It’s not really hard to defeat Mewtwo if everyone is on the same page. I did it both times with Mew; once built for support, once built for damage.
Catching folks up: Mewtwo shows up in 7 star Tera raids in Pokémon Scarlet and Violet from today, September 1st, through September 15th. Tera raiding is the greater part of the post-game gameplay, for me anyway. I don’t do the battle league stuff or the PvP stuff.
Every save file can get a free Mew using the “GETY0URMEW” Mystery Gift code when you have connected to the Internet. This is super important, as Mew gets a huge boost in its stats when it goes against Mewtwo.
A Mew isn’t much without training. When it arrives from its gift box, it’s just level 5 and has a whole lot of training ahead of it. Or, if like me, you’ve been playing for awhile, you immediately level it to level 100 with items.
It’s EVs (EV = Effort Value) will, thankfully, be zero all around. Fighting Marills will raise HP, fighting Spoinks will raise Special Defense. There are plenty of other mons that can raise those values, but those were the ones I chose for the ease of finding and fighting them. Having Mew hold certain items you can buy at the Chansey shop will boost the speed the stat raises.
The ideal raid balance is three support Mews to one damage Mew.
- Struggle Bug lowers MewTwo’s Special Attack. Someone should always be casting this. It does some damage; not a lot, but some.
- Mud Slap lowers MewTwo’s accuracy. When I won as support, I was the only one using this ability. By the end, MewTwo was missing most of his attacks.
- Life Dew is for healing the group. Every support should be keeping an eye on everyone else’s health.
- Helping Hand boosts party attack.
MewTwo will wipe out its disabilities several times. When that happens, all the supports should be spamming Struggle Bug and Mud Slap.
MewTwo’s fight isn’t the normal Tera raid. He immediately spends half his health to set up a shield. Once that is broken, he will use Rest to fall asleep and heal to full, when he will eat a Chesto Berry to wake himself up. The prescription for this is to have someone use Electric Terrain (which prevents any non-flying mon from falling asleep), or Misty Terrain (which prevents any non-flying mon from gaining any status conditions, including sleep). When I won as support, nobody had a terrain loaded, and so we had to empty its health bar a second time. We still won. It’s not the end of the world.
Mew should be holding a Covert Cloak as support. Holding that prevents Mew from gaining status conditions from an attack, so that MewTwo’s Ice Beam won’t freeze Mew, nor will any of his other attacks drop abilities or anything.
This thread on Reddit has a lot more information about all this.
I didn’t want to undo all the work I’d put into Support Mew, so I made a new save file, played from the start until I got to the point where I could get into the Pokemon Portal, redeemed the code for a new Mew, and transferred it to my main account with Pokemon Home.
I again boosted it to level 100, fought Marills to max the HP EV, and Tauros’ to max the Attack. I believe one of MewTwo’s attacks ramps up based on defense, so raising defense is not really a good idea here. I gave D.Mew a Metronome to hold, which powers up attacks that are used repeatedly.
The Damage Mew has the most complicated job. For one, D.Mew needs to trust the Support Mews to keep it alive in the first phase. I had to use a Cheer when things got too close, but after that, the Supports would drop a Life Dew when needed.
- Max out Attack by casting Swords Dance three times.
- X-Scissor until MewTwo’s shield is near breaking, reapplying Swords Dance as needed.
- Before the shield breaks, use Electric Terrain or Misty Terrain to prevent it from healing.
- Use Leech Life, reapplying Swords Dance as necessary, until MewTwo is defeated.
Once we’re in the Leech Life phase, health stops really being an issue. MewTwo raises his Special Defense into the stratosphere, so we only use normal attacks here. I also had changed D.Mew’s Tera Type to Bug, so when it Terrastalizes, it powers up X-Scissor and Leech Life. When all is going well, each X-Scissor/Leech Life takes big chunks off its health.
It took two tries for Damage Mew to prevail, so not too bad.
I wasn’t able to beat the previous 6 and 7 star raids because, at the time, I didn’t know how important attitudes, effort values, held items and all that sort of stuff was. Now that I do know… these things aren’t so hard.
It was educational to read the Pokemon subreddits yesterday with everyone calling this raid impossible, to theorycrafters trying out different things, until today, the builds are well understood and it isn’t hard to find a group that can do the job.
