Nadian Explains!

[Nadian]

"I don't understand how that works."
"Why is breeding my pokemon important?"
"Is Blastoise a good pokemon to have on my team?"
"What does Pokerus do?"
"Why can't I train all of my stats to the max?"


There are always plenty of questions going around, many of which I feel I can answer! So, instead of trying to explain it each time, possibly introducing misunderstandings or inconsistent explanations, I'll try putting them here! In addition, I should be able to enhance my explanations with images and analysis, hopefully bringing us all to a more complete understanding. smile

So, without further ado, the table of contents!

How Pokemon Stats Really Work  

[Nadian]

How Pokemon Stats Really Work

So, why don't we go ahead and get the mathematically interesting (but potentially confusing) part mentioned first. Afterwards, I'll move on to trying to explain it in ways that are less painful.

There are two formulas which determine a pokemon's stats, one for the HP, the other for the remaining stats.

HP:
10 + (base * 2 + IV + floor(EV / 4)) * level / 100 + level

Attack, Defense, Special Attack, Special Defense, Speed:
floor((5 + (base * 2 + IV + floor(EV / 4)) * level / 100) * nature)

There, now that we've got that out of the way, let's simplify it so that y'all can understand it a lot better! The best way to do that is to rename terms and make assumptions. So, let's do that:


-First, let's assume the level is 100. After all, you want your pokemon to be level 100, right?

-Next, call "IV" something a bit more intuitive... like, RANDOM

-Likewise, let's call "floor(EV / 4)" something like TRAINING

-For now, let's ignore "nature" and explain that at the end.


Now the formulas are very simple!

HP:
10 + 100 + BASE*2 + RANDOM + TRAINING

Attack, Defense, Special Attack, Special Defense, Speed:
5 + BASE*2 + RANDOM + TRAINING

Now that we've only got three terms, I can identify them for you very easily!


BASE is a number that depends on the pokemon's specie. This is what determines that a Chansey will have a lot of HP or an Onix will have lots of defense. The reason I haven't simplified this term is because there are plenty of websites out there where you can find these "base values" and it's absolutely important to know what to do with them.

RANDOM is a random number between 0 and 31. As the name suggests, it is randomly generated when a pokemon is born and it will never change.

TRAINING is a number between 0 and 63. It always begins at 0, but as you train your pokemon, you can increase this number.


Alright, that's all fine and dandy, but it's all just numbers and terminology right now, right? So, let's choose a specific pokemon so I can give you visual examples. I'm going to choose a pokemon you are probably all familiar with, Pikachu!





As you can see, Pikachu's base speed is much higher than his other stats, suggesting his speed is his defining trait.

Now let's assume RANDOM is its highest, 31, and TRAINING is its highest, 63. Let's find out what this Pikachu's stats will be...







There you go! Simple enough, right? Notice how RANDOM and TRAINING add a good chunk to the stats. That's why people work so hard to increase those values.

However, there's one really big problem with that picture ; all of the TRAINING values are maxed. If you sum together all of the stats gained from TRAINING, you'll get 378. However, the game only allows that sum to be 127 at most!

Okay, so to fix that problem with my example, let's choose only two stats to put 63 points into and one stat to put an extra 1 into. Hmmm... Pikachu is fast, so let's max his Speed... and I like Thunderbolt so let's max his Special Attack. I guess we'll put that last extra point into HP.







That's much closer to what you'll see in an actual level 100 Pikachu. 3nodding


Now it's time to cover the effect of a pokemon's nature. For starters, let me note that there are five natures that don't have any effect on the stats: Hardy, Docile, Serious, Bashful, and Quirky. A Pikachu with one of these natures can look like the one in our example. However, we're really interested in the other natures.

The other natures are pretty simple. They raise one stat but lower another.

(Pro tip: the stats are either raised or lowered by 10%)

If you're curious which natures affect which stats, Serebii.net has an excellent page with these details.

However, let's get back to our Pikachu example. For the nature, let's decide which stat we want to raise and which we want to lower. Actually, it's pretty obvious that I want to lower the Attack stat ; I want my Pikachu to use Thunderbolt anyways. But which stat do I want to raise?

Well, at first glance, it'd seem like maybe I should raise the Special Attack since it's so low, but Pikachu is a special case. He has an item called the Light Ball which will help raise his Special Attack, so instead I'll go ahead and raise his Speed even more!

So, the nature I want:

-Raises Speed
-Lowers Attack

Fortunately, this is a commonly used nature: Timid. Now let's look at Pikachu's stats after we've added this new information!







That's one complete Pikachu. cool

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