M Alzamora 
One of the biggest parts of building a competitive Pokemon team involves optimizing a Pokemon’s stats with the perfect IVs, EV spreads, and nature.
Competitive Pokemon team-building can be complicated for a number of reasons. First, The Pokemon Company changes the rules regularly to account for new Pokemon becoming available in-game and to keep the competitive scene from feeling stale. While Sword and Shield had a shifting ban list, Pokemon Scarlet and Violet have unlocked already available Pokemon over time.
At a high level, team-building revolves around meta-gaming and attempting to counter what other players are doing. Regardless of the player’s individual level, having Pokemon with ideal stats. Here’s how to build a competitive Pokemon team based on stat optimization through IVs, EVs, and natures.
Table of contents
Getting the perfect IVs for competitive Pokemon battling
IVs are hidden stats that are intrinsic to a specific Pokemon.
Individual values, dubbed IVs, are generated alongside base stats when a Pokemon is spawned or when an egg is created. Each stat has an IV ranging from 0-31. With some exceptions, a competitive Pokemon team wants all members’ IVs to be 31. Every two IV points translates to a one-point stat increase.
Other than HP, this results in a 15-point stat increase at level 50. Below is an example of how IVs affect stats with Leafeon.
How to improve a Pokemon’s IVs
In earlier Pokemon games, the only sure way to get a Pokemon with perfect IVs was through selective breeding. Players would need to catch Pokemon with maximum IVs and then selectively breed it until they received and hatched an egg with the desired stats. For many, this is still the preferred method.
Nowadays, players can collect Bottle Caps to Hyper Train a Pokemon and boost one or all IVs to the maximum. Bottle caps can be found in Scarlet and Violet in any Delibird Presents store for 20,000p giving them an easier method than previous generations had.
Breeding or Bottle Caps are acceptable ways to achieve perfect IVs for one’s competitive Pokemon team. Getting Pokemon with optimized stats through hacking and save modification remains common, but is now aggressively policed by The Pokemon Company.
How to check IVs in Pokemon Scarlet and Violet
Players can use the Judge function to check their Pokemon’s IVs. This is unlocked after completing the game’s main story.
After unlocking the Judge function, players can go into their boxes and press the + button to get a qualitative answer as to their Pokemon’s IVs. “Best” means a perfect 31 EVs, while “Fantastic” means 30. “No good” refers to 0 IV in a stat, while “Pretty good” and “Decent” refer to a range of stats.
Before beating the game, players will need to use IV calculators. Players input the stats and nature of a freshly caught Pokmeon to get an estimation of their IVs. Players cannot accurately find out their IVs with Pokemon they have been battling with. This is because EV gains influence Pokemon stats as well.
What are EVs in competitive Pokemon?
EVs are stats that a Pokemon accrues by being in the party during winning battles or through vitamins.
EVs, short for effort values, add to a Pokemon’s base and IV stats. Like IVs, these stats are mostly obfuscated by the game. After being defeated, a Pokemon gives EVs to all Pokemon on the player’s party. Each species of Pokemon confers a set amount of EVs to a fixed set of stats. For example, defeating a Magikarp will give a player’s Pokemon one EV to their speed stat.
Assuming a Pokemon is at level 50, four EVs translates to one stat point increase. After that, eight EVs translates to one stat point increase. Each Pokemon has 510 EV points to work with, and each stat can hold a maximum of 252.
How to improve a Pokemon’s EVs
Compared to breeding Pokemon for IVs, increasing a Pokemon’s EVs is significantly faster. There are two main ways to increase the EVs in a player’s competitive Pokemon team; a lot of repetition or a lot of in-game money.
The first method of EV training involves battling a large number of specific Pokemon to increase the EVs for the related stat. Auto-battling doesn’t count, but players can equip the Macho Brace to double EVs gained or use items like the Power Anklet or Power Belt to increase gains for a specific stat.
Otherwise, players can purchase large quantities of vitamins that increase EVs for a specific stat. Each vitamin gives 10 EVs, meaning that players much purchase 26 vitamins to max out a stat. In Pokemon Scarlet and Violet, Chansey’s Supply sells them for 10,000p each.
For most competitive Pokemon players, the trick is to min-max the EV spread. Since one stat can only have 252 EV points, players often maximize two stats and then throw the last four points into another stat. One of the toughest parts of competitive Pokemon is optimizing an EV spread beyond this.
Players will go through great pains to find the right distribution of EVs to survive specific moves from common meta threats, while balancing that against their offensive potential.
How to check a Pokemon’s EVs in Pokemon Scarlet and Violet
Players can get an idea for a Pokemon’s EVs based on the in-game stats summary.
The summary page for a Pokemon includes the Moves and Stats page. Press L on this page to bring up a radar chart that gives an idea of a Pokemon’s EV spread. Exact numbers aren’t provided, except for a sparkle around the stat if it has the maximum 252 EVs.
Players can take away a Pokemon’s EVs using certain berries. These berries state that it “makes it more friendly, but it also lowers its base” stats. After a Pokemon’s EVs are maxed out, players who want exact numbers can use these berries and refill those stats to get exact figures.
Using Pokemon natures to improve certain stats
Pokemon can have one of 24 different natures/traits that affect how their stats, which players can alter for their competitive team build.
Similar to IVs, the system randomly assigns a Pokemon a nature upon hatching or catching. Other than neutral natures, they give one stat a 1.1x increase and another stat an 0.9x downgrade. Some of the prevalent natures in the competitive Pokemon battling scene include:
- Adamant (+Atk, -SpA)
- Bold (+Def, -Atk)
- Brave (+Atk, -Spe)
- Impish (+Def, -SpA)
- Jolly (+Spe, -SpA)
- Modest (+SpA, -Atk)
- Sassy (+SpD, -Spe)
- Timid (+Spe, -Atk)
What nature is best for a Pokemon depends on the role that it fills. Though not the most common Pokemon in competitive gaming, Leafeon when used tends to be a tank or a sweeper. Her best natures to have, then, include Bold, Impish, and Jolly. The Leafeon below has an Impish nature and gets a boost to defense and nerf to special attack.
Natures can also be good examples of when to not perfectly min-max stats. In the Leafeon example, her defense is boosted almost to max – but because of the way that EVs work with point distribution, there’s more benefit to a player to take twelve points and put them into another stat.
It’s worth noting that natures go into effect after accounting for all added EVs, not before. This means that competitive players will want to change the nature, if needed, last in the process.
How to change a Pokemon’s nature
Players can use mints to change a Pokemon’s nature. Mints can be found in a number of places across Pokemon Scarlet and Violet, including for sale in Chansey Supply store for 20,000p or in five or six-star Tera Raid battles.
Players can hypothetically save before catching a Pokemon and keep recatching it, or they could breed Pokemon with the same nature. However, mints have made getting the desired nature easier than ever.
Optimizing stats through IVs, EVs, and natures is key to building a good competitive Pokemon team. What stats to boost depend on both the individual Pokemon and the rest of the party – but having high IVs and EVs never hurt anyone.
