Hi guys, girls and everything in-between! Natures are much less complicated than the last two, so think of it as your cerebral pause before the storm. You’ll see, breeding is one heck of a subject in Pokémon. Open your books folks, school is on.
I am not a professional competitive trainer. I do not pretend to hold the holy sacred Truth and by no means replace experts and experienced players. I simply think I have a strong enough basis to share my knowledge with less experienced players.
There exists a total of 25 natures out there. Each offer a 10% boost in one stat and a 10% nerf in another. Neutral nature simply gives buff and debuff at the same stats. The most important ones are in Blue and the useless natures are in Teal.
Adamant (+Atk -SpA)
Bashfull (Neutral)
Bold (+Def -Atk)
Brave (+Atk -Spe)
Calm (+SpD -Atk)
Carefull (+SpD -SpA)
Docile (Neutral)
Gentle (+SpD -Def)
Hardy (Neutral)
Hasty (+Spe -Def)
Impish (+Def -SpA)
Jolly (+Spe -SpA)
Lax (+Def -SpD)
Lonely (+Atk -Def)
Mild (+SpA -Def)
Modest (+SpA -Atk)
Naive (+Spe -SpD)
Naughty (+Atk -SpD)
Quiet (+SpA -Spe)
Quirky (Neutral)
Rash (+SpA -SpD)
Relaxed (+Def -Spe)
Sassy (+SpD - Spe)
Serious (Neutral)
Timid (+Spe -Atk)
The -Speed natures have specific utilities. It could be for a mixed support Pokémon like some Tyranitar variant, often carrying Fire Blast or Ice Beam, or for Trick Room Pokémon. Neutral natures are useless because the 10% stats boost the natures gives is too important to give up. Lax and Gentle have basically no reason to be used because I really don’t know why the heck you would use it. Others like Naughty or Lonely are… tricky. Its used for Mixed attackers that does not need much speed investment not bulk on a given side of the spectrum. Very specific. The only Pokémon I know are using these natures are Gen 7 Yveltal and Sand Rush Dracozolt. Mixed Attacker usually would prefer speed and thus use Naive or Hasty.
If a Pokémon has synchronise in the first place of your party, then wild Pokémon will have 50% chance to be the same nature as the synchronise user. This is something very useful in Shiny Hunting.
Although irrelevant in modern Pokémon games and Insurgence, the natures also tells the taste of your Pokémon. For example, Pokémon with a nature boosting the attack will love spicy food. That mean I would probably be Adamant nature.
If you want to see the effect of your nature but you don’t know each of them by heart, here is a little trick:
Since HeartGold and SoulSilver, the nature’s effect can be seen by looking at the Pokémon’s summary. When you look at the statistics, the one in Red is the stat boosted by the nature and the Blue is the one reduced by the nature. If we take again our Raichu as an example,
I can see Raichu’s speed is higher and Defence is lower. In conclusion, it is Hasty nature.
The only way to change a nature in Pokémon is with the Poképon for Insurgence (Although extremely unreliable because the chance of getting a desired Nature from Poképon is 1 / 300 or 0.33333%. Or just a 1/12 chance for a nature change in the first place.) or the Mint in Gen 8. Technically, the mint doesn’t change the nature, but its effect. Otherwise, there is breeding. Which gives me a somewhat decent cliff-hanger.
