Pokémon Scarlet & Violet - Dragonite the Unrivaled Failures

The 7-star Tera Raid Battle featuring Dragonite can be either easy (for a 7-star raid) or excruciatingly hard depends on how prepared you are for the raid. In a way though, this applies to the entirety of the main series as a whole: the better prepared you are going into a battle, they more likely you’ll emerge as the winner. But I think it’s more pronounced for this one than the previous ones, though I’m not entirely sure why—I think it has something to do with how this Dragonite is designed specifically around unrelenting momentum. With moves lke Dragon Dance and Scale Shot, Dragonite will boost its stats to crazy amounts, leaving you either more than ready to meet the onslaught or cught crumbling, which will cause you and your Pokémon to crumble over and over.

0:00 - Exhibit 1 - Flutter Mane and Iron Hands
A strategy that went floating around (no pun intended) is to put an Air Balloon on Flutter Mane. As Dragonite’s regular attacks are Normal (Extreme Speed), Dragon (Scale Shot), and Ground (Earthquake), on paper, that makes Flutter Mane invulnerable. But Dragonite will also use Hurricane and Thunder early into the battle. In this case, Dragonite struck Flutter Mane with Hurricane almost immediately, turning Flutter Mane into a liability. Your teammates will not be happy with you. Not helping is the Iron Hands insisting on the Belly Drum strategy facing a Pokémon that can and will use a super-effective Earthquake at every opportunity.

03:19 - Exhibit 2 - Blissey
Blissey is a Pokémon whose resilience is heavily influenced in how you train her. And in this case, I think Blissey’s trainer neglected to put any points into Defense. With a base HP of 255 and base Defense of just 10, those points seriously add up and can allow Blissey to withstand physical attacks three or four times as well. Not sure how well that works with all the Attack boosts from Dragon Dance though.

07:01 - Exhibit 3 - Dondozo
As long as Dragonite doesn’t strike Dondozo with Thunder, I think it’s a solid choice, especially if you can keep up with those Dragon Dances with Curse. It’s no match for a Body Press strategy, if you ask me, and it’s much slower than Iron Defense, not to mention you’re in big trouble when Dragonite resets your stat boosts. Not that this Dondozo was doing any of that. This was another case of someone desperately trying attack move after attack move, perplexed that they’re not dealing the huge damage they’re used to seeing. (And a much too reckless Terastallization. And something about a Corviknight who can’t take a hit.)

11:38 - Exhibit 4 - Koraidon
Really now? You bring in a Dragon-type against a Pokémon with Scale Shot? I Hope the reason is because this trainer has nothing better.

15:56 - Exhibit 5 - Mimikyu and Stored Power
Mimikyu has the same game plan as Flutter Mane. The idea is to play with computer players, since you can quit if Dragonite targets Mimikyu or Flutter Mane with Hurricane or Thunder. You can’t here though. Not sure what caused the Disguise to get busted, but it caused the undoing of a series of otherwise solid strategies. There’s also Farigiraf, who is normally a solid choice for blocking Extreme Speed, but I think this person was handed a well-suited Farigiraf but didn’t know what to do with it and spammed Stored Power with no stat boosts the whole raid long. That’s a textbook case of not being prepared and paying for it…