Nature vs. Nuture?

Pokemon Heart Gold and Soul Silver

So!~ After playing for many years, I have always believed that pokemon should be caught, and trained, without the use of special attack items, TMs, etc. I mean, EXCESSIVE use. I guess you could say, the non-aggressive approach to playing pokemon (or - the 'MEH' approach).

I was shocked to recently discover (or rather, it became relevant) that the NATURE of the pokemon made some difference to the pokemon. And that some trainers choose to catch one particular pokemon (or, reset and discover) again and again and again in order to find a pokemon with suitable nature. WHAT? I hear you say. Yes, that is what I said too. Isn't the pokemon meant to be yours forever and ever? Just like in the TV show? Can you imagine Ash doing that for every single episode?

Anyway, back to what I was saying - it turns out that in some instances (e.g. EEVEE) it does help to know what you are getting O_o? So let me walk you through it.



Say for instance, I wanted an espeon, I would have to first look up espeon (use a website like http://pokemon.marriland.com) to see what types of moves it would learn - obviously, psychic/psybeam would be great for this pokemon. Then you look at their overall stats at level 100.
Then, take a look at this summary article on Natures at http://Serebii.net. Now, for espeon we would like to raise the sp. attack for psychic moves. SO, we look for a nature that gives us an increase of sp. atk. Then, we choose which stat we don't mind lowering. For espeon, we would choose maybe normal atk since it would be using sp. atk moves. Or, you might choose to sacrifice speed. That gives us Modest Nature. So, we would want an Eevee with a modest nature.

Gone are the days of thinking, 'well, maybe my pokemon is just special and it's defence is not that great'. You can now FIGURE OUT what is what.

Is this a form of cheating? I really don't know anymore. Surely, they have added this into the game to allow us some form of control over pokemon stats.

But in general, if you don't care overly much, here are the natures to avoid which give you NO stat boosts:

***Hardy***Docile***Serious***Bashful***Quirky***

These natures are absolutely USELESS to you. I mean, if you are going to take advantage of this new system, but don't care THAT much, you can at least utilise this information :)