What are the best PvP IVs for Greninja in Pokemon GO?

Pokemon GO trainers celebrated Froakie Community Day on August 13, 2023. It was one of the most anticipated Community Day events of the year. This is due to the fact that Greninja, Froakie’s Second Stage evolution, received two moves that made it extremely viable in the current metagame of the Pokemon GO Battle League.

Greninja and its alternate form, Ash Greninja, have been among the most popular Water-type creatures in the Pokemon franchise. However, the former has been living in the shadows when it comes to Pokemon GO (Ash Greninja is not a playable monster in the game).

With the addition of Water Shuriken, a Fast move, and Hydro Cannon, Greninja’s Legacy move, this creature has been making massive waves in the competitive scene.

In this article, we will walk you through the perfect PvP IVs for Greninja in the Great and Ultra Leagues of the Pokemon GO Battle League.

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Greninja in Pokemon GO: Best PvP IVs in the GO Battle League

If you are new to the PvP scene of this game, you might not be aware of IV spreads. IV stands for Individual Value, and there is one for each base stat of a creature in the game – Attack, Defense, and Stamina. While base stats are the same for all creatures of a given species, it is their IV spread that makes them unique. Every Pocket Monster can have a max IV of 15 for each of its base stats, 15/15/15.

Let us consider the base stats of Greninja in Pokemon GO:

• Attack: 223
• Defense: 152
• Stamina: 176

A Greninja with a perfect appraisal, a fancy term for IV spread, would have 15 added to each of these attributes. That would raise each of the stats by 15. So, the effective stats after considering the IVs would be:

• Attack + IV (attack): 238
• Defense + IV (defense): 167
• Stamina + IV (stamina): 191

Technically, this should be the best IVs for Greninja as more is better, right? That is not the case when it comes to PvP IVs in the Great and Ultra Leagues.

You see, in these two formats of the Battle League, there is Combat Power (CP) cap, 1500 for the Great League and 2500 for the Ultra League. If you want to perform well with a creature in either of these leagues, you will want to push its CP as close as you can to the permissible limit.

If you take a 15/15/15 Greninja, you cannot power it up to a desirable CP for either of the two leagues. It will either fall too short, or it will exceed the limit.

In such cases, a lower attack IV is often preferred as higher attack IVs roughly translate to inflated CPs. You do not want to compromise your bulk and health points (HP). So, a higher Defense and Stamina IV spread is always the way to go.

There is a lot of math involved in these calculations. To water it down, you just need to remember that lower attack IVs are best when it comes to PvP in the Great and Ultra Leagues.

(Note: Pokemon that max out their CP before hitting the limits of these leagues can have higher attack IVs.)

That being said, let us see what the best PvP IVs for Greninja are.

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Best PvP IVs for Greninja in the Great League

Greninja received a new move in this Community Day (Image via Niantic)

Rank 1 IVs: 3/15/12

CP: 1500 at level 21.

This is a highly bulk-centric IV spread. If you want a bit more power on your Greninja to deal with the pesky Azumarills, you can crank up the Attack IV to 6 and simmer down the Stamina to 7 while keeping the Defense IV unaltered.

While this will give Greninja enough HP to play with when it comes to dealing with attacks from Froslass, you can also overthrow the Azumarills with the boosted attack.

If you choose to go with the bulky Greninja, it will have the following stats:

• Attack: 139.5
• Defense: 101.6
• Stamina: 113

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Best PvP IVs for Greninja in the Ultra League

Rank 1 IVs: 0/13/14

CP: 2497 at level 41.

It will have the following stats:

• Attack: 179.6
• Defense: 129.4
• Stamina: 149

This will cover the Shadow Claw Altered Giratinas that are everywhere in the Ultra League of Pokemon GO. It is important that you have two shields to play with in this scenario.

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Understanding PvP IVs can be daunting at first, but it becomes easier as you get used to the concept. If you do not want to dive into the deep end of the pool with IV spreads, you can use our suggestions.

However, you are more than welcome to play around with IVs of your own if you want to have an experimental build for Pokemon GO PvP.