Pokemon GO became a global hit in no time, but not thanks to its detailed tutorial and crystal clear mechanics. Thankfully, hundreds of Pokemon trainers all over the world are already putting in a lot of work into figuring out the game’s tricky rules and regulations and they’ve just had a breakthrough. More specifically, a Pokemon GO testing group called the Silph Road recently came to the conclusion that regardless of how much CP a certain Pokemon has and regardless of how many times it’s been powered up, it has certain fixed stats that are semi-randomly determined and cannot be changed. These attributes are the base attack, base defense, and base energy and unfortunately, all three are hidden from the players.
While base attack and base defense are self-explanatory, base energy determines how quickly can a Pokemon fill its special attack meter. Despite being somewhat random, the ranges of these three stats are determined by species, so e.g. Onyx will always have a higher base defense than Golbat even if both are on the same level. The Silph Road concluded that rarity doesn’t necessarily correlate with combat viability as some incredibly rare Pokemon like Ditto always have horrible base stats and aren’t worth investing resources into. Furthermore, the strongest pocket monsters in the game are either incredibly rare or cannot reach their full potential without a massive time investment. These include Lapras, Snorlax, Exeggutor, Mewtwo, and Articuno. As suspected, the Silph Road testers concluded that Vaporeon is the best bet for your Candy as it’s the 13th strongest monster in the game despite requiring only 25 Candy to evolve from Eevee.
Apart from the above three, another hidden yet incredibly important stat featured in Pokemon GO is attack duration. As the game’s combat isn’t turn-based like in the older titles, you won’t necessarily be looking for a Pokemon who has the most powerful attack, but one can dish out the highest damage per second (DPS) As suspected, Vaporeon once again proved to be one of the fastest damage-dealers out there. Another important find is the fact that while quick attacks require only a single dodge, some longer special moves can only be avoided with multiple nicely timed dodges. More info regarding the game’s mechanics is expected to follow soon as the Silph Team is still conducting tests.