The Gentle nature in Pokémon raises a Pokémon’s Special Defense by 10% and lowers its Defense by 10%. This makes a Pokémon better at taking hits from special moves (like Flamethrower or Thunderbolt) while making it weaker against physical moves (like Earthquake or Close Combat).
How the Stat Changes Work
Every Pokémon nature applies a 1.1x multiplier to one stat and a 0.9x multiplier to another. For Gentle, the boosted stat is Special Defense and the penalized stat is Defense. These multipliers are baked into the final stat calculation, so the difference becomes more noticeable as your Pokémon levels up. By level 100, you’re looking at a full 10% swing in both directions compared to a neutral nature.
In practical terms, a Gentle Pokémon will survive special attacks more comfortably but fold faster to physical hits. This tradeoff matters most in competitive play or tough in-game battles where you need your Pokémon to wall specific threats.
Flavor Preferences
Natures also determine which berry flavors a Pokémon likes and dislikes. A Gentle Pokémon likes Bitter flavors and dislikes Sour flavors. This comes up when using berries that raise a stat but may cause confusion if the Pokémon dislikes the taste. If you feed a Sour berry to a Gentle Pokémon, it will become confused, so stick with Bitter options when you have the choice.
Other Special Defense Natures
Gentle is one of four natures that boost Special Defense. The difference between them comes down to which stat takes the hit:
- Gentle: lowers Defense
- Calm: lowers Attack
- Careful: lowers Special Attack
- Sassy: lowers Speed
For most Pokémon that want a Special Defense boost, Calm or Careful tend to be more popular picks. Calm is ideal on special walls that don’t use physical attacks anyway, since the Attack drop is irrelevant. Careful works well on Pokémon that only use physical moves, since they don’t need Special Attack. Gentle’s drawback of lowering Defense is harder to work around because almost every Pokémon benefits from having decent physical bulk. Losing Defense while gaining Special Defense often just shifts a vulnerability rather than removing one.
That said, Gentle can occasionally fit a niche. If a Pokémon already has terrible Defense that no 10% boost would save, losing more of it costs very little in practice.
How to Get or Change a Gentle Nature
Every wild Pokémon you catch has a randomly assigned nature. If you want to breed for a specific one, have a parent with the Gentle nature hold an Everstone in the daycare. In older games (Generation IV and earlier), this gave a 50% chance of passing the nature to the egg. From Generation V onward (Black 2, White 2, and every game since), the Everstone guarantees a 100% chance of nature inheritance.
If you already have a Pokémon you want to keep but it has the wrong nature, you can use a Gentle Mint. Mints were introduced in Sword and Shield and are available in later games as well. A Gentle Mint changes a Pokémon’s stat modifiers to match the Gentle nature (+Special Defense, -Defense) without changing its actual nature. The original nature still governs flavor preferences, breeding inheritance, and any other nature-dependent mechanics. So a Pokémon given a Gentle Mint will calculate stats as if it were Gentle, but if you breed with it, the offspring inherits the original nature, not the minted one.
Is Gentle a Good Nature?
In most competitive scenarios, Gentle is one of the less desirable natures. Lowering Defense creates a significant vulnerability to physical attackers, and there are usually better options for boosting Special Defense. Calm is the go-to for special walls, and Careful serves physical attackers who want extra special bulk. Gentle occupies an awkward middle ground where the stat you’re sacrificing is one most Pokémon want to keep.
For casual playthroughs, natures matter far less. The 10% difference rarely decides a battle when you’re overleveled or using items freely. If your favorite Pokémon happens to be Gentle, it won’t hold you back in the main story. The nature distinction becomes significant mainly in competitive battles, Battle Tower challenges, or other content where opponents are optimized and margins are thin.