It looks like the highly-anticipated and feared seven-star Pokémon Scarlet and Violet Charizard raid isn’t quite the gruelling challenge many thought it would be – and that’s largely thanks to one of the cutest Pokémon in the Dex.
Before the Charizard event start time, players that had cleared the game’s main story were frantically preparing to take on this daunting, Dragon Tera Type ‘Zard. Hardcore players were sifting through the best Pokémon Violet and best Pokémon Scarlet Pokémon to find the strongest options possible to take on the limited-time raid, and were working hard to predict which movesets and strategies Charizard would use against them.
The most popular choice being talked about in the build up to the raid was Azumarill, and not just because it was a good matchup on paper when it comes to the Pokémon type chart. As well as being a Water/Fairy-type that would resist many of Charizard’s attacks, and possessing Fairy moves that are strong against Dragon-types, Azumarill can also learn Belly Drum, a move that cuts your HP but maxes out your attack stat. Many predicted you would need a whole team of Belly Drum Azumarills to get enough attacking power to wipe out this raid, but now it seems that Charizard is easily soloable with Azumarill and a few other Fairy-type Pokémon too.
The main reason for this is that Charizard’s moveset doesn’t contain some of the Steel-type moves many predicted it might have. With Fairy-types not being vulnerable to any super effective moves, tanky ones like Azumarill can happily sit there and soak up damage while taking out Charizard.
Others have claimed to solo this Charizard raid with Flutter Mane (check out the video below), Sylveon, Daschbun, and Grimmsnarl.
While we are admittedly making this sound like a stroll in the park, you will still need to have some high-level, EV and IV-trained examples of these Fairy-type Pokémon, rather than just any old Azumarill. However, the massive challenge many hardcore Pokémon fans expected just hasn’t come to fruition with this Charizard Tera Raid event, and while you can only catch one, there is now the chance to grind the raids for loads of excellent rewards, as is pointed out by YouTuber ‘Austin John Plays’.
As well as being disappointed in the difficulty, the Charizard raid is also plagued by a health bar bug that will show the incorrect amount of HP it has, before seemingly gifting Charizard back some of its health. However, fire off enough strong Fairy moves, and the health bar will become fairly irrelevant anyways.
With this seven-star raid not quite living up to the expectations of high-level players, it’ll be interesting to see if the next Tera Raid event cranks up the difficulty a little more. If you want a true challenge though, try climbing the ranks in Series 1 of Pokemon Scarlet and Violet competitive ranked battles.