by Doc – Owner, Founder, If There Were a Move That 20% of the Time Set Frozen on a Tera Opponent It Would Be OP
In Tera Raids, inflicting your opponent with the right status move can sometimes clinch you a victory you may not have otherwise had. You won’t always have direct control over what status the opponent will have – sometimes your NPC partners will inflict a status for you, or you’ll be running a build like Okidogi that inherently inflicts status on its own – but if you can help it, you should consider attaching a status to your move pool… unless it’s poison.
Why Status?
Statuses primarily buy you “freebies” – free turns where the opponent doesn’t move so you can self-heal and boost stats uninterrupted. Freebies don’t stop the timer, but they do let you reinforce where you may have been weak previously. I’ve won (and lost) close raids based on whether I got an RNG freebie turn or not, and for some of the lower-class raid builds that are more suited for niche situations the proper placement of a status affliction can clinch the win.
Here are the statuses ranked best to worst. We only care about non-volatile statuses and confusion:
- Frozen
- Sleep
- Paralysis
- Confusion
- Burn
- Poison
Frozen
On the very rare chances you get a lucky freeze, it’s usually from an NPC partner. If you manage to inflict it yourself with an Ice type attacker, you’ll be granted a few turns with which to self-boost or self-heal by attacking. The exact amount of time is undetermined, but that doesn’t matter – this is extremely valuable regardless. Freebies are rare in Tera Raids, so getting one matters tremendously. Frozen tends to last the longest of all the freebie statuses, by the way.
Ice Beam seems to be the most frequent way a freeze status is procured, and the Weavile partner occasionally gets one from Ice Punch as well. You’re otherwise not going to see this one too much.
Sleep
Similar to Frozen, Sleep, on the rare chances you can inflict it, is extremely helpful. Most sleep inflicting moves do not work through the Tera shield, so you won’t see it too often, but if you’re wanting to go for a luck-based RNG approach then inflicting sleep in the early battle helps. It’s not as guaranteed as frozen, and you will likely have just as much incentive to prevent being put to sleep as you will putting them to sleep, so don’t be surprised if you try to knock them out only to find that the anti-sleep measures you already took prevent it!
Some forms of sleep are guaranteed, like Yawn, so Sleep does thrive through options like that. Yawn is incredibly helpful for the more defensive raid builds, especially in online raids.
Paralysis
This is the easiest of the top three statuses to inflict, as Thunder Wave is widespread and 90% accurate. Paralysis creates a one in four chance for the opponent to be unable to do anything that turn, and it also cuts their speed down quite a bit. This is very helpful for two reasons: 1, you occasionally get a free turn, and in the closer raids a free turn is typically all you need to self-heal enough, and two, cutting their speed down lets you move first so you can self-heal before they can hit you. That makes it moderately harder for them to KO you. Paralysis is also permanent until they clear their own status afflictions, so you stand to possibly gain multiple freebies if it’s going to be a while before they clear. It’s a good investment!
Bear in mind that Thunder Wave can’t inflict Paralysis through the Tera Shield. If you want that, you’ll have to find a move that inflicts it alongside its actual damage. There’s a few options for that, like Body Slam, but they’re not as helpful as Thunder Wave usually is.
Confusion
Another status that is rare and hard to inflict through the Tera shield, confusion is kind of a sibling of paralysis in that it randomly takes away a turn from the opponent, with a 1/3rd chance. However, confusion wears off after a few turns so it’s not as helpful for the duration of the raid as paralysis is. Don’t go out of your way to inflict confusion, but if the opportunity arises, take it. After all, it’s the one status on this list that can stack with the other statuses. If you conveniently get confusion on top of, say, paralysis your opponent has, give or take, a 50% chance of actually being allowed to attack that turn!
Pecharunt is the biggest user of both confusion and poison, as he confuses opponents that he poisons.
Below this line, statuses no longer give free turns.
Burn
Burn and poison’s main impact is doing damage, but they do so little damage here that it’s negligible. However, Burn has the helpful side effect of cutting their physical attack stat in half! So if you’re facing an opponent, of which there are many, who run exclusively physical attacking moves you will have a similar effect to a +1 defense boost in terms of damage taken. Will-O-Wisp makes this somewhat easy, but don’t forget to check the rest of the available moveset to see if there’s options to inflict burn that also do damage.
Poison
Poison is useless. It does damage, but it does so little damage that it doesn’t matter. You should avoid inflicting poison if possible so that your teammates might hit them with a better status. Otherwise, you’re just making sure a better status can’t be applied.
Amiibo Doctor 