GHENT, WV (WVNS) – Raid events have been a staple in Pokémon gameplay for a while now, but some trainers still find the battles challenging.

Approaching these raids largely depends on which pokémon you bring to the battle, but are there any pokémon that are good for most raids? 

If you’re looking to solo some 7-star raids with physical attackers, Annihilape and Azumarill are frequent go-to pokémon for raiders. Azumarill is a pokémon many players have likely seen in the raids since it’s been the main raider for many players since the first events.

For Annihilape, you should be looking for an adamant nature. If you can’t find one organically, it’s fairly easy to just use a nature mint to get what you’re looking for. Ideally, you will want to max out IVs on this pokémon, though its special attack won’t matter much, so you could avoid that stat if you’re low on bottle caps. This means your Annihilape will need to be, at minimum, level 50, but if you’re planning on taking on 7-star raids, you’ll probably want to get it to level 100 anyway. You’ll want ‘vital spirit’ as the ability. As for effort values, you’ll want to max out Annihilape’s HP and attack stats while throwing the extra in defense.

This sets your annihilape up to be a massive attacker, landing powerful hits. You’ll be pairing this with a ghost tera type. Since Annihilape is already a ghost type and will be getting a same type attack bonus on ghost type moves as well as its tera boost, it will quickly become a problem for the raid pokémon. You’ll use Annihilape to taunt to avoid any boosts to your opponent’s stats, then screech to lower their defense. After that, you can make calls on when to use rage fist or drain punch, depending on your health. Make sure to have a metronome on your Annihilape to get the max power out of your moves.

The azumarill strategy has been pretty well known for a while now. You’ll want an adamant azumarill. Again, you can use a mint if you’re having trouble finding a specific nature. A big part of using the azumarill strategy is having the all-important ability ‘huge power’ on it. That is going to be a big part of making your hits land with that much more force. Azumarill should have effort values maxed in HP and attack with the leftovers in defense and should be holding a shell bell to heal a bit.

If you’ve been playing for a while, you’re probably aware of where this is going. Belly drum with Azumarill to increase your attack even more and then use play rough. This is going to be shockingly aggressive to people who haven’t seen one of these monster azumarill in action before. To make things even more devastating, you’ll be giving your azumarill a fairy tera type. It, like Annihilape, will get a same type attack bonus as well as a tera bonus, making it exasperatingly powerful. Azumarill can also have helping hand and liquidation to round out its movepool. As with any other raid pokémon, you’ll want to max out Azumarill’s levels and IVs to make it as devastating as possible. 

If you’re going up against something with lower special defense rather than lower defense, you might prefer a special attacker as opposed to a physical attacker. In that case, players tend to bring out Gholdengo and Miraidon. Both pokemon are widely used in raids. 

For Gholdengo, you’ll have the ability ‘good as gold.’ Luckily, there is no other ability option so you’ll definitely be squared away on this immediately. You can use a mint to make this pokémon’s nature modest. For effort values, max out HP and special attack while dumping the rest into special defense. Gholdengo will also be holding a shell bell for a little extra healing and should have a steel tera type. The goal with this pokémon is to use nasty plot first to boost your own stats followed by metal sound to lower the opposing pokémon’s special defense. Then, you can use flash cannon to deal massive damage. Hex will round out the movepool so that Gholdengo can deal extra damage if an opponent has a status affliction. 

Miraidon is a natural choice for a lot of things because, as a legendary pokemon, it has high stats naturally. As an attacking pokemon, you can give it a life orb and an electric tera type which will already make it a worrisome opponent. A modest nature will make that power even more of a problem. Effort values should be maxed in HP and special attack with extra points in special defense. Miraidon’s movepool should be parabolic charge, electro drift, helping hand, and metal sound. Metal sound, as stated with Gholdengo, will lower defense. Paired with all of the boosts Miraidon has, the lowered defense will make electro drift hit incredibly hard. The best part is that, after all the time spent making sandwiches with your cute little motorcycle pokemon throughout the game, you’ll be endeared to it and will likely have some fun destroying things with it. 

For my toxic girlies out there, we’ll talk about an amazing muk build as an added bonus that I personally like to use. Muk has a few builds but I like to use its physical attacking build. What you’ll need is an adamant muk with the ability ‘stench.’ Its hold item should be black sludge which will actually act as a healing item for Muk since it’s a poison type.

As with all of these builds, you’ll want to max level and IVs. Effort values should be maxed out in HP and attack with extra in special defense. Its tera type should be poison for that extra boost. With Muk, you’ll minimize to avoid being hit while you screech to lower the target’s defense. Then, you can use drain punch if you need to heal or gunk shot for more damage.

Something that isn’t required that makes any raid pokémon feel a little more special is hunting down a shiny or marked version of that pokémon, so feel free to do that too just to show off a little.