I kinda glossed over it last video, but uh… Psych Up is kinda insane against raid Pokemon that buff themselves. Being able to replace both attack buffs and defense buff moves, while also allowing you to cap buffs faster than you could’ve if you just used those buff moves yourselves (because raid targets can use their moves four times for each one of yours)… Crazy.
0:00 – Infernape
Okay, so Incineroar’s gonna stay at +6 Def, and so… maybe one way to deal with it is by simply using a special attacker?
This goes back, again, to 7* Blastoise where I tried out a Lucario set, but basically the list of stuff that has access to both Nasty Plot and a good defense-buffing move (so either Iron Defense/Acid Armor or Psych Up) is pretty small… and of those, almost none of them also happen to be a type that resists dark and is super-effective back. In this case, both Lucario and Infernape qualify (and in fact have very similar stats), though of course Lucario’s fire-weak whereas Infernape resists fire, so here I decided to breed and prep an Infernape set.
Now… the problem is that Infernape’s just really frail. Base 76 HP/71 Def means that a typical Modest 252 SpA/252 Def Infernape is still guaranteed to get oneshot by a resisted +6 Atk Darkest Lariat! You could swap to a defense-boosting nature and/or move all attack EVs into HP in order to guarantee your survive one hit… but even then you’re definitely never going to survive two in a row, which means the unlucky 1/8 double-Darkest Lariat late in the fight will absolutely end your run.
My solution to this (in addition to just rolling for Intimidate allies) was to keep Incineroar burned, thus halving its damage… but while that’s pretty easy to do early on (you can just Will-o-wisp it), Incineroar puts up shield and also wipes its debuffs partway through the fight, which is already the hard part of the fight, and so you’d need to come up with a way to burn it through shield.
Luckily the AI can do it! Arcanine can Flamethrower for a 10% chance, and Umbreon/Gardevoir have Synchronize to burn it if they get burned by Flare Blitz’s 10% chance… but that’s clearly unreliable. In the end I decided to gamble on Scorching Sand’s 30% burn.
…Even then, I spent three hours one night with a Heracross/Gardevoir/Arcanine team and eventually gave up, because I simply couldn’t get things to line up. Burning seemed too unreliable so I tried stacking infinite-duration attack/defense cheers by fainting early, then using Psych Up to copy defense right before shield went up, then waiting for the debuff wipe and then finally attempting to burn with Scorching Sands, before going back to Nasty Plot buffing and then Aura Sphere spam… but that simply took too long, and even a run where nearly everything lined up (apart from only having a defense cheer) timed out with around 20% HP left. I was ready to give up!
And then the next day, when rolling AI to do other runs (in the next video), I ended up getting this god team as the very first set. A few more tries later, and I won.
…Really, that says more about how insane Gardevoir + two Intimidate teams are, rather than anything about Infernape itself.
7:32 – Clefable
Anyways, forget all that nonsense. Incineroar uses buffs, and therefore one way to deal with them is by having Unaware ignore them. Simple enough.
In theory, Unaware Skeledirge might work… but even once you tera-fire, Darkest Lariat still outdamages a 252 SpA/252 Def Skeledirge’s +6 SpA shell bell Torch Song’s healing, so you’d again need to either divest attack EVs towards HP, or else hope an AI Gardevoir’s Life Dew/Arboliva’s grassy terrain or Bellibolt’s Light Screen have enough uptime to allow you to win.
Unaware Dondozo’s a better option; it’s clearly very bulky and can make use of that bulk offensively through super-effective Body Press. Sadly its best buffing move is Curse, and overall it’s apparently a very slow clear.
One very interesting setup (courtesy of Smogon’s thread for this raid), though, is physical-attacker Unaware Clefable! Psych Up lets you copy +6 Atk/Def and then you can just spam Drain Punch for the win. Someone said that they ran out of PP (and recommend using Tera Blast), but here I definitely could’ve won with just Drain Punch since I only used, like, 11 attacks total.
Definitely think this set is clever. If left up to me, I’d probably only have come up with ‘Psych Up to copy defense, then Calm Mind six times, then spam Draining Kiss’ or whatever…
Still one more video to go somehow!
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