Pokemon Violet - 7* Goodra the Unrivaled (1) with Bellibolt and Eelektross

It's the next pseudo-legend already!

Just based on Goodra's moveset, people kind of assumed that it'd be somewhat of a pushover: its only offense-related self-buff is Curse (unless it were getting Body Press in which case Iron Defense would be relevant...). Still, we just kinda hoped it wouldn't have Acid Spray... Apart from that, Goodra has decent coverage, but the combination of Sap Sipper (to counter grass types) plus Earthquake (to counter electric types, plus leads to a mixed set so can't just run full SpD) meant there were no trivial solutions.

Well, in the end it's definitely not that bad.

7* tera water Modest Sap Sipper Goodra (with x35 HP and an 8-minute timer) immediately kicks off with Sludge Wave, and puts up shield (covering ~40% of max HP) at 90% time or 90% HP. Its only other HP-related threshold is resetting player buffs at 60% HP; meanwhile, at 87% time it wipes player buffs, at 84% time it uses Surf, at 55% time it wipes its own debuffs, and at 52% it uses Earthquake... and at 45% HP (not 40% like usual!) it starts using a second move 50% of the time. Its regular moveset is Scald, Dragon Pulse, Sludge Bomb, and Earthquake.

Before the raid came out I came up with four sets I wanted to try... and indeed, I managed to clear with all of them.


0:00 - Bellibolt

Who cares about super-effective Earthquake when you can just have Intimidate (or Arboliva grassy terrain) allies and focus purely on special defense, and then spam super-effective lifedrain?

As it turns out, Goodra only having a single debuff-wipe, and fairly late into the raid at that, means you especially want to debuff with Acid Spray early on. Unfortunately it's not quite safe enough to use three of them because of the scripted Surf (and even two is unsafe without Intimidate!), and also even once debuffs are wiped you kind of don't want to reapply Acid Spray because the whole 50%-chance-to-attack-again plus the scripted Earthquake tend to all happen around the same time (around the shield-break) and skipping one lifedrain turn can lead you to be KO'd from five attacks in a row.

...I lost two promising runs that way...

6:55 - Eelektross

Instead of caring about Intimidate, what if your electric type can ignore ground moves?

Goodra's incredibly bulky special-wise (which is why the other three runs were all down to the wire), but Eelektross actually has access to a decent physical electric move in Supercell Slam, which is fun. Using Coil for both the attack and accuracy boost complements its 95% accuracy well!

On the other hand, with mere Shell Bell healing the beginning of the raid is insanely rough. A cheeky Eerie Impulse at the start to halve special damage is very handy, but after shield goes up any shell bell healing is greatly reduced, so it takes a lot of luck (low damage rolls... or just have it use resisted Scald instead of Dragon Pulse I guess) until you can survive and terastallize. If you reach that point, though, the rest of the raid is super-straightforward!

I rolled (and locked in) both Arcanine and Weavile, who both have Leer, so I was all set when it came to defense debuffs... but if you don't, then gambling on Crush Claw's 50% -1 Def might be worth it.

Other electric types that can ignore ground moves include other Levitate users (like Vikabolt or Rotom) as well as electric/flying Pokemon (like Zapdos or Thundurus or Kilowattrel), but iunno, I like Eelektross. =)


Two more runs in the next video!