by Doc – Owner, Founder, Has a Mega Blocks Pixel Art Thing of Mew on His Desk
In the 6-star Tera Raid build tier list, I declined to go into any real detail about what the Pokémon Mew is capable of insofar as Tera Raids are concerned. This is because Mew has basically everything you could want him to have – Nasty Plot, Swords Dance, Calm Mind, Bulk Up, Earthquake, Leech Life, Acid Spray, Surf and everything else. If it’s in a TM, he has it available to him. Going into detail on Mew would take an entire lifetime because of the absurd number of possibilities you can run with him. Of course, because his stats are a flat 100 across all the boards, you can run him both as a physical or a special attacker as well, complicating things further.
Here’s the problem: in Tera Raids if you’re not using STAB moves, you’re heavily penalized. As I’ve explained in the Tera Raid mechanics post, you lose a significant portion of your damage against the Tera shield if you’re not dealing damage that is the same type as your base type and as your Tera type. In addition, even though you may be Terastallized to another type and doing damage as that type, you don’t get the first level of STAB bonus. So by the numbers, your damage output is subpar compared to what could be achieved… but we’ll work around that later.
Still, Mew – and to a lesser extent Arceus, but today we’re talking about Mew – does have everything available to him that he could reasonably need, and he can attack with any type you’d reasonably desire. So what does a typically good Mew build look like?
Off-Type Mew
Anytime you want to run Mew as an off-type attacker, your options are really straightforward. If you want to run a physical or special attacker, choose between the appropriate stat boosting move for that. Pick an attacking move of that type, and voila! You’re done. You can add some seasonings to it, such as Acid Spray if you’re going to run a special attacker, or terrains and weather if you’re going to run moves that require that. See the list of best moves in Tera Raids for some ideas, as your possibilities are pretty extensive and he has most of what’s on that list available to him.
On top of that, you need to save a moveslot for the move Reflect Type. Remember how I said using moves not of your type results in a damage penalty? Yeah, that’s how we solve that. Reflect Type does not typically work on Terastallized opponents, but it does work in Tera Raid battles. The end result of this is that you can adopt the Tera type of your opponent and deal that kind of STAB damage. So if you want Mew to run, say, Ghost type attacks you’d fit him with Shadow Ball, Acid Spray, Nasty Plot and Reflect Type and you would only use that build against Ghost Tera Raids.
The downside to this strategy is that it doesn’t work too well against many Tera types, but the upside is that it gives you a fill in the blank user for many others! Additionally, you can run terrains or weather that you need to boost your type, providing a weird solution to the pain in the butt sleep raids by stocking Electric or Misty Terrain.
(By the way, there’s no point in trying this against Tera types that resist themselves. Specifically, those types are Fire, Water, Grass, Electric, Ice, Poison, Psychic, Dark, and Steel. So if you’re going to try this, run it with Normal, Fighting, Ground, Flying, Bug, Rock, definitely Ghost and Dragon, and lastly Fairy.)
These Off-Type builds are acceptably good, but they’re not fantastic. Mew has enough options available to him that he can afford to not be super effective, but it’s still better in almost all situations to use a Pokémon that does not require the one turn of Reflect Type setup and will be super effective. Of course, running off-type Mew builds without Reflect Type is really, really a bad idea – while it does change your defensive profile from Psychic to whatever you’re changing to, which can cause some annoyance if not properly planned for, the real damage that it does is missing out on the STAB. You need as much STAB as you can get in Tera Raids, especially when the Tera shield is up, so be absolutely sure to run Reflect Type.
Stored Power
Mew is a fantastic user of Stored Power, and arguably the best, because he can add his stats any which way you prefer. By having access to nearly every good stat boosting move in the game save for Cosmic Power and Stockpile, and by being Psychic type and Terastallizing into Psychic, you coincidentally get double STAB on a Stored Power that can be boosted extremely high. Stored Power is a very basic and easy recipe for a Tera raider, but Mew at least allows you to take some creativity into your own hands by letting you run Psychic Terrain and Acid Spray to boost it further. Stored Power is still cheap and lame, but hey… It works.
Stored Power’s a flexible build option to some degree. You’ll probably run:
- Nasty Plot
- Acid Spray (can be exchanged for other moves like Chilling Water as needed, but generally Acid Spray is the best)
- Stored Power
- Discretionary
Your discretionary slot should probably go to defensive stat raisers as that boost will add to your Stored Power stack.
The strategy here’s easy: Nasty Plot not only boosts your Sp. Atk, but also adds +40 to Stored Power’s base power each time you use it. Acid Spray used three times lowers the enemy’s Sp. Def as low as it’ll go and gets you a Terastallization without having to use Stored Power early, and if you run a defensive stat move then that’ll hopefully keep you alive long enough to drop the bomb. I’d encourage checking out the timeline of your raid before choosing Stored Power though, as many raids wipe stats 40% of the way in or have other weird situations that completely destroy Stored Power’s viability.
Basic Mew
Basic Mew looks a lot like off-type Mew except… It’s not off type! You’re just running the build I mentioned in the tier list page:
- Psychic
- Acid Spray
- Nasty Plot
- Discretionary (typically any of the best moves in Tera Raids)
Alternatively, you can swap out your discretionary slot and Psychic for something a bit more impressive like Psychic Terrain and Expanding Force, which requires a turn to set up but does a massively larger amount of damage. Problem is, reliance on terrains gets invalidated by the Arboliva NPC partner, so results may vary.
Why Not Stellar Type?
I get asked occasionally why not use the Stellar type for Mew. The easy answer is that you can! Mew is one of the Pokémon whom it makes a lot of sense to use the Stellar type for… Until the Tera Raid shield goes up at least. At that point, even if you have used Reflect Type, because your move will not be a Stellar type move, it will be subjected to the x0.35 multiplier when dealing damage to the shield. Your only alternative to this is using Tera Blast, which will become Stellar type, but then you lose your attack stats. So Stellar type on Mew doesn’t function as well as you’d like.
Amiibo Doctor 