[DONE] Setting the Default Atk IVs to 0 if the Pokemon doesn't have a Physical Attack

DragonWhale

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Right now the Pokemon Showdown teambuilder defaults to 6 31IVs on your Pokemon unless you have Hidden Power (in which case the appropriate stats turn into 30), or if you have Trick Room or Gyro Ball (in which case speed becomes 0). My suggestion is as follows:

- If the Pokemon doesn't have a Physical move excluding Final Gambit, Seismic Toss, Foul Play, Super Fang, Endeavor, Counter, Guillotine, Horn Drill, or Fissure, set the Attack IV to 0.
- If the Pokemon fits the above criteria and has a Hidden Power that requires the attack IV to be odd, set the Attack IV to 1.

Zarel asked me if there was a reason why people kept 31 Attack IVs on their Pokemon. I believe it's just laziness or simply forgetting to change it, seeing as it's basically useless outside of dealing extra damage when you Struggle, but if I'm wrong here let me know.
 

Zarel

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I kind of assumed there was a reason a lot of people still use max Atk IVs on pokemon with no physical attacks.

Is there consensus for setting it to 0?
 

Zarel

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From Karxrida:

I don't have PR access, so I wanted to mention that Defensive Starmie only avoids a 2HKO from STAB Foul Play with a minimum Attack IV. I don't think the value really matters otherwise for it.
 
31 IVs: 0- Atk Mandibuzz Foul Play vs. 252 HP / 0 Def Mew: 186-218 (46 - 53.9%) -- 2.3% chance to 2HKO after Leftovers recovery
0 IVs: 0- Atk Mandibuzz Foul Play vs. 252 HP / 0 Def Mew: 162-192 (40 - 47.5%) -- guaranteed 3HKO after Leftovers recovery

It's actually a somewhat notable difference depending on the user. But yeah, I've never heard of a reason to use Attack IVs on Pokemon with no physical attacks -- its just an easy thing to miss when creating a set. I almost always forget about it, especially since Foul Play isn't a very common move.

As an addendum to this suggestion, if you pick a Hidden Power type and your set has no physical moves, can the Teambuilder set the Attack IV to 1 instead of 31 if it needs to for reaching the desired Hidden Power values?
 

Joim

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Setting it to 0-1 is important in case you get confused! Hurricane is out there.
 

Zarel

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(I accidentally deleted this thread and had to manually re-create it, if people are wondering why the Likes are gone, the post times are wrong, and you're no longer watching this thread.)
 

Lumari

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Re. analyses at least, the reason why those don't specify 0 Atk IVs is not "overlooking it", it's c&c policy to assume 0 Atk IVs on anything that doesn't run physical moves, in order to prevent clutter. There's virtually no realistic scenario in which you'd prefer 31 Atk over 0 Atk on such Pokemon (Foul Play / confusion is tons of times more relevant than Struggle damage), so essentially all that making 0 Atk explicit for all special attackers / Pokemon without attacking moves and adding a line "0 Atk IVs are used to minimize confusion and Foul Play damage" (which would be a /lot/ of analyses) accomplishes is adding more words for something pretty much self explanatory.

I guess what I'm saying is, running 0 Atk on like Gardevoir is really just as logical / self explanatory as running 31 Def on Gardevoir, so it makes no real sense to specify one but not specify the other.

(and let's not forget that there are also situations where you'd run 31 Spe on a Trick Room attacker)
 
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Nix_Hex

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Since the analyzes don't mention 0/1 Atk (and they shouldn't) I think the team builder DEFINITELY should take care of it. New players won't automatically think to put 0/1 Atk unless they get their teams from RMTs. If they are curious why it's necessary, they can easily just ask around for the answer.
 
I occasioanlly struggle between choosing to run 0 atk ivs on defensive starmie or not. Losing out on a potential spin kill can be heartbreaking :[
Under these rules it would not automatically be set to 0 anyway on a specially-based Rapid Spinner like Starmie or Claydol or whatever, you would have to do that yourself because Rapid Spin's damage is based off Attack. Rapid Spin is a far more borderline case to do automatically (all the excluded moves have a very important thing in common) because as you pointed out there's a case where you might want Attack other than the possibility of Struggle, I don't think it's better but it's much harder to argue it's always optimal.

- If the Pokemon doesn't have a Physical move excluding Final Gambit, Seismic Toss, Foul Play, Super Fang, Endeavor, Counter, Guillotine, Horn Drill, or Fissure, set the Attack IV to 0.
 

Zarel

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Under these rules it would not automatically be set to 0 anyway on a specially-based Rapid Spinner like Starmie or Claydol or whatever, you would have to do that yourself because Rapid Spin's damage is based off Attack. Rapid Spin is a far more borderline case to do automatically (all the excluded moves have a very important thing in common) because as you pointed out there's a case where you might want Attack other than the possibility of Struggle, I don't think it's better but it's much harder to argue it's always optimal.
Karxrida pointed out earlier in the thread that Defensive Starmie only avoids a 2HKO from STAB Foul Play with a minimum Attack IV

that seems like a good reason to minimize Atk in that specific situation...
 
Yeah I saw that post! That's actually why I made mine, I should probably have found the time to expand upon my point (and maybe emphasise different bits), which wasn't that you shouldn't but to note that the Rapid Spin concern, despite being brought up in the same vein, isn't addressed by the proposal in the OP and nobody else has commented on it

Like I said it's better, and there's an obvious case that Rapid Spin belongs with those moves, I do think just that it's at least a slightly different proposition conceptually to say that the teambuilder should automatically reduce the Atk IV on a set with a move that factors in that stat, even though it's not why you use that move ever, as opposed to a set of moves that are classed as physical but don't need the Attack stat.

My personal opinion: It would be probably more useful if it were set to 0 by default on Rapid Spinners with no other physical attacks, whether that's a judgment the sim should make is not something I have an absolute opinion on as opposed the set of moves listed in the OP but I don't see why it shouldn't (you can always fix it if you like doing Rapid Spin damage)

Ultimately I see IV changing as something that easily falls under the teambuilder's purview since it already does it for Hidden Power / the very act of all 31 defaults is an optimisation even though there it's technically not purely optimal; this would improve it

p.s. Bide should be in the same category as all these moves :D unless I missed a part where it calculates off the user's Attack ever?
 

DragonWhale

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p.s. Bide should be in the same category as all these moves :D unless I missed a part where it calculates off the user's Attack ever?
I forgot Bide existed lol. There may be some more I missed.

Also Zarel if you decide to implement this can the Attack IV go back to 31 when the user changes their mind later on and adds a physical attack? This is a slight issue that is present with Trick Room and Gyro Ball, where when a user removes those moves the Speed IV remains as 0. If the IVs aren't dynamic someone can end up with a 0 Attack IV mixed attacker and it can be devastating :(

Slightly changing the topic from Attack IVs to Speed IVs, but there seems to be quite a few cases where a Trick Room user doesn't automatically want 0 Speed IVs, like the Hoopa The Dutch Plumberjack mentioned above. kamikaze17 also told me this is common in doubles, where teams coined 'SemiRoom' are designed to perform both in and out of Trick Room and many Trick Room users on those teams have 31 Speed IVs to fulfill this need. People who are going all in on Trick Room will manually set all of their Pokemon to 0 Speed anyway.
 

Zarel

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Also Zarel if you decide to implement this can the Attack IV go back to 31 when the user changes their mind later on and adds a physical attack? This is a slight issue that is present with Trick Room and Gyro Ball, where when a user removes those moves the Speed IV remains as 0. If the IVs aren't dynamic someone can end up with a 0 Attack IV mixed attacker and it can be devastating :(
The issue with 0 Spe specifically is that your team might have other TR setters, so I don't want to change that 0 Spe.

Changing Atk back, like removing a Hidden Power move, doesn't have that problem, so that won't be an issue either.
 

FlamingVictini

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My post was a joke. Starmie (or any other special spinner like tentacruel)'s attack IVs should definitely default to 0. Also sometimes in TR teams you still don't want to run min speed (like TR hoopa) so I think its overally just more convenient to remove the 0 speed ivs when Trick Room / Gyro Ball are deleted from the moveset. If a person wants to, they can reduce the speed ivs again.
 

Bughouse

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Just do it in BW and later, tbh, as that's where Foul Play exists. I'm not sure caring about things like confusion is relevant enough to set a standard. It'd be helpful in DPP OU and LC for example, where DPunch Machamp and Machop are very common, but no so much in DPP UU or Ubers.
 

Tokyo Tom

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i don't see why this needs to be implemented at all. this change should definitely not be implemented for BW/DPP (zeroing IVs compared to using 2 or 3 will lower the base power of hidden powers where applicable) or trick room (as i believe FV mentioned, many trick room users want to be creeping various speed benchmarks of defensive pokemon, which is more typically more rewarding than lazily going min speed as trick room's offensive application is primarily geared towards underspeeding the fast offensive pokemon in the tier rather than EVERY pokemon in the tier).

it's like, 29-ing HP IVs for the LO Pokemon that have HP ending in 1 (take Latios, for example). does it help? sure, but it's not exactly something that PS needs to be holding your hand to implement on every team.

all in all, this just seems like a very unnecessary and tedious change. if the team builder is conscious of minimizing IVs and such then let him/her be rewarded for it; otherwise, does anyone really care? it's not like making manual IV edits yourself is a particularly difficult process.

e:

[2016-04-18, 9:53:11 PM] TDK: choiced special mons should probably run 31 atk ivs in the long run because it would do more damage with struggle, although trick mons shouldn't which is
[2016-04-18, 9:53:14 PM] TDK: adding a ton of specifics
[2016-04-18, 9:53:53 PM] TDK: it's kinda mon specific
[2016-04-18, 9:54:12 PM] TDK: like keld just run max atk
[2016-04-18, 9:54:25 PM] TDK: you resist foul play and die to hurricane anyway

OUTL has spoken
 
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Setting ivs modulo 4 rather than modulo 2 is something that the teambuilder already does, iirc, if you put moves like Gyro Ball with hidden power.
This means that the base power for Hidden Power in past gens is not reduced, but for current gens the spe value could be set lower ("1" instead of "3") since hidden powers only care about ivs modulo 2 now. This currently isn't implemented, so your gen6 Gyro Ball + Hidden Power Mon will be set to 3spe ivs and you manually have to set it to 1iv.

Generally I think the teambuilder should make life as easy as possible. If, in the majority of cases, you'll want one option over the others, that option should be the default.

It also has to be transparent, of cause. After a short amount of getting used to, a user should be aware of when the teambuilder sets ivs. Currently, for me, this is the case. I know to set atk ivs back to 1 after I add a hidden power. If the process was not transparent to me, I might be annoyed when I'm in a battle and find my settings have changed.
 

Tokyo Tom

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Sorry for bumping the thread, but gamer boy wanted to propose a solution (something that I personally agree with, ftr, and he mentioned that he doesn't have access to the thread):
Recently (idk when it was implemented, but one day it wasn't there and the next it was) an IVs dropdown has been appearing when using Hidden Power that allows you to pick between a range of IV spreads to account for different reduced IVs for that Hidden Power. This has been useful as it allows me to quickly set the optimal spread with the optimal choice of IVs. The issue is... that it only appears when using Hidden Power. I think part of the thing with special attackers not running 0 IVs (which, for the record, they shouldn't necessarily do depending on what Pokémon/set you are talking about) simply comes down to the fact that a lot of players--especially newer ones--aren't aware that there can be benefits to minimising certain IVs. As such, I think that instead of this automisation thing that goes on for Gyro Ball and Trick Room, and instead of implementing an automisation for fully special attackers (which is just a bit of a neusance considering that it needs implementing differently for different generations and considering that it isn't even always worth doing), the best course of action here would be to make that dropdown visible every time you go onto the EV/IV/nature screen and having it display "all max", "min atk", "min spe" and "min atk+spe" as options even when not using Hidden Power (and have it update depending on choice of Hidden Power), as it gives newer players a way of making the connection that it is sometimes a good idea to lower IVs to zero without imposing it onto the player.
He also mentioned that alongside TR users often not having to run minimum speed, some Gyro Ball users such as Forretress would also forgo zeroing their Speed IVs in order to outspeed Pokemon such as Snorlax/Slowking in UU (as I don't play UU, perhaps someone could correct me if this is wrong), so it might be beneficial to just get rid of the automation there altogether and allow the user to decide with the drop down menu if necessary.

TLDR - perhaps find a way to tweak the IV drop down menu in a way that it would always appear even without the user selecting Hidden Power (giving the user the option to minimize attack, speed, or both without forcing anything), and update the IV spreads in the menu if necessary if a Hidden Power is chosen?
 
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People have brought up some valid edge cases where you don't want a decrease in Attack or Speed IVs -- I don't think they're good enough cases why there shouldn't be automation, though.

Which is a more common scenario: getting confused by Hurricane or having to use Struggle? Fighting Foul Play Mega Sableye or nabbing a Rapid Spin Kill? Wanting to do maximum damage with Gyro Ball or wanting to Speed creep certain, very slow Pokemon? They're all fairly specific cases, which is why this hasn't really been discussed until now. They're minor enough that I won't be too torn up no matter what the final verdict is.

But think of it this way: shouldn't be basing the system off of the more common scenarios, not the edge cases, even if they're both rare? The situations people have listed (Struggle damage, Trick Room Sped creep, etc.) fit more into the "competitive" mindset, where you tweak your EVs past the default 252/252 to match certain threats and maybe drop a few Speed IVs on Rotom-W to get the slow Volt Switch vs. opposing Rotom-W. Meanwhile, stuff like confusion and Foul Play fit into both "competitive" and "casual" play: even if you're the type of player that only uses the recommended spread, you're still going to have to deal with Hurricane and Foul Play. It's more universal.

if the team builder is conscious of minimizing IVs and such then let him/her be rewarded for it; otherwise, does anyone really care? it's not like making manual IV edits yourself is a particularly difficult process.
I think this is backwards: competitive players that are concerned about specifics like Struggle damage and TR Speed creep should be rewarded for making those adjustments, not the wider group of general players that want to defend against Foul Play and use Gyro Ball in an optimal manner in the majority of cases. As you said: the IV editing process is very simple, but the difference between general players and competitive ones is that most people aren't even aware of the downsides in keeping your IVs maxed. One might make the argument that we shouldn't cater to "ignorant players", but the teambuilder already takes care of conveniences like randomizing gender and adjusting happiness based on your moveset. It's not hard to tweak these things, but its still automated because its a greater convenience to the player, no matter if they're a 8 year old fresh off of beating the first gym in Omega Ruby or a seasoned SPL veteran.

I agree that the modular system proposed in the above post would be ideal, but if that proves too convoluted to implement or use, I'd generally push for a philosophy of basing automation on the most frequent scenarios.
 

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