Quantifying effect of IVs on usefulness of attacker

It effects its maximum CP.

I have a Charizard with wing attack/dragon claw. I kind of want to play with it, because both moves are have fast cool down times, and it might be good for dodging. Anyway, its IVs are horrible. So, I calculated the difference in damage given and damage taken with min and max IVs. Hypothetically, the opponent was a perfect dragonite.

For attacking the atk/def portion of the damage calculation was, 1.032 for a Charmander with 0 atk IV versus 1.102 for a perfect Charmander. For defense, the difference was 1.58 vs. 1.455.

Anyway, in the range of lvls 20-30, a 10% difference in the damage formula is roughly what you get by leveling up five levels.

So, if you are happy with a level 25 Charizard with perfect moves, and don't have a better use for your stardust, go ahead and power this guy up to lvl 30.

IVs don't have equal weighting in both the CP formula and in actual combat. i.e. 1 attack isn't equal to 1 defence or stamina, so it's not right to just add the stats together. Your estimate is a bit too high.

As an example, lets say a Pokemon had 15 attack, 15 defence and 100 stamina. If IVs were equally weighted, then any combination of IVs would result in an equal combat effectiveness increase as long as the total was the same, but that isn't true.

15 attack IV would double your attack and therefore double your damage dealt before fainting, while 15 stamina would only result in a 15% increase in survivability / time before fainting, and therefore only a 15% increase in damage before fainting.

Stat increases affect a Pokemon's effectiveness exponentially rather than linearly. For example if a Pokemon has it's attack increased by 20% as well as it's stamina by 20%, you'd get more than a 40% increase in damage dealt - you're not adding 20% more damage, you're multiplying it by a factor of 1.2x, and the same applies to the increase in stamina/HP, so you'd get 1.2 x 1.2 (= 1.44) more total damage dealt.

That being said, of the 3 factors in determining a Pokemon's effectiveness in combat (species, moveset and IVs), IVs are the least impactful.

Good IVs don't make shit-tier Pokemon relevant, and bad IVs don't make top tier Pokemon useless. Same with moveset. Good IVs don't make shit moves good, and bad IVs don't make good movesets bad.

Still,.you could power up the Charizard a few times to increase it's CP to where you can get a more accurate estimate of its IVs, because the lower it is, the more room for error there is due to rounding. As a Pokemon's stats gets higher there's less and less IV combinations that match the criteria to get those exact CP/HP values.

To be honest, the IVs of a Charizard don't really matter because they're not top tier Pokemon anyway. It's max potential is largely irrelevant from a competitive standpoint, even a perfect IV one would be rather mediocre, so if a Charizard with WA/FB is what you'd enjoy using, that's what you've got.

First off, I wouldn't do a dang thing until this event is over. You might find something better to power up or evolve. Right now my backyard is practically a Charmander nest, with about 12 popping up a day. I'm not touching those candies until it goes back to being a Goldeen spawn again...

Once that happens, figure out what you can realistically expect from the mon. Powering it up to 2000 will cost almost as many candies (plus loads of stardust) as evolving a higher CP Charmander. Yes, you risk a bad moveset, but I'm overall disappointed with my WA/FT Charmander with 93% IV's in battle. My Arcanines are, IMO, more reliable. I might feel different if it had FB, and hopefully this event will give me enough candies to take two or three more shots at it.

first off: I do not know the answer to your question as far as the percentages are concerned. I would be very happy to hear an answer to that, too.

Second: Do not only think of the moveset, rather think of the stardust you are investing. I pumped a cp 173 evoli to 2557, and am short on stardust ever since. Wait for the event to give you a giant charmander, evolve it twice, should still be less candies spent than powering your little one up, and saves you about a 100k stardust.

I project I will be able to bring 2 to 4 of each starter to their final evolution. And while i am willing to wait until a good large specimen comes along, I am also willing to just evolve large ones with middling IVs.
Mainly, because I got burnt once too often with bad movesets on 95% IV mons, but powering a 400cp charizard just because it has good moves seems unreasonable.

Although it's not charizard, u might wish to check out this vid on great vs lousy IVs

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P43Iiu7-PTo

I think my head is spinning from all those numbers and formulas. Like Bush Jr says to Gore back in 2000. It's all fuzzy math. Let's keep this simple. Because you are focused on an attack Charizard my guess is that will be one of your best attacking mon. I would not use crazy amount of dust on the low CP Charizard. I would keep grinding candies to evolve a higher cp/acceptable IV level Charmander. They are spawning more during this lame event. Take advantage of it.

With all that said, I would save dust on better species for attack. Wait for great. You won't regret it. Arcanine is a better fire choice than Charizard btw.

Hold onto it and if you ever need to train against a low grass pokemon you can then decide to power it up a few times and use it.

Don't power it all the way to 30. I actually had a similar situation to yours a while back, when I still struggled to evolve a FF/FB Arcanine. I caught a 600cp one with bad IVs and decided to power it up just a few times to make it a viable prestiger at least.

I now have a 2400cp Arcanine with FF/FB and the true story is, my old 1200cp Arcanine with FF/FB still sees more use. Your situation might be different, but personally I spend a lot more time prestiging against Venusaur/Exeggutor/Lapras in gyms, than I spend taking them down in enemy gyms.

That way your good moveset Charizard will still have a purpose, and you can keep the rest of your candies and stardust for evolving a higher level Charmander with decent IVs. I evolved a lvl 26 one and lvl 28 one with 78% IV this far, and I'm currently lvl 31. The first one got WA/FT and the second got WA/FB. Don't stop believing.

I think IVs are only important for defenders due to CP for gym placement. Having the best move set is more important than IV for attackers. I think the same lvl pokemon with best and worst IV will defeat the defender roughly the same time.