Pokemon Database Battling Basics - Issue #3 How to Build A Pokemon Part 2

Building Pokemon - EVs and Natures

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EVs
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If I say EV and you think of the super cute Pokemon that evolves into many different types of other Pokemon, you're not alone. But that's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about Effort Values. If you don't know what EVs are then I'm too lazy to explain. Luckily someone already has, so go links! (and being lazy)
http://pokemondb.net/ev
Read through that article, and hopefully you'll understand what EVs are. Pokemon Showdown! lets you customise EVs without training pokemon, which lets us be more detailed. But what EVs do you choose for each Pokemon? Well it's pretty complicated and takes a lot of practice to learn it all, so I'm going to try my best to summarise it for you.

The first thing to note is that like moves, EVs tend to go hand in hand with base stats. To go back to my old friend gengar with the high special attack and speed, the EVs are very simple and basic. Gengar's EVs should coincide with it's stats. That's to say that because Gengar has high special attack and speed, you give it EVs in special attack and speed. Your boosting Gengar's best traits even higher to boost it's effectiveness at it's job.

Some of you may be asking 'why not put the EVs into a lower stat so that Gengar has no real weaknesses?' I can forgive people for thinking this, I mean it sounds logical. But it doesn't work like that. Gengar's defences are very low, and even with the extra EVs, it's still going to be way lower then it should be. Adding EVs in HP, Defence or Special Defence doesn't help Gengar take any more attacks than it would anyway. It's not surviving any longer. So we instead boost what it's already good at to make it even better at it's original job, opposing to trying to make Gengar good at something it was never supposed to be good at.

We can apply the same thing to Defensive Pokemon. Of course, we use the fat pink blob Chansey again. As before, Chansey has very high HP and Special Defence. Using the same rule, we apply EVs to the special defence and HP stats so that Chansey can perform it's job of sponging attacks much better. And the second rules also applies: giving EVs to physical defence won't help much, because the physical defence is so low it hardly makes a difference. To simplify this even further, I'm going to just say the rules singularly. These rules aren't always true, but are generally true enough to follow for the most part.

Rules #1 Maximise the Pokemon's best traits. Pokemon with high attack should have attack EVs, pokemon with high speed should have speed EVs, etc etc.

Rule #2 Avoid boosting stats with EVs if the effect doesn't change the outcome.

This is how the basics of EVs work. However there are more advanced tactics and effects that we could go really deep into. I'm going to avoid doing this for now and come back to it again at a later date, as many of the examples contradict the rules I just set out and it would be very confusing.


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Natures
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Mother nature at it's finest. I'm assuming you know what natures are, but just in case, #LazyLinks
http://pokemondb.net/mechanics/natures
Natures are used on top of EVs to just edge your stat so you can perform specific actions, or generally increase the effectiveness of a Pokemon. The boost is significant and since it's used on top of EVs, it's very useful. But unlike EVs there's a downside - while one stat is raised another is lowered. So we need to know which Nature to use for each type of Pokemon.

The rule for this is very similar to EVs, in fact it's actually kind of easier. If you're using an offensive pokemon that uses only physical attacks and speed, you don't need your special attack stat. Therefore you can use either Adamant (which gives you more Attack but less Special Attack) or Jolly (which increases your Speed but gives less Special Attack), because lowering your Special Attack doesn't effect how good the Pokemon is. But if you use a pokemon that uses Special Attack and Speed with an Jolly nature, then that hurts your Pokemon's effectiveness, because it's lowering it's best stat. Using Adamant is even worse because it doesn't benefit the Pokemon in any way.

Let's give an example. Lets take the Pokemon Mamoswine. Mamoswine uses physical attacks, and might want some speed. Lets say Mamoswine has Ice Shard, Earthquake, Superpower and Stone Edge. Therefore the Pokemon should run either Adamant Nature to increase it's Attack power or it's speed to move and attack before the opponent. Using the Timid nature would be bad, since although it increases Mamoswine's speed, it'd decrease it's attack power. Using the Modest nature would be even worse.

To give another example, a defensive one, let's use Chan- I mean Skarmory. Skarmory uses it's Defence the most, or maybe it's special defence. As a result, a nature that increases either of these would be good. Skarmory may use it's physical attack as well, but it'll almost never use it's special attack. Therefore, a good nature would be Impish (+Def, -SpAtk) or Careful (+SpDef, - SpAtk). But using Gentle wouldn't help as much, considering it only helps SpDef and hurts the standard Defence. Something like Adamant or Timid would be useless as well, since Skarmory is meant to be defensive.


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Next Time!
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In the next article I will be going over the roles that Pokemon assume and how to build around that role. I will also cover common Items and why they're used. Look forward to it, it'll be the last article about building pokemon, because afterwards we'll be into building a team at last!