Hard questions about IVs
Hey y'all. My friend has some questions about IVs and I'm not smart enough to answer him.
"IVs include three numbers: attack, defense, and stamina. Am I correct in understanding that the defense IV ONLY matters for defending a gym?
Is that the only time it comes into play?
If so, you only would care about the defense IV if you are looking at a potential defender, right?
For example, with a legendary the defense number would be meaningless. Let me know if I have this right or not."
Thank you!
Answers
Defense will be in most cases your best indicator of the performance of a defender-- The higher the defense stat, the higher other players will need to train their attackers to meet critical damage break-points (especially concerning fast attacks).
However, for certain species a low stamina rating can really hurt overall defendability. A good general rule-- you don't want something with a low individual value in the same category it has a low BASE value. The lower the base value, the stronger the effect of each added Idividual Value, this also creates a stronger influence on overall CP.
While CP can be very misleading, the way it fluctuates when adding additional values can help point towards the more effective individual to train, if a player has a few different copies with relatively similar spreads of IVs.
This can be seen comparing multiple species and how much certain individual values affect CP. The CP of certain species, those with low base values in one category, will be affected more by additional levels to that stat than a species with a relatively high base value for that particular category.
I'm not suggesting to pay attention to the CP itself, but rather how it changes when additional individual values are added to one category or another. Certain species are affected much differently.
Attack measures how much Damage your Pokémon causes.
Defense measures how hard it is to Damage your Pokémon.
Stamina measures how much Damage your Pokémon can take.
This is true for both Attackers and Defenders. Generally Attack is more important for Attackers because Attackers can dodge and make up for lower Stamina and Defense. Since Defenders can't Dodge, Attack is far less important than Defense and Stamina.
