Are EVs, IVs and Natures really necessary?

Question

EV training and all these specifics is kind of what killed my interest in Pokémon to be honest. It takes ages to breed and train the Pokémon you want, and in 1 week the meta changes again. I'm getting tempted to use a sysbot but I'm still not sure whether these are legal. I would like to know, do hidden stats make a major difference in how a battle will unfold?

Comments

For competitive? Definitely! EVs, IVs, and Natures make a huge difference when it comes to how fast you move, how much damage you do, how much damage you take, etc. You'll definitely want to optimize getting the best IVs (or worst, if you need to move last or want to take as little damage as possible from Foul Play or something) and Natures as possible.

Just out of curiosity, have you played Showdown, OP?

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Yes I have, I prefer playing the main games but having to constantly research the best Pokémon and change up your team based on the meta fried my brain and I decided to stop playing. Now I am slowly getting back into it but only because I am thinking of using a sysbot.

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Why do you prefer a real Pokemon game over Showdown?

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Pokémon Showdown is a pixilated, quicker and lower quality battle simulator. Real Pokémon games give you the full experience of growing with your Pokémon, catching them, training them, fighting them in raids, as well as higher quality sounds and animations. I always got a thrill seeing the dynamax band gathering energy, chucking the big Pokeball and seeing the Pokémon become giant and using the dynamax moves. I also loved watching normal move animations, mainly behemoth blade and dynamax cannon. I suppose from a competitive perspective Showdown is better for some, and I know me saying I want to use a sysbot contradicts most of what I said, but I'd only use them online, not when I'm playing any other part of the game.

Answer 1

Yes, they absolutely do. EVs, Ivs, and nature, all influence your Pokemon's final stats. For example, a jolly Garchomp will always be faster than an adamant Garchomp. This can make a huge difference because that means Garchomp 1 can kill Garchomp 2 before Garchomp 2 can even do anything. Another example would be Rillabbom. You can ev it to survive Tornadus Therian's uninvested hurricane from full which can make a difference

In all cases, the higher the iv the higher the stat so in many situations, you want to have your Pokemon with max ivs. Evs are a different story and are probably the most complex one. Generally speaking, when it comes to distributing evs, you want your Pokemon to either survive certain hits, deal a specific range of damage, our outspeed certain threats. Taking the example of Garchomp again, instead of using the standard max attack and max speed, I can just put enough evs to outspeed something like Urshifu or Zapdos, maximizing my attack, and putting the rest in hp

As for using a system bot, I heard that most of those work on the cartridge. I own a 3ds and played on its matchmaking and genned Pokemon does work. It was only recently in vgc where you could get screwed over with a genned mon because they implemented stricter checks, which was really just checking if a Pokemon passed thru Pokemon home or not. On the matchmaking system, those things work according to this video

This exact tedious bullsht is why many think accessibility is a problem to competitive Pokemon. You have to grind your ass for hours and hours getting the perfect breed with the ivs, ability, and nature you want. Then you have to level that thing up to 100 and ev train it. However, in recent gens, this has become a bit easier because of bottlecaps which max out your ivs and those two capsules that switch between abilities. This made the breeding part easier but trying to earn the bottlecaps and these capsules is still takes more grinding, just less than what it used to require. Then you have to ev train your Pokemon and then level it up to max

Comments

"Work on the cartridge"? Do you mean the 3ds games? I was particularly wanting to use a sysbot for Sw/Sh. Thanks for the answer!

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It's the same with the switch games. I'm not a hundred percent sure but in the nuzlocke community, the word "cartridge" refers to the actual games on the switch or 3ds, as in the ones that aren't roms, so I just assumed that's not just a nuzlocke thing and a pokemon thing. And the switch does have cartridge that you chuck in the thing to play a game

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What's nuzlocke?

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basically when your Pokémon faints, it dies and it's boxed forever

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Thanks!