Pokémon Stratagem

EV's

Definition

Each Pokemon has six stats - HP, Attack, Defense, Speed, Special Attack and Special Defense. Effort Values are like points - each time you battle a wild Pokemon or an in-game trainer's Pokemon, it will increase your stat's EV count by a certain amount of points, for example, beating a wild Gardevoir will increase your Special Attack EVs by 3. For every 4 EVs you earn, the actual stat value raises by one (note this applies to Pokemon at lv100 only - at any other level, you may not notice an increase until more EVs are acquired). In other words, take the number of EVs, divide it by 4, and round it down to the nearest whole number. This gives you the stat increase.

Each stat can have a maximum of 255 EVs. So that means if you were to fight a wild Gardevoir 100 times, you'll only have 255 EVs instead of 300 (100 x 3). A Pokemon with 255 EVs for Defense (Or 254, 253, 252 since they are divided by four and round down to the same number) will have 63 points more than a Pokemon with 0 EVs for Defense.

However, a Pokemon can only hold a maximum of 510 EVs. That is, the sum of the EVs for HP, Attack, Defense, Speed, Special Attack and Special Defense must not exceed 510. Therefore, it's possible to max out two of a Pokemon's stats, whether it be Attack and Defense, or HP and Speed, or whatever. Careful planning means that you can have 252 for one, 252 for another, and 6 in another, meaning you max out two stats, and increase the last by 1.

Using EV's Effectively

It is obvious that maxing out EVs is a powerful training method to make your Pokemon that much stronger. With 510 EVs to distribute between 6 stats, however, how should one go about gaining EVs? The distribution of EVs on a Pokemon is more commonly known as its EV Spread. When planning what EV Spread should be used for a Pokemon, you have to consider the moves that the Pokemon knows.

Checking EV's

As stated before, EVs are gained when you battle and defeat wild Pokemon or in-game Trainers, excluding the Trainers in the Battle Frontier and Battle Tower facilities. As a general rule of thumb, if you gain Experience in a battle, you are gaining EVs as well, just that EVs are hidden values and are not shown to you.

The fact that EVs are hidden means that there is no way for you to know how many EVs your Pokemon has accumulated. As such, you should manually keep track of the EVs that your Pokemon have gained, so as to avoid learning the wrong amount of EVs.

There is, however, one in-game method to check if your Pokemon has already maxed out its EVs. In Diamond or Pearl, go to the lady behind the counter at Sunyshore Market and speak to her. In Ruby, Sapphire, or Emerald, go to the stall in the lower left and speak to the woman there. If your lead Pokemon has already maxed out its EVs, you can get an Effort Ribbon from her. Apart from this, there are no other methods of telling how many EVs your Pokemon have.

EV Training a Pokemon refers to letting the Pokemon gain the correct EVs according to your plans for the Pokemon's EV Spread. In short, you would have to battle 510 Pokémon to max out your Pokemon's EVs, assuming each of the 510 Pokemon give only one EV each.