Jinglefruit
The black-nosed Reindeer
IV breeding is a huge chore, I think only 3 of my team were.
Basically for each stat your pokemon have a random number between 0 and 31 is assigned. If for all 6 stats that number is 0, and then you magically get the pokemon to level 100 without EV training, then the stat totals the pokemon has (ie the stats you see in their summary) will be the minimum it can be for that pokemon (ignoring nature.) And if the IV number for the stat is 31, and you fully EV train in that stat then they will have the highest possible value for that stat.
So if we use a Leafeon's HP for example, at level 100 it's HP stat will be between 240 and 334. Seeing as nature doesn't affect HP we can see that the difference between these numbers is 94. Which is 31 IVs + 63 EVs. So if you catch a wild lvl 100 Leafeon with 0 HP IV's it's HP would be 240. And if you caught one with 31 HP IV's it would have 271 HP. Then taking the 271 HP IV Leafeon and fully EV training it would give you a Leafeon with the max stat of 334 HP.
Now if we take my Leafeon, which I know has 27 HP IV's, and I've given it 248 effort points (so divide by 4 for 62 HP EV's) I can tell when it eventually (never) reaches level 100 it'll have 329 HP. (240 minimum + 27 IV's + 62 EVs)
So now you know you want 31 IV's in everything for your Leafeon to be the very best Leafeon, like no Leafeon ever was, but how do you get the best IV's?
You don't.
In general wild pokemon have a tendancy to have lower IV's. And breeding gives them a slightly better chance with random odds. The only thing you can do to help is find parents with 31 IV's in the desired stat and give them a Power item (the 16 battle point ones) And have them breed and the corresponding stat to the Power item will be passed down to the Egg. (only 1 can be passed down for sure for 1 egg though) And then 2 more stats at random from the parents will be passed down, and the final 3 IV stats are randomly generated.
Back to my Leafeon, it's father had 31 IV in Speed and held a Power anklet, and it's mother had 31 IV's in both Attack and Defense. The Eevee that hatched very luckily randomly inherited the Attack and Defense off it's mother, and due to the Power anklet recieved the 31 IV speed from it's father. Then By an even huger amount of luck, it randomly got 27 HP and 28 Sp.D (and 4 Sp.A but Leafeon doesn't need that) So he got a spread of 27/31/31/4/28/31. Which is the luckiest I ever got with breeding (well that's debatable xD). I did breed like 100 Eevee's to get this though and I was also fortunate to get Jolly as a nature (+Speed -Sp.A) and it's DW ability.
Then there's checking your IV's. Which is another chore. If you're using Gen V, (which is the only generation I've IV trained in) I recommend using Serebii's IV calculator in the Game mechanics sections here. If you hatch an egg and put in it's details it's not very helpful, but get it's Hidden Power (Mistalton in BW1/Driftveil PWT in BW2) checked in game, and talk to the guy in Gear station who vaguely checks IV's and put that info in. Then use a couple rare candies and put those stats in and finally go to the battle institute in Nimbasa and check it's stats in battle (it'll scale up to level 50) And put those in and it should give you exact numbers for your IV's. Sometimes though it gives 2 options for 1 stat, which is good enough, and sometimes it screws up and tells you something is wrong when it wasn't and you have to get everything checked again and refresh the page and put all the numbers in again.
I would recommend as a beginner starting with breeding Eevees because whatever stats you get lucky with there is an eeveelution that will appreciate that arrangement. And also because they're popular on the GTS, so if you search Lvl 1 Eevees and trade for a few there's a good chance 1 of those will be from someone who was trying to IV breed and got a couple 31 IVs in stats they didn't want. ~ I traded off spare level 1 Eevee's to help complete my dex. xP
If you have anymore questions feel free to ask me. Unless the question is, "What was that? Start again from the top."
I'm not too sure how clear this is to someone new to it. It took me a long time to fully understand.
No TL;DR either read it or weep.
