Pokémon Scarlet and Violet’s next Tera Raid event skips Alola’s most dominant Starter

We’re getting an Alola Starter for the next seven-star Tera Raid event in Pokémon Scarlet and Violet, but it’s not the one dominating the metagame.

From May 10 to 12 and again from May 17 to 19, seven-star Primarina Tera Raids will be popping up in Scarlet and Violet. Like previous seven-star raid bosses, this one comes with the rare Mightiest Mark and should be quite difficult to defeat without a game plan. 

The Water/Fairy Alola Starter will have the Fairy Tera Type, meaning you definitely don’t want to get hit by its Moonblast or any other Fairy attack it might be running. On top of this, Fairy only has two defensive weaknesses—Poison and Steel—so those two types are a great place to start when looking for a counter for this raid battle. You’ll also need to watch out for its Liquid Voice hidden ability, which gives the Water-typing to any sound-based move like Alluring Voice, Hyper Voice, or Psychic Noise. Based on all this, Clodsire or a group of Perrserker seem like possible counters at a quick glance.

Interestingly enough, these seven-star raid events have been avoiding Incineroar, perhaps the best Starter Pokémon from a competitive standpoint. Like Primarina, Incineroar is a Gen VII Alola Starter, so this could’ve been the perfect time to feature the fire cat in the seven-star raids. We’ll just have to wait a little longer before we get to go toe to toe with Incineroar, which is sure to be a tough battle. After all, it’s currently the most popular Pokémon in Scarlet and Violet’s Regulation G ruleset for VGC, and it’s not showing any signs of slowing down.

Looking ahead to future Tera Raid events, it seems like we’re slowly running out of options when it comes to Starter Pokémon. The raids have already covered all Starters from Kanto, Kalos, Galar, and Hisui, along with a handful from the other regions. We still have yet to see popular picks like Incineroar and Infernape—and I’m personally waiting for my favorite Starter, Torterra. At this point, it’s hard to predict which Starter will be next without any obvious patterns. And it’s unclear if these raid events will eventually cycle to the three Paldea Starters, but that would be a great way to collect them without having to trade or restart your Gen IX journey.