot. I was a bit unsure about the 4th moveslot and the item choice for Eel, so you can change those if you'd rather use something else. Sitrus Berry is just a nice buffer for when you're spamming Acid Spray after Gastro Acid. Coil is a less-good Defense-boosting option, and Bullldoze can off-set any Speed-dropping shenanigan. The speed for both sets outspeed Chesnaught, btw.

Edit: ended up going for a more defensive Swalot set since I realized it took a lot from Adamant EQ. Offensive is better with Eel anyway.

 

[DougJustDoug]

I had to fact-check this, and of course the Japanese translation is "Acid Bomb". Damn.

Well, it's a good thing we have two goofy goobers that can get around this with the help of Gastro Acid. The point of the following two Pokemon is the self-sufficient ability to nullify Chesnaught's Bulletproof while having access to Acid Spray itself.

On acid. (Swalot) @ Iapapa Berry
Ability: Gluttony
Tera Type: Grass
EVs: 180 HP / 252 Def / 76 Spe
Bold Nature
- Gastro Acid
- Acid Spray
- Acid Armor
- Giga Drain

On acid a bit less (Eelektross) @ Sitrus Berry
Ability: Levitate
Tera Type: Grass
EVs: 140 Def / 252 SpA / 116 Spe
Modest Nature
- Gastro Acid
- Acid Spray
- Giga Drain
- Coil / Bulldoze

These two play similarly, but have different advantages. Swalot resists Grass and Fighting, has access to Gluttony so Iapapa Berry can be activated at 50% health as opposed to 25%, and can boost its Defense with Acid Armor to alleviate the Ground / Psychic weakness (EQ or Zen Headbutt). Meanwhile, Eelektross has Levitate to remove its Ground-weakness with the exception of the ability-nulling turn, and is a lot stronger than Swalot. I was a bit unsure about the 4th moveslot and the item choice for Eel, so you can change those if you'd rather use something else. Sitrus Berry is just a nice buffer for when you're spamming Acid Spray after Gastro Acid. Coil is a less-good Defense-boosting option, and Bullldoze can off-set any Speed-dropping shenanigan. The speed for both sets outspeed Chesnaught, btw.

Edit: ended up going for a more defensive Swalot set since I realized it took a lot from Adamant EQ. Offensive is better with Eel anyway.

Just looking at these on paper, it seems like it’s a lot of work to get around Bulletproof, while eating a ton of damage from Chesnaught while you’re doing gastro acid and acid spray. And then the payoff is just to hit it with a low-BP unstabbed-without-tera Giga Drain, coming from not-amazing pokemon in the first place? I’m just not seeing it. I’m not saying they aren’t creative sets, and if you want to do something quirky, that’s great. I do it all the time in event raids, and I love running offbeat sets just for lulz. But there’s a reason Swalot and Eelectross are basically never used in raids, and it’s because anything they do is probably done better by others. Or in this case, the thing that they do better than others (Gastro Acid) is only marginally useful compared to the cost to do it.

I guess we’ll see when the raid goes live, but I think I agree with Worldie (I think it was their comment earlier about ape) that this Chesnaught raid sure looks like we’re gonna see a lot of button-mashers spamming Annihilape and collecting loot — and it’s gonna be hard to argue anything else is much better than that.



EDIT: Just looked and saw it was Chou Toshio that made the comment earlier about Annihilape, just giving credit where it’s due ;-)

 

[Vengeance417]

Just looking at these on paper, it seems like it’s a lot of work to get around Bulletproof, while eating a ton of damage from Chesnaught while you’re doing gastro acid and acid spray. And then the payoff is just to hit it with a low-BP unstabbed-without-tera Giga Drain, coming from not-amazing pokemon in the first place? I’m just not seeing it. I’m not saying they aren’t creative sets, and if you want to do something quirky, that’s great. I do it all the time in event raids, and I love running offbeat sets just for lulz. But there’s a reason Swalot and Eelectross are basically never used in raids, and it’s because anything they do is probably done better by others. Or in this case, the thing that they do better than others (Gastro Acid) is only marginally useful compared to the cost to do it.

I guess we’ll see when the raid goes live, but I think I agree with Worldie (I think it was their comment earlier about ape) that this Chesnaught raid sure looks like we’re gonna see a lot of button-mashers spamming Annihilape and collecting loot — and it’s gonna be hard to argue anything else is much better than that.



EDIT: Just looked and saw it was Chou Toshio that made the comment earlier about Annihilape, just giving credit where it’s due ;-)

These two Pokemon aren't meant to be the main damage-dealers. They're supports that can help chip in vs the shield unlike passive mons like Umbreon and Blissey. You use them alongside stronger Special Attacking partners that would like to benefit from the Acid Spray support against shield after the boss's stat-restoration turn happens, where you can't use Metal Sound or Fake Tears anymore because the shield is up. These two just so happen to have Acid Spray AND a way to nullify the target's ability that stops Acid Spray.

 

[DougJustDoug]

I get it that those two are support mons, not the high-DPS mons for Chesnaught. But as support mons go, they don’t have much going for them for this raid. For one, the speculated DPS mons that seem promising for this raid are mostly physical. And even if physical isn’t optimal, we all KNOW what the randoms are going to click when they see an event raid with Rock typing — yep, bet on it, Hands, Koraidon, Annihilape, etc. LOTS of physical mons that get nothing from Acid Spray. So if these Acid Spray users can’t take advantage of it themselves, it’s gonna be hard to be of much use as a support mon.

And on top of that, both Swalot and Eelectross are not great from a survivability standpoint. Swalot is weak to Earthquake (seems like EdgeQuake coverage is likely for this raid) and although its a bulky mon, taking SE hits from high-BP moves is a bad omen. And that Eelectross is gonna eat like 50% from Wood Hammer, which seems like another likely move in this raid. And neither Swalot or Eel have legit recovery moves, so they have to rely on their weak Giga Drains and heal items and cheers. They both have defensive boosts, which is good, but with the wonky crit ratio in these raids, it seems like both mons can easily be put on their heels with one crit and doing the I-just-dont-want-to-die thing. And dying is basically the worst thing a support mon can do in a raid, particularly if their support moves aren’t even helping the likely workhorses of the raid.

Like I said, if these are just offspeed pitches to make things interesting, I like them. I love doing raids with weird stuff. And I admit, speculation about what moves will be in any 7* raid has been proven wrong more often than not. GF goes in weird directions that we don’t expect, so maybe these two mons will work out well. We’ll see!

 

[Chou Toshio]

Swalot especially seems intriguing— I think it has potential! But like Doug alluded to, probably majorly determined by what people bring. If Gholdengo becomes the primary DPS then Swalot looking quite good— especially if by some miracle Chestnaught is not packing EQ and then Gholdengo and Swalot can both go to work!!

Otherwise if EQ is a big part of the raid, maybe Lurantis and Appletun do it better, with Appletun not needing to get around bullet proof to SpD drop and although -1 instead of -2, gets to use a strong super effective STAB instead of a negligible one.

We’ll see with the move set/stuff.

 

[Terimas]

If Lurantis ends up being viable, that also works out nicely for the seemingly good Annihilape and Koraidon since they can support Lurantis by using Screech on it to buff its defense.

 

[Coronis]

Swalot especially seems intriguing— I think it has potential! But like Doug alluded to, probably majorly determined by what people bring. If Gholdengo becomes the primary DPS then Swalot looking quite good— especially if by some miracle Chestnaught is not packing EQ and then Gholdengo and Swalot can both go to work!!

Otherwise if EQ is a big part of the raid, maybe Lurantis and Appletun do it better, with Appletun not needing to get around bullet proof to SpD drop and although -1 instead of -2, gets to use a strong super effective STAB instead of a negligible one.

We’ll see with the move set/stuff.

Even if it doesn’t have EQ, surely it will have a fighting a move to smash Gholdengo, right?

 

[Chou Toshio]

Even if it doesn’t have EQ, surely it will have a fighting a move to smash Gholdengo, right?

They took out moves like Foresite though so don’t think it has a way for it to hit through Gholdengo’s Ghost type.

On the topic of Special Steels too, this guy might have some value…

Bronzing
Item: Shell Bell
Ability: Levitate
252 HP 252 SpA or Def
-Iron Defense / Reflect
-Metal Sound
-Calm Mind / Flash Cannon
-Stored Power / Flash Cannon

Resist Rock & Grass, Immune to Ground, Neutral to Fighting, good defenses, Metal Sound access and ability to boost Def and SpA alongside Stored Power or STAB Flash Cannon. Could go for the slow solo-sweeper style, or support, or a bit of both.

Or just use Iron Defense, Body Press, and Bull Doze+Helping Hand? Or throw in Reflect. Enough to be interesting anyway

 

[Coronis]

They took out moves like Foresite though so don’t think it has a way for it to hit through Gholdengo’s Ghost type.

On the topic of Special Steels too, this guy might have some value…

View attachment 515510
Bronzing
Item: Shell Bell
Ability: Levitate
252 HP 252 SpA or Def
-Iron Defense / Reflect
-Metal Sound
-Calm Mind / Flash Cannon
-Stored Power / Flash Cannon

Resist Rock & Grass, Immune to Ground, Neutral to Fighting, good defenses, Metal Sound access and ability to boost Def and SpA alongside Stored Power or STAB Flash Cannon. Could go for the slow solo-sweeper style, or support, or a bit of both.

Or just use Iron Defense, Body Press, and Bull Doze+Helping Hand? Or throw in Reflect. Enough to be interesting anyway

Honestly, haven’t used Gholdengo at all since I evolved it. Just assumed it was pure Steel.

 

[Worldie]

Well the moveset is out

https://www.serebii.net/scarletviolet/teraraidbattles/event-mightychesnaught.shtml

Moves
Earthquake
Hammer Arm
Stone Edge
Wood Hammer
Additional Moves
Iron Defense
Bulk Up
Curse
HP multiplier: *35
Shield Damage: 20% Std, 30% Tera, 70% Matching Tera

Reddit seems to say nature is Impish

So mainly phisically defensive. No flying coverage, no Body Press, does however have a bunch of boosting moves.

Get your Corviknights and Shrooms out

 

[R_N]

cowards not doing the rollout smh

 

[Worldie]

cowards not doing the rollout smh

To be honest, I think they probably don't want to do that because of lord knows what kind of interaction it'd have with the actual tera raids mechanics. I think there's the risk it'd be a shitshow of oneshots lol

 

[R_N]

Also was it strictly necessary to have three ways of raising your defense (+2 ways of raising attack + def)

 

[Vengeance417]

Pretty straightforward solo for Lurantis, although the TWO stat-reset turns makes you have to manage your Leaf Storm PP. Glad I packed Defog to lower evasion to ensure it always hit.

 

[Cheryl.]

Holy crap... it's time...

 

[doipy hooves]

From beyond the grave, Azumarill does it again!

This time I was talking up my strategy on discord for a while but there was a lot of doubt going around if Azumarill could survive a Wood Hammer or do more than 0 damage or if it was even worth it, so I decided to prove all the doubters wrong with a new Azumarill and new set.

I had a Sap Sipper Azumarill in the box that was conveniently Fighting tera, though I imagine Water tera would work as well but it seemed like everyone was talking up Fighting types being the answer to the raid. Sap Sipper is necessary to be immune to the deadly Wood Hammer. Despite common sentiment that Azumarill would not be able to damage Chesnaught without Huge Power, it's only half the damage it would be and this is easily made up for by Tickle, debuffing both Attack and Defense in one shot which ended up being key for the raid. Other moves include the classic Mud-Slap, and Belly Drum and Brick Break for setup and pure STAB action after tera. The EV spread is the usual 252 HP/252 Atk with 4 in Defense and a Shell Bell for sustainability.

The actual raid itself was rather straightforward and I got a first try blind victory. I started off with some Tickles to debuff while I could before the shield went up, and managed to get about 4 off to about cancel out the initial Iron Defense. With the help of an Intimidate Staraptor and a burning Drifblim, Chesnaught's damage output was also immediately neutered and it uselessly rotated through all its moves with no success. The Hammer Arm usage in particular allowed me to outspeed which was even safer for me. After that I popped a few Mud-Slaps to start dodge tanking even more, and after the first buff reset on my side and shield going up, (with a fortunate dodge of Wood Hammer that probably wouldn't hurt at -6 anyway), I decided to start Belly Drumming up and preparing to go on the offense. I ended up going for an Attack Cheer as well before my onslaught for good measure as well, and my prior Mud-Slap hits allowed me to immediately engage into Tera-Fighting mode from the get-go.

(Sappy!)

The main thing of note was that after breaking its shield it put up Bulk Up and Curse to cancel out my defense debuffs, and also reset my buffs again. I didn't realize this at first, but it made me have to put up Belly Drum again and also tickle back down a few times.

(Chesnaught dropped its guard.)

In the end Chesnaught did not reset its debuffs and the rest of the fight went smoothly with some more Brick Break spam.

(Winning!)

 

[Original Dragon Arkvelza]

So will my Appletun build work? No Poison Jab or Acrobatics and Appletun does learn Iron Defense.

 

[R_N]

attempt one with a hasty corviknight build my dudes are an Annihilape (not bad), a slowbro (...questionable) and a Blissey (oh no)

and i just realized i gave corviknight swagger instead of screech. At least I remembred Taunt.


Anyway that went terribly. The slowbro died at one point, the Annihilape was dedicated to ALSO setting up, we took so long barely doing anything that the shield went up and the debuff and without screech support the defense buffs could ignore basically anything it wanted. Rage Punch was nothing. I died, eventually, despite the Blissey's best efforts.


TAKE 2
Swapped Wide Lens (meant for Screech...) for Bright Powder, put Screech over Swagger, threw some PP Ups at Body Press

The squads are...Slither Wing, Gardevoir, Miraidon. Quite the trio there.
Gardevoir was support focused (using Reflect, Helping Hand, life dew?), Miraidon was using Metal Sound & Parabolic Charge (fair enough, it never died) and Slither Wing bulk up.
I think we are all getting a little too buff happy, frankly!

fully buffed corviknight is doing nothing btw. DOnt bother unless you have tera fighting

Honestly we did better than i thought until everyone started dying. We broke the shield at least. I don't think that Slither Wing contributed much by the end, honestly.

 

[Lightning Energy]

Won first try with the following:


@ Leftovers (Light Clay is also a possibility, since you have Giga Drain)
Bold Nature
Trait: Thick Fat (not that it matters)
Tera Type: Grass (same here, for the most part, but helps avoid Wood Hammer + EQ)
252 HP/Def, 4 SpAtk
~ Apple Acid
~ Giga Drain
~ Iron Defense
~ Reflect

Partnered with a Greninja/Bellibolt/Lurantis. Would've thought the Gren died to the first SE move, but it lived and managed to put it work, moreso once it Tera'd. Bellibolt never died, either, so I'm guessing it was a bulky set. Lurantis was, naturally, Contrary Leaf Storm with Giga Drain. I put up Reflect Turn 1, followed by Apple Acid and Giga Drain. I only used Apple Acid once, though more could've made it go a little faster. Didn't feel the need to throw up IDs either, since Reflect + EVs made Hammer Arm/Stone Edge tickle.

Honestly thought it'd go a lot worse with the Chesnaught moveset and human partners, but I guess I got lucky somehow.

 

[R_N]

Attempt 3
2 Annihilapes and a Iron Hands

Lord almighty...SOMEHOW this one was the one that worked.
The Iron Hands only died once! It was wild. The annihilapes died more but over all we were just like, really good about those heal cheers.
I cannot believe it. Caught it in a Heavy Ball.


The funny thing is I changed the tera type from Ice (ough) to Fighting and never even got a chance to use it.

 

[Vengeance417]

I can confidently say Appletun is the most consistent choice for this raid. It's not worried about the two stat-reset turns, unlike Lurantis who has to do something else other than Leaf Storm (and loses all of its boosts) and because the boss doesn't reset its own stats (surprising because of all the speed-dropping moves) the Apple Acid SpDef drops are permanent.

I gotta say this raid boss is poorly designed. Iron Defense t0, along with Curse AND Bulk Up to...not use the newly-gained Body Press???? Also, why is Earthquake the chosen move the boss uses against everyone after a certain HP threshold and not STAB Rock Slide? Also like I said earlier, why doesn't it reset its stats with more than one move lowering Speed? It makes Appletun even more brainless of a pick since it'll outspeed at -1.

 

[DougJustDoug]

My first solo attempt was with a Bulk Up Koraidon, and I lost by running out of time. Chesnaught could barely scratch my Koraidon, but BU just couldn’t boost DPS fast enough to do big chunks and outpace Chesnaught’s def boosts. So I retooled and solo’ed it pretty easy with this Koraidon build:


Koraidon @ Leftovers
Tera Type: Fighting
Adamant Nature
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Atk
- Collison Course
- Drain Punch
- Screech
- Swords Dance

I Screeched as much as I could before the shield went up. Chesnaught did not reset its own debuffs the entire battle. Then I started Swords Dancing and Drain Punching, almost alternating every turn, because Ches was hitting pretty hard with those Hammer Arms. I decided to Tera and Ches started using Wood Hammer doing even more damage. But the increased healing from Drain Punch was worth the Tera and loss of Dragon typing. After the shield dropped, I was able to Screech again. But Chesnaught did a double turn Bulk Up and Curse (yikes!) and I didn’t check the exact levels of its Attack and Defense. But it was hitting Koraidon for like 75% every time. And I was Drain Punching recovering about 70% every time. Finally I got it down to where it looked like Collision Course would finish it off, and it did.

Things might have gone badly if Chesnaught would have critted me more. But it was a pretty easy solo after switching to Swords Dance, and I had lots of time left on the timer. I definitely recommend Koraidon for solo.

Now I’m playing around with various Chesnaught builds to beat Chesnaught LOL! Belly Drum + Drain Punch Chesnaught is niiiice! And it has lots of other fun tools too…