Hi guys, girls and everything in-between! This is probably where newer players make the most, more often than not by not searching to optimize or because they don’t understand how it works. Don’t worry, creepy old papa Peter is here for ya. This hidden mechanic is much more simple than it looks, especially in fangames! Open your books folks, school is on.
I am not a professional competitive trainer. I do not pretends to hold the holy sacred Truth and in no mean replace experts and experienced players. I simply think I have strong enough bases to share my knowledge with less experienced players.
Alright. You walked calmly into tall grasses and found a Pikachu. Without further hesitation, you started trowing industrial capture devices at it until the creature decide to fit inside. Congrats! You are now a poacher and by extension, a Pokémon trainer! You went on your journey without realizing its training would be much deeper than what meets the eye.
So, what do you do with it? Refuse to make it evolve and use a Light Ball or evolve it ASAP? How can you optimize it? Well, I can give you the answer for the latter.
EVs
EVs, abbreviated from Effort Values, are little points offered to Pokémons when they knock down a Pokémon. EVs are also shared with the EXP share. EVs you gain depend on the Pokémon you knock down. For example, Abra gives you 1 Special Attack EV while Rattata gives you 1 Attack EVs. You can check on some wiki like Bulbapedia or the Insurgence Wiki to know what Pokémon gives what EVs.
To help you on your training, there exists some bonus EVs. The “Power Dunk” items are here for you! These items gives you a bonus of 4 EVs in Gen 4 to Gen 6, and 8 EVs for Gen 7 onward for a specific stat, depending on the item, when the Pokémon receives EXP in a battle. Macho Brace doubles the number of EV the Pokémon would normally receives. However, the top notch of the EV training is the Pokérus. That parasite/virus/thing has the same effect as the Macho Brace but stacks with the previously mentioned items! So, if your infected Pokémon holding a Power Lens knocks out a wild Abra, instead of gaining 1+8=9 EVs, it gets 2(1+8)=18 EVs. MATH!
There is also other ways to gain EVs, these alternatives methods includes but are not limited too Vitamins, Super Training, and the Poke Pelago. They do not stacks with Pokérus.
I said how to get them, but what are they doing concretely? At the level 100, 4 EVs equal to 1 bonus point in that given stat. So that mean to every slices of 4 EVs, you get one point! Simple yet! Since the total amount of EV you can give to a Pokémon is 510, you can give a total of 127 points maximum and there will be a leftover of 2 useless EV. But wait! You can only give 252 EVs maximum in one stat. So, in competitive Pokémon, the most popular EV spread is of 252 / 252 / 4, two maxed out and one who’s honestly negligible.
So, after few days of beating random Pokémon, how is your Pikachu doing now?
Yeah… still better than nothing, I guess? Since you are facing a very wide variety of different species, you then gets EXP almost randomly. That explain why you often get rekt when you challenge someone online immediately after beating the Elite 4. Not only you aren’t used to a player who, unlike the AI, can read your plays, but also their teams will most likely to be EV optimized. Also the fact most Pokémon game are so easy they don’t require a coherent team.
If you want to get rid of some EVs, you have a variety of berries to help you. They increase happiness from your Pokémon and remove 10 EVs on a given stats.
Cooking advice: Grepa Berry is great in salads and Tamato Berry is very spicy. Needless to say I’m eating a lot of Tamato Berry because I LOVE spicy food, even if the aftermath in the toilet is rarely pleasant.
Back to competitive. EVs are very often strait forward when it comes to single battles. The classic 252 / 252 / 4 is the most frequent. Little advice, most of the time, on offensive Pokémon, you will see 252 EVs in speed as it is the most important stat in the game while defensive Pokémon will likely have 252 in Hp to increase simultaniously physical and special bulk. There are some notables exceptions, these includes but are not limited to:
- Regieleki who’s speed is so high that it doesn’t need much investment there.
- Gen 6 Giratina-O sets who’s HP was so high it preferred to invest in Def and SpA for some cases.
- Chansey, Blissey and Wobuffet who use Max Def and Max SpD.
- Slow Tank (and not wall, check the vocabulary guide to help you) who cannot outspeed much things to begin with and then run HP investment instead of speed.
Quick note, Gen 4 Attacking Lead Dragonite is and will be the ONLY Pokémon who can viably run a spread of 252 Atk / 252 SpA / 4 Spe PERIOD!
Obviously, some EV spread are much more specific. Like I pointed out in my Tyranitar analyse post, its speed can be adjusted depending on the EV spread:
It also apply to defensive Pokémon. Mega Milotic, for example, who I proposed 252 Hp / 60 Def / 192 SpD because it avoid the 2HKO by Mega Metagross Meteor Mash and still avoid the 2HKO by Mega Gardevoir’s Hyper Voice.
Ok, took me longer than expected so I’m doing IVs and Natures in the next post!
(Edited by Aren, kick me if you didn’t want me to, I wanted the badge and, if you want me to turn it back to normal tell me.)