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Stat Calculation
Introduction
Stats are, as in any game with even a passing resemblence to an RPG, the magical numbers that determine how awesome your Pokémon are. Whether you obsess over them or completely ignore them, they control how much damage a Pokémon's attacks do, how much damage other Pokémon's attacks will do to it, how much damage a Pokémon can take, and which Pokémon will move first in battle.
Pokémon have six stats:
- HP
- Hit Points or Health Points; the amount of damage a Pokémon can take.
- Attack
- Along with the target's Defense, this determines the amount of damage a
physical move will do. - Defense
- Along with the attacker's Attack, this determined the amount of damage a physical move will do.
- Special Attack
- Equivalent to Attack, but for
special moves. - Special Defense
- Equivalent to Defense, but for special moves.
- Speed
- During a turn in battle, Pokémon with higher Speed will attack first.
The calculated values for each of these stats appear on the Summary screen for a Pokémon, listed in the same order as above; you have hopefully seen them all before. Understanding what factors affect them and how they work will make it easier to pick better Pokémon and use them more effectively.
Number Crunching
The first and most obvious factor affecting a Pokémon's stats is its species. Every species of Pokémon has six base stats, one per stat, which affect how good Pokémon of that species can ever get. These stats range from 0 to 255, although the extremes are rare; 40 is fairly low, whereas 120 is fairly high. A few exceptions exist, for example Blissey and its obscenely high 255 HP stat. These are the numbers listed under 'Stats' in the Pokédex. A difference of 1 point in a base stat, all else being equal, makes a difference of 2 points in the calculated stats -- that is, with no other changes, a Chansey (base HP of 250) evolving into a Blissey (base HP of 255) will gain 10 max HP.
Next is a Pokémon's set of individual values or IVs (sometimes called DVs), which are specific to each individual Pokémon. Whenever a Pokémon appears in the wild, or when you receive an egg, the Pokémon is permanently assigned a set of six random numbers, one per stat, ranging from 0 to 31. These are its IVs, and serve to make individual Pokémon naturally better or worse than others, rather than all about equally strong. A difference of 1 in an IV makes a difference of 1 in the calculated stats, so IVs can at best only affect calculated stats by 31 points.
Although IVs are never shown in the game, you can figure them out with an IV calculator. Diamond and Pearl provide a few subtle hints as to a Pokémon's IVs, such as the quip on the Summary screen above the Pokémon's preferred flavors, but they are so obscure and vague that it is hardly worth the effort to use them -- it's far easier to enter a L100 wifi battle and enter the L100 stats into a calculator.
Perhaps most importantly is effort, often referred to as EVs. These are another form of personalization, although they are not set in stone like IVs are. Every time a Pokémon gains experience from a battle, it gains a handful of effort points in one or more stats depending upon the Pokémon it defeated. As a general rule, these points generally correspond to the best stat the defeated Pokémon has, and stronger Pokémon give more points; Charizard, for example, gives 3 Special Attack points, whereas Magikarp only gives a single Speed point.
Effort is collected individually for each stat, and can reach up to 255; however, the combined effort in all six stats can never go above 510. Every 4 effort points grants 1 calculated stat point, and any remainder is ignored, so the most useful effort points a stat can have is 252 (63 * 4). Thus, effort can make a difference of up to 63 in a given stat on a given Pokémon.
One more important consideration, although not used solely for stats, is a Pokémon's level; before L100, a Pokémon's stats are scaled down by about its level's proportion to 100. That is, a level 50 Pokémon's stats are about half of what they should be, it takes 8 effort points instead of 4 to grow by 1 stat point, etc. This ensures that, even if nothing else changes, a Pokémon's stats will still increase as it levels up. The underlying values don't change, though, so effort points that appear useless at an early level will become more useful later on.
Finally, each Pokémon also has a nature, listed on its Summary screen, which either has no effect at all or raises one stat by 10% but lowers another by 10%. HP is not affected by natures.
More on Effort
As effort is the value you can best control and most significantly affects stats, it should be your main focus. Breeding for good IVs is worth it, but not to the point of requiring 30 or 31 in every stat; each point only gives a single extra stat point, after all.
Here, then, are a few more ways to affect effort.
- The
Macho Brace is a held item which will double any effort the holder receives. - There is a rare condition known as Pokérus which will permanently double the effort a Pokémon gains. If a Pokémon has it and is contagious, a small purple "PKRS" will appear on its Summary screen, and you will be informed when you heal at a Pokémon Center. As long as a Pokémon is contagious, it will have a chance to spread the virus to other Pokémon in your party or in the same Box when you finish battles. The virus is otherwise harmless. At midnight, any Pokémon in your party (but not those in a Box!) will stop being contagious, although it will still have the effect. There will also be a small dot on its Summary screen to indicate that it cannot catch the virus or become contagious again.
- Battle Tower provides six "Power" items, one for each stat, which increase any effort the holder gains in the respective stat by 4. This happens before Pokérus is considered, so with both effects, a Pokémon gaining 1 effort point will gain 10 instead. These items are listed in the chart below.
- Six consumable items, one per stat, can be purchased to give a Pokémon 10 effort points. However, these items cannot increase the effort in a given stat past 100, so they are best used early. These items are listed in the chart below.
- If you have lost track of a Pokémon's effort and want to figure out its IVs, or otherwise want to reduce its effort, there are six Berries which each lower the effort in a certain stat by 10. If the corresponding stat has no effort, they won't work, so you can feed them en masse to a Pokémon without worry of using too many. These Berries are listed in the chart below.
| Stat | Power item +4 per battle |
Drug item +10 permanent |
Berry -10 permanent |
|---|---|---|---|
| HP |  Power Weight |  HP Up |  Pomeg Berry |
| Attack |  Power Bracer |  Protein |  Kelpsy Berry |
| Defense |  Power Belt |  Iron |  Qualot Berry |
| Special Attack |  Power Lens |  Calcium |  Hondew Berry |
| Special Defense |  Power Band |  Zinc |  Grepa Berry |
| Speed |  Power Anklet |  Carbos |  Tamato Berry |
Nerd Stuff
Formulas
Ah, here's the fun part! The following are computed with the normal order of operations: multiplication and division first, etc. However, as the games do all these calculations with integers only, you must discard remainders after any division. Thus, seven divided by two will result in three, not three and a half, and 7 / 2 + 6 will give you 9.
This is the formula for all the stats except HP:
This is the formula for HP, which -- due to being a little higher -- is slightly different than the other stats:
Older Games
Before Diamond and Pearl, the distinction between physical and special was made by the type of the move, not the move itself. The category for each type is still on each type pages in my Pokédex.
Back in the days of RBY, there was only Special. GSC had both Special Attack and Special Defense, but they were both based on the same IV, so trading with RBY could be supported. IVs only ranged from 0 to 15 and HP was based on the other four in both games. Effort was also based on the defeated Pokémon's base stats, rather than a separate set of values. The formulas were, of course, somewhat different to compensate for all of this; UPC has the details.