Pokemon Violet - 7* Dragapult the Unrivaled with Flutter Mane

Описание: It's the final pseudo-legend raid! Hopefully not the final 7* raid though.

7* tera dragon Cursed Body Dragapult (Naive, with x35 HP in a 470-second raid) immediately starts off with Dragon Dance, and puts up shield (covering around 35% of its health bar) at 92% time or 92% HP. At 86% time, player stats are reset, then soon afterwards at 83% time it uses Breaking Swipe. Meanwhile, at 55% HP player buffs are wiped, at 43% HP debuffs are wiped, and at 40% HP it uses Dragon Dance again and also starts using a second move per turn 50% of the time. Its regular moveset is Dragon Darts (200 BP with STAB physical dragon), Shadow Ball (120 BP with STAB special ghost), Acrobatics (110 BP without item physical flying), and Flamethrower (90 BP special fire), some decent coverage...

with the glaring weakness that, since Dragapult learns zero poison or steel moves, fairy types are immune to its most threatening move and can hit super-effectively back. Wow.

It could've had ability Clear Body to block debuffs, which would've been fairly annoying in either encouraging player-buffs or encouraging an ability-replacement... but instead it has Cursed Body, which has a 30% chance to disable any attack move, which is very annoying in being luck-based, encouraging you to bring two attack moves (in case one is disabled), or again encouraging an ability-replacement.


Once the raid data was out confirming that it didn't have Clear Body, it was clear to me that I wanted to reroll for an Intimidate ally (somehow my first party with Intimidate had two!) and then focus on a specially-defensive fairy type... and while Flutter Mane and Sylveon were both great candidates (both knowing Fake Tears, Calm Mind, and a variety of fairy moves including Draining Kiss), in the end I went with Flutter Mane just because it can debuff SpA through shield with Mystical Fire. (Sylveon can just Mud-Slap instead, though!) Debuffs are super-handy because there's only one debuff-wipe and it's late in the fight... and you can even fit in two status moves before shield goes up, which is nice.

Since I was at low health after using two Fake Tears, and I knew I was outsped by +1 Spe Dragapult, I decided to just attack cheer and faint for the perma-cheer glitch. After reviving, Cursed Body was very nice at first, only disabling Mystical Fire after I used it three times... but after using Draining Kiss only two times, breaking shield, and reapplying Fake Tears, Cursed Body immediately disabled Draining Kiss. Ugh! I decided to just buff/debuff some more for three turns, but it was still disabled, and Mystical Fire ended up doing half its remaining health... so I just finished it off with a second one.

It'd probably be easier to just use Moonblast instead of bothering with Calm Mind, in order to have a strong option even if Draining Kiss was disabled. In fact, maybe even replace Draining Kiss with Dazzling Gleam and hold a shell bell!


Cursed Body's the type of difficulty that's annoying rather than interesting (unlike Goodra's Sap Sipper plus Earthquake) so I'm only doing this one run, but if you want an actual counter then Wigglytuff seems great. Normal/Fairy means you're immune to both dragon and ghost, you can Skill Swap away Cursed Body (just don't give it Competitive!), can also Fake Tears (and/or Nasty Plot!), can attack/debuff through shield with Chilling Water, and can still metronome Draining Kiss/shell bell Dazzling Gleam. What a good counter!


If you just want a fairy type that can remove Cursed Body, then there are plenty of other options.

Galarian Weezing has Neutralizing Gas (though that also prevents Intimidate);
No fairy type gets Simple Beam;
no fairy type gets Gastro Acid.
Worry Seed can be used by Whimsicott (but weak to Acrobatics) and Comfey (has Triage, might be fun!),
Entrainment can be used by Dedenne (resists flying!) and Alcremie,
Skill Swap can be used by Wigglytuff (immune to Shadow Ball!); Carbink and Diancie (resists flying and fire); Clefable and Florges (neutral); Magearna and Tinkaton (weak to Flamethrower); Ribombee (weak to Acrobatics and Flamethrower); Gardevoir and Hatterene (weak to Shadow Ball)...

Or instead of using a move to bypass Cursed Body plus one attack move, just bring two attack moves instead, I guess.