Pokemon Go: IVs For Prestigers - Josh Woodward

Pokemon Go: IVs for Prestigers

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I spend a lot of time chasing that amazing Eevee with super-high IVs around 300 CP that I could (hopefully) evolve into an amazing Vaporeon for prestiging. Turns out, I was wasting my time, because a 0% Pokemon is identical to a 100% at the same CP, and there's something that's even better still.

Wait, what?

Backing up a bit for those who aren't familiar with IVs: every Pokemon has three semi-hidden fixed values representing their attack, stamina, and defense "DNA". When you ask for an appraisal, you'll get (usually) enough information to figure out their IVs using a calculator. Each of these three values range from 0 to 15, the average percentage of these represent how "perfect" your Pokemon is. But it's a little more complicated than this.

A Pokemon with a 0% Attack IV sounds like it'd be incredibly weak, but IVs are added onto a "base stat" for attack that's shared with all Pokemon of their type. A Vaporeon's base Attack stat is 205, for instance, which means a 0% IV and 100% IV Vaporeon would have base attack stats of 205 and 220 respectively - not a huge difference. Even more importantly: because of the way the damage formula is calculated, the damage applied is rounded, so a 0% attack IV and a 100% attack IV often have exactly the same damage output!

But even with a small difference, isn't more better? The problem comes in with how the CP formula is calculated. The attack stat is weighted the same as the defense and stamina multiplied together, so a Pokemon with a high attack stat will have a higher CP than one with a high stamina or defense stat. The flipside of this: if you're prestiging and aiming for a certain CP, you can cram more defense and stamina stats into a given Pokemon than you can for attack points.

Let's look at an example fight: a 2,000 CP Flareon defender, with a Vaporeon attacker, aiming for 1,000 CP for around 1,000 prestige. I used the amazing PokeBattler simulator to run virtual fights, dodging only charge attacks.

Simulation	Level	A/D/S	IV %	CP	HP Remaining	Healing Needed	Fight Time
Simulation	12.5	0/0/0	0%	981	25/122 HP	97 HP	25.3s
Simulation	11	15/15/15	100%	992	24/121 HP	97 HP	25.3s
Simulation	12	15/0/0	33%	1010	22/120 HP	98 HP	25.3s
Simulation	12	0/15/15	66%	1008	38/127 HP	89 HP	25.3s

The 0/0/0 and 15/15/15 have about the same CP, just under 1,000, and the same underlying stats - they behave identically in battle. The attack-heavy Vaporeon, even with a slightly higher CP, performed slightly worse than either of those. The defense/stamina-heavy Vaporeon performed noticeably better, leaving it with more HP to take on the next defender. Dodging everything narrows the gap a bit, but not significantly.

There are some edge cases where you'll do better with 15/0/0 than with 0/15/15. A higher attack stat will build a your energy a little more quickly, allowing you to get off charge moves slightly more often. You can also occasionally jump up a number in the damage formula with a higher attack stat. All of the Vaporeons above all did 4 damage per hit, but if you bump it up to CP 1,500, the 15/0/0 bumps up to 5 per hit, while the 0/15/15 stays at 4, almost (but not quite) equalizing their performance.

How can you get good prestigers without stressing over exact IVs? Pay attention to the appraisals. If you're seeing a third or fourth tier overall appraisal, but one or both of defense or HP are in the first or second tier ("exceeds my calculations" / "blown away by its stats" / "best I've ever seen"), you've got a good candidate.

Does this mean that IVs are useless? Absolutely not - for your defenders and enemy gym attacking team, high IVs are much more important. This is where having a high CP is important - the difference between a maxed out Dragonite with 0% IVs and 100% IVs is 3,141 and 3,581 respectively. Save your super-high IV Pokemon for your A-team.

Tl;dr - chasing high-IV Pokemon for prestigers is counter-productive. You can get a modest performance boost by choosing Pokemon with low attack scores and high defense/stamina, but it's probably not worth even checking IVs for anyone except your defenders and enemy gym attackers.