I called one shot, and now to deliver on the other. Solo Azurill returns for one last personal clear, probably.
The Azurill set is pretty similar to Azumarill, though also based on the locked in NPC team I settled on. Without Gardevoir in play, Shell Bell is here for survivability in the long run and lategame room to take stray random double attacks. Having more HP to survive is better than Eviolite when playing to win, even if it takes a while to actually get on the offense for it to matter. Unlike its evolutions, Azurill can't actually learn Play Rough for whatever reason, and it doesn't get any other physical Fairy moves to fill in for it, so Protect takes the 4th slot here to help stall out 2 out of 3 Cursed Body turns.
My EVs seem to be 12 HP/252 Attack/180 Defense/64 SpD, left over from the last time I used Azurill which seems to be all the way back from Rayquaza, or rather Torterra since I left the same EVs from there as well.
I had some early attempts with a NPC team of Sylveon/Weavile/Arboliva, but I decided to reset for a better team after seeing that I could break shield but before the 43% HP debuff reset with 3 Tera Blasts, if Weavile didn't hit Leer T1. I also wanted an Intimidate user since I was forced to run Charm in slot 4 to mitigate Acrobatics and I could use that turn for a T1 Mud-Slap for tera charge and reliability instead. Ironically my final run would not make use of the former fact, as I ended up with Weavile/Arcanine/Sylveon which added another Leer user/Intimidate source/potential Flamethrower burner, which are all appreciated factors, and so Azurill would end up taking advantage of the T1 Leer to do more damage and hit both resets at the same time, as well as not actually setting up again and instead going straight to debuffing post-reset.
(EDIT: Expanded on the last sentence.)
After some very close test runs, I was pretty confident in Azurill's chances to score a win with this team, even without a passive healing source. 2 heal cheers would just have to do to pull off a Belly Drum midgame, and Shell Bell would handle the rest.
Compared to Azumarill, Azurill most definitely has to intentionally faint and get both cheers preserved, but can still get a T1 Mud-Slap in for charge. Fainting on T2 early is common and also ideal because otherwise the early timed buff clear will wipe the cheers off, but if Dragapult hits Flamethrower T1 or low rolls Acrobatics then Azurill probably faints T3. Even still I don't really get an extra hit off and still just offense cheer T2, because more Mud-Slaps means potentially missing and not actually dying. I suppose this could be an opportunity for Aqua Jet priority tech on the fainting turn but I think Protect is more consistent overall.
On this attempt I got my 3 Mud-Slaps in and also a burn and Moonblast proc. Still, I had to run through my last 2 cheers for healing and a safe Belly Drum, and still had to want for a couple dodges. My last cheer ended up putting me at 237 HP and on an Acrobatics miss turn, so all I could do was Belly Drum. Or Protect and stall for some more offense debuffs maybe, but in retrospect I did not have the spare time to use on that.
-1 0 SpA Tera Dragon Dragapult Flamethrower vs. 12 HP / 64 SpD Tera Fairy Azurill through Def Cheer: 51-61 (20.9 - 25%) -- 0% chance to 4HKO
Possible damage amounts: (51, 52, 53, 53, 54, 54, 55, 56, 56, 57, 57, 58, 59, 59, 60, 61)
Dragapult ended up landing a Flamethrower (57 HP), but Azurill was able to get the Belly Drum (-122 HP) off into 58 HP, with my calc up I knew that I had a fair shot at surviving this next hit. Maybe I could have Protected to fish for another Moonblast, but oh well.
And honestly, if it wasn't burned I would probably be doomed with an Acrobatics hit, but on the other hand random Acrobatics hits while burned would be pretty preferable.
-1 0 Atk Tera Dragon Dragapult Acrobatics (110 BP) vs. 12 HP / 180 Def Tera Fairy Azurill through Def Cheer: 61-72 (25 - 29.5%) -- guaranteed 4HKO
-1 0 Atk burned Tera Dragon Dragapult Acrobatics (110 BP) vs. 12 HP / 180 Def Tera Fairy Azurill through Def Cheer: 30-36 (12.2 - 14.7%) -- possible 7HKO
But all was well, Azurill took a 51 damage Flamethrower (actually a min roll) and struck back with a huge (power) Tera Blast, helped by a -1 Leer set by Arcanine all the way back from Turn 1. Unfortunately Cursed Body procced immediately, but Protect/Mud-Slap/Protect put us right back in business with only a Flamethrower taken to show for it.
One more Tera Blast knocked Dragapult into double reset + Dragon Dance + random double attack range, and I was kind of conflicted. But based on my most recent last attempt, I figured that this free shield break turn was the time to set Mud-Slaps, and I ended up going for two after some hesitation. Now that the shield was down, the AI would be free to Leer and Charm as they pleased, and that seemed like the more viable route for getting more damage in, over trying to hope for the unlikely opening to Belly Drum and survive or lose everything at that point.
Also, Mud-Slap got disabled by Cursed Body after two hits, so my hand was forced to move off it anyway, but fortunately this also meant my final Tera Blasts would be undisableable in turn for the next 3 turns. Fortunately by then Arcanine had fainted and respawned in time to get an Intimidate and back its Attack down to neutral.
In the end, I went for a Tera Blast, and got hit by Acrobatics, but the Shell Bell healing was still enough to get to full, even as I did get hit by a random second move Acrobatics as well. Unlike her namesake, Machyua does not have Vantage to always hit first in the turn (and is also getting doubled), but that's a positive here when you need to heal between hits. Azurill may not be able to take 3 hits back to back, but it sure can take 2, as long as they don't crit.
Or highroll Shadow Balls, apparently. But I didn't end up seeing those.
0 SpA Tera Dragon Dragapult Shadow Ball vs. 12 HP / 64 SpD Tera Fairy Azurill through Def Cheer: 103-123 (42.2 - 50.4%) -- 1.2% chance to 2HKO
0 Atk Tera Dragon Dragapult Acrobatics (110 BP) vs. 12 HP / 180 Def Tera Fairy Azurill through Def Cheer: 90-107 (36.8 - 43.8%) -- guaranteed 3HKO
0 SpA Tera Dragon Dragapult Flamethrower vs. 12 HP / 64 SpD Tera Fairy Azurill through Def Cheer: 78-92 (31.9 - 37.7%) -- 91.5% chance to 3HKO
The 10% time warning also triggered around this time, so all I could do was mash into Tera Blast and hope for more Leers. Though I feel like the NPCs hitting Ice Punches and Moonblasts were contributing about as much as well, either way.
252+ Atk Huge Power Tera Fairy Azurill Atk Cheer Tera Blast (80 BP) vs. -1 0 HP / 0 Def Tera Dragon Dragapult: 844-996 (7.6 - 8.9% of 35x hp boss) -- possibly the worst move ever
Dragapult tried hitting one last Flamethrower, but Azurill held strong and landed the finishing blow in time, even without a Belly Drum to back it up in the end. I'm glad I could get Azurill what may be its last win in this campaign of raids for the generation, and also a first successful solo for the year by my own hand even if Nrom7 has been representing it/Marill well enough. It's been fun to have a mode where you can play around like this with mons that don't really have much point in battle otherwise. Though I do have to admit Mud-Slap has carried many a time, and Belly Drum is a very efficient boosting move. I think this all really goes to show that Gen 2 had some cutting edge move ideas for its age.
These last drops were pretty solid too. Though fun fact about the drops that mattyoukhana noticed, the usual Star Piece drop was lowered from x2 to x1 and its weight from 8% to 2.13% with everything else also being slightly incerased compared to the last 7-star raids.
On a last note, it seems like
https://stevecooktu.github.io/sv_raid_lookup/'s data source it fetches has removed its raid data and also hasn't updated since Goodra, so there probably won't be another individual raid script shot to post. At this point the bosses had been following a usual trend anyway and most of it was on Serebii, but it was nice to note some smaller details like with Goodra changing up the double attack phase threshold randomly. I imagine Dragapult might follow the old ways since it does have a 40% HP action. It seems like the raid event files are at least eventually archived by
projectpokemon as well with their parameters visible, at least, so if anyone's wondering about these stats in the future then it's covered somewhere.
