POKEMON GO: CP or IV? Which Is More Important?



Are IVs (Individual Values) More Important Than CP (Combat Points) in Pokemon Go? Which Should We Focus On? CP level is also representative of the Pokemon's actual level.

What do you focus on more when you're out catching Pokemon? High CP arcs or high IV scores? So many players around me and various websites make such a huge deal about IV scores from the mons they catch that it's almost distracting from what I feel should be the more important focus of the game, which is the CP itself.

What caps off the confusion is the in-game appraisal system that says you have a mon that can accomplish anything or one that would suck in battle. I mean, seriously? (See the example below about this comparison,)

I get confused because I have (or had) so many mid-range CP or level mons with fantastic IV scores while sometimes I get high level mons with crap IVs! As if, almost, by design.

So my question or example is this:

If a player catches a Pokemon with a full CP arc, but 50% IV, at what point do you focus more on CP than IV?

According to Nick at Trainer Tips, the difference in stats between the worse (0 IV) and best IV (100) is 8 percent. And yet we still focus heavily on IVs in our conversational boasting and in-game appraisals.

Check out the numbers in this example I put together...

PokémonMax CPCP RankMax HPAttackDefenseStamina

Arcanine (base)2,83942152227166180

Arcanine 50% IV2,83942152234173187
Arcanine 100% IVs2,83942152242181195


If we focus on what we may actually encounter, would be a mon with a CP of around 1500, but 100% IV, or one with a 2,800 CP but 50% IV...  you'd dump a ton of candy and dust to power up the 1500 CP mon, versus the nearly fully leveled up 2,800 CP.

If you look at what the three stats look like between the 50 and 100% IV scored mons, you can see the values are pretty dang close.

(BTW: You might notice a difference between my ADS values and the numbers in the image above. Niantic has since modified some mons base stats as the game has developed and added more mons.)
-

Trainer Tips Nick also says that we're better served focusing on move-sets than IVs. In one example, Nick says an Arcanine with the best move-set versus worse move-set will deal 35% more damage per second (DPS).

With that said, I still asked a very successful power player in my area his thoughts on the issue of CP vs IV and he said:

"I would focus on CP more, IV isn’t super significant."

Furthermore, he said...

"If you have a maxed CP level mon with 0% IV, it would be better than evolving a level 10 100% IV mon, (due to the costs of stardust and candy)."

His example was that the difference between a 100% and 0% Hariyama vs Absol is only 8 seconds in a gym battle, so if you have a high CP 60%, that is better than a low CP 90% IV mon.

Don't get me wrong.  IVs are important to some degree but not important enough to evolve a high IV, low level mon over a low IV high CP level mon.

So then I wanted him to clarify as to exactly when does he start to consider the higher IV scored Pokemons for developing? OR, when would the higher IV scores might matter to him. He said, 

"I go for IVs if the Pokémon is at least level 20."

Level 20 is about 2/3rd's on the CP arc. For me, I'm a bit more patient and focus on level 25 and higher mons, if I need to, because that could still be a lot of eggs and stardust, but there you have it.

But it's still all confusing because for the last few years I've been having IVs pounded into my head. Then when I have a mon with 40% IV or my appraiser telling me my mon won't amount to much in battle, it would seem to be bullshit propagated to push you into chasing the 'leveling up' game, which, in the end, costs you time and/or money.

-

Trainer Tips make great videos, but he updates his Twitter feed more often with pertinent news,updates or observations.

Trainer Tips YT Video on Base Stats, Levels and IV.
Trainer Tips on Twitter.


= = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =
Follow Cinema Static on:

Comments