No one is safe from the raids

I have to give credit where credit is due: Scarlet and Violet Pokemon. With these games, I’ll never be bored. The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom and the Diablo 4 beta release on Friday, so I was hoping to get some extra shut-eye over the weekend. Game Freak, it seems, also wanted to offer trainers something to beat their heads against, so it brought us yet another Tera Raid event. The people of Hell and Hyrule may wait another day; I’m sure they’ll understand.

Regardless of your speculations regarding the dates (12-14 May), 7-Star Chesnaught will surely visit Paldea. It will return between May 19 and May 21 as has become customary in recent years. I think the rebroadcast weekend will attract a far larger audience than the first event did. Regardless, this Grass/Fighting-Type Pokémon will show up as a Rock Tera, which might be quite entertaining depending on its final moveset.

Let’s analyse how we can best get ready for this meeting. What else are you going to do between now and Friday, anyway?

Think about the moves that Chesnaught could know

Chesnaught will most likely resort to physical assaults because to its uneven stat distribution. There have been no 7-Star Tera Raids that haven’t equipped their Pokemon with at least one attack that fits both their natural typing and their Tera Type. We can rule out a purely magical adversary because Chesnaught is limited to learning Rock-Type physical attacks. Its strongest moves are physical attacks, and these include the Fighting and Grass-Type attacks that it is well known for.

Since Chesnaught has participated in previous Tera Raids, we may also presume that it is familiar with its Hidden Ability, Bulletproof. Although Bulletproof is not as lethal as some other Abilities we’ve seen, its influence may make some techniques useless. For example, it renders ineffective “ball and bomb moves,” such as Acid Spray, Aura Sphere, Energy Ball, and Focus Blast. This effectively removes one of Chesnaught’s most effective counters, Special-focused Fighting-Type Pokemon. After all, this monster has a far higher Defence than Special Defence.

The potential for further development of Chesnaught’s move set exists beyond this point. The ideal monsters to deploy in its defence depend on whether it uses Flying, Psychic, Ghost, or Ice-Type attacks. Spiky Shield is a unique ability available to Chesnaught that serves a similar purpose to Protect while also doing damage to Pokémon that employ Contact techniques like Drain Punch. Even while we haven’t witnessed any Tera Raid encounters employ such defensive manoeuvres, we shouldn’t rule them out entirely.

Pokémon