by Doc – Owner, Founder, Tera Raid Geek
Over the last several months, and really since Pokémon Scarlet came out, I have been increasingly obsessed with Tera Raid battles. You probably noticed this by my extremely long Tera Raid builds list that I posted last year, which I have been steadily updating ever since. Rest assured that I’m also working on a tier list for both special and physical attackers that should have at least 50 builds listed on it in preparation for Pokémon Scarlet’s Switch 2 addition.
I’m curious, however, as to what the Switch 2 transition might bring to the Tera Raid experience. We saw screenshots of the Switch 2 edition come out a few weeks ago, and they only showed us a slight increase in texture quality and draw distance, as well as having significantly more Pokémon visible in the field. This does not inform us of how Tera Raids specifically might be impacted, and I am extremely interested in what might happen to the Tera Raid meta if the Switch were no longer hindered by its limited processing speed.
It’s not entirely clear to me where in the Tera Raids process the current Switch is limited by its processing speed, as opposed to simply taking a long time for animations to play out. However, given the Nintendo Switch’s limited capabilities and Pokémon Scarlet’s relative lack of optimization, it seems reasonable to conclude that there’s at least a notable chunk of time in Tera Raids dedicated simply to processing. One also wonders if desyncs between players, even in offline battles, are caused in part by these processing issues. I don’t know, to be honest.
Here’s the thing: Pokémon Tera Raids are a real-time event. If there are gaps of time caused by poor processing speed, then the Switch 2 edition, which should no longer have those issues, would result in Tera Raids getting easier by a measurable proportion. The reason they’d become easier is because time is the limited resource in Pokémon Tera Raids. When you faint, you lose time. When you take time to select an attack, you lose time. You don’t lose the raid by any other win condition except by running out of time. So if you save the time in a Tera Raid that would otherwise be spent on syncing, processing, or other delays caused by the original Switch hardware, then your win condition becomes easier to meet. This would make a lot of Pokemon that are borderline non-viable (such as Eternatus as a special attacker) into somewhat more viable options, expanding the list of possibilities for Tera Raid builds.
I’m very hopeful about what might happen to the Pokémon Scarlet Tera Raid meta on the Switch 2 should something like this occur. Keep your eyes peeled for incoming tier lists and Tera Raid builds—I have been developing a list of several dozen of the best builds for various scenarios, and have put a couple thousand hours into Pokémon Tera Raids to sift through every combo I can think of. I’m very excited to share what I have discovered with you all down the line.
Amiibo Doctor 