EV Training vs. Shiny Pokémon

[jagjaguwar]

Alright you lil stud-muffins and stud-muffettes,

Let's say you're very far into EV training a Pokémon and you encounter the wrong Pokémon to increase your chosen stat.

PLOT TWIST: This wrong Pokémon is a rather appealing shiny.

 

[COOLTRAINER♂]

I capture it and deal with junk points that probably won't matter because you have 6 points spare after maxing out two stats, and most NFE Pokemon and single-stage lines don't give out 3 EVs.

 

[jagjaguwar]

I capture it and deal with junk points that probably won't matter because you have 6 points spare after maxing out two stats, and most NFE Pokemon and single-stage lines don't give out 3 EVs.

I was thinking more on the lines of EV training the efficient way; i.e., with Pokérus, a power item and horde battles so you get a lot of EVs in one battle. That way you really would have to decide between ruining your EV progress or missing out on a shiny Pokémon. I guess I should have said this in the OP. :P

 

[Hiatus]

I would capture, for sure. Compared to EV-training, encountering shinies is not an easy feat.

 

[Fannie]

Catch the shiny. Even if stat reducing items didn't exist I'd rather start training from scratch again than miss out on a shiny. I'm crap at finding them lol.

 

[OuterTsuchinoko]

I'd catch the shiny without hesitation. I'd just use an EV resetting berry or item afterwards. Also if it's a game prior to Gen 6 then it doesn't even matter because you wouldn't get the EVs anyway since that's a feature of the new games.

 

[Imperator161]

I would catch the shiny, then reset the EVs on the relevant Pokemon. The same would go for defeating other Pokemon in a double battle in older games where you don't gain experience and EVs from catching Pokemon, but you have to be down to a single Pokemon on the field in order to catch it. I've messed up EV spreads before, for other reasons (actually, I have one I have to reset sitting around in my PC at the moment), so it's not the end of the world. If there was no way to reset EVs, it would be more of an issue, but it would probably still make sense to catch the shiny, unless the Pokemon I was training was a perfect shiny that I could never replace.

I do kind of wish catching Pokemon didn't give you EVs though. It can be nice to get the experience at times, but it can cause a lot more trouble than it's worth. I can't think of a situation where catching a Pokemon and missing out on the EVs would cause a problem long-term, but I can think of plenty where gaining EVs from a catch would cause problems.