Update: Pokemon X and Y announced for 3DS! Coming October 2013 worldwide!

[lestatdark]

Player2 said:

lestatdark said:

Player2 said:

 

I discovered the box trick by myself so hitting lv100 wasn't a problem for me . It worked in Gen 2 too.

Training without vitamins was killer, they save ~35% of the battles.

They need to polish the EV system a bit, the cap should be in the stat points gained through EVs and not in the EVs itselves. For example this way you can't mess things by putting 255 EVs in one stat.

I think the box trick still worked in Gen III and IV, before they overhauled the system to allow for on-the-fly recalculations of stats at lvl 100 in Gen V. I found it on Crystal only, could have saved me a lot of grivances back in Red . 

And yeah, Vitamins were a life saver back in Gen II. I spent at least 30 hours or so per pokemon back in Red to get my team in shape. 

Well, the current stat points cap is based on the Base level of the stats in conjunction with the IV spread (Nature, Personality and Hidden Ability notwithstanding), so tampering with the EV system alone wouldn't make that much of a difference. And you have to bear in mind that you can undo any kind of "damage" of bad EV training with EV-reducing berries as well.

My personal choice would be to increase the 510 overall EV cap, or even better, make the EV spread a bit higher than the 4:1 EV to stat points ration (2.5:1 would be a very good balance, but I would be happy with 3:1, that would still give you a 85 point spread). With a higher EV to stat point ratio, you could spread out your EVs through more stats (at the current EV cap) and increase the differentiation between builds.

I was just trying to make life a bit easier, not to make gameplay changes . Instead of having a cap at 255 EVs in each stat (which doesn't make sense because 252 points are enough to max it) it shoud be better to put the cap at an +63 stat points in one stat (at level 100, before applying nature bonuses) and at a total of 127 stat points instead of 510 EVs. That way you'll always get a 127 stat point spread no matter what you do, and it isn't needed to keep in mind how much points have been allocated so far to avoid mistakes.

An alternate way (but less effective as it doesn't guarantee a 127 stat point spread) is to reduce the cap to 252 EVs.

But yeah, nothing is definitive with those EV reducing berries around. Luckily they don't reduce EVs to 100 if they were above 100 anymore.

The best way to encourage different spreads should be to increase the 510 EV cap (756 allow to max three stats). This would make mixed sweepers a bit more viable again, being able to max both attack stats and speed. The drawback of this is that defensive builds would be able to max HP and both defenses. Tweaking the EV to stat point ratio there's the possibility that putting EV points to get higher bonuses (252/252 Attack and Speed to get 85 stat points in each, for example) could be the most efficient way to allocate EVs in most cases again.

Well, with a higher ratio, more people would soup up sweepers as they currently do at first, but with the extra points, walls can be much more effective and some strong sweepers that have slight wall capacities (like Tyranitar or Salamence) would rule the Meta. Imagine a modest mence with the current extra 63 points on Sp.Att and Speed, but this time also with an extra 40 stat Def boost to outlast that first Dragon Claw from a Sweeper adamant mence. It would give you time to set up a DD and basically you'll plow the field. 

While increasing the EV cap to allow three stats, what you would see is an increase of Wallers. I shudder to think what a Relaxed Ferrothorn would do with the following spread: 252 HP, 252 Att, 88 Def and 168 SpD. You'd basically get a perma OHKO Gyro Ball to anything except Steel Resist.