Raid Event Report: Slither Wing and Iron Moth
Battle and catch strong versions of Volcarona's Paradox forms
The second raid event featuring Paradox Pokémon is coming this weekend, as Slither Wing (in Scarlet) and Iron Moth (in Violet) will be appearing in raids from Friday, September 22 until Sunday, September 24. (If you’d like to be very precise, the event starts at 00:00 UTC Friday and ends at 23:59 UTC on Sunday.)
If you’re a huge fan of either one of these Pokémon hoping to find a shiny version, you’re better off cooking up an Herba Mystica sandwich and heading to the Wild Area — based on the Donphan Paradox raids, the shiny chance will be standard on these. But at least they’ll have a few perfect IVs!
Raid Info
Both of the raids will be 5-star and random Tera type, meaning the best options to battle Slither Wing and Iron Moth will vary. Using physical attackers will usually be ideal, given the moths’ defenses (79 and 60, respectively) are significantly lower than their special defenses (105 and 110). It should be possible to solo them with a good matchup, but keep an eye on the STAB options and coverage moves both Volcarona cousins carry.
Type Coverage
In addition to its Bug and Fighting repertoire, Slither Wing carries flying, grass, fire, psychic, ground, steel, and electric damaging physical moves. Iron Moth carries plenty of poison and fire special moves (including the nasty Venoshock and Toxic combo), plus flying, electric, bug, fairy, steel, grass and psychic coverage options too.
Given all of the potential coverage it’s difficult to know what type combinations work perfectly without knowing the full available movepools yet — avoiding weaknesses to the STAB types and not bringing Pokémon with low physical defense against Slither Wing or low special defense against Iron Moth is a good guideline to follow.
What to Bring
That said, pure fire types hold up pretty well against anything outside of Stomping Tantrum/Earthquake on Slither Wing, so bringing something like the Typhlosion from an earlier raid event against any bug, grass, steel, or ice Tera types for these two would work well. They also don’t hit ghost Pokémon for super effective damage and Annihilape is almost always good given the Rage Fist stack and Defiant boosts, although flying and psychic moves could be a problem.
Iron Moth has seen some niche VGC use (at least more than Slither Wing has), but this is probably one of the most skippable raid events we’ve seen so far. Hopefully we get some more useful Paradox Pokémon next time — a locked-in 0 speed IV Iron Hands and Brute Bonnet event would be nice! Drop a comment below if there’s a Paradox raid event you’re holding out hope for.