by Doc – Owner, Founder, Really Hopes People Are Still Doing Tera Raids in Five Years and That They’re a Thing in Future Pokemon Titles
We’re staring down the barrel of Pokemon: Legends Z-A, so I’ll record for posterity my thoughts on the best moves for Pokemon Tera Raid battles. These recommendations are probably like what you’ll find in the builds lists that I’ve put up and the strategy guides I’ve posted. When you’re building a Raid build it’s best to start by looking for these moves in a moveset – there’s many Pokemon with great stats that simply don’t have good moves, so don’t get caught up in the numbers when the options aren’t there!
As a general rule of thumb, every Tera Raid build needs to be able to either boost its own stats, or debuff the opponent’s stats. However, because most debuffs are blocked by the Tera Raid shield, non-contact debuffs stop working early in the battle.
I’m avoiding some of the more niche moves, like Arceus’ Judgment, that are only useful in one great Tera Raid build.
Top Tier Moves
- Acid Spray
- Bulk Up
- Calm Mind
- Parabolic Charge
- Drain Punch/Giga Drain
- Earthquake
- Electric Terrain
- Taunt
- Cosmic Power
Acid Spray
Acid Spray has everything you want in a status move. It makes contact through the Tera Shield, it knocks down Sp. Def by two stages, it does damage so it’ll boost your Tera charge by one. It’s Taunt-proof and its only downside is that it doesn’t work on Steel types, so if you use it against them you won’t get the Tera charge either.
Acid Spray boosting your Tera charge is convenient for when your main moveset is using an 8 PP move. When doing a 6-star raid, you typically need about 4 charges (the opponent will steal 1) so only your last 4 attacks will pierce a Tera shield. That’s not great. Acid Spray alleviates that by getting you a Tera charge and doubling your special attack damage, to boot.
I’d honestly put Acid Spray as the “Melee Fox Shine” equivalent in Tera Raids because when you have it in your moveset, you always benefit.
Bulk Up/Calm Mind
These moves are parallels of each other, with Bulk Up and Calm Mind boosting their physical Attack and Defense and special versions, respectively. Calm Mind is distributed pretty well, with lots of good Pokemon and even several Legendaries having access to it. Calm Mind’s wide distribution is part of the reason that special attacking is often more effective than physical attacking.
Bulk Up is more truncated, with much of its distribution being more focused on Fighting types and not being distributed to as many Legendaries that can make use of it.
Parabolic Charge
Only Bellibolt and Miraidon get Parabolic Charge (Heliolisk and Dedenne are useless), and they both make great use of it, enough that it might as well not be a niche move. Parabolic Charge is an Electric-type move that can get boosted by Electric Terrain, and there’s any number of ways you can boost its power. Parabolic Charge is great because it’s sufficiently beefy that its 50% heal amount will actually help you quite a bit. If you’re starting with 65 base power and you’ve got Electric STAB, plus an Electric Terrain… you’re healing quite a bit.
Drain Punch/Giga Drain
It seems everyone and their mother has Drain Punch these days. Drain Punch is really, really common on physical attacker Fighting-types, and it’s a 100% accurate move. Fighting-type is already a good offensive type, covering several types that are useful to be super effective against, so having a STAB-boosted Drain Punch is a real lifeboat for some of the more frail attackers. Good stuff.
Giga Drain is another well-distributed move, this time as a Grass type special attack similar to Drain Punch. Giga Drain replaces the role that Shell Bell has, enabling your Grass-type user to employ something like Miracle Seed, the Meadow Plate or another useful held item. It’s not as beefy you may prefer, but combine it with Acid Spray (looking at you, Grass-type Vileplume) and you have an extremely potent damage dealer that’s going to reheal himself often.
Earthquake
Ground type. 100 Base Power. 100% accuracy. What’s not to love about Earthquake? It’s a physical Ground type attacker’s tip of the spear, especially for Groudon builds. You’ll find yourself reaching for Earthquake a lot when Electric Tera raids come up.
Electric Terrain
Terrains are an underutilized and underdeveloped mechanic in Tera raids, and that’s because there’s really only a few good ways to use them. Electric Terrain is the best, because it boosts Electric-type attacks and conveniently blocks Sleep as well. Sleep’s a real problem, and Electric Terrain is one of your few easy, consistent ways to avoid it in all forms.
Terrains also aren’t wiped when your stats are wiped, so if you’re needing to recover your HP and fast, and you’re expecting to get your stats wiped soon, you can drop a Terrain to help boost your damage, healing you with Shell Bell enough that you can survive the stat wipe.
Taunt
Taunt is a unique move in that it does no damage and is blocked by the Tera Shield, but is still such a viable move in so many raids that you should always consider it if you have it available. Taunt basically locks the opponent into only using attacking moves for the next few turns. That sounds like it sucks until you realize that prevents them from self-boosting, from setting weather or terrains, from inflicting status, and so on. Tanky Taunt users are golden, as they can take those three hits consecutively while boosting their own stats safely, and then deal back all the damage they took to re-heal.
Cosmic Power
Cosmic Power is far and away the best defensive option in the game, but it’s only limited to a few specific raiders, such as Lunala, Jirachi, Arceus, Solgaleo and Eternatus (of course it has more than those five). Still, by effectively one stage-boosting both your defensive stats you become practically unkillable after one use of this move. Two uses of this move and suddenly only crits are dealing any real damage! Cosmic Power is broken but makes up for it by being uncommon.
Pretty Good Tier Moves
- Nasty Plot/Swords Dance
- Screech/Metal Sound
- Misty Terrain
- 80+ Power, 100% Accuracy moves (Surf, Psychic, Shadow Ball, Moonblast, etc.)
- Rain Dance/Sunny Day
- Iron Defense/Amnesia/Acid Armor, etc.
- Body Press
- Grassy Terrain
- Mud-Slap
Nasty Plot and Swords Dance
Nasty Plot and Swords Dance are pretty much the same idea. You get two boosts to whatever it is that you’re attacking with. It’s debatable whether you would rather have them or their Calm Mind and Bulk Up options, but I put Calm Mind and Bulk Up in the next tier up because they give you the defense boosts. However, if you’re using a Pokémon that already has a hard time getting its attack stat up and is not worrying about its defensive options, Nasty Plot and Swords Dance are the better choice. Basically, there’s a trade-off.
Screech and Metal Sound
Screech and Metal Sound are in the same boat as Nasty Plot and Swords Dance. They both only work before the Tera shield goes up, and they both lower the defensive stat of whatever you’re attacking. These two are just move copies of each other, and there are a few others out there as well.
Misty Terrain
Misty Terrain is a useful status clearing option at your disposal. It isn’t distributed as widely as I would have liked, but it’s at least very useful against sleep, which is typically the biggest pain in the arse as far as status effects go. Misty Terrain doesn’t actually boost Fairy-type attacks unlike the other terrains, but it does cut the power of Dragon-type moves in half, which can be useful for some raiders. This isn’t really useful all that much, as the opponent AI will basically always attack with whatever will do the most damage to you, and Dragon-type moves typically will not do the most damage to you unless you are also Dragon-type, and there aren’t a lot of Dragon-types that have access to Misty Terrain, but… well… it’s still nice to have.
Generic 80+ Base Power Moves
This category belongs to the 80+ base power, 100% accuracy moves that almost every type has. We’re talking Surf, Psychic, Shadow Ball, Moonblast, and so on. I realize this is kind of an overly broad category to include in one move listing, but there are so many moves of this type that serve as the baseline for the effectiveness of that move type that they really can’t be ignored. When you are building a build, you should always keep an eye out for one of these generic 80+ base power moves as the base of your attack plan, and then see if the Pokémon has anything more than that.
Rain Dance and Sunny Day
Rain Dance and Sunny Day, though not Snowscape, are pretty great moves to have, especially with the prevalence of Paradox Pokémon. Rain Dance and Sunny Day boost Water and Fire types, respectively, with Sunny Day providing even more benefits by cutting the effectiveness of Water-type moves in half, and also activating past Paradox Pokémon’s abilities. Basically, it’s a Booster Energy, but using a move slot so you can still run Shell Bell. Weather in general is just great to have on your side, as are Terrains, because they both survive stat wipes, so if your back is to the wall and you get stat wiped, you still have some boosted damage output to self-heal a bit more.
Defensive Stat Boosters
Iron Defense, Amnesia, Acid Armor and any other two-stage defensive stat raisers are in this category. They’re pretty much all pretty good, though when you use them they often cause the opponent AI to just switch moves to the other kind of attack. For example, if you boost your own physical defense with Iron Defense, the AI will just switch to a special attack that would have done almost as much damage. They’re good, but most raid bosses have a diversity of moves.
Body Press
Body Press may be the most unique move, besides Stored Power, in Pokémon raiding. It is an archetype unto itself – you raise your Defense stat as high as possible, and then use Body Press. Unfortunately it is a Fighting-type move, which means it competes with the other physical attackers for Fighting-type dominance, so it’s not going to rule the roost of raiding. At the very least though, it helps you take advantage of especially defensive Pokémon like Zamazenta and Regirock.
Grassy Terrain
Grassy Terrain is a very different beast from Misty Terrain. Actually, aside from both being Terrains, they really have nothing in common. Grassy Terrain, like the other Terrains, boosts your Grass-type attacks, but it also regenerates about 1/16 of your HP each turn, kind of like having Leftovers. Grassy Terrain pairs especially well with Giga Drain users.
Mud-Slap
Mud-Slap is a move that I only came around to using 2 years into my time doing Pokémon raids. It is an incredibly weak Ground-type attack, that seemingly does no damage at all. So why is it on this list? Well, Mud-Slap lowers the opponent’s accuracy by one stage, so if you hit twice, not only have you gained two charges to your Tera Orb but you have also introduced a one in three chance that the opponent’s attack will miss, and that chance is even higher if their attacks do not have 100% accuracy to them. It’s like Acid Spray, but for accuracy. The best part is that it hits through the Tera shield, so even after the opponent has wiped negative effects from themselves you can try it again. It’s also very widely distributed, and honestly could be a move that I’ve seriously overlooked for far too long.
Amiibo Doctor 