Tera ambushes Pokemon scarlet and violet are a team-based affair, and part of that teamwork relies on the use of Cheers, a set of commands exclusive to these four-player boss battles scattered across the games Paldea region. However, in my experience of grouping with randos online, I was often the only cheerleader in the group while my teammates continued to do nothing but damage. This has resulted in some devastating wipes in high-level raids. While this type of damage play is very common, it is not sustainable. Let’s talk about why cheers matter and why even the most offensive player should use them.
Grab your megaphone
Tera Raids give you three different cheer skills, and each player can only cheer three times per raid. Since raid teams are four players, that’s a maximum of 12 Cheer “Heal up!”, giving everyone a respectable health recovery. Tera Raids rely on a push-and-pull of stat changes and your enemy building up defenses. All of this happens while a timer slowly counts down to the moment your team is ejected from the Tera Raid boss’ lair. Understanding how Cheers help you make the most of the little time you have while being a limited resource is paramount to success in difficult battles like the Charizard event happening later this week.
“Everybody go out!” and “Hold on!” are good to use from the start as they allow your team to hit harder and defend against a raid boss’s more powerful attacks. This survivability opens more windows for players to use “Heal up!” since Tera raids do not allow healing items. While some specific Pokemon can also use moves like Heal Impulse to heal teammates during these fights, Heal up! is your primary healing method in raids, and has a team-wide effect that can give anyone a turn or two before it again in danger.
The stat-based tug of war comes from the Tera Raid bosses’ ability to regularly wipe away all stat buffs. Hence, this is an initial use of “Go all out!” and “Hang on!” will only give you a short window of increased offense and defense. But Tera Raids are all about soft resets and reapplying those perks, so Jubel can’t be left to just one player. A coordinated team of four must rotate cheering responsibilities since each player only gets three missions during the match. That’s not three of each cheers, it’s three cheers, period.
time is money
This was the biggest problem I encountered when grouping online for high level raids. When I’m not on a Discord call with friends, I often have three people unwilling to switch from their attack menu to the cheer menu, which leaves me in the support role, even if my favorite Pokemon does the most damage out of the party. I’m more than happy to throw out a heal and a buff, but with the boss building stronger defenses as a raid progresses, I often have to turn off offense and put all three of my cheers into the heal at once just to get my teammates keep on the field because they are unwilling to do it themselves.
Aside from being a waste of resources, every single person who has to spend part of their turns cheering is a waste of precious time. Coordinating attacks and team building is important, but making good use of the limited time during a Tera Raid is probably the single most important key to success. Any time a teammate falls in combat, a significant chunk of time is snapped by the raid clock, and if a single player is stuck doing the entire heal, this will be limited by their cooldowns and three total uses. If the raid boss unleashes powerful attacks during these time gaps between healing rounds, it can (and inevitably will) cause a teammate to pass out, receive a raid time penalty, and wait a few more precious seconds for it reappears.
Smart teams can avoid this cascade of mistakes by keeping track of each party member’s health and stocking people accordingly. Healing is more readily available during a fight when one person is not responsible for cheering. Anyone who tunes in at opportune times to contribute cheers themselves will avoid the cooldown issue and result in more optimal cheer timing throughout the raid.
A lot of Tera Raids are about thinking fast and being under pressure, and knowing when to cheer when it’s your turn is a good bat to have in your pocket. In a pinch, Cheer can also be a good alternative to attempting to attack if your Pokémon has been afflicted by a status effect like Sleep or Confused. In standard battles, it can sometimes be worth surviving these debilitating conditions, as a Pokemon can wake up or wake up from its confusion and attack normally.
But time is money in a Tera Raid, and if you can get more out of each round, your team’s standing in battle will be better. When my Pokemon got confused, I took the time to do a Cheer or two rather than risk damaging myself and wasting valuable time. This helped turn the tide of battles by saving precious seconds that would have been wasted if my Pokemon were damaging themselves.
We are all supporters now
Ultimately, using your Cheer is never as exciting as using a super-effective attack, but it’s so fundamental to success in high-level Tera Raids that it’s almost impossible to win unless it’s a team-wide effort to use it . So if you sign up Pokemon scarlet and violet and join raids online, start using your cheers and you’ll quickly see how they can help your team weather the storm and emerge victorious on the other side. You and your team will not regret it.
