IV Flavor Guide

The IV Flavor Guide is the teal-bordered zone at the top of the IV Recommendations section on every dive page. It groups the IV space into a short list of named play-style archetypes - a “flavor” - each one paired with the specific matchups that flavor buys you and the specific matchups it costs.

It’s the fastest section to read on the whole page, and it’s the right place to start if you’re deciding which IV spread to chase.

The teal IV Flavor Guide zone on a dive page, showing
five flavors in a summary table and the expanded
'General Good' flavor with its threshold ladder below. — The IV Flavor Guide zone on the Tinkaton UL dive. The summary table lists the five flavors the simulation derived, each with how many IVs qualify and how many catches it takes to land one. Below the table, each flavor expands (the "General Good" one is open here) with its stat signature, a safe-baseline description, and the def/HP threshold ladder naming the opponent-by-opponent matchups each step of the cut buys you.

What a flavor is

A flavor is a named cluster of IV spreads with a shared stat signature and a shared strategic intent. The screenshot above shows the Tinkaton UL dive’s five flavors: General Good is a broad “safe baseline” cut covering 82.4% of the IV space; Dusknoir Slayer, Ninetales Slayer, and Gyarados Slayer each give up bulk to clear a specific damage breakpoint against their namesake opponent; Tinkaton Mirror Atk is the mirror-matchup attack cut (12% of the space clears it).

A flavor is not an arbitrary PvPoke preset. It’s derived by:

Taking the mechanical tier cutoffs from the simulation sweep (every Atk/Def/HP threshold that changes the matchup list).
Mapping each cutoff’s shape - does it bound Atk, Def, HP, or a combination - onto a SwagTips-style name family. Pure-Def cuts become Fortified {Opp} or Premium Bulk. Pure-Atk cuts tied to a specific opponent become {Opp} Slayer. Broad cuts with no single anchor become General Good.
Attaching the per-flavor trade-off list by partitioning the IV space at the flavor’s cut and comparing the flavor cohort’s win rate against the General Good flavor’s win rate across every opponent in the dive’s pool.

The code that does this is refine_flavor_names in scripts/deep_dive_narrative.py. The name is the editorial label; the cluster is the mechanical output.

The six name families

Every flavor you see on a dive comes out of one of six families. The family is chosen from the shape of the cut (Atk, Def, HP, or a combination) plus whether the cut is tied to a specific opponent:

General Good - a broad cut with Atk, Def, and HP floors, no single opponent anchor. This is the “recommended” flavor on most dives; clearing it gets you the bulk of the species’ meta coverage without chasing anything specific.
Premium Bulk - a Def + HP cut with no Atk floor. The defensive counterpart to General Good: the cut narrows to bulkier IV spreads, but isn’t tied to a named opponent.
Attack Weight - a pure Atk cut with no Def or HP floor. Narrows to the high-Atk tail of the IV space; usually surfaces on species whose role is “open with a charged move, win by damage race.”
High Bulk - a pure Def cut, no Atk or HP floor. Rarer; usually a species-specific pattern where the HP dimension doesn’t carry a bulkpoint.
{Opponent} Slayer - a cut (Atk, or Atk + HP) tied to a specific opponent’s damage breakpoint. Lapras Slayer, Tinkaton Slayer, etc. The cutoff is the attack threshold at which one of the focal’s moves steps up a damage tier against that opponent, plus any HP requirement from the neighboring matchup boundary.
Fortified {Opponent} - a cut (Def, or Def + HP) tied to a specific opponent’s bulkpoint. Fortified Greedent, Fortified Clodsire, etc. The cutoff is the defense threshold at which one of the opponent’s moves steps down a damage tier against the focal.

A seventh family, TOML-defined, covers cases where a human has given the flavor a specific name in thresholds/<species>.toml (e.g. “GL-General Good”, “Slight Atk Weight”). The renderer passes those through unchanged. An eighth, {Species} Mirror Atk / Mirror Bulk, is synthesized automatically when the mirror matchup needs its own cut; like TOML names, it passes through unchanged.

How to read the zone

Top of the zone: a one-sentence species-level summary (“In Great League, Oinkologne (Female) has N flavors: A, B, C”) plus an overview table with one row per flavor:

Flavor	IVs	%	Catches needed
General Good [Recommended]	4081	99.6%	almost any will do
Fortified Diggersby	2	0.0%	very rare
Wigglytuff Slayer	3	0.1%	very rare
Grumpig Slayer	3	0.1%	very rare
Oinkologne (Female) Mirror Atk	3842	93.8%	almost any will do

(Numbers above are a snapshot of the reference Oinkologne (Female) Great League dive; the actual table on your dive shows its own live values.)

The IVs column is the count of IV spreads out of 4096 that meet this flavor’s stat cuts. The % column is that count expressed as a fraction of the IV space - the same number as the IVs column, just in percent form for quick scanning. In the example table above, General Good covers ~99.6% of the IV space (almost any wild catch clears its cutoffs), while Fortified Diggersby and the two Slayer cuts each cover a handful of spreads (almost every catch misses them). Use % for “how often does this flavor come up at random”; use Catches needed (described next) to turn the same information into a tangible catch count.

The Catches needed column is the expected number of catches to hit at least one qualifying IV spread, with 50-75% probability. The column assumes an IV floor of 0/0/0 unless stated otherwise; that matches plain wild spawns. Weather-boosted, raid, hatched, traded, research-reward, and Shadow-rescue catches use higher IV floors and need correspondingly fewer catches - see the Pokemon Go Wiki’s IV floor reference for the per-source floor table.

Below the table, each flavor has its own collapsible card:

Header: flavor name + stat signature (e.g. 93.67 Def, 148 HP). The stat signature is the minimum each constrained axis has to clear.
Body - gains paragraph: a short sentence naming the opponents and shield scenarios this flavor wins relative to General Good.
Body - losses paragraph (only shown for non-General flavors): the matchups the flavor gives up relative to General Good. This is the tradeoff.
Body - threshold ladder (on General Good): a bulleted list of the exact Def / Atk / HP combinations that clear specific opponents. This is the “what is each part of the cut buying me” detail.

The cards default to the General Good flavor open and the rest collapsed. Click any header to expand.

The namesake guarantee

For {Opp} Slayer and Fortified {Opp} flavors, the flavor’s name names a specific opponent - and that opponent is guaranteed to appear in the gains list. Lapras Slayer wins Lapras. Fortified Greedent wins Greedent. This is a hard invariant enforced by the renderer: if the cut’s mechanics don’t actually flip the named matchup, the flavor gets a different name (or gets dropped).

The namesake guarantee means the flavor card can be read as a contract: “name the opponent in the flavor, look at the gains list, verify the matchup is there.” If it isn’t, that’s a bug in the renderer and worth reporting.

Two namesakes can’t merge into one flavor: if two cuts produce the same stat signature, they end up as separate cards with disambiguators in the name (e.g. Lapras Slayer (123.74+ Atk) vs another slayer sharing the cut).

Distinction from Threshold Tiers

Threshold Tiers and the IV Flavor Guide answer different questions about the same data. They overlap, sometimes confusingly, and the distinction is worth getting straight:

Threshold Tiers tell you “what cutoff do I need to clear to hit this tier, and which IV spreads qualify?” Tier cards are named after their mechanical anchor (e.g. “Lapras Slayer” because the cut comes from Lapras’s breakpoint), list every IV spread that meets the cut, and show you the full list of per-opponent anchors the tier clears. Tier cards are mechanical.
IV Flavor Guide tells you “what archetype does this cluster of IV spreads represent, and what tradeoff does picking it make?” Flavor cards name the play-style, name one or two load-bearing gains, name one or two load-bearing losses, and skip the exhaustive anchor list. Flavor cards are editorial.

The tier-name unify (shipped 2026-04-23) means the two surfaces now share the same flavor name: a Threshold Tier card named “Lapras Slayer” and the flavor card named “Lapras Slayer” refer to the same cut. But you read them for different reasons. Start with the flavor card if you haven’t picked a direction; drop into the tier card once you want the full anchor list.

A note the zone itself carries at its top: “This IV Flavor Guide and the Threshold Tiers answer different questions and may not line up 1:1.” The places they don’t line up are usually:

A flavor with a namesake has a small member count driven by the gain, but a tier with the same cut may list many more opponents it incidentally clears.
A tier with no named anchor (“General” or “Atk X+”) has no flavor-side name drama - the flavor just becomes “General Good” or “Attack Weight.”
TOML-authored tier names pass through to flavor names unchanged; auto-derived tier names get mapped through refine_flavor_names.

Worked example: Oinkologne (Female) in Great League

Five flavors on the reference dive (a 2026-07 snapshot; your dive’s zone carries the live values), in the order they’re presented:

General Good (4081 IV spreads, ~99.6%) - the broad cut. 100.97 Def and 156 HP as a bulk baseline, 107.21 Atk as a coverage floor. Doesn’t chase a specific opponent; sits above most of the meta. The threshold-ladder in its card names every def/HP step and what it unlocks (101.50 Def with 156+ HP for the Lapras and Kingdra sets, 103.38 Def with 164+ HP for Florges and Feraligatr 0-0, and so on). Recommended for most players.

Fortified Diggersby (2 IV spreads) - defensive namesake. Trades attack range (no Atk floor) for a 114.62 Def cut with 163 HP. Gain: Diggersby 1-1 / 1-2 / 2-2, Corsola (Galarian) 1-2, Dondozo 1-1 flip into wins. Loss: Cradily (Acid) 1-0, Dragonair 2-1, Dusclops (Shadow) 1-2 drop out (the higher Def cut excludes Def-sacrificing IV spreads that clear other matchups via the attack side). Vanishingly rare - 2 of the 4096 spreads.

Wigglytuff Slayer / Grumpig Slayer (3 IV spreads each) - offensive namesakes sharing a shape. Trade bulk for a 116.21 / 116.44 Atk cut while holding 160 HP. Gain: the namesake matchup plus Azumarill 1-2 and Clodsire 1-2. Loss: Annihilape (Close Combat+Rage Fist) 2-1, Charjabug 1-1, Corsola (Galarian) 0-1 drop out (low-Def IV spreads lose the defensive matchups).

Oinkologne (Female) Mirror Atk (3842 IV spreads, ~93.8%) - the mirror-synth family: 109.18 Atk with 155 HP, the attack cut the mirror matchup needs. Broad, because most spreads already clear it.

Reading them together: General Good is the default pick; the rare namesakes are the tradeoffs to consider if you care about the Diggersby-family defensive matchups or the Wigglytuff / Grumpig flips specifically. Each flavor’s category also carries an envelope shape (see the Envelope Position guide) - rendered on the matching composite card in the Per-matchup IV finder - telling you whether its members reliably beat the anchor band or just tilt in the right direction on average.

Where to go next

Threshold Tiers - the mechanical tier cards that drive the flavor-naming. When a flavor says “Lapras Slayer,” the Threshold Tier with the same name is where the cutoff came from.
Envelope Position - each flavor’s category carries an envelope shape (rider-top, straddles band, etc.), shown on the matching composite card in the Per-matchup IV finder. The shape tells you whether the flavor’s win-rate lift is consistent across members or only shows up on a sub-cluster.
Reading a CD Article - the CD article’s IV Recommendations card grid is a compact distillation of the flavor cuts, one card per form.
How This Works - if you want the short version of how the simulation sweep that powers all of this is built.

Battle engine is a Python port of PvPoke; all game data from PvPoke by Empoleon_Dynamite (MIT license). This project would not exist without it.

Part of the PvP dive site. Explainers regenerate from current dive data every publish, so numbers stay in sync with the methodology. Last regenerated 2026-08-27.