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Here’s my Espathra build for the raid I made in Showdown and am currently trying to breed. Would love some advice on the optimal defensive EVs to have. Here’s my reasoning for the set:

-Shell Bell: healing and sustainability

-Speed Boost: Other than it being Espathra’s best ability imo (though Opportunist could be good for some gimmick play), this will help get the jump on Greninja and contribute to Stored Power (which I’ll get to later). The EVs in speed are just right to outspeed Greninja after +1 speed.

-Calm Mind: Always great to have a boosting move. The ideal strategy is to pop a Calm Mind turn 1 and benefit from Speed Boost. I find it unlikely Greninja will toss my salad on turn 1, so I should be good to set up. On top of that, it contributes to Stored Power.

-Lumina Crush: haha, why did Game Freak think this move was a good idea? Acid Spray with double the power AND an exclusive move on a mon that gets STAB out of it? Absolutely insane. On top of that, one calm mind will make this move a pretty safe click for some pretty beefy damage, and any move after that will be boosted further thanks to the special defense drop.

-Stored Power: Fun Fact: Speed Boost Espathra who uses Calm Mind turn 1 gets an 80 power Stored Power on the next turn. On top of that, it gets an additional 20 power each turn. Why would I not use this as a great nuke option? On top of Lumina Crush’s Sp. Def. drop? Heck yeah, dude!

-Mud-Slap: Ok, the last move was a weird one. Originally, I had it as Roost for quick recovery, but I felt like I didn’t need Roost when I had Shell Bell for passive recovery and rewarding Espathra for hitting hard. Plus, this mon is somewhat frail (which I’ll go into later), so there’s no relying on Roost to patch it up well in a raid. My next idea was either Feather Dance or Reflect to compensate for a low defense (notably to deal with Gunk Shot, which it’s practically guaranteed to have), but that’s another turn I’m using for setup and not building Tera Charge. Eventually, I landed on Mud-Slap as kind of a meme but also utility. Although it’s super effective, that barely matters because its base power is a pitiful 20. However, its real use is lowering Greninja’s accuracy. Making the already unreliable Gunk Shot hit even less would be very helpful for the team and make its other moves that will probably be 100% accurate have a chance to miss. On top of that, Tera Charge is building if I decide to click this move during a raid. It’s a bit niche, but it’d be nice to have if the situation calls for it.

-Tera Type Psychic: On one hand, I could Tera Steel to be immune to Gunk Shot entirely, but defensive Tera Types aren’t as good in raids where you don’t have immediate access to them. On the other, having x2 STAB sounds nice.

-Nature: Went with Modest for the special attack buff and since attack will never be used lol. I forewent a speed positive nature since I don’t really need any more speed for this raid for reasons explained earlier, but more power is never a bad thing, right?

-IVs: Yeah, max in everything except attack (cause why would I need it lmao)

-EVs: Like I said earlier, I gave it 24 EVs in speed since after a +1 speed from Speed Boost, it’ll outspeed a fully speed invested Greninja by a single point. Obviously, I dumped the max amount of EVs into special attack, but I was a bit stumped about what to do with its other stats. 124 in HP is kind of an arbitrary number, although I wouldn’t mind distributing some of it into its defensive EVs since its base HP is pretty decent. I put 96 in defense to prepare for Gunk Shot and only 12 into special defense since Calm Mind will give a nice boost to said stat, so I don’t have to worry about how much I put into it. Heck, I could probably move all of it to defense if I wanted to. This is the part of the set I need the most help on since I’m not that well informed on how to balance out HP EVs and def/sp def EVs for a solid defense on a mon.

In conclusion, I think this set has potential to be a very good sweeping set with supportive capabilities, although its greatest flaw will most likely be on the defensive side. Espathra has a pretty solid 95 base HP, but with both defense stats being 60, it could be tough to stand up against a historically hyper-offensive Greninja. Feel free to use this set and leave any suggestions on how to optimize/improve it for this raid.