High IV low cp
Should I evolve such characters to use for prestige purposes, currently I can evolve to 970 Poliwrath, 630 arcanine, 664 vile plume, 919 ninetales, 913 exeggutor. All these characters have over 90%IV, just really low cpl. Candies aren't an issue stardust is. I also have high iv high Cp of all of these same characters. Do you think it's smart to evolve these to use as my main prestige characters?
Answers
Never say Never is a Good Rule of Thumb.
If you tend to use a Prestige "Team" of same pokemon, and go deeper into a Gym. (Not a beat the first with half and run person, but beat 3-5 with your 6)
Since Prestige goes by the highest CP of the team, there's nothing wrong with powering up to bunch them up.
Example: Your Water Pokemon is 1400, 1380
But your Electric is 1250, 1200.
You could power the electric up to the level of the water since you arent getting extra prestige when you switch to them for that Gyrados 5 pokemon deep in Gym.
Good point, except around here Eevees are everywhere. It's easy to research the Eevee cp you need to target the Jolteon level you want, and 1/3 chance of getting a useful prestiger (or at least 2/3, as a vaporean might come in handy anyway). A great example worth tweaking are ice pokemon like dewgong or cloyster, where you need them to target Dragonites at different CP levels and you want to use 1/2 CP attackers for max prestige.
Here is my point of view, from my experience best prestigers for me are around 1000-1200 CP, I try to have at least one of each type of mon in that range, venusaur, vaporeon, raichu/electabuzz and so on...normally you don't need more than one because in the case you have 2 mons of the same type in the gym you can use prestigers with same effective damage (for example you find a gym with 2-3 vapes, you can use your grass and your electric mon to take them down).
With this in mind from the ones you said the better to prestige would be arcanine, poliwrath and exeggutor. If candies are not an issue evolve all of them, see what moves you get and decide afterwards.
Small note: keep in mind that you don't even need a 6 mon team to prestige, I normally try to get the 6 but if I can't fill the spots with raticate, you will for sure have a lot of them, bite/hyperbeam raticate is one of the best prestigers, very easy to get, very powerful and easy to find ones with good ivs ;)
The IV of the Pokémon only matter after you pass a certain point in the game. This is usually after you pass level 30 as the IV differences is only a few CP. At lower trainer levels the only thing that matter is your place in defending a gym. So yes, high CP is a priority to stay in there longer to hopefully collect the max gym defender bonus for stardust.
Definitely evolve since candies aren't an issue for you so you can at least see the movesets...
I agree with the comments that if they have the best/great movesets, then you can decide if and when to power them up at that point.
Having a prestige team is probably the main "skill" part of this game since you can defend better if you wanted to (only form of PvP currently) and open up a gym slot insanely fast. Getting all your team below a certain CP (like 1000 or 1200 as stated) could save you a lot of time in the long run and is a good idea IMO.
You don't need great IVs to have prestigers, but it makes it easier and more optimal (like I have a FB/B Cloyster at ~800CP, but very low HP and with the dodge bug, it gets knocked out even with a successful dodge so it wouldn't be out of the question to raise it to 1200CP or so to deal with Dragonite (which has a naturally high CP)).
