Tuesday Tip: Let's talk about pokémon!

[inkstone]

I thought it'd be useful to have a catch-all post for all things pokémon. They are what you're trying to catch in this game, right? And with the release of the in-game appraisal system, I figure some people might have some questions.

Here are the basics:

• Each pokémon is unique. It has visible values for CP and HP, in addition to movesets that can vary from mon to mon within a species.


• Every pokémon also has hidden stats called individual values (IVs) for attack, defense, and stamina. The CP & HP values are visible renderings of these IVs. The new in-game appraisal system gives you the range for these hidden values.


• When you level up as a trainer, you will start seeing pokémon with higher CP but to only a certain extent. The CP of pokémon hatched from eggs stop scaling at level 20 and the CP of pokémon caught in the wild stop scaling at level 30.


• The trainer level cap, though, is level 40. So you can keep powering up your pokémon with stardust and candy past level 30 until you hit the cap.

There are other nuances to be found here, but I find they vary from trainer to trainer. Some people start powering up their pokémon right away. Others wait until they hit level 30. Some people are torn. I thought that in addition to sharing general tips about pokémon, we could also use the comments to ask advice about our mon.

So let's have it!

Comments

[monanotlisa]

Thanks for this!

The powerup question is a good one -- like in the discussion in my previous post, I think it really depends on your environment:

If I lived far west in San Francisco, or far out in the 'burbs of the East Bay, where the gyms are weak and/or their defenders are low-CP Pokémon, I probably wouldn't have powered up my mon for my nightly gym takeovers...only for excursions o' mine elsewhere, on and off.

Given that I live where I live by the University of California, Berkeley, holy moly, I've been powering up since Day One. :)

[inkstone]

Yeah, it's funny. When I first started playing and was flailing around in confusion, I did power up my mon. Then I realized that was silly because I was catching ones that were higher CP! So I stopped. And I told myself I wouldn't power up again until level 30 when CP scaling stops.

I live in the suburbs and for a while I was just barely competitive (and even then, only because I'm pretty good at dodging), but now that people are settling in the level 20ish stretch, I'm probably mid-tier. Now that the bots are gone, I don't actually see 3000+ CP dragonites in the gyms. I occasionally see high 2000+ CP dragonites, but the range is usually 1600-2300 CP for mons. So I've never felt that pressure to level up my mon that I'm sure I would feel if I lived in Berkeley.

[melannen]

I have (so far) managed to take every gym I wanted to take with dogged persistence and my 1400+ vaporeon, and I am still catching higher-CP Pokemon fast enough that it's always been more efficient to save my candy for evolving them than leveling up (I really regret the powering up I did early on because I could have evolved an Ivysaur by now if I hadn't wasted candy on my starter.)

At some point I will probably start powering up, though. It's good to know level 30 is the ceiling for catches.

(Also I'm level 21 but I still occasionally see pokemon in the wild that are CP ???. Haven't managed to catch any. I figured that would stop once I got to a higher level, but apparently I have a ways to go yet.)

[inkstone]

Vaporeon is a bit of a monster. It's the strongest of the 3 eeveelutions and if you have one with the water gun/hydro pump moveset, you're pretty much set for attacking.

[melannen]

/me checks. It does! I guess I lucked out!

[inkstone]

Right. So.

If you read my comment to monanotlisa above, I had been planning to wait until level 30 to start getting serious about powering up my mon and finding the perfect team. Right now, I'm mostly focusing on filling my pokedex (96 caught/98 seen - so salty about chansey & onix!)

But life and mobile games don't work that way, apparently. After some dedicated hunting and catching of oddishes, I was finally able to evolve a Vileplume this past weekend. I love it. It's very cute. I named it Picasso for its petal hat. (I'm weak for cute mon, you know?) Then I checked its IVs.

It's, uh, 15/14/15. 97.8% perfection. Poison/petal blizzard make up its moveset, both of which are STAB since Vileplume is a grass/poison type. I'm level 23, not even close to level 30, but...this seems like a reasonable investment of stardust and candy, right?

[malnpudl]

I would be THRILLED with your Vileplume! I say great investment, yes!

[monanotlisa]

Yes it does!! Mine is good, but not THAT good.

[inkstone]

What do you use as your standard for determining which mon should be powered up? Anything above 80%?

I ask because my Mariana (vaporeon) and Zuko (flareon) are both 88.9%. The vaporeon is 15/10/15 and the flareon is 15/14/11. So not as good as my vileplume, but nothing to scoff at either. Both have the ideal movesets for their species. I'm trying to figure out if I should wait and see if I find better IVs or if the difference between 88.9% and, say, 93% is that much and therefore, worth it. Never mind the fact that I'd be dice rolling anyway to see 1) which eeveelution I get and 2) which moveset I get.

[monanotlisa]

Two decision routes that lead to powerup, for me:

1. The mon is perfect or near-perfect, and I wuv it...for battling. ;) For example, regarding Eeevolutions, I have my Vaperfecta (15/15/15) and Sperfecty (15/15/13 or similar), and I power them up because, in a bastardization of a hair brand slogan, they're worth it.

2. There's a tough gym, and I do have the right type of mon and attack, but I just. Can't. Win. I power up here regardless of perfection level because it's the only way I see to get the job done (e.g., I have a medium-good Rhydon, maybe in the 70%s per IV, but because it used to be my only mon with solid HP I had to use it for fierce enemies).

[inkstone]

That makes sense.

I did some digging through the Silph Road subreddit (man, I love those stat nerds) and I think I'll set my requirements to >85% & great moveset. I compared the difference in damage & weighed the cost/effort and that's a comfortable limit for me. But only for mon that would make great attackers or defenders. So, looks like Mariana will get a boost while Zuko can sit there & look pretty LOL.

[monanotlisa]

I'll set my requirements to >85% & great moveset

Yeah, that makes tons of sense -- I may look more at movesets in the future (wow, everybody hates Twister on their Gyarados; I do have two dragon moves, thankfully).

[inkstone]

My gyarados has twister & I hate it, especially since they took away dragon breath as a quick attack. (So I have bite.) I'm going to start farming magikarp again in the hopes of getting a better moveset but ugh. Why.

[melannen]

Can someone explain movesets in v. small words for someone who has never played a pokemon game before?

I mean I fight gyms by buttonmashing as fast as I can while praying I don't lose the wifi, so it's not super-important, but it would still be kinda nice to understand what they do.

[inkstone]

Basically, every species has a set of moves that they can get. It's purely chance. So even if your mon has 100% perfect IVs, it can still get a garbage moveset. *eyes her Gyarados with twister WHY*

Some movesets are better suited to attacking. Some are better for defending. Some attacks are very powerful (they do more damage per second) and some not so much.

The thing you want to keep an eye out for are whether the attacks match the mon type. You get a 25% bonus when they do, making your attacks even more effective. (It's one of the reasons why a water gun/hydro pump vaporeon is so powerful as an attacker.) When you combine this with type advantages, you can do real damage to gym defenders.

[melannen]

So your pokemon can get moves that don't match the pokemon? I could get a fire type with water moves or something? Is a fire pokemon with water moves advantaged against a pokemon that's weak to water, or is it only based on the pokemon's type? Can different pokemon get the same moves? Can you figure out what moves a defending pokemon has before it uses them?

Do I have to look up a chart somewhere to figure out which moves are good or does it sort of make sense, the way the elemental weaknesses/advantages do?

[inkstone]

Yes, you can get moves that don't match the mon. Nothing so opposing as fire type with water moves, but you can get a water type with steel. *eyes her Kingler SIGH* The advantage is always based on the attack type vs mon type.

Different mon can definitely get the same moves. I have two vaporeons with water gun/hydro pump. Since each mon only has a handful of potential moves, you can have a general idea about defenders but you won't know for sure until you see.

I've only looked at charts for ideal movesets, I'm afraid. If there's a logic to it, I don't know what it is.

[korafox]

I have a question about powering up Pokemon: if you've got one that you mean to evolve, which is better, boosting its CP before or after evolution?

[inkstone]

In terms of simple candy and stardust investment, it doesn't matter. The investment will be the same either way.

Personally, I would evolve first and then level up. Just because you might end up with a garbage moveset and not want to invest the stardust.

[korafox]

Okay, that makes sense. Thanks. : )

[malnpudl]

Oooh, that's really good advice. I'd never thought of that. Thanks!

[malnpudl]

I have a question and I don't know if it should go here or in its own post.

As I'm entirely new to the Poke-universe -- and 58 years old and childless -- this game is my very first exposure to everything except Pikachu.

I'm stumbling over pronunciations. Is there a definitive guide? I found this webpage but I'm having a very hard time believing that some of these are correct.

Gyrados is my biggest puzzler. My brain wants to make it jer-RAH-dose or JYE-rah-dose or JEER-uh-dose. But the above linked web page says it's GAR-i-dose and that flat out makes my brain hurt.

And Ponyta is supposed to be poh-NEE-tah? Seriously? *blinks*

Anyone else have trouble with this? Input? Opinions? Rants?

[monanotlisa]

Oh, that's interesting; I instinctively pronounced it poh-NEE-tah...but man, not in a thousand years had I guessed it's GAR-i-dose.

Frankly, I'm the worst person in the world to ask for pronunciation (foreigner with good grammar but limited auditive and replicative skills), but since there doesn't seem to be consensus among the new-gen Pokémon GO players, I wouldn't worry -- until some old-skool Trainer comes along to correct you. :)

[inkstone]

I wouldn't worry too much about pronunciation. Most players I've encountered -- even ones who grew up with the anime or have played the games since gen 1 -- are pretty chill about pronunciation. And if they're not? Eh, that says something about their character, imo.

[tyger]

When it first came out, we always pronounced it as gi-a-ra-dos; wasn't until one showed up in the anime any of us knew that wasn't the official pronunciation. (Ponyta, it helps if you think of it as Pony-ta, it's pretty much just a suffix because... they could. Or possibly it's a pun in Japanese, that happens.)

Anyway, pokémon pronunciation is COMPLICATED at best, because some of the names are taken directly from the Japanese names, and others are changed entirely - usually to puns, but sometimes for no apparent reason. And IIRC some are half of one, half of the other, though I can't think of any examples off the top of my head.

And that's not including the usual problems you get when translating - the further you go back, the worse translation standards were, and I wouldn't exactly call them great today, particularly in the US where you don't actually have to have any sort of qualification to work as a translator. Pokémon was always big-budget, which helps, but it's never been perfect. (It is, however, absolute strides above FFVII, which was released a year or two before. A bunch of the early game stuff is notoriously incoherent.)

So pronunciation vs spelling vs general common sense is pretty much a crapshoot! If it's important to you, you can definitely look it up, but anyone who isn't an asshole won't care if you pronounce something in a non-standard way!

[dickgrayson]

I watched as a kid and still have trouble...I would like a guide too.

[dickgrayson]

Oh I might push to level 30 then relax more...thank you! :D