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Published on November 13th, 2013 | by Stats

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Bulking Up: A Guide to Defensive EV Spreads

Note: Some game mechanics such as Draco Meteor’s base power have changed since the writing of this article which factors into the examples, but the content itself is still valuable for the 6th generation and beyond.

Overview

After following jio’s guide and allotting the appropriate number of EV’s offensively and in speed, you have come to the point where you have leftover EVs and don’t know where to put them.  Or perhaps you’re trying to make a bulky spread to survive as many attacks as possible, but you don’t know whether placing the EVs in Defense, Special Defense, or HP is the most beneficial.

If this is somewhat along the lines of your thought process, you’ve come to the right place.

A question you may be asking is: “Why invest EVs in defenses in the first place?  My team consists of a bunch of hard hitting Pokémon that outspeed and OHKO the opponent’s Pokémon with super-effective attacks.”  The reason for that is that higher the level of play you go, Pokémon become bulkier to survive the attacks that are normally designed to KO them.  That Conkeldurr that you thought your Metagross would take care of with a Zen Headbutt will come right back and Hammer Arm you into submission.

When you first come up with an EV spread, it’s a good idea to determine the role your Pokémon will play on your team.  Will it be a Pokémon designed to hit as hard and fast as possible?  A bulky Pokémon intended to take out specific threats?  Or perhaps an extremely defensive Pokémon that sticks around the entire game?  The role that your Pokémon is intended to fulfill plays a large part in the amount of EVs that will be distributed into defenses.

Pokémon designed to hit as fast and hard as possible should invest maximally in offense, reach the desired speed tier, then place the remaining EVs in defenses.  For a Trick Room Pokémon, you can simply invest maximally offensively then place the remaining 256 EVs into defenses.

Bulky Pokémon whose job it is to remove a threat from the opponent’s team should have just enough offensive EVs to always OHKO the target Pokémon, or a chance to OHKO it that you’re comfortable with.  If your Pokémon is unable to naturally OHKO the target Pokémon, you can use a Gem, Helping Hand, Life Orb, or other method of powering up your attack.  Or, you can invest adequate offensive EVs to always 2HKO the target Pokémon, then place the rest in defenses.

For a Pokémon intended to last as long as possible, simply distribute all the EV’s into defenses.  Make sure that you aren’t missing out on any important OHKOs or 2HKOs though!

For those who may not know the difference between these stats:

• HP increases both the Defensive and Special Defensive durability of a Pokémon
• Defense increases the Defensive durability of a Pokémon
• Special Defense increases the Special Defensive durability of a Pokémon

Before we talk about EV distribution, one of the most important things you can do when creating an EV spread for a Pokémon is to choose a Nature that boosts the highest base stat (you can access a list of base stats here).  A positive Nature boosts a stat by 10%, and 10% of a larger number is more than 10% of a lesser one.  In other words, by boosting the highest base stat, you can achieve the same stats while using fewer EVs (or higher stats with the same number of EV’s).  The only exceptions to this rule are if you need to boost a stat beyond its normal 252 investment limits, if you have an offensive goal which your Pokémon overshoots with a positive attacking Nature, or in cases where you would need to invest so many EVs in another stat that boosting that stat would let you achieve the same goals, while still hitting a larger number of Nature boost benchmarks than would otherwise be hit (these will be discussed later).  An example of the former is standard Latios, which is most useful if it outspeeds as many Pokémon as possible.  Therefore, a Timid Nature is used to boost Latios’ speed beyond the normal 252 EV limit, even though a Modest Nature would provide Latios with more stat points overall.  An example of the latter is if you are trying to create a Gastrodon spread that has just enough offenseive EVs to always OHKO 252 HP / 4 Special Defense Heatran with Earth Power.  Gastrodon’s highest base stat that can be boosted by a Nature is its Special Attack, however a Modest Nature with no Special Attack EVs provides one more Special Attack point than is necessary to OHKO Heatran.  Therefore, by using a Calm Nature and the concept of positive Nature benchmarks, we can create a spread with a larger number of total stat points.

When you first go about distributing EVs defensively, it’s beneficial to come up with a goal for what you want the EVs to do.  This is greatly dependent upon the role you want your Pokémon to play on your team.  Is there a super effective attack that you can survive?  Or perhaps turn a borderline 2HKO into a 3HKO?  Let’s take a look at a standard Amoonguss spread.

Amoonguss (F) @ Black Sludge
Nature: Sassy (+Sp. Def, -Spd)
IV’s: 31/0/31/31/31/0
EV’s: 252 HP / 84 Def / 172 SDef
Ability: Regenerator
– Rage Powder
– Spore
– Giga Drain
– Protect

Amoonguss is used to Spore the opponent’s Pokémon and redirect attacks as much as possible before fainting, so we want to make it as bulky as can be.  With the prevalence of special attackers, you might think to simply dump 252 EVs in HP and 252 in Special Defense  However, a common super effective attack that it falls to is Metagross’ Zen Headbutt.  Therefore, we use a damage calculator and see how much Defense it takes for Amoonguss to survive the attack 100% of the time.  Once we’ve figured out that 252 HP and 84 Defense in tandem survive Metagross’s Adamant Zen Headbutt, we transfer 84 EVs from Special Defense to Defense.  Setting a defensive goal helps to ensure that you are not just throwing EVs randomly into different stats.  Another thing to note is that you do not necessarily need to survive an attack 100% of the time, just a percentage that you are comfortable with.

Some powerful attacks that people EV to survive are:

Physical

• Adamant Tyranitar’s Crunch, Rock Slide, and Dark Gem Crunch
• Adamant Hitmontop’s Fighting Gem Close Combat
• Jolly Terrakion’s Fighting Gem Close Combat
• Adamant Metagross’s Zen Headbutt and Meteor Mash
• Brave Conkeldurr’s Life Orb Hammer Arm and Ice Punch
• Adamant Scizor’s Technician Bug Bite
• Adamant Breloom’s Technican Life Orb Mach Punch

Special

• Timid Latios’s Dragon Gem Draco Meteor
• Modest Hydreigon’s Dragon Gem Draco Meteor
• Modest Volcarona’s Bug Gem Bug Buzz
• Modest Chandelure’s Fire Gem Overheat and Ghost Gem Shadow Ball
• Modest Rotom-W’s Water Gem Hydro Pump
• Quiet Heatran’s Fire Gem Eruption

A common beginner’s mistake is to EV too many of their Pokémon to survive a certain threat, like a Dragon Gem Draco Meteor from Latios.  While this can sometimes be useful, make sure that your Pokémon can do something to the attacking Pokémon in return, otherwise surviving the attack is pointless.  Whether it’s best for a Pokémon to survive an overpowered attack depends heavily upon the role it’s playing on your team.  Remember that a Pokémon’s teammates are there to help take care of threats that it can’t defeat by itself.

Now that you’ve created a goal for your Pokémon, it’s time to actually distribute the EVs.  The rule of thumb when distributing EVs is to increase the Pokémon’s lowest base stat.  Why? Because increasing the lowest base stat increases the stat by a higher percentage than increasing a higher stat would.  Blissey’s low base Defense is the reason that her Defense and HP are maximized, providing the maximum possible Physical durability.  Unfortunately, it’s not always so easy to tell which stat is the most beneficial to maximize on a Pokémon.  This is because it’s often more beneficial to maximize a Pokémon’s HP stat even when its base HP is slightly higher than its base Defense and Special Defense.  Let’s use Ludicolo as an example.   Ludicolo’s defensive base stats are 80 HP / 70 Def / 100 SDef.  After selecting a Calm Nature, you might immediately want to maximize EVs in Defense to survive Hitmontop’s Close Combat.  This is not the most efficient use of EVs, because even though Ludicolo’s base HP stat is higher than its base defense,  maximizing HP provides more overall bulkiness than maximizing Defense would.  Because situations like this aren’t always apparent, it’s generally a good idea to put all of your EVs in HP first, then the leftovers in Defense and Special Defense.  From here, we will split into two different pathways, EV’ing for overall bulk and to survive a specific attack.

EVing for Overall Bulk

Sometimes when you set an offensive goal, for example KO’ing a certain Pokémon, you’re left with a number of EVs that aren’t sufficient to survive anything significant.  This is where we want to spread the EVs out for overall bulk.  When you’re EV’ing for overall bulk, there is no definitive best spread.  It all depends on how well you want your Pokémon to take Physical and Special Attacks.  Transfer EVs from HP to Special Defense and Defense and between Defense and Special Defense until you achieve Special and Physical damage percentages that you’re comfortable with.  Only transfer EVs from HP if this will not lower the percentage of damage that you take.  You can also use a modified version of X-Act’s calculator to come up with the general idea of a defensive spread.

EVing to Survive an Attack

If you have more than 252 EVs:

With your HP maxed out, put enough EVs in Defense or Special Defense until you survive the attack. Use the minimum possible number of EVs for this, the rest should go in the opposite stat. For example, if you’re placing your EVs in Defense to survive a Physical Attack, only put in enough EVs to survive that particular attack, then put the rest in Special Defense.  This ensures we’re using the minimum number of EVs possible to reach our goal and saving EVs for other stats.  If this is not possible, transfer EVs from HP to the respective defensive stat until you survive the attack.  Once this has been achieved, transfer EVs from HP to both Defense and Special Defense until you reach the lowest damage percentages, or keep it as is if the current spread will provide this (make sure that you can still survive your benchmark attack when transferring EVs!).

If you have less than 252 EVs:

Oftentimes after placing EVs in both Speed and offensive stats, you won’t end up with more than 252 EVs.  If this is the case, start with all of the remaining EVs in HP, then transfer them into the respective defensive stat until you can survive your benchmark attack, or minimize the possibility of it OHKO’ing your Pokemon (or leave it as is if you already can).  Next, transfer EVs from HP into Defense and Special Defense to minimize the damage percentages while still surviving your benchmark attack (again, only do this if it will improve the Pokémon’s durability).

Now that you’ve come up with the skeleton of a spread, it’s time to get into the finer points of defensive EV spread calculation.

Minutiae

The Benefits and Drawbacks of Minimizing HP EVs

Reducing the amount of HP as much as possible while still retaining the same percentage of damage from an attack is beneficial both offensively and defensively.  Offensively, if you’re using a draining attack (e.g. Drain Punch, Giga Drain, etc.), minimizing your HP stat will allow you to regain a higher percentage of HP from your attack (since the HP regained depends on how much damage you dealt to your opponent).  Because this is the case, reducing HP for the defensive aspect is also useful.  This will allow your opponent to regain fewer HP when they use a draining attack on you.  Remember to only minimize HP to the extent that the damage percentages remain the same; it’s not worth doing if you take a lot more damage from an attack.

The only instances that reducing HP is not beneficial is when you’re getting attacked by a fixed damage attack like Night Shade or Seismic Toss, or by an attack with recoil damage such as Flare Blitz or Brave Bird.  Because they are both calculated based on actual HP points, you would take a higher percentage of damage from fixed damage moves and recoil from attacks like Flare Blitz.  In addition, the opponent attacking you with a recoil move would take a lower percentage of damage from recoil.  However due to the relative obscurity of these moves compared to Conkeldurr’s Drain Punch, it’s generally worth it to minimize HP.

This brings me to my next point, which is to represent damage as percentages of HP lost as opposed to the amount of HP lost.  Different EV spreads will have a different amount of EVs invested in HP and Defense/Special Defense, therefore comparing spreads using HP lost is inaccurate because a spread’s defensive durability may lie in its Defense and Special Defense investment, giving the same Pokémon a different HP number from an alternate spread.  This is also the reason that the myth that maximizing HP for Sitrus Berry use is beneficial holds no credence.  After all, you are recovering 25% of your HP with Sitrus Berry – whether or not you have a higher HP stat makes no difference.  The only instances where you want to calculate damage using HP lost is if you’re trying to survive two successive attacks, or an attack and passive damage , where you need to add up the HP lost for both cases and make sure that you have at least 1 HP remaining.

Before we get into the next section, it’s best to understand the concept of a benchmark.  A benchmark is a special number that achieves a certain goal, be it reducing passive damage, reaching an efficient substitute number, maximizing Leftovers recovery, or gaining an extra point from a boosting Nature.  It’s best to look for all of these benchmarks in an EV spread to see if it would benefit your Pokémon to reach it.

Note: The next few points are also explained very well in DaWoblefet’s guide Stepping it Up: Small Ways to Improve Your Game, but are reiterated here for completeness sake. Go check it out!

Reducing Passive Damage

Reducing the amount of damage that you take from passive damage (e.g. Burn damage, Sandstorm/Hail damage, Poison damage, Life Orb recoil) can be very beneficial.  To do this, we need to know the percentage of HP that these reduce per turn.

• Sandstorm/Hail: 6.25% or 1/16 of max HP
• Burn: 12.5% or ⅛ of max HP
• Poison: 12.5% or ⅛ of max HP, increases by 12.5% every turn for a badly poisoned Pokémon
• Life Orb: 10% or ⅒ of max HP

With this in mind, if we want to take one less point of damage we reduce a Pokémon’s HP stat to one under a multiple of 16, 8, or 10, depending on the passive damage you’re trying to reduce.  For example, Cresselia often uses 220 HP EVs because this reaches the HP stat of 223.  223 is one under a multiple of 16, which means that Cresselia will take one point less of Sandstorm, Burn, and Poison Damage (Burn and Poison damage are also reduced because 12.5% is a multiple of 6.25%).  Why does this work?  It’s because the game rounds down for most numerical values, truncating all numbers after the decimal point.  In other words, 224 divided by 16 is 14, while 223 divided by 16 is 13.9375, rounded down to 13 points of damage.  For certain Pokémon like Cresselia and Togekiss that stay on the field for a long time, it’s a good idea to minimize Sandstorm damage because of the large number of Tyranitars they tend to attract.

Only attempt to reduce passive damage if it will not significantly increase your damage percentages taken from attacks.

Distributing HP for Leftovers/Black Sludge

Leftovers and Black Sludge both recover 1/16 of your max HP rounded down at the end of the turn, so to make sure that you get a whole number of HP recovered, it’s beneficial to have an HP stat that is divisible by 16.  Only implement this technique if you won’t take significantly more damage and the benchmark is just a few points above your current HP stat (i.e. don’t reduce your HP stat just for the sake of perfect Leftovers recovery).

Distributing HP for Sitrus Berry

Sitrus Berry restores ¼ of your Pokémon’s max HP, so you want your HP stat to be divisible by four.  Similar to Leftovers, getting perfect Sitrus Berry recovery is not a very high priority, so only attempt to do so if you won’t take a higher percentage of damage from attacks.  If you prefer not to make the HP stat divisible by four, try to make it an even number.  This will cause Sitrus Berry to activate after your Pokémon is hit by Super Fang, making it more difficult for it to be picked off by a follow-up attack.  If the HP stat is an odd number, Super Fang would leave you sitting just above 50% HP, preventing Sitrus Berry from activating.  Also, if you want to see if your Pokémon will be able to survive two consecutive attacks while factoring in the Sitrus Berry, simply multiply the HP stat by 1.25, then round down.  Add up the maximum damage rolls of the two attacks, and if it’s less than your HP * 1.25, you’re good to go!

Distributing HP for Substitute

The move Substitute reduces your HP by ¼ of your max HP (rounded down) to produce a plush doll that bravely takes attacks in place of your Pokémon.  To get an optimum Substitute HP benchmark, either make the HP stat one over a multiple of four, or simply make the HP stat not divisible by four.  This will allow you to substitute four times with one to three HP leftover.  If you’re also holding the item Leftovers, it’s best to make your HP stat equal to 1, 2, 3, 6, 7, or 11 points above a multiple of 16.  This allows your Pokémon to create four Substitutes, then have recovered enough HP with Leftovers to create another one (assuming your Pokémon took no other damage).

Using the Minimum Number of EVs

Have you ever wondered why Latios with Hidden Power Fire only run 248 Special Attack EVs?  This is because Hidden Power Fire requires your Special Attack stat to be 30, and whether a stat’s IVs are even or odd determines the number of EVs that is necessary to invest to reach a certain stat point.  If a stat has an odd number of IVs, the EVs divided by 8 should have a decimal value of .5.  If a stat has an even number of IVs, the EVs divided by 8 should be a whole number.  If these conditions are not met, you’re wasting EVs due to the way the game calculates stats at level 50 (e.g. It takes 8 EVs to increase a stat by one point after the initial 4, assuming odd IVs).  Returning to the Latios example, since Hidden Power Fire requires an even number of IVs in Special Attack, the EVs invested need to be divisible by 8.  Therefore, 248 EVs is the maximum number of EVs that can be invested in Special Attack. (Note: This is only relevant at Level 50.  At level 100, whether an IV is even or odd makes no difference on the amount of EVs that can be invested.)

Minimizing Attack on Special Attackers

On special attackers, reducing the attack IV to zero minimizes the damage that your Pokémon takes from self-inflicted confusion damage and Foul Play.  Also, unless your special attacker is used in Trick Room (which generally indicates a negative speed Nature), choose a Nature that reduces the Attack stat for the same reasons.  As DaWoblefet mentioned in his article, to minimize IVs while keeping the same Hidden Power type and power simply reduce the IVs to 2 if it was originally an even number and reduce them to 3 if  it was originally odd.

Improving an HP Spread

A simple trick to improve the overall bulk of a Pokemon utilizing a spread with defensive investment solely in HP is to remove 8 EVs from HP and place 4 EVs in Defense and 4 in Special Defense.  This trick is successful on most Pokémon unless its base HP is a lot lower than its base Defense and Special Defense.  However, it only works if the IVs in Defense and Special Defense are odd.  The methodology behind the madness is that you are in effect removing one point of HP and adding one point in both Defense and Special Defense.

Nature Boosted Stat Benchmarks

A positive Nature increases a stat by 10%, and because the game generally rounds down, there are benchmarks for an extra stat point at every multiple of 10.  For example, Thundurus has a Special Defense stat of 100 with a neutral Nature and no Special Defense investment.  The next Nature benchmark is at 110 (the next multiple of 10), meaning we would have to increase its stat by 10 points to get an extra point from a Special Defense boosting Nature (e.g. Calm).  Assuming there is an odd number of IVs in Special Defense, this would require 4 + (8 * 9) = 76 EVs (4 EVs to increase the stat by 1 point, then 8 EVs each for the other 9 stat points).  Once you’ve found the first benchmark, you can simply add 80 EVs to reach the next benchmark.  In Thundurus’ case, they  would be 156 EVs and 236 EVs.

This skill is useful for knowing how many EVs you need for the boosted stat to gain an extra point, often making a difference in the stat total.  When you are making the skeleton of an EV spread, try reaching a positive Nature benchmark in a stat to begin with, as this can save you EVs for other stats and often results in the most efficient defensive spreads.

Comparing EV Spreads

When you’re comparing two EV spreads for a Pokémon, there are two different ways to go about doing so.  The first is to simply compare the percentage of damage dealt from an attack both on the Specially Defensive and Defensive sides of both Pokémon (a simple way of doing this with one attacker is to use Psychic and Psyshock).  This helps you to see which spread is bulkier in each area.  The second method is to calculate the damage of both spreads when hit by successive Special and Physical attacks.  This factors in the damage from both Physical and Special moves and gives you an idea about the spread’s overall bulk.  In addition, you can subtract the HP lost from passive damage from both spreads to compute the number of turns it takes for a spread with reduced passive damage to have a lower percentage of damage than one without it would.

When I wanted to compare two different Conkeldurr spreads to see which one was bulkier overall (one of which was designed to minimize HP while the other was meant to maximize HP while minimizing Sandstorm Damage), I wanted to account for passive Sandstorm damage and Life Orb recoil while factoring in the HP regained through Drain Punch.  In this case, I decided to compare the physical and special aspects of Conkeldurr’s defenses separately as opposed to successively.

Note that the choice of Cresselia as an attacker on Conkeldurr and Gastrodon as a defender from Conkeldurr’s Drain Punch was arbitrary, any Pokémon and attacks are acceptable as long as you compare the same spreads using the same specifications.  However, an EV spread that takes less damage from one attack than another spread may take a higher percentage of damage from a different attack, so the comparison is not always objective.  In the following example, I compute the damage taken from a neutral Natured zero Special Attack investment Cresselia’s Psychic and Psyshock, while taking into account passive Sandstorm damage and Life Orb recoil.  In addition, I decided to compare the amount of HP recovered from both Conkeldurr’s Drain Punches attacking 108 Def Bold Gastrodon.

Spread #1: 188 HP / 44 Def / 20 SpDef; Actual HP stat: 204

Cresselia’s Psychic does at most 132 damage, so we subtract that from 204 HP and have 72 HP remaining.  Next, we want to take Life Orb into account.  Ten percent of 204, our max HP stat, is 20 damage (20.4 rounded down), therefore we subtract 20 from 72 and end up with 52 HP remaining.  Finally, we subtract 12 HP for Sandstorm damage (204 divided by 16 rounded down) and end up with 40 HP remaining.  Taking this number, we find the percentage of HP remaining Conkeldurr actually has by dividing it by the HP stat at full health.  This leaves us with a value of 40 / 204, or 19.61%

In mathematical terms:

• 204 (Max HP) – 132 (Psychic damage) – 20 (Life Orb recoil)  – 12 (Sandstorm damage) = 40 HP
• % HP Remaining: 19.61 (40 / 204)

Next, we’ll restore some HP from the damage dealt to Gastrodon through Drain Punch.  The maximum damage done to 108 Def Bold Gastrodon is 148, so the HP recovered in this situation would be 148 divided by 2, or 74 HP.  Therefore, we add 74 to our subtotal of 40 and end up with 114 HP.

In short:

• 40 (HP remaining) + 74 (HP recovered) = 114 HP After Sandstorm, Life Orb, and Drain Punch recovery.
• The final percent of HP remaining would be 114 divided by 204, or 55.88%.

With the Specially Defensive side finished for this spread, we now move on to the Defensive aspect.  Neutral Natured zero Special Attack investment Cresselia does a maximum of 86 damage to this Conkeldurr spread, so we subtract 86 from 204, our original HP stat.  Next, we again subtract 20 HP for Life Orb recoil and 12 HP for Sandstorm damage.  This leaves us with 86 HP, or 42.16% of our max HP.

• 204 (Max HP) – 86 (Psyshock damage) – 20 (Life Orb recoil) – 12 (Sandstorm damage) = 86 HP
• % HP Remaining: 42.16 (86 / 204)

After attacking a Bold 108 Def EVs Gastrodon, the maximum HP recovered is 74, which we add back to our subtotal of 86.  Doing so, we end up with a total of 160 HP, or 78.43% of our max HP.

• 86 (HP remaining) + 74 HP (HP recovered) = 160 HP After Sandstorm, Life Orb, and Drain Punch recovery
• Total % HP Remaining: 78.43 (160 / 204)

Spread #2: 212 HP / 28 Def / 12 SpDef; Actual HP Stat: 207

Just like the first spread, we’ll calculate the percentage of health remaining from neutral Natured 0 Special Attack investment Cresselia’s Psychic and Psyshock, subtract Life Orb recoil and Sand damage, then add back HP regained from Drain Punch.  Since it’s likely you don’t want the same process explained twice, here are the cold hard calculations.

• 0 SAtk EV Cresselia’s Psychic: 134 Max Damage
• 207 (Max HP) – 134 (Psychic damage) – 20 (Life Orb recoil) – 12 (Sandstorm damage) = 41 HP
• % HP Remaining: 19.81 (41 / 207)

After attacking 108 Def Bold Gastrodon, Max HP Recovered is 74 (damage dealt to Gastrodon  / 2)

• 41 (HP remaining) + 74 (HP recovered) = 115 HP After Sandstorm, Life Orb, and Drain Punch recovery
• Total % HP Remaining: 55.56 (115 / 207)
• 0 SAtk EV Cresselia’s Psyshock: 90 Max Damage
• 207 (Max HP) – 90 (Psyshock damage) – 20 (Life Orb recoil) – 12 (Sandstorm damage) = 85 HP
• % HP Remaining: 41.06 (85 / 207)

After attacking 108 Def Bold Gastrodon, Max HP Recovered is 74 (damage dealt to Gastrodon / 2)

• 85 + 74 = 159 HP After Sandstorm, LO, and Drain Punch recovery
• Total % HP Remaining: 76.81 (159 / 207)

Now what do all of these numbers mean?  Looking at the damage taken from Cresselia’s Psychic, we notice that the percentage of HP remaining for the first spread was 55.88%, while the percentage of HP remaining for the second one was only 55.56%.  On the physical side, the first spread has 78.43% of its HP remaining, while the second one has 76.81% remaining.  From this, we can deem that the first spread takes a lower percentage of damage from Cresselia’s Psyshock and Psychic after regaining some of its health back from Drain Punch.

Now that you know all the minutiae in creating a great defensive EV spread, it’s time to put that knowledge to good use.

Example EV Spread

DaWoblefet and I thought that it would be useful to update Cassie’s Defensive Gastrodon spread originally designed to survive a Fighting Gem Close Combat from Jolly Terrakion and a Timid Latios’s Dragon Gem Draco Meteor to today’s metagame and survive an Iron Fist Conkeldurr’s Life Orb Hammer Arm as well.

Therefore, my original goals were to have Gastrodon survive Conkeldurr’s Life Orb Hammer Arm and a Timid Latios’ Dragon Gem Draco Meteor.  Normally, you would want to have some offensive investment to ensure your Pokémon doesn’t miss out on any important OHKOs or 2HKOs, but for the purposes of this example I decided to attempt to have Gastrodon survive Conkeldurr’s Life Orb Hammer Arm in addition to its follow up Mach Punch through the use of a Sitrus Berry.

With my goals in mind, I looked at Gastrodon base stats.  I noticed that Gastrodon’s highest base stat was Special Attack, so I would likely gain the most stat points by using a Modest Nature.  However, I knew by taking a quick glance at the damage outputs of my target attacks that I would be unable to to achieve all of my goals by doing so.  Therefore, I chose to use the highest defensive base stat: Special Defense.  Both a Sassy and Calm Nature could have been used successfully depending on the team that Gastrodon is on, but in this case I chose to use a Calm Nature.  I also noticed that Gastrodon’s base Defense was significantly lower than its base HP, indicative that the best spread likely wouldn’t be one that maximized HP.

To start off, however, I placed 252 EVs into HP.  Next, I invested enough Defense so that the HP lost from Conkeldurr’s Life Orb Hammer Arm and Mach Punch was less than 272 (Gastrodon’s HP with 252 EVs is 218. 218 * 1.25 = 272.5, round it down and you get 272 HP).  The minimum Defense investment necessary to get the sum of the damage from Conkeldurr’s two attacks to 271 was 204 EVs. The rest of the EVs were placed into Special Defense.

Just for comparison’s purposes, I also calculated the damage taken from Conkeldurr’s Fighting Gem Hammer Arm and found that it would OHKO my current spread 12.5% of the time.

At this point, my spread looked like this:

Gastrodon (F) @ Sitrus Berry
Nature: Calm (+Sp. Def, -Atk)
IV’s: 31/0/31/31/31/31
EV’s: 252 HP / 204 Def / 52 SDef
Ability: Storm Drain
– Earth Power
– Ice Beam
– Recover
– Protect

I realized that with the 52 EVs invested in Special Defense, Gastrodon’s positive Nature benchmark was only one point away.  Therefore, my next goal was to transfer EVs from HP to Special Defense to reach the benchmark, then put enough into Defense to still reach my Conkeldurr goal.  This lead me to an EV spread of 220 HP / 228 Def / 60 SDef.  To compare it to the first spread, I again checked the damage taken from Conkeldurr’s Fighting Gem Hammer Arm.  I was pleasantly surprised to discover that by gaining an extra stat point by hitting the Special Defense benchmark and investing more in Gastrodon’s low base Defense stat, I was able to reduce that chance that Conkeldurr’s Fighting Gem Hammer Arm would KO Gastrodon to 6.25%.  Additionally, by reducing the HP stat I was able to minimize the percentage of HP regained by an opponent’s Pokémon using a draining attack.

The final spread would be:

Gastrodon (F) @ Sitrus Berry
Nature: Calm (+Sp. Def, -Atk)
IV’s: 31/0/31/31/31/31
EV’s: 220 HP / 228 Def / 60 SDef
Ability: Storm Drain
– Earth Power
– Ice Beam
– Recover
– Protect

In this case, I deemed Gastrodon’s survival of my target moves was far more imperative than reducing passive damage, which is why I didn’t account for it anywhere in my calculations.

Conclusion

At this point, I’d like to thank DaWoblefet for his numerous discussions with me, tremendous editing prowess, and for helping me to see things from a different point of view.  I’d also like to thank Jio, Ray, and Wolfey for pointing me in the right direction when I first embarked upon my Pokémon journey.  In addition, I’d like to thank the Nugget Bridge community as a whole for creating the best website on the Internet for competitive VGC play and putting up with my numerous threads on this subject..

Of course, I couldn’t have gotten this far without the numerous sources that have helped me along the way:

• Stepping It Up: Small Ways to Improve Your Game by DaWoblefet
• 252 Times Better Than 252/252: Advanced EV Spreads by jio
• HP vs. Draining Moves, a Nugget Bridge thread in the Q&A section
• Distributing HP for Substitute, a Nugget Bridge thread in the Q&A section
• Chinese Dood’s post on getting a bonus point when using Natures
• Smogon’s guide to EV training in the 5th Generation
• Smogon’s guide to complex EV spreads in the 4th Generation
• Smogon’s guide to maximizing defenses in the 4th Generation

Hopefully I’ve helped you understand how I think about defensive EV spread calculation and the tremendous finesse it entails.  However!  Don’t forget that making an absolutely perfect EV spread is no substitute for teambuilding and battling skill.  These skills are just as important as creating an advanced EV spread, so make sure you don’t ignore any of them as you create the perfect team.

About the Author

Stats Ansel Blume was first enraptured by competitive VGC after watching a replay of the finals match of the 2012 World Championships. Ever since the beginning of his competitive career, he was fascinated by EV spreads and wanted to understand the logic behind them. When he's not playing Pokemon, Ansel can be found playing baseball and break dancing.

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