What are the best natures for Vaporeon, Jolteon, and Flareon in Let’s Go Pikachu and Eevee? How do people decide what is the best nature for any Pokémon in general? I usually only trust this site. But I found that other sites recommend different natures for example Vaporeon’s best nature on, RankedBoost.com, is Mild. Is that what you would recommend? I was just wondering how can people decide what nature is best for certain Pokémon? Anyone who has the answer I would like to say thank you ahead of time! Sorry if this is a weird question or whatever!
Merged this into the existing Help Thread.
To understand what nature is best for a Pokemon requires you to understand the role they play and their stat spreads. In general you pick a nature to raise a stat that helps them in their role, while lowering a stat they don't rely use or that is already low. Offensively, if a Pokemon wants to sweep then they opt for a speed nature. However, if a Pokemon's speed is below a certain level (base 80 is often considered one of the benchmarks), it often becomes better for that Pokemon to focus on a nature that raises offenses. If they only use physical or special attacks exclusively, then you generally opt for a nature that raises one and lowers the other (Adamant and Modest, respectively). However if they use both of their offenses, you can opt to lower the weaker defensive stat instead. In other cases, you can opt for a speed reducing nature if that Pokemon is already slow. Honestly, there's no one size fits all for natures, so what it comes down to is "it depends".
Jolteon typically opts for Timid nature, because it maximizes its blisteringly fast speed, while lowering its attack stat, which it doesn't use. In general you'll often opt for a nature that lowers one of the two attacking stats if that Pokemon only attacks from one side of the physical/special spectrum, but exceptions do exist. Flareon typically opts for Adamant for more power; its speed is low enough that it's not really outspeeding anything important the extra speed from a speed nature, and since it's generally not using its special attacks then it doesn't mind the special attack drop from Adamant. Vaporeon is where it gets tricky. You could opt for Modest if you want to use it offensively, since it's not particularly fast where it would benefit from a speed nature, and doesn't use its attack stat, so it appreciates the extra special attack from Modest. But for a more defensive spin, you could use Calm or Bold. Bold might seem counter-intuitive, given Vaporeon's defense is its lowest stat. But thanks to its absurdly high HP stat, it can opt for boost its defense with Bold to be bulky on both the physical and special spectrums. Alternatively, it can go for Calm to make its already good special defense even better.
TL;DR -Nature really depends, but it definitely ain't mild for Vaporeon,