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The Greninja Raid is back for one more weekend, so don’t miss your chance to complete it. Greninja is a fan-favorite Pokemon (for very good reason) and now, the wait to add Greninja Pokemon to your team in Pokemon Scarlet and Violet is over. Right now you can tackle the 7-Star Poison Greninja Tera Raid and bring it home for yourself.
Greninja’s Water/Dark typing is good defensively, fantastic offensively, and they have a great stat spread and move list that makes them a welcome addition to any team, whether you are building a team to tackle the Elite Four or the competitive ranking system.
Table of Contents [hide]When can I catch Greninja?Before you beginBuilding a Pokemon to beat GreninjaSlowbro EVs for fighting GreninjaSlowbro Moves for fighting GreninjaFighting Greninja
When can I catch Greninja?
This Tera Raid takes place in two waves, just like Charizard and Cinderace. Weekends during which you can complete this raid include:
January 27 – 29February 10 – 12
You’ll also be able to catch 4- and 5-Star Bronzong and Lucario during the event, which are both Pokemon that have advantageous typing against Water/Dark/Poison Greninja.
Before you begin
First, before you can even think about fighting Greninja, make sure you’ve taken care of all the 7-star Tera Raid prep work I detail in our How To Catch Charizard guide. Once that’s done, you’ll need to build a Pokemon that can counter Greninja.
There are a few frontrunners for this, including Lucario, Clodsire, and Bronzong, but my recommendation is Slowbro. A Stored Power Slowbro will help you survive for a very long time, then take out Greninja with massively damaging, supereffective damage.
You don’t even have to worry about what Tera type Slowbro is. I used a Grass Tera type and simply didn’t Terastalize, and I was totally fine, although if you have a Psychic Tera type Slowbro, that will bump your Stored Power damage up to double, which is a nice benefit, but the tradeoff is that you lose resistance to Hydro Pump.
Building a Pokemon to beat Greninja
You can catch a Tera Slowbro in the northwestern region, swimming around on Casseroya Lake. Once you have caught them, you’ll want to visit the Hyper Trainer in the icy city of Montenevera (northern section of the map) to increase every stat besides Attack to maximum.
To do this, you’ll need Bottle Caps, which you can get from high-level raids, fighting in the academy tournament, and in auctions in Porto Marinada.
Slowbro EVs for fighting Greninja
Once your Slowbro’s IVs are maxed out (again, except for the Attack stat, which we won’t be using), it’s time to max out the EVs. We want to max out HP and Special Attack, which will take 26 HP UPs and 26 Calcium, which can be purchased at the Chansey Supply in Mezagoza (East). You can use one final Iron to give yourself a tiny boost to Defense to round out your EVs.
After that, use Exp. Candy XL (another Tera Raid bonus item) to reach Level 100 and then the last thing you need are the moves.
Slowbro Moves for fighting Greninja
Stored Power (TM41)Iron Defense (TM104)Nasty Plot (TM140)Slack Off (Learned at Level 33)
Slowbro learns Slack Off naturally, which you’ll use to stay healed up during the fight, so now you need to obtain the rest of the moves via TM.
Stored Power can be found just west of Los Platos in the starting area.
Nasty Plot can be found in Area Zero on the ledge above Research Station No. 2. Teleport there, run outside, turn around, use your Legendary mount to climb the cliff, then you’ll be able to hop up onto another small ledge to grab the TM. You can also get Nasty Plot by completing Professor Raifort’s history lessons, passing the final, catching all four of the legendary Pokemon, then talk to the Professor.
Iron Defense is found in East Province (Area Three) just east of the fast travel point with the same name. It’s on a raised mesa in the middle of a pit.
With all your moves, IVs, EVs, and leveling up taken care of, the last thing you need is your item. I recommend the Leftovers. There are a few that can be found around the world, but you can also buy them pretty inexpensively.
Head to the Delibird Presents shop in eastern Cascarrafa, located in the western part of Paldea. Pick up the Leftovers for 20,000 yen, then equip it and it’ll be time to fight.
Fighting Greninja
You can certainly fight Greninja online, but this build is good enough to beat him with CPU trainers helping. By fighting solo, it will matter much less if your teammates get knocked out, as that won’t reduce your timer the way it would if a player’s Pokemon would.
Greninja will start the fight with Double Team and Toxic Spikes, so you’ll be poisoned if you faint at all (as will your teammates) but this won’t really matter, since we have Leftovers and Slack Off.
Begin by using Iron Defense three times, keeping an eye on your health and using Slack Off instead, if you reach roughly 50% health.
Once you’ve done Iron Defense three times, switch to Nasty Plot, using that three times, too. After that, go to your Cheer section and use “Go All Out” one time, then start using Stored Power.
If Greninja removes the stat bonuses for your Pokemon, you’ll need to start over, but don’t worry if the timer is getting low. Once you are all set up, Stored Power does a ton of damage. You’ll need to plink away a bit if Greninja puts up the shield, but once you’ve staggered it, you’ll be able to knock it out in just 2 or so hits.
Meanwhile, you’ll be taking very little damage, and you’ll have the ability to passively and actively heal. Using this method, you can catch Greninja on your first solo attempt.
Additionally, if you can get one or more CPU Pokemon with Intimidate, it will make it even easier. On my first solo attempt, I was teamed up with Tauros, Arcanine, and Staraptor for a whopping three intimidates before the fight started.
Good luck!
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