Pokemon Violet - 7* Metagross the Unrivaled (1) with Dark-Urshifu and Archaludon
0This 7* raid is really rude!
7* tera steel Metagross (with x25 HP and a 500-second timer) has Clear Body... and immediately puts up shield (covering 25% of max HP). Wow! It then follows up with Hone Claws (+1 attack and accuracy). At 89% and 79% time remaining it uses Iron Defense, whereas at 70% HP remaining (a bit more than what the shield covered) it wipes player buffs, at 60% HP it wipes its own debuffs, and at 40% HP uses Light Screen (and also starts taking an extra action 50% of the time). Its regular moveset is Meteor Mash (steel, 20% chance to boost attack), Earthquake (ground), Zen Headbutt (psychic, 20% chance to flinch), and Thunder Punch (electric, 10% chance to paralyze), which is pretty good coverage.
Clear Body (prevent all debuffs) plus insta-shield (block status moves) plus 2x Iron Defense is an incredibly mean combination!
0:00 - Dark Urshifu
One way to get past the defense buffs is to get critical hits. Focus Energy plus metronome Drain Punch was my first thought upon seeing the raid, but while wondering how to go about this with Iron Hands (who's incredibly bulky and also has Iron Defense... but should I Belly Drum or just Swords Dance?) someone suggested (dark) Single-Strike Urshifu, presumably because it's a fighting type that isn't weak to psychic.
My strat: do 3x Drain Punch at the start just to build up tera, then allow yourself to faint... which should be fast enough to do the glitch and keep the AI's defense cheer permanently. After reviving, use Iron Defense and Focus Energy, and one or two Swords Dance, and then just spam tera fighting Drain Punch (reapplying Iron Defense and Swords Dance after the buffwipe).
As you can see, this is really close on time! If you're unlucky with crits then this strat fails, which isn't really a surprise given that it involves a faint without a perma-attack cheer.
8:09 - Archaludon
Before the raid was out, it was clear that Metagross was going to have STAB steel and psychic moves, plus ground for coverage... but steel/flying Pokemon (such as Skarmory, Corviknight... and Levitate Bronzong) resist/are immune to all three of those, have high defense, and have access to Iron Defense plus Body Press. Easy raid!
Alas, Thunder Punch coverage plus Clear Body/Iron Defense dashes those dreams... but Body Press is still an option. Stamina Archaludon gets free defense buffs while also having access to Focus Energy, allowing you to very quickly get to max power.
By the way, an easily-forgotten but surprisingly useful aspect of grassy terrain is that it halves Earthquake damage, which means AI Arboliva is super-important for anything weak (or even neutral) to Earthquake. The extra healing is nice too! Arcanine's Intimidate is blocked by Clear Body but its Flamethrower still has a 10% chance to burn through shield... and if it doesn't, then Drifblim's Will-o-wisp can reliably do it once shield is down. (I didn't think of Meteor Mash on AI building up ATK buffs invisibly, though...) Still, I fish for a para proc while building up tera orb charge at the start because why not.
Unfortunately an unlucky crit bypasses your defense and will likely oneshot... Another option is Battle Armor Falinks, who can still Iron Defense/Focus Energy/Body Press but is immune to crits.
This raid's hard enough that I was inspired to do a few more runs! So look forward to the special-attackers next.