EV Training 101 The Basics.

Alright Kids....here we go. Definitely the most beneficial thing in Pokemon training, the all powerful EV!!!!

First you need to know the basics. There can be a bit of math involved in the process, but I'll make it as simple as I can. We have a couple magic numbers to remember here....the numbers are 510 and 252. 510 is the maximum amount of EVs a Pokemon can have. 255 is the maximum that it can have in an individual stat.......but wait Josh......didn't you just say that 252 is the magic number and not 255?......... Why yes I did....but I said that I'd go over the basics and will explain why 252 is better that the maximum of 255.

So, let's just say that we are gonna Ev train our Reuniclus today. We want him to be bulky so we are going to do HP as one of our maxed EVs. We will go to Icarus city, go to a pond and surf. The only Pokemon we see here are Stunfisk (1HP EV). We fight 1 Stunfisk and we get 1 EV......what happens now?!? ABSOLUTELY NOTHING!!!! The way that EVs work is if you get 4 EVs (KO 4 Stunfisk in this scenario) then you will get 1 extra stat point. Let's put this on our Reuniclus......
We'll go with an odd set, just to make it interesting.

We have a total of 510 Evs to work with and we want to max out HP, so we will put 252 of the 510 into HP. You might be thinking that I am crazy and that you should put 255 into HP, but if you look at the math it makes sense my way. Like I said before, you get 1 stat point for every 4 EVs.....252 is the highest number that is divisible by 4. Giving you 63 extra stat points in that particular stat. If you were to go up to 255 the extra 3 EVs wouldn't be enough to give you the 1 extra point and would be wasted. With that said let's get back to Reuniclus.

510 total with 252 (divisible by 4 giving 63) in HP...that gives us 258 left to work with.
258 and let's throw 124 (divisible by 4 giving 31) into Def....that gives us 134 to work with.
134 and let's put 132 (divisible by 4 giving 33) into S.Def.....that gives us 2 to work with.
You will always have 2 EVs left over at the end. You can put them into whatever stat you want because it will make no difference to your final stats.

Okay, so we fight 252 Stunfisk and we have a maximum HP stat...now we need to get Def and S.Def taken care of. Stay tuned to find out where the EV hotspots are.