Pokémon Scarlet and Violet’s next seven-star Tera Raid event features the popular Water Starter, Swampert, with a surprising Poison Tera Type.
From May 31 to June 2 and again from June 7, Unrivaled Swampert Tera Raids will pop up in Paldea for your chance to challenge and catch the tough Gen III Starter. For these raids, Swampert has the Poison Tera Type, which is totally giving Quagsire and Clodsire vibes. Like Swampert, Quagsire has the fairly common Water/Ground-typing, while its Paldea counterpart, Clodsire, swaps Water out for Poison. There must be something in the Paldea water that’s turning these Water/Ground Pokémon into Poison types.
But unlike Clodsire, this Unrivaled Swampert doesn’t have too many Poison-type moves to go along with its Poison Tera Type. In fact, Swampert only gets access to three Poison moves: Sludge Wave, Sludge, and Poison Jab. Thankfully, it can’t learn Toxic.
If the Pokémon raid boss is rocking a mixed moveset, it’ll likely have both Sludge Wave and Poison Jab. They aren’t overpowered attacks, but they do have a chance to inflict your Pokémon with poison, which can get pretty annoying. The easy way to avoid this would be to bring a Poison or Steel-type counter with Poison immunity, though you’ll still have to figure out a way to hit Swampert for super-effective damage.
With the Poison Tera Type, Swampert has two defensive weaknesses: Ground and Psychic. Ground Pokémon will have a tough matchup against Swampert’s Water attacks, so my first thought was to bring a Psychic ‘mon like Slowbro. As a Water/Psychic-type counter, Slowbro resists any Water move Swampert wants to throw at it while hitting the Poison Tera for super-effective damage.
Slowbro has seen much success as a Tera Raid counter with the popular Stored Power build, so I imagine it would work quite well against the Hoenn Water Starter, too. Being poisoned by Poison Jab or Sludge Wave could set Slowbro back since it requires setup for Stored Power, but that’s where you can try the Poison/Psychic-type Galarian Slowbro instead. Rather than being poisoned, you’d just have to worry about Ground attacks. Other counters and builds will pop up once the event begins and we have all the details on Unrivaled Swampert, but Slowbro is a great place to start when figuring out how to clear this raid.
