Before third-party IV calculators, Appraisal was the only way to check a Pokémon’s IVs — and it’s still built into the game for anyone who doesn’t want to screenshot every catch into an external tool. Here’s how to read what your team leader is actually telling you.
How to Appraise a Pokémon
Open any Pokémon’s profile, tap the three-dot menu, and select Appraise. Your team leader (Candela, Blanche, or Spark) will give two separate pieces of information: an overall comment about the Pokémon’s total IV spread, and a comment about which individual stat — Attack, Defense, or HP — is its highest.
What the Overall Comment Tells You
The overall comment sorts a Pokémon’s combined IVs into a small number of tiers, from “simply amazes me” territory at the very top (90–100% IV) down through progressively more lukewarm phrasing for lower rolls. It won’t give you an exact percentage — just a general tier — which is enough to tell you whether a Pokémon is worth investing in without needing precise numbers.
What the Individual Stat Comment Tells You
The second comment tells you which of the three stats (Attack, Defense, or HP) is highest, and roughly how high it is, using similar tiered language. If two or three stats are tied for highest, your leader will mention that too. This is the part that actually matters for PvP: a Pokémon with a high Attack IV isn’t ideal for a CP-capped Great League build, while one with balanced or Defense/HP-leaning IVs usually is — our IVs Explained guide covers why overall IV percentage can be misleading for PvP specifically.
Appraisal vs a Calculator
Appraisal is fast and doesn’t require leaving the app, but it only gives you a range, not an exact number — which matters if you’re trying to decide between two similarly-rolled Pokémon of the same species. A calculator (in-game or third-party, using CP, HP, and Stardust cost at your current level) gives an exact IV spread instead of a tier. For everyday catching, Appraisal is enough to know what to keep or transfer; for min-maxing a specific raid attacker or PvP pick, an exact calculator reading is worth the extra step.
The Star Meter Next to Appraisal
Alongside the scripted comments, the Pokémon’s info screen also shows a simplified star meter (0 to 4 stars) that acts as a quicker visual shorthand for the same overall IV tier described in the dialogue. It’s the same data as the storage search bar’s 0* through 4* filters described in our search terms guide — so if you’ve ever filtered your storage by star rating, you’ve already been using this system without needing to tap Appraise at all.
Common Misreadings
A few things trip up newer players reading their own appraisal:
- “Highest stat” is relative to that Pokémon, not a league table. Being told Attack is a Pokémon’s best stat just means Attack is proportionally its highest of the three — it says nothing about how that Pokémon compares to a different species.
- Team leader doesn’t change the underlying data. Candela, Blanche, and Spark each have their own flavor text and personality, but the actual IV tier and highest-stat information conveyed is identical no matter which leader appraises the same Pokémon.
- Re-appraising doesn’t refresh anything. A Pokémon’s IVs are fixed at the moment of catch or hatch — appraising it again just re-displays the same information, it never changes the roll.
