EV Training

The last piece to the stat puzzle are EVs. EVs as I briefly mentioned before are short for Effort Values which are hidden values for each stat that are gained along with experience in battle. Every time you defeat a pokemon in battle every one of your pokemon that got experience will get EVs as well, this applies even if they didn't actually participate in battle so in other words they get EVs if they were holding EXP Share. The amount of EVs your pokemon will receive depends on the defeated pokemon. Depending on the species defeated your pokemon will (normally) gain between 1 and 3 EVs in one of the six stats and on some occasions in more than 1 stat. Here are links to lists of pokemon based on what EVs they give:
Pokemon who give HP EVs
Pokemon who give Attack EVs
Pokemon who give Defense EVs
Pokemon who give Special Attack EVs
Pokemon who give Special Defense EVs
Pokemon who give Speed EVs

So what do EVs do and why are they important? Well for every 4 EVs in a particular stat a pokemon will gain 1 point in that stat at level 100. A pokemon may have up to 255 EVs in a single stat and up to 510 EVs total which means up to a 63 point boost in 2 stats at level 100. Hopefully you see that 63 points is quite a lot, a pokemon with the respectable base stat of 100 will have a stat ranging from 236 to 299 (assuming a neutral nature and an IV of 31) based on how many EVs they have. In other words EVs can give a boost of around 30% to 2 stats (or smaller boosts to more stats) making them more influential to your stats than IVs or natures. This is why there is a need to do EV training.

EV training is the manipulation of what stats get the boosts from EVs. Since we are limited to only 510 EVs for a pokemon we want to make sure we distribute them effectively. Here are two level 100 Alakazams one was EV trained (properly) the other was not.

Can you tell which is which? The one on the left was EV trained the one on the right was not. If you look you will see that the one that was not EV trained has 3 points more in HP, 17 points more in Attack, 14 points more in Defense, and 13 more points in Special Defense. That might sound pretty good, but look at the cost. The EV trained Alakazam has 38 more points of Special Attack and 40 points more in Speed, the stats that Alakazam utilizes the best. Why wouldn't you want to boost Alakazam's poor defenses you might ask? Well it is because no matter how much effort you put into his defenses they are only going to be mediocre at best, and if you wanted a defensive pokemon there are much better choices. Alakazam's strength lies in his speed and special attack, for him it is a matter of the best defense is a good offense. Alakazam won't take many hits no matter what so his best option is to try and power through the opponents pokemon before they can lay a finger on him. 

Of Course other pokemon are different. Depending on their roles you will want to EV train them differently. Often you will put 252 EVs (252 not 255, 255 is not divisible by 4 so it would be wasteful to put more than 252 in a stat) in to two of the stats and use the remaining 4 on one of the remaining stats. This isn't always the case there are many situations that will call for you to spread the EVs across three different stats, but rarely would you want to spread them over four or more stats.

So how do we go about EV training? Well basically we just have to make sure that our pokemon only fight pokemon that give them the EVs we want. It is by far easiest to EV train a freshly caught pokemon or baby pokemon that has never been in battle since they will have a clean slate with 0 EVs, but it is not impossible to fix the EVs of a pokemon you have already trained. I only recommend this as a last resort because it is usually easier to just breed a new baby and start from scratch, but if that is impossible (eg. Legendary pokemon) then this is what you have to do. You have to collect several (15-20 would probably suffice, but you would need 26 of each to be certain) of each of these types of berries: Pomeg Berry for removing HP EVs, Kelpsy Berry for removing Attack EVs, Qualot Berry for removing Defense EVs, Hondew Berry for reducing Special Attack EVs, Grepa Berry for reducing Special Defense EVs, and Tamato Berry for reducing Speed EVs. The berries aren't particularly easy to get either, they are only available from the Dream World and can be a pain to find. Once you do find them it takes about three days for them to grow and give you more berries. But once you have them you can feed them to your pokemon until you get the message, "But (insert stat name) can't fall any further" or "It doesn't have any effect" from every type of berry. Each berry you feed to your pokemon will reduce the EVs of a particular stat by 10. It may seem like a good idea to not reduce the stats that you intend to increase, but because the EVs are a hidden value doing that will make it impossible to track them correctly. I guess it depends on how much of a perfectionist you are, you don't necessarily have to reduce them if you aren't worried about the 1 point stat loss (assuming you are doing a 252, 252, 4 spread) but if you want to truly maximize your pokemon's potential then you will want to completely zero out your pokemon's EVs. Once you have removed the EVs you can EV train these pokemon in the same way as any other pokemon.

As I said before to EV train all you need to do is fight only the pokemon who give you the EVs you want, but there are several ways to really expedite this process. First there are vitamins that grant your pokemon 10 EVs in a given stat. The upside to them is that they are extremely fast and easy to use; the down side is that they are expensive costing 9,800 poke dollars for one. The other downside is that they can only be used until your pokemon has 100 EVs in the given stat, so you are still going to have to do a fair amount of EV training. The vitamins are still really nice if you can afford them; you can buy them on route 9 from the Department store or you can win them in the Battle Subway where they cost 1 BP.  The different vitamins are: HP Up for HP, Protein for Attack, Iron for Defense, Calcium for Special Attack, Zinc for Special Defense, and Carbos for Speed. There are two other rare (can't be bought) vitamins that have nothing to do with EVs but are still note worthy, these are PP UP which boosts the PP (number of uses) of a move by one and PP Max  which boosts the PP of a move to 8/5ths the original. 

Besides Vitamins there are the very similar wing items. The Health, Muscle, Resistance, Genius, Clever, and Swift wings they like vitamins increase the EVs of HP, Attack, Defense, Special Attack, Special Defense, and Speed respectively. The advantage that wings have over Vitamins is that they can be obtained for free and they are not restricted to the 100 EV boost limit that the Vitamins are. The disadvantage is that they give only 1 EV at a time making them extremely impractical. Anyways they can be found in shadows on the Driftveil Drawbridge and Marvelous Bridge. You may also find the Pretty Wing, but it is worthless so should just be sold.

Other than Vitamins and Wings there are also a few ways of increasing the number of EVs you get when defeating a pokemon. The simplist of these ways (and least effective) is to let the pokemon you are EV training hold the Macho Brace. The Macho Brace doubles the number of EVs the pokemon holding it receives after battle, it also halves speed but only while holding it whereas the EV effects are permanent. The Macho Brace can be obtained by talking to a man in the east gate to Nimbasa City.

Better than the Macho Brace are the 6 different Power items that I talked about in the last post. Besides being used to pass an IV down to a baby pokemon, the main use of the Power Items are for EV training. The Power items function similarly to the Macho Brace in that when you have a pokemon hold them that pokemon's speed is halved in battle but they gain more IVs. But unlike the Macho Brace the Power items give +4 EV bonus in the item's corresponding stat every time the pokemon gains EVs. The only downside to the Power items is that they are fairly difficult to obtain. Like I mentioned last post they are prizes in the Battle Subway and each one costs 16 BP. 

The last thing is the incredibly rare Pokerus virus.  Pokerus is a secret virus your pokemon can catch from fighting wild pokemon, but the odds of a pokemon having it is a frighteningly low 3 in 65536 chance meaning you either have to get incredibly lucky or else know someone who is incredibly lucky to get it. Despite being a virus and showing up on your pokemon's status screen where any other status ailment would, Pokerus is not bad and actually it is quite good. A pokemon with the Pokerus virus will gain twice the EVs of a pokemon without it. The best part about this is that it stacks with the EV boosting items, so if your pokemon is holding a Power item, has Pokerus and then defeats a pokemon that gives 1 EV it will get (1 + 4) X 2 or 10 EVs. That means you can potentially make the process of EV training 10 times faster than normal. 

If you are lucky enough to get the Pokerus virus it needs to be handled with care because the pokemon that has it will become immune to it in one or two days. While Pokerus appears like a status condition it is in its contagious stage. While in the contagious stage if you use the infected pokemon in battle there is a chance it will spread the virus to your other pokemon (which is good). But after a day or two it will stop being contagious and the status mark will be replaced by a little smiley face. Once that happens it is no longer possible to spread the Pokerus virus, but the positive effects will remain on the pokemon. Fortunately there is a way to preserve the virus, by depositing an infected pokemon in the PC it will stay infected indefinitely. Pokerus only disappears at midnight so you just have to make sure that at midnight you always have at least one infected pokemon in your PC.

Active Pokerus:

Cured Pokerus:

So all that is left is to just do it. Remember that you have to track your EVs yourself because there is no way to check them. Finally, here are some of the best places to EV train your pokemon.

For HP: Icirrus City is good while surfing on the water. If you surf you will only find Stunfisk which gives 2 HP EVs and rarely in dark spots you will find Seismitoads that give 3 HP EVs. You can also walk in the shallow water around here to find mostly Stunfisks and Palpitoads which both give 2 HP EVs, but you will also see Shelmets who give 1 Defense EV.

For Attack: Dragonspiral Tower is the place to go. Here you will only run into Goletts and Mienfoos who give 1 Attack EV as well as Druddigons who give two Attack EVs.

For Defense: There isn't really that great of a place for defense, but I guess Wellspring Cave. You have a 50% chance of fighting Roggenrola who gives 1 Defense EV. Run from all other fights.

For Special Attack: Celestial Tower is best. You will only run into Litwicks and Elgyems which both give 1 Special Attack EV.

For Special Defense: Route 4 surfing (this may work at a few other spots too). If you avoid the Dark spots you will only run into Frillish who gives 1 Special Defense EV. If you hit the dark spots you will most likely fight Alomomola who gives 2 HP EVs.

For Speed: Surf in Striaton City (again may work in some other places too). You should only find Basculins that give 2 Speed EVs.

Here is a short demonstration of EV training.

That wraps up EV training. Not sure what my next post will be, but I'm thinking probably Team building.