I disagree with the OP.
- From the very start, you are limiting your options. I feel the best thing about the Pokemon games is that there is so much variety. When you say you are only going to use your favorites, you are immediately secluding yourself to a handful of Pokemon and focusing only on those. Though individually, the sets you use for teams can be creative, the general strategies are bland or ineffective as you have to cater to your limitations.
Not really. There's no rule saying that, by using your favorites, you're somehow limiting yourself. As soon as you use a Pokemon you like, you've just expanded your "limitations." This is only true for really closed-minded individuals, but for people like me who like a lot of Pokemon, it's not a limitation at all.
Also, the same can be said--that one is limiting one's options--for those who only use Pokemon that are considered "good" competitively. By only using "good" Pokemon, they've limited their options to essentially most OU Pokemon (as for you touchy people, I know what OU means) and have cut themselves off from other Pokemon they might want to use, like Samurott or Lilligant.
Rhys29 said:
- Players who use only their favorites generally ignore better options. Even though Heracross is exponentionally better than Pinsir, these players would still use Pinsir, the sole reason being they prefer Pinsir aesthetically. This is like saying you'd rather walk three hours to work/school instead of driving 20 minutes because you like to walk, or declining an upgraded plane ticket because you prefer 3rd class, or declining an inflated basketball at a game because you like the feel of a deflated ball in your hands, or even saying no to free money because you like how much cash you have in your wallet/bank account at the moment. Quite frankly, every reason I've heard defending prioritized players when I've touched upon this subject were only excuses.
This is true on most parts. That's pretty much the sole reason why using your favorites is a bad idea when battling competitively, unless your favorites all happen to be Pokemon that are good competitively.
Rhys29 said:
- Through forums and live engagement with prioritized players, I have noticed a pattern of difficulty with adaptivity and/or improvement. If you use certain Pokemon exclusively, you will have issues when you run into specific threats or metagame shifts. At the same time, since players are only using their favorites, lack of exploration tends to leave their growth stunted since the players only know how to use specific Pokemon. Usually when I run into someone who plays in a closed circut (only plays with a group of friends), they believe certain Pokemon/sets are an arm and head above everything else. When a suggestion is made contradicting this, nearly none will respond with open minds or logical discussion. Instead, I tend to hear stories about poorly designed teams being crushed by a threat that they have no answer to. Since they don't move outside their comfort zone, their issues are rarely resolved and are usually done so by banning things which have no reason to be banned in a general competitive standpoint.
Some argue competitive battlers go down a similar road by banning things from tiers, such as Garchomp. However, they fail to realize general competitive battlers will use any and every mean to find an answer to a problem and when there is none, that is when a decision is made. Prioritized battlers simply don't want to face the problem because losing with your favorites a horrendous number of times makes the game no longer fun.
So... where does this leave players who use their favorites, and yet leave themselves room to explore and discover new favorites?
I'm not enjoying how you're generalizing every prioritized player. Quite frankly, any prioritized player should know from the start that they're more than likely disadvantaged competitively, so being all immature about always losing isn't really justified. You seem to be ignoring prioritized players who recognize their handicap and who are willing to find new favorites that will lessen their handicap.
Rhys29 said:
HOWEVER, prioritized battlers are not completely hindered and have many positive attributes that, I feel, make them invaluable to competitive battling. I would like to explain these now so readers don't get the wrong impression, but I currently have a schedule to attend to. If I hold your interest, expect to see my reasoning soon.
I'll be waiting to read this.