"Levels, IVs and why they matter."

#PokemonGO: Many players in Pokemon Go don't worry very much about IVs or about trying to get their teams to max level, because high IVs are rare and high levels are costly, and a lot of folks feel that the gains you get by min/maxing your Pokemon aren't worth the effort.​Pokemon from raids, hatches and research have a stat floor of 10/10/10, which means there are 216 IV combinations. Only 9 of those combinations total 96% IVs or higher or 1 in 21 raid catches. Only 4 combinations total 98% IVs or higher or 1 in 54. And only 1 is perfect.​Leveling to 30 from 20 costs only 66 candy, and it only costs 38 candy to get to 30 from weather-boosted level 25. To level all the way to 40 requires 248 candy, as well as 225,000 dust. Power-ups continue to get costlier past level 30, but each power-up past this point yields only half the stat boost, so some players consider these levels to provide diminishing returns on investment.​It is absolutely true that finding high IVs and reaching max level are far less important than using the right Pokemon with the right moveset. A 0/0/0 level 20 Thunder Shock/Wild Charge Electivire deals more than double the damage to a water-type than you'll get from a level 40 15/15/15 Iron Tail/Heavy Slam Aggron. But a max-level, high IV Raikou is still significantly better than an underleveled, random one.​Pokemon Go, like all stat based games, is about accruing slight mathematical advantages that aggregate into significant mathematical advantages. Inferior Pokemon -- those who aren't the strongest dealers of their type of damage, those who aren't at the highest level, and those without high IVs, are serviceable in many contexts. But there are some contexts where performance matters.​If you are free to play or live somewhere where it is difficult to do legendary raids, getting high IV legendaries and earning enough candy to level legendary teams to 40 simply isn't viable. However, if you're a committed raider you should be focusing on the getting the best specimens of the best Pokemon up to the maximum level.​Levels are significant​It is important to reiterate that nothing makes as big a difference as using the right Pokemon. If you have a team comprised of the best counters to the boss you're fighting at level 30, and they have optimized movesets, you will contribute more to beating the boss than a solid 80 percent of players I see in raids. But if your team is at level 40, you will be considerably stronger.​There's a little variance from Pokemon to Pokemon and from raid to raid due to quick-move breakpoints, but, in general, a single player using level 40 Pokemon will clear a raid about 10 percent faster than a player using the same Pokemon at level 30.​The best legendary Pokemon are better than their non-legendary counterparts mostly because they have insane stats compared to comparable non-legendary Pokemon. Their stats are less insane at level 30 than at 40, and 10 percent is a pretty significant spread in this game. If your legends are underleveled, you lose out on a lot of the advantage of fielding legendary attackers.​For example, level 30 Rayquaza is outperformed by level 40 Dragonite and Salamence. Level 30 Kyogre is outperformed by level 40 Gyarados and level 40 Hydro Cannon Feraligatr. Level 30 Raikou trails level 40 Electivire considerably, and is neck and neck with level 40 Roserade and Luxray.​Levels also matter if you're concerned about how many balls you get to catch the boss. If five players are battling a Giratina-O raid, and four of them are using teams of level 30 Rayquaza while one is using a team of level 40 Rayquaza, then the fight will be over in 127 seconds. The level 30 Rays deal about 23 DPS, while the level 40s deal 26. The four players using level 30 Rays will each deal about 2920 damage, while the player using level 40s deals 3340 damage, meaning he is the only one of the five players who gets three bonus balls for his damage contribution.​In the context of larger groups, fifteen percent of a legendary raid boss's health pool is 2250 damage. Level 40 Ray deals this much to Giratina-O in 86 seconds, compared to 97 seconds for level 30 Ray. Level 40 Kyogre earns a second ball against Groudon at 130 seconds, compared to 145 seconds for level 30 Kyogre. There are a lot of contexts where you're in a raid with 7-12 players, and having higher-leveled Pokemon will earn you an extra ball.​Extra damage also matters for raid completion when you're trying to short-man a raid, or when the other players you're raiding with are using suboptimal lineups. The raid needs to do 50 DPS to win, and if you can deal 17 DPS instead of 15, that's 2 DPS you don't have to rely on other players to provide. I encounter players who do less than 10 DPS all the time, and it's nice to be able to carry a 5-player raid without needing the other players to perform at a high level.​One of the best arguments against leveling your Pokemon all the way up is that it's better to have 6 level 30 Kyogres than 1 level 40 Kyogre, and then five inferior counters, and the fact that 6 level 40 kyogres is better than 6 level 30 kyogres is immaterial because almost nobody has the resources to power up 6 level 40 kyogres. This is historically true. However, now that dodging works in raids, your best counters can have significantly more uptime. Prior to this change, a Kyogre would often be killed by a solar beam Groudon before it even used Hydro Pump. Now, you can get two and sometimes three pumps off, and the uptime of a Kyogre is going to be 40-50 seconds. So having 2 level 40 Kyogres and a couple of level 40 Gyarados or Feraligatr is probably going to result in higher DPS over the entirety of even a longer fight now than you'd get from 6 level 30 Kyogres.​IVs matter less​IVs add a flat number, up to 15, onto a Pokemon's base Attack, Defense and Stamina stats. Since raid catches have a floor at 10, the differences are generally pretty trivial. Occasionally, an extra point in attack will allow a Pokemon to reach a breakpoint where its quick attacks deal one more damage. But these are rare, and this game rounds to the nearest whole number, so in most cases, quick attacks from a 10 ATK IV will do the same amount of damage as quick attacks from a Pokemon with a 15 ATK IV.​The real world impact of IVs is that having one point higher in attack will probably cause your charge moves to deal one more damage, one point in defense will probably cause your Pokemon to take one less damage from a charge move you don't dodge, and one point in Stamina will usually, but not always, give you one more hit point. In most cases, The difference in a fight as a result of IVs will be imperceptible. If all your Pokemon have 15 ATK IVs and all of somebody else's have 12, you'll do about 30 damage more over the course of a fight where you use ten charge moves. That's about 1% more damage.​However, Pokemon with high IVs are strictly better than the same Pokemon with lower IVs. The advantage may be slight, but it exists, and there may be some edge cases where it matters. If you're going to invest dozens' of raids worth of candy and several hours' grinding worth of dust into a Pokemon, it might as well be a good one. Breakpoints are different for each fight, because they're dependent on the target's defense stat, and they also change depending on whether you're raiding with a friend and the weather. So there are different scenarios where you might hit one, and hitting a quick move breakpoint will materially impact your performance.​Focus on the most relevant Pokemon​There are actually only a handful of legendaries that you really need to worry about powering up. If you are resource limited, you will want to allocate your rare candy to these guys, and use your premium raid passes to do more of them when they are available. They are:Rayquaza: The best dragon-type attacker forever and a top counter for many dragon-type raids, including Latios, Latias, Giratina, and upcoming Reshiram and Zekrom. You will get a lot of use out of Rayquaza. The only knock against him is that Community Day Salamence is almost as good. Best counter for his raid is Mamoswine, which you should not need to use rare candy to power up.​Kyogre: The best water type forever. The only thing that will beat it is if a future Kyogre gets the signature move Origin Pulse or if Primal Kyogre is released as a separate, distinct Pokemon. This is a top counter for anything Fire, Rock or Ground, particularly Groudon.​Groudon: The best ground type forever unless a Groudon with the signature move Precipice Blades comes out, or if a Primal Groudon is released as a separate, distinct Pokemon. Ground is good against Fire, Electric, Steel, Poison and Rock, and Groudon is a top counter for Raikou, Dialga, and probably electric movesets for Zekrom.​Giratina-Origin: This bulky ghost dragon is a top counter for psychic types like Lugia, Mewtwo, Deoxys and the lake trio.​Raikou: Electric is good against Flying and Water, so Raikou is a top counter for Kyogre, Articuno and Lugia. However, it is roughly matched by non-legendary Electivire, and will likely be inferior to Zekrom.​If you have a couple of each of these guys at 40, you will be one of the players everyone else in your community relies on in raid battles. via /r/TheSilphRoad http://bit.ly/2IYksjL