by Doc – Owner, Founder, Tired of Sleep
There’s a few Pokemon Tera raid opponents whose raid gimmick relies on inflicting Sleep status to wind down your clock and then KO you, and they only got harder to beat with the addition of the DLC Tera Raids. Some of the raids rely more heavily on some sleep methods than others (Amoonguss heavily prefers Spore whereas Cetitan often only uses Yawn towards the end of the raid) but sleep will basically always be a problem in a good chunk of the raids you’ll encounter. Here’s the list of raid opponents that have sleep in their repertoire:
- Amoonguss
- Breloom
- Gengar
- Gallade
- Milotic
- Alolan Exeggutor
- Snorlax
- Vaporeon
- Torkoal
- Hippowdon
- Sylveon
- Cetitan
- Clodsire
- Quagsire
- Galarian Slowking
- Lapras
Sleep is enough of a problem that it could honestly be a separate raid meta entirely: while the Tera Raid Builds Tier List is worth considering, if a build on there doesn’t have sleep-cancelling capabilities it’s not going to be worth much against a sleep opponent. Your build either deals with Sleep, or it doesn’t. If it deals with Sleep, you’re good. If not, you run the risk of being unable to self-heal for up to three turns, at which point you’re going to die and lose your Tera.
As always, we’re assuming you’re running a Shell Bell Tera raid build instead of one of the less-successful ones like Safety Goggles, which sacrifice survivability for removing the status (but see the last paragraph for exceptions to Shell Bell). These are the strategies I use to cancel out sleep:
Electric and Misty Terrain
As it happens, you can’t fall asleep when these are active, and they’re somewhat widely distributed. Bellibolt, Miraidon, Enamorus and a few other useful raiders have access to these moves already in their normal raid build set, so as long you can keep the terrain up you can take on the opponent.
Unfortunately these moves are mostly restricted to Fairy and Electric types, and not many physical attackers have access to these moves. Zacian is the only one that immediately comes to mind, actually. So that takes us to…
Gholdengo and Annihilape
Gholdengo’s “Good as Gold” ability is the obvious choice for defeating sleep and other status effects, as they simply don’t apply to him, and he’s a pretty powerful raider in his own right. If you have a Gholdengo and the opponent’s Tera Typing is weak to Steel or Ghost, you’re in luck! That’s a pretty easy raid for you.
Annihilape is similarly immune to sleep due to Vital Spirit being a clone of Insomnia.
Heal Cheers
If you’re lucky, you’ll be on a raid that doesn’t focus on sleep all that much, like Cetitan or Sylveon. Heal Cheers clear status effects, so you can use it to wipe a Sleep status instead of waiting two or three turns. Unfortunately, they move first, so the AI can simply use the Sleep-inducing move immediately after you wipe it if you’re unlucky. Fortunately, everyone has Heal Cheers, so while this shouldn’t be your first option it’ll definitely be a good backup plan.
Other Abilities
Some abilities are present on useful raiders, like Vital Spirit (Annihilape) and Overcoat (Enamorus-Therian) that prevent sleep under certain conditions. Vital Spirit won’t be put to sleep by Yawn but will fall to other methods, and Overcoat won’t be put to sleep by Spore. These are situational at best but can be useful if you don’t otherwise have a useful raider for that situation.
Safety Goggles on User with HP-Refilling Moves
As it would happen, some Pokemon have moves that refill HP, removing the need to hold Shell Bell. Options like Bitter Blade, Horn Leech, Giga Drain, Draining Kiss and so on can hypothetically do enough damage that the user may hold an item that prevents sleep. In this case, you could use Safety Goggles with:
- Ogrepon
- Enamorus-Therian
- Ceruledge
- Vileplume
…and other Pokemon builds that can refill their own HP by attacking.
Sleep Talk
This option is your backup of a backup plan. If you have a moveslot to burn, you can try to run Sleep Talk. Let’s be real here: you’ve got a 1/3rd chance that this will be the move you want it to be, and even then you’re assuming you won’t wake up before you use it. If you wake up, it’s wasted. If you get the wrong move, it’s wasted. You honestly might be better off just running a Heal Cheer over Sleep Talk for consistency’s sake.
These are your most consistent ways to deal with Sleep, though there’s other options out there – when in doubt, I recommend running a Terrain or Gholdengo.
Best of luck!
Amiibo Doctor 