by Doc – Owner, Founder, So Close to Perfect “T” Alliteration in that Title
Often times in Tera Raids a raid will go from absurdly easy to incredibly difficult just because the same opponent has a different Tera type. For example, if you’re fighting somebody like Armarouge who primarily attacks with Fire and Psychic, you’ll have a pretty easy time if his Tera type is Steel. You can just grab a Fire type attacker who will resist his Fire type attacks, and you’re conveniently super effective against him now. However, if he’s the Normal type, you’re in for a hard time! You’re not going to be super effective against him unless you’re running a Fighting type… which happens to be weak to Psychic. Same opponent but different types makes a big difference.
Well, when broadly speaking about which Tera types are the hardest you have to consider the available types that you can respond with and the likelihood that those types will be easily walled off by the opponent. You also have to consider the actual quality of attackers you can attack it with. For example, we have some extremely solid Electric-type attackers in Miraidon and Bellibolt. Because of that, Flying and Water are going to be less potent defensively since we have such great options to defeat them with.
For attacker rankings and reference, see the 6-star Tera Raid builds tier list.
S Tier
Electric
Electric is exclusively weak to Ground, and you have basically no other options against Electric unless you’re feeling up to neutral damage. Plus, Water seems to be one of the most widely distributed attack types on the opponents, with Grass not being that far behind. So you think you could mitigate this by bringing something that resists both Water and Grass… which only leaves you with Garchomp. Oh, but don’t forget that Garchomp is double weak to Ice!
Unfortunately your Ground options are also pretty limited, as you don’t have much besides Groudon and Landorus that are consistently effective. There’s a few others out there but those two are your best friends. And Electric resists itself, so you don’t have the best Tera raiders available to you should you need them.
Normal
Generation 1 players rejoice, Normal type is again one of, if not the, hardest Tera types to beat. This is pretty obvious – Normal is only weak to Fighting, but Fighting is weak to Psychic, Fairy and Flying. The likelihood that you’re going to find a Fighting type that’s not going to be weak is not always that great, so luck will have to be on your side. Fortunately for you though, the Fighting type is extremely prominent among the best physical raiders in the game, and Body Press builds make it easy for you to wall off physical attackers bearing the Normal Tera type.
Still, the Fighting type is not represented hardly at all among the special attackers, so if you’re up against something that would need a special attacker to really knock it into next weekend, you’re gonna have a bad time. I’d consider Normal to be a contender with Electric for hardest Tera type in raids.
Fairy
The Fairy type pairs extremely well with a Ground type opponent, as Fairy type is only weak to Steel and Poison. There’s not many great Steel or Poison attackers, and none of them are avoiding a Ground weakness with their typing. Further, Steel and Poison are weak to an impressively large amount of the cast, so you’ll find that even if you have an attacker of the right type it may not give you the resistance you need. Further, it resists Fighting, taking a lot of the best raiders off the table.
A Tier
Flying
At first glance you’d think Flying would be pretty easy to rule out given common prejudices against the type. However, Flying is only weak to Electric, Rock and Ice. Rock and Ice are both weak to a lot of types, and Rock and Electric share a weakness to the Ground type, so your options are constricted quite heavily depending on what you’re up against. Let’s not forget that Fighting, Grass and Ground – three of the best attacking types available – are useless here.
Fighting
Fighting is weak to a lot of things, chiefly being Psychic, Fairy and Flying. However, there’s not a lot of great Flying type builds, nor are there an abundance of Fairies to go around. You do, however, have a metric ton of Psychic types, many of whom have a secondary type that can cover their weaknesses. So you’ve got that going for you, which is nice.
Thing is, there are several raids that use Close Combat. I would almost consider it a subgenre of raid, just like sleep raids. Close Combat raids are not that difficult so long as you can survive at least one Close Combat… But if he has STAB on Close Combat, you’re screwed! Assuming you don’t have something that resists Fighting, that is. It’s not too hard to find something that’ll resist Fighting, so it’s not an S tier type.
Bug
The nice thing about fighting the Bug Tera is that practically nobody has Bug type attacks in any Tera Raid. Oh sure, there’s a few, but they’re very spread out so you don’t have to worry about STAB. However, Bug is weak to Fire, Rock and Flying. (Recall that Rock attackers practically don’t exist, they’re so bad). You basically only have Fire and Flying to choose from.
This gets complicated when you’re fighting something like, say, Golem. If he’s got Rock type attacks and a Bug Tera you’re in a hard situation. Pun intended. There’s a lot of opponents that have Rock attacks, so you’re keen to find yourself in a position where you can’t be super effective against Bug without being hit super effectively yourself, and that’s… harder.
Ghost
You have two options when fighting a Ghost type – Dark, and Ghost. And if the opponent has Tera Blast or a Ghost type attack, you only have Dark. However, there’s a lot of really great Ghost type attackers, and a few very solid Dark type attackers, so you’re not likely to be in a situation where neither of those types will work for you. It’s inconvenient, sure, but where Ghost really shines is the fact that it’s immune to Normal and Fighting. Normal immunity isn’t that big of a deal (Normal types are almost always inferior anyway) but Fighting? Removing the Fighting type from your list of options truncates down what you can do fairly handily. So if you don’t have a good Dark type that can work for you, you’ll have an uphill battle on your hands more often than not.
B Tier
Fire
There’s a lot of usable Water and Ground-type attackers, chief among them being Kyogre and Groudon. You’d think that that would render Fire as a bottom tier type, but opponents carrying the Grass type invalidate everything that Fire is weak to. (Rock exists as well, but Rock is such a bad type to have that it’s not worth considering). So Fire’s got some bite to it!
Poison
Since when is the Poison type any good? Well, since we had to worry about it from an exclusively defensive point of view. Poison’s uniquely only weak to Psychic and Ground. Those types don’t share any weaknesses so there’s no scenario where you won’t have anything to attack with, but you’re also heavily limited in your options if one of them is weak to the opponent, though not completely.
Steel
Yes, Steel has the best resistances in the game, and that’s keeping him from being C tier. However, consider what it’s weak to; Fire, Fighting and Ground. Fighting is one of, maybe the single best offensive type in terms of power level and availability in Tera raids, and Fire is quite potent in its own right. Ground is a narrower set of availability but still has a few very powerful representatives on the physical side. Honestly, if you consider not just the types it’s weak to but the power level available to those types, Steel is actually one of the easiest defensive types to beat in the game.
C Tier
Dragon
Dragon’s not especially hard, due in no small part to the facts that it’s weak to some pretty powerful types and that there’s a sizeable collection of attackers that are super effective against it. No matter what Pokemon is running the Dragon Tera you’ll have either an Ice, Dragon or Fairy solution to it (though if memory serves Archaludon is the exception).
Dark
Being weak to Fighting isn’t exactly a blessing, and also being weak to Fairy doesn’t help either. Sure, you’re immune to Stored Power builds, but who uses Stored Power in the year of our Lord 2026? Not to mention that your only resistances are to Dark and Ghost, both of which have plenty of alternatives. Actually, Dark-type Tera Raids are some of the most fun opportunities to use Slither Wing Bug, if you’re feeling like it.
Psychic
Ghost has four really good top-tier attackers between both tier lists, and Dark has almost as many that are almost as powerful. Sure, Psychic resists Fighting, but it doesn’t resist hardly anything else that it needs to. Psychic STAB is very useful, don’t get me wrong, and Psychic-type attacks are a bit more common among the opponent’s movesets than others, but that’s rendered irrelevant by Dark types.
Grass
Grass is the punching bag of Tera types when it comes to raids. Grass is weak to just about everything, and while it does resist many of the most powerful attackers, it simply can’t put up enough of a fight against what it doesn’t resist. There’s some great Fire and Flying attackers that between all of them have no universal weakness, so it doesn’t matter what opponent carries the Grass Tera, you’re going to have some good options.
Water
You’d think one of the best defensive types in Pokemon would be one of the best defensive offerings in Tera raids, right? After all, Water is only weak to Electric and Grass.
The catch is that Electric and Grass are both types that are extremely well-represented, with Bellibolt and Miraidon carrying the Electric type and Arceus and Ogerpon carrying the Grass type, with any number of other supporters of both types behind them. Now, if you’re in an extremely specific scenario, like Water Tera Clodsire raids, that’s a different story, as Clodsire can bully both of those options. But generally Water’s not going to give you a hard time.
D Tier
Ground
Fairly easy to place; it’s weak to two of the best attacking types in the game, and its immunity to Electric doesn’t help it against anything besides Electric! You can slap any old Giga Drain user against a Ground type and cash in the Tera Shards without much issue, typically.
Rock
Just like Ground, it’s weak to Water and Grass, and on top of that the Rock Tera has to reckon with Fighting and Steel types. The odds are decent that if you throw a dart at a dartboard with the top tier raiders on it, you’ll hit something super effective against Rock. But hey, at least it resists Normal and Fire! Tied for Ice as the easiest Tera type to beat in raids.
Ice
It’s weak to Fighting. It’s weak to Fire. It’s weak to Steel. (We don’t care about Rock attackers). It resists nothing but itself. Fighting, Fire and Steel all have fantastic representation in top tier attackers and there’s really nothing that an Ice type can defend against, short of Glastrier and Regice. Ice is the easiest Tera type to beat in Tera Raids, but when you consider the benefit of STAB for the opponent, it’s maybe tied with Rock.
As a reward for reading all the way through, here’s the image of Muk in the Tera Raid I used for the background of this post. I always chuckle when I see it. It’s just a screenshot from a Tera Raid that I asked ChatGPT to turn into an oil painting, it’s nothing special.
Amiibo Doctor 