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Karen or Gentleman?
Do you follow Johto Elite Four Member Karen’s logic or a gentleman’s logic from the Hoenn remakes?
Comments
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Karen. Its how I've always battled.
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I prefer Gary's mentality.
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Karen. The games aren't even that hard, why would I need to follow the gentleman's advice when I could probably beat the newer games with a singular Pokémon that's not even that good in battles?
For competitive, it's a mix. Sometimes I have to add Pokémon because they're strong or remove them for being weak. I don't play competitive often though, it's pretty rare for me to do. And even when I do I can still use Pokémon I like, have you ever heard of Hyper Voice Choice Specs Pixelate Sylveon?
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The title makes it sound like you suspect Karen was a gentleman in disguise or something, lol.
Use whichever Pokémon you please. There is nothing wrong with using the most competitive Pokémon to build the strongest team, nor is there anything wrong with using your favourites because they are your favourites.
The problem comes when someone using one type of team enters an environment where the other is expected.
When someone brings their goofy gimmick team of their favourites to VGC, they are very quickly going to find that the power of friendship and anime is not going to carry them to the top.
Likewise, when your average Smogon competitive grinder brings their team of Ubers to play with their friends' casual teams that they used to finish the game with minimal thought for competitive viability, they will swiftly find themselves ostracised as a "try hard" and not invited to play in future.
Despite all the cutesy characters and narrative themes of friendship, hard work and determination winning out, at the end of the day, the Pokémon in your game is just a stat table and a moves list. And some are better than others. If you do not play the optimal team, you are almost certainly going to lose to someone who does, barring some very unlucky RNG or misplays.
So long as more casually minded players accept this and play with other like-minded players, there shouldn't be much of a problem. But unless you come up with a very clever strategy, your favourite PU Pokémon is not going to make you the very best, like no one ever was.
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Karen all the way.
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