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IVs, EVs & stat gain

baratron

Moderator of Elder Scrolls
Staff member
Moderator
OK. Let's say you've got a Pokemon that's legendary (or shiny), so it's unbreedable. This means you can't faff about catching or breeding multiples of the Pokemon until you have the perfect nature & IVs. However, you've managed to acquire a couple of these Pokemon & you want to make sure you train the best one. The Pokemon concerned is a Special Attacker. Which of the following would actually be better?

Quiet natureLax nature
HP10-1117-18
Attack1519
Defence120-6
Sp.Atk0-515
Sp.Def3014
Speed270-6
+Sp.Atk -Speed+Def -Sp.Def

My gut instinct was to go with the Lax natured Pokemon on the basis that it's going to use Sp.Atk, and an IV of 15 is clearly better than one of 0-5. However, the Quiet natured Pokemon has a very high Speed IV and a +Sp.Atk -Speed nature. Assuming that I spend the maximum EVs on Sp.Atk, might the positive nature make it better at level 50 than the Lax pkmn?

Well, I have no idea how to do the maths, but a guy called MetalKid does know. MetalKid's IV Calculator is far superior to any of the others out there, because it allows you to input stats over multiple levels. You type in your pkmn's starting stats, then use a Rare Candy to level it up, type in the new stats and repeat until either you run out of Rare Candies, or you've found your IVs. These IVs were the best prediction I could get with the number of Rare Candies I had in that particular game.

If you're using Diamond or Pearl, he suggests a super shortcut called an IV Battle - take your just-hatched or caught pkmn, input their starting level stats, then go into a battle with a friend & set their levels to be Level 100, and type in those stats. Apparently this allows near-perfect IV calculation, which can be confirmed using the Characteristics in D/P. Awesome, eh?

Anyway... this MetalKid guy has an answer to the question of which of those two pkmn is best. I entered the calculated IVs into MetalKid's Stat Calculator, along with the EVs I'm thinking about spending, and told it to calculate the stats at Level 50. (For the IVs that were a small range, like 17-18 I took the lower number, and for the ones that were 0-5 I used 2, as an "average" value.) I get the following:

Quiet natureLax nature
HP165169
Attack112114
Defence123129
Sp.Atk150144
Sp.Def132111
Speed111112

I think it's Quiet nature ftw. I wouldn't have expected that.

So, the moral of the story is this: Don't dismiss a Pokemon solely on its "crappy" IVs. You need to think about its Nature as well. And you can fix crappy IVs by training it in appropriate EVs. Thank you, that is all.
 
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