Competitive Pokémon battling is a lot of fun but quite hard to get into. Terms like EV spread and IV choices are thrown around a lot and few players know what they mean, let alone how they are useful. Today, we are going to break down how to train your beloved Pokémon so they can be the very best, like no one ever was.
Please note, this can and will get complicated; it’s not easy but the results are well worth it.
Easy choice right? No necessarily. Not all Pokémon have good enough stats to be used competitively. Sure you can make weaker ones work but if you start off with a good baseline it will give you a much easier time. This is more of a suggestion than a step really as the methods we go over here can apply to any Pokémon you want. For the purposes of this guide, let us use Mimikyu. He has a fantastic ability and some decent stats to go along with it; a good starting point.
After you have chosen your Pokémon you have to ask what it is going to do for your team. Let’s take our Mimikyu for example. One use for it can be a counter to Pokémon who power up and try to take out a team by themselves (a sweeper) thanks to his Disguise ability. This would mean he would have to be defensive and fast; therefore, we would need to EV train it in special ways and look for certain other parameters. For now, we shall go with an attacking Mimikyu as it is rather simple to train.
Since we settled on an attacking Mimikyu, it needs to be a nature that helps its goal and in this case, that’s an Adamant nature. This nature raises a Pokémon’s base Attack and lowers its Special attack; perfect for a physical attacking Mimikyu (Check the chart here to make sure you get the nature you want for your Pokémon!). Next up the EV (Effort Value) spread; in this case since we want Mimikyu to hit hard and fast, we need to max out his Attack and Speed. This means that in total we need to put 252 EV’s into Attack and Speed, and since there are 310 EV’s to go around, put the last few points into its
Next up the EV (Effort Value) spread; in this case since we want Mimikyu to hit hard and fast, we need to max out his Attack and Speed. This means that in total we need to put 252 EV’s into Attack and Speed, and since there are 310 EV’s to go around, put the last few points into its Defence so it can live a bit longer.
IV’s (or Individual Values) are important as they increase the base stats of a Pokémon. The best way to get good IV’s on a Pokémon is to breed, but this can take a long time. Pokémon Sun and Moon introduced a feature to bypass this slightly; Hyper Training. This new feature is located in the Hau’oli City Shopping Mall. Go to Mr. Hyper’s shop within and you can exchange the rare Bottle Cap item to increase the IVs of your Pokémon. Be warned, this can only be done if your Pokémon has reached Level 100, so it may be best to EV train that Pokémon first. Make sure to do this for ALL the Pokémon’s stats, every little helps in battle.
There are a few ways to do this; the Festival Plaza is a good place, you can take part in various activities on stalls to increase them, buy certain foods or play mini games. However, a faster way is to chain S.O.S battles (To set that up, check out our tips and tricks guide).
First off, check which Pokémon, when knocked out, give the EV’s you need. For us, we need to fight and KO Yungoos since they give 1 EV in Attack. Set up the S.O.S battle and start to knock out the Yungoos while the Pokémon you want to train is in your party; it will start to gain EV’s. This sounds like it may take a while but there is a saving grave here. When a Pokémon calls for help, the EV’s yielded from the Pokémon are multiplied by 2. Combining this with, a Power Item which gives you extra EV’s (For us it’s a Power Bracer) and PokéRus (a random status effect your Pokémon can get which doubles all EV’s it gains), you can get 36 EV’s from one Pokémon being KO’d. This lets you max a stat out after just 7 KOs in a chain.
So we have our max IV’d, 252 Attack, 252 Speed, 4 Defence, Adamant natured Mimikyu; now to add the final parts. For that, make sure check out our upcoming Mimikyu competitive guide to find out how best to use this Pokémon. For now, you can now start to make your own fully EV and IV trained Pokémon. Stuck for choice? We have a guide on how to get the most out of the starter Pokémon; check it out here.
