The IVs in Pokémon GO: calculator and everything you need to know

One of the best points of Pokémon GO is the raids and the battles in gyms. When you have already kicked the entire city and captured all the creatures there and to be, the next obvious step is to go to competitive mode, and in that mode, the IVs (individual values) are a fundamental factor. And what is the competitive mode? Capture all the gyms you can, get the strongest Pokémon, and defend the main locations of your city on behalf of your team. To this end, all players set out to capture Pokémon with a high CP (combat points) to, surprised, realize that their allies are cruelly killed when facing a Pokémon with the same or even lower CP.

Combat points are misleading since, in practice, they serve little more than knowing the level of the Pokémon you are going to capture. More CP does not mean more attack, power, or win rates. The essential thing if you want to have a strong Pokémon, which can be used to attack and defend gyms and has an optimal combination of characteristics, are the IVs.

What are IVs in Pokémon GO?

If you are an old dog in this Pokémon, you will know that all creatures had a series of attributes that differentiated them between them, namely: attack, defense, health, special attack, special defense, and speed—each of these attributes determined how powerful your Pokémon was about others of the same species. Roughly speaking, a Machamp (fighting type) with a lot of attacks (measures physical capacity) is better than a Machamp of the same level with a lot of special attacks (water, ice, plant …). In Pokémon GO, we have only three attributes, which are attack, defense, and health.

It is useless to have a Pokémon with a lot of CP if its IVs are very low. What is the problem? That you cannot know in advance what the IVs of a Pokémon is. You must get hold of it and, later, calculate the IVs, but don’t worry; we’re not going to get mathematical. As you may have already guessed, dozens of apps and websites can do this for you. We will see them later.

The IVs of a Pokémon remain constant even if you raise their CP.

Each of the three IV values ​​has a score of 15. The higher the number, the better your Pokémon will be. If the three values ​​add up to 45 (15 each), it is said that you have a perfect Pokémon. This is the one that you have to level up as if there were no tomorrow, even if you find another one with more CP. A Pokémon that moves between 10 and 15 points is worth training. The rest, discard them and send them to the teacher so that he can give you candy.

Another issue that you have to take into account is the type of Pokémon you are catching. Each species has its own innate characteristics that make it different, and each of them is intended for a purpose. There are those more focused on attacking and more focused on defending. What will that do for you? To know which Pokémon to use to attack a gym and which to leave to defend it. You can see them all sorted from SilphRoad > Tools> Species by stats.

It is better to level up a Pokémon with good IVs and low CP than to level up one with high CP and bad IVs.

IV calculator

As you can see, Feebas, although it has a very low CP, is one of the most powerful.

I could tell you all the mathematical formulas to calculate the IVs, but that would imply that you would have to play Pokémon Go with a calculator always at your side. The best thing is that you use an app like Poke Genie. This is superimposed on the screen and calculates the IVs of any Pokémon in real-time. It is completely free (although it has some Pro functions that can be purchased within the app) and is available for Android and iOS (in this operating system, you must import screenshots of the Pokémon file).

You can improve the accuracy of IVs using the team leader’s rating.

This app will tell you if your Pokémon is worthy of fighting and what could be improved. That way, you can put together the best possible team to fight in gyms and raids with the highest chances of success. If you want to take Pokémon GO to the next level, this is where you should start. You have the download links below.