Pokémon is widely viewed as a very simple game, but casual players might not appreciate the level of depth present in every aspect of each system in these relatively straightforward games. Thankfully, there is a dedicated fanbase for Pokémon that always goes even further beyond and breaks down each piece of the game in detail—which is currently happening for Pokémon Scarlet and Violet.
Following the typical breakdowns for things like capture mechanics and Shiny hunting rates, now some of the most reliable dataminers are pointing their efforts to Tera Raids. And thanks to that, we now have a detailed set of numbers to show just how much a Tera Raid’ boss’ shield impacts the damage your Pokémon is doing during battle.
If you don’t know, after you and your three teammates get a raid boss below a certain HP threshold, the Pokémon will enter a scripted state of action. This includes removing debuffs from itself, erasing your team’s stat buffs, and activating a shield that will take some of the incoming damage heading into the home stretch.
Typically this shield pops up once you get the raid boss down below half of its starting HP. And according to dataminer Anubis, there are three core ways that those shields impact the damage-dealing capabilities of player Pokémon while active.
Related: How to get an Ability Patch or Ability Capsule in Pokemon Scarlet and Violet
How do shields work in Pokémon Scarlet and Violet Tera Raids?
Once a shield is active, the Tera Raid boss is going to be taking damage at a much slower rate than normal. There are three distinct variables after taking into account the usual damage calculation factors being taken into account.
Basically, if your Pokémon is just attacking at a shielded raid boss, you will only be dealing 20 percent of your regular damage. From there, it is all based on if you are attacking while Terastallized, which will increase your damage output somewhere between 15 and 55 percent, depending on the move.
If you are Terastallized and using a move that does not match your Pokémon’s Tera Typing, it will do 35 percent of its regular damage output. Using a STAB-boosted move while Terastallized will bump that all the way up to 75 percent of the damage it would normally do without the active shield.
Using Anubis’ examples, if you use a Fire-type move that would do 666 damage to the Tera Raid boss, this is how those percentages would show up.
- Non-Terastallized Pokémon: 133 damage or 20 percent
- Terastallized but non-STAB: 233 damage or 35 percent
- Terastallized and STAB: 500 damage or 75 percent
These numbers might not be meaningful depending on the level of Tera Raid you are taking on, especially since the shields will often be instantly shattered if you are playing with competent teammates.
If you see a shield appear and then almost all of its added health disappear, it could be a case of one attack dealing enough damage to break it or the online lobby trying to catch up to multiple moves being used and impacting the shield. However, due to how the Tera Raid system is set up, it could remain active for a few additional turns as it catches up to each player’s actions.
Anubis speculates that this is because as soon as a move is clicked, the game’s systems have already run the damage calculations and are implementing the result live. The animations are all just for show and will sometimes cause a delay that causes a desync—but there is no way to accurately document this.
