Raikou 80% or Zapdos 91%?
Which Pokemon should I power up as an electric attacker? 91% Zapdos (15/12/14) or 80% Raikou (10/12/14)? I know that Raikou is the best electric attacker atm, but his low IVs (especially atk) confuse me about mine being worth it.
Are any of those 2 even better than a jolteon?
Answers
Both Raikou and Zapdos are much better than Jolteon, no question about it.
You're overestimating how much IV matters. The Raikou is better between those two, but if you want to only power up 90%+ mons, the Zapdos isn't a bad choice either.
EDIT: I ran it on pokebattler with those IVs. The Raikou at level 30 is better against Kyogre than the Zapdos would be at level 40.
Raikou L30 power 12% ttw 971s
Raikou L40 power 15.5% ttw 887.6s
Zapdos L30 power 9.7% ttw 1070.5s
Zapdos L40 power 10.9% ttw 990.4s
IVs are added to the base stats (then multiplied by the CPM for the level). Most legends have pretty good to amazingly good base stats to start with, then you are guaranteed at least 10 out of 15 for each IV, so the difference of 5 IVs is a small percentage.
Reasons people search for better IVs:
1) They generally don't know how IVs are used and completely overvalue them. They think that a 10 atk IV has 66% the performance of 15 atk IV.
2) They know exactly how IVs are used and how damage is calculated. They have figured out exactly what level to power a pokemon up to for the most gain with the least amount of stardust and rare candy spent. Higher IVs allow for fewer power ups to hit important damage breakpoints.
3) It is a collectable game with little other content. Striving for better and better duplicate pokemon is basically the only end-game.
But recoil damage isn't a thing, so why hold back on investing in something that is the best of its type? There are many things in the main Pokemon games that are not implemented or completely different than in Pokemon go. Recoil damage seems one of the mechanics that is most unlikely to happen, imo.
