Pokemon have three stats, which aren't directly exposed on the UI: Stamina, Attack, and Defense. (CP is a weighted value derived from these stats that tries to give a straightforward way to compare two Pokemon to see which is better without exposing the stats directly to the player.) Each Pokemon, when it's generated, is assigned a random value from 0 to 15 for each of these stats. These values are called IVs and they're a bonus on top of the stats the Pokemon would have from its species and level.

Let's take Articuno as an example. It has a base Attack stat of 192. If it had 15 Attack IV (the appraiser would claim that its attack is the highest possible) then it would be treated as 207, but a 0 Attack IV would still be 192. To determine the Pokemon's actual stat, this base value is then multiplied by a fraction based on its level. At level 20 (that is, if your trainer level is 20 and the Articuno's power up bar is maxed out) that multiplier is approximately 0.6. So the 0 IV Articuno would have an actual Attack stat of 115, while the 15 IV one would have an actual Attack stat of 124. The 15 IV Articuno would therefore be dealing ~8% more damage with every attack than the 0 IV one. This isn't an overwhelming advantage, but it's not insignificant either.

However, because of the way the damage formula works and where the rounding takes place, that extra little bump could end up making a HUGE difference in actual damage output: If a fast attack would deal 1.95 damage, it would get rounded down to 1, but if it would deal 2.05 damage, it would get rounded down to 2. That tiny little bump is technically only a 5% increase before rounding, but AFTER rounding that tiny little bump means you're dealing TWICE AS MUCH damage with your fast attack. This is most significant for high-speed low-power fast attacks like Fury Cutter, and when you've only got 80 HP, dealing 2 HP per fast attack instead of 1 HP means you need 40 fewer attacks to win the flight.

On the flip side, consider a Pokemon like Wailord, which actually has surprisingly low defense because it relies on its HP for survivability. A level 20 0 IV Wailord has 204 HP and 52 Defense, while a level 20 45 IV Wailord has 213 HP and 61 Defense. This means that the tougher Wailord can survive 22% more damage than the weaker one -- that's like being able to just ignore one out of every 5-6 incoming hits!

I'm not getting an app to do IVs. Like I only do raids I can do alone and if someone is gonna take a gym, IVs will not make a difference.

So, for me, IVs do not matter lol

I'm not understanding how stats are determined in Go when they're not shown.

Once I'm done having to wrack up raid battles for this mission, I'll only bother with the pokemon I want.
I've only ever entered one raid that wasn't empty (the Alolan Raichu) and my strongest pokemon are terrible battlers. '-_-. I'm fortunate to even win a gym battle.

Oh interesting. I've never had an appraisal done before.

"Top tier" for overall stats in this case is that the total of the three IVs is between 37 and 45. "Top tier" for a single stat is 15, second tier is 13-14. So with these bits of information you can make a fairly educated guess as to what your Pokemon's IVs are within a couple points.

An app will let you pinpoint exactly what they are by reverse-computing based on HP and CP, the stats you CAN see. That said, I don't actually care about it at THAT level of detail. I'll take the thing that I CAN see and just go with the best I can get my hands on, but I'm not going to go for perfect 45s on everything.

EDIT: That said, I have a perfect 45 Gulpin. I look forward to getting enough candy to evolve it and see how it does.

Question: Can stats increase and thus appraisals change when you either evolve or power up a Pokemon?

IVs don't change for any reason after the Pokemon is generated, not by leveling up or by evolving. Even in the main series games where you have things like Super Training that increase a Pokemon's stats, you can't influence IVs.

IVs can change if they're traded, I have heard....but idk

This is all too much for me at the moment, but I suppose it wouldn't hurt to actually lean.

Tried to get an espeon recently and failed. Walked and got my two candies, but apparently the pokemon needs to be your active buddy when you evolve it and I swapped out just before evolving. I have enough to evolve again so I'll give it another shot. At least I did get an improved flareon.

I always find myself having a bit of debate when it comes to which buddy to walk with. I pretty much need to walk for my fire pokemon candy as they're so rare for me. I'm walking with my cindaquill to get what I need to evolve him one stage. But, I also want to start that eevee, and I've got it in my head now that I want to take Mighty for a walk to get him to 100km. He's at 80 right now. I could use a better arcanine than Howitzer but he and Mighty are what I've got.

I'm starting to get silly with names. I finally evolved a golem and called it "Amadea" (a girl, or it would be "Amadeus"). My two snow block sandshrews from Kentucky are now Igshrew and Sandloo. I've mostly laid off the puns so far.

2 raids into my 10 raid goal. I think I mangled 1 raid catch and that was a quilava. Otherwise, I've caught my magikarp, crocanaw, and ...something I can't remember. Most of the time I simply can't beat higher powered raids (tried for a porygon with no success) so I just join and ditch for my point.

I have two 'perfect' pokemon now, my jumpluff and now my slowbro. (Luff and Bro. How original, I know.) Neither are very high in the cp end though, but I find I stick most of the time with my main crew anyway. I've taken to annotating names with little characters that designate certain stats because I got tired of appraising all the time to be sure what something was.

Well, that's shitty.

You can control Eeveelutions via nicknaming them after their respective trainers in the anime, the Eevee brothers of Kanto and the Eevee sisters of Johto.
ex. Pyro = Flareon
Rainer = Vaporeon.

Sakura will result in Espeon.
I've done this successfully with Espeon and Umbreon. Though my Espeon's appraisal was poor, looks like I need to evolve another but female Eevee are so scarce---have been for me at least and I prefer Espeon female.

This is true, but that's because trading effectively generates a new Pokemon on the receiver's end instead of actually transferring the Pokemon. However, there are some constraints applied to the newly-generated Pokemon: The moveset is forced to be the same, and the newly-generated IVs have a minimum value based on your friendship level with your trade partner. (This means that trading a Pokemon with crappy IVs to someone you're best friends with is GUARANTEED to result in a much better outcome.)

Another interesting tidbit I just picked up is that another feature is enabled when you trade with a friend: The Pokemon has a chance to be "Lucky" which halves its powerup costs!

Quite the contrary, it means that wild Pokemon have variability and individuality instead of every Pokemon growing up exactly the same. IVs are like genetics, and in fact in games with breeding the parents' IVs have some influence on the offspring's, but the child will always have some unique traits instead of copying the parents directly.

I mean, yes, it's inconvenient that some Pokemon will always be a little bit weaker than others no matter how well you train them. But in terms of game design it's a very good decision.

This is basically what I meant, that getting a strong Pokemon with a good move set means capturing the species multiple times rather than training one.
Kinda frustrating.

Frustrating, sure, but also an explicit part of the game design, meant to reward players who put more effort into the game.

Also that's what TMs are for. Easier to change the moves of a Pokemon with good IVs.

Yeah I wish TMs weren't so ridiculously rare.

I'm stoked. I just beat a raid at my park, a whalmer so nothing special (and it wasn't even stronger than the one I already had) but I now qualify if Mewtwo ever showed up there because my findings claim EX raids mos often appear at park gyms.

It's been a while since I've dog walked that route but it's a good route because I get 6 stops including two gyms and it's so much nicer just going with the friendly one of my two dogs.

UPDATE:
This is a semi-lucky day.
The good news: I got two raids into today, just 3 more until I've got that task out of the way.
Bad News: Second one was an Alolan Marawak again and again I could barely dent the damn thing. I'll never be able to beat one alone but no one else is ever around when raids show up around here!

Are the Alolan Marawak the one that looks like a voodoo fire eater? Those are cool!

I know about the eevee name changes. Have done most of those already. Need to do it the legit way, now.

Eevee: Put as buddy, walk at least 10km in a row, get two candy, keep as buddy entire time, evolve during day for espeon, night for umbreon. Do not remove from buddy during entire process.

Yeah, they're totally bitchin'!

Alright then, good luck with that.

Woot!
Finished my ten raids!

I'm jonesing to get this damn magikarp evolved and switch my buddy. I've had this thing as my buddy for at least two months and I'm still just under 300 candies! Ugh!

I had so many server problems during the event. I got one moltres. I could have had many more chances if the servers would have been fine.

I think I'm at 3/10 for raids now. Still need 2 new friends.

Also, what the heck is a "lucky" pokemon? How do you know?

You can only get lucky pokemon through trading. IT will say under its name that it is lucky and the background for the pokemon will have shiny gold things I think behind it.

I believe what Quiet meant and what I am unsure of as well, is what does it mean for a Pokemon to be lucky?

Oh, half price on the stardust requirements for powering it up.

Sweet.

I have one lucky pokemon. He is a zigzagoon named Liglagoon

My wife and I traded Hariyamas and both of us got way better stats in the reroll ("wonder"-tier) and they're both Lucky.

I need to make one more friend for Celebi. Any volunteers?

I'm pissed off at Niantic again. They released a clarification: The Niantic Kids thing actually doesn't provide any meaningful in-game parental controls after all. >_< Under-13 kids are still unable to see sponsored stops/gyms, still can't add friends, still can't trade, still can't send or receive gifts (but CAN have gifts cluttering up their inventory), and by extension still can't catch Celebi.

On Celebi if you contact them they should override the ones requiring friends.

Or they could start a new account .-.

Both questions actually. Alas, I have no one to trade with right now as all my friends are in the United States! I don't think my niece plays anymore but I could see about my cousin's kid (who is not under 13). Maybe my niece still has it on her phone...but I kinda doubt that.

Had anybody tried Pokemon Glossary? Is the information in it worth installing this app? I read about it here and some of my friends say it's rather convenient. Sometimes I have some difficulties with understanding different words in the game, maybe it's an opportunity to improve my knowledge.

So I was walking home from pokemon go....and a guy asked if I wanted sex. Wtf?

Also, on a side note, I cannot carry a defense keychain in my state, but can have a 4 inch or less knife, a gun (if I got the right permits and all), pepper spray, and a stun gun....but god forbid if I just want a self defense keychain.

For the record, my son is level 25...

What's a defense keychain?

I never said he would want to start over, I'm just saying he could .-.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kubotan

There are many different forms but this shows the basic type in the picture which is what I would want and from what I understand it is banned in my state.

If it doesn't have a spike or spikes I can't imagine how it could possibly be illegal. A law that would prohibit a weighed rod attached to a keychain would also prohibit a LOT of other stuff that wouldn't even make sense to ban. What state do you live in, if you don't mind me asking? I don't mind doing a bit of research for you.

I mean, in all seriousness, carry a Maglite if you're worried about it. It's a flashlight, which couldn't possibly be banned and is a perfectly legitimate thing to want to carry in a dark, threatening area, and they're designed to be useful as a defensive tool.

Tennessee. I mean, I might be misunderstanding something.....but if I'm not wtf lol

Edit: From what I understnad, they're banned because they are weapons (but you can still get a stun gun)

Is that one of those blinding lights? Or?

A Maglite is a heavy and durable flashlight that you can wack someone over the head with, and not break (the flashlight). It's long as well, like a police baton with a light.

I can see things being unlawful because they are intended to be used as a weapon, but functional things, like the flashlight, can be used instead because it's not something that shows intent to harm someone. In my self defence class people suggest using a key as a weapon if need be, by standing it up between two fingers. I usually just make myself look confident and take note of the best means of escape if thing start to seem off.

...On the topic of weird weapon laws, apparently the knife I carry around in my backpack is, uh, illegal.

...WHOOPS.

I don't know if I'd call them weird. And I'm not sure I should really bather more about it in the pokemon go thread, ;). Save to say that it seems more a matter of intent than physical characteristics.

I was showing my sister the pokemon stops while we were waiting for a ferry. She was amused when I could comment about an object in the area before we actually came upon it. Often I'll go and look for the thing in the stop, especially if it's something I didn't know was there. I have seen stops for missing things, though. We passed a "'world famous" giant gnome the other day. After we started at the thing a moment, I announced "I bet that's a poke-stop!" Yes, it was.

Tennessee's law prohibits things that are designed to protect the knuckles when striking, like brass knuckles. Some security keychains are made around this design (the most popular is a "cat" keychain where you put your fingers through the eye holes and the ears are spikes) and would be illegal under that ordinance, but the Kubotan (especially non-spiked varieties) ought to be okay.

That said, one thing should be noted when it comes to any form of self-defense carry item: The entire point of having such a tool is not to actually defend yourself, because in general they rather suck at it. (The cat keychains are especially bad.) The point is that it gives you a way to make attackers think that you're not going to be an easy fight. They're still going to overpower you if it comes down to an actual fight, but unless they're hopped up on drugs or something the risk of getting hurt during the struggle is a pretty big deterrent. Your goal should be to show that you mean business and you won't take an assault passively, and then GTFO.