The solo on this raid isn't too tough if you cheese it by resetting for an Intimidate NPC, but online is another story completey. This is a hard raid to clear online because Blaziken has spectacular coverage, lots of big BP moves, and boosts itself quickly. In online battles with typical Miraidons, Blaziken is just steamrolling everything. Yes, there's the usual inept noobs doing stupid stuff, but even players with decent mons like Miraidon and Bellibolt, they aren't doing enough damage suppression with Reflect and Chilling Water. Instead they go straight for SpDef lowering and spamming Parabolic Charge. And that's fine if they can live through it, but sadly most teams are decimated after the Swords Dance or the inevitable crit happens. I don't know if we can find something more successful for online play, but I think we should work on it.
Here are two mons that I have been using for support that have significantly increased my win rate with online teams.
Slowbro @ Leftovers
Tera Type: Water
Ability: Own Tempo
Bold Nature
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Def
- Chilling Water
- Trick Room
- Iron Defense
- Slack Off
Most standard mons in the Blaziken raid fare a LOT better when they can move first. So the biggest thing this Slowbro does is set Trick Room at the very beginning. After that, it does one Iron Defense to give it basically infinite life with Lefties and then it just spams Chilling Water to lower Blazikens attack as much as possible. Slack Off is rarely used and probably could be replaced with something else, but it comes in handy after the occasional SD-boosted crit, and because Bro is faster than Blaziken it is guaranteed to heal up before the next hit.
This Slowbro is a welcome addition to any online team and for that reason it is my default right now for online play. But, if I see a team that is loaded full of Miraidons or other mons that I don't think will try too much to debuff the boss -- then the following mon has been an absolute gamechanger for me in making online wins almost trivial:
Malamar @ Leftovers
Tera Type: Psychic
Ability: Contrary
Bold Nature
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Def
- Skill Swap
- Stored Power
- Reflect
- Nasty Plot
Skill Swapping Contrary onto Blaziken is monumental for this raid. Turning that first Swords Dance into a -2 debuff is such a huge reversal for raid success against Blaziken, I can't emphasize it enough. It's not just that it neuters the normal hits -- arguably even more important is how it keeps the critical hits in manageble territory for most teams. Because most teams will have done a Reflect or whatever to suppress damage, but when Blaziken Swords Dances it goes to +2 AND it has accrued a Speed Boost or two -- then it gets a Critical Hit on one of those first few hits before the team Chill Waters or otherwise lowers the attack (which most online teams don't do anyway, because they only spam attacks) and those +2 crits just annihilate everything. With Contrary, even if Blaziken crits, it only crits with normal Attack, not boosted. This is huge, huge, huge in my experience.
After Contrary is swapped, the hard work is done. I put up Reflect and then usually do Cheers to support the team as needed. If I have free turns, I do Nasty Plot, because combined with the Speed Boosts you get from the Skill Swap -- Stored Power becomes a legit damage-dealer later in the battle. Normally Malamar isn't needed for offense, but on the occasion where I have stupid teammates that don't get with the program and button mash attacks like good boys, it's nice that Malamar can move things along offensively if it has to.
The BIG downside with Malamar is making sure you choose the right teams to play it on. Because there are several teams with boss debuffs in their movesets (Acid Spray and Chilling Water mostly) and they have no clue what is going on when Malamar does the Skill Swap thing. And so they happily keep spamming Acid Spray and Chilling Water which makes Blaziken a total juggernaut. I still bring Malamar in many battles even if I see a Bellibolt on my team, even though Bellibolt SHOULD be using debuff moves. Most randoms using Bellibolts don't play it properly and just spam Parabolic Charge, so Malamar can do its thing just fine. But occasionally I have been burned by Belli players inadvertently boosting Blaziken, none the wiser to its skill-swapped ability.
One pro-tip when playing with Miraidons is to wait a few seconds at the start of the battle before doing Skill Swap, just in case the Miraidons fire off Metal Sounds. But don't wait too long, because I've gotten surprised by dumb Miraidons getting fainted super-fast and the shield procs before I can Skill Swap. If that happens, your team is screwed because Malamar is pretty much dead weight without doing the Contrary trick. So, I'd rather take my chances with a Contrary Blaziken that has an accidentally-boosted Special Defense (because I swapped Contrary prior to Miraidon doing Metal Sound) than to face a Blaziken that can Swords Dance, Bulk Up, and Speed Boost to its hearts content.
Malamar is freaking awesome on lots of online teams, and I rarely lose if the team has decent attackers and don't do debuffs. That's really the beauty of using Malamar -- you actually want stupid online button-masher players to be stupid button-mashers! If they do, well... it's an easy GG when you play the "squid game" lol ;-)
