What type of Pokemon player are you?

What type of Pokemon player are you?

  • Timmy

    Votes: 22 12.9%

  • Johnny

    Votes: 95 55.9%

  • Spike

    Votes: 94 55.3%
  • Total voters
    170
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Mainly Spike, although with a touch of Johnny.
I like winning, but using obscure, yet effective things to do so, such as using Poliwrath as my standard physical sweeper.
I also do get annoyed when I lose big matches, such as tour, when I was in position to win, and I do have a tendency to stop using a team if it doesn't get instant wins, or show signs of good.
 
BurtonEarny sums up my thoughts pretty well. Everyone on this website should be at least somewhat of a "Spike" but elements of "Johnny" are very much needed in order to be a top tier battler day in and day out. It keeps you ahead of the curve.
 
capefeather said:
I've said it many times on the chat server and I'll say it here: Use what's best for your team, period. By imposing arbitrary "rules" on your team, you are merely limiting yourself, not just from success in itself but from learning more about the game.
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I understand what you're saying here. It's true that in a competitive environment, you should be using Pokes that optimize your team and all work well together. But there are people who just get tired of the norm and don't care that much about winning.

For example, I make your previously mentioned weatherless team on Ubers. I'm mainly doing just to see how far I can go. I play it for about a week, and barely reach a rating of say...1100. Obviously that's pretty mediocre, right? But the fact that I've reached that rating with a completely gimped team makes me happy. That's the kind of player I, and many others, am.

And even then, you have players that want to do something different, but still like winning. Sometimes breaking from the status quo just plain increases the enjoyment value for the person. So now that I've decided to get serious with my weatherless Ubers team, I adjust it to make sure that it deals with common threats and it starts to win more and more. My rating has now risen to a decent 1300. This is a JohnnySpike. An innovative player who still plays to win.

Honestly, BurtonEarny has summed it up quite nicely. Whether you agree with him or not is fine with me, but I feel like he has done a fine job of getting the point across. :)

P.S. You can't edit in polls. You can only add them at the creation of the post. So unfortunately, no poll for this one. Sorry guys! :(
 
Spike here. The Lunar Future formats were developed because of that - to be the tightest, most balanced competitive formats possible. No change-of-the-week, no politics, just stuff that works. I'd still like to see what kind of competitive metagame comes out without stealth rock.
 
Megapants said:
Hm, I'm looking all over the screen after editing the OP and still can't find it. It should be in the additional options, right?

Also, for you Johnny players, I recommend trying out Mix Jirachi. It's pretty awesome.
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At the very bottom in thread tools (where the search bar is at the bottom of the page). You can click add a poll. Just fill in the question/ answers
 
Johnny, Johnny, Johnny!!!

I try to make movesets that only use Level-Up moves and Egg Moves, and only use Pokemon that are breedable. It makes it easier to get in game and you don't need to pay anything but Heart Scales, and it bring out originality in Pokemon.

COMPETITIVE PLAY IS FAIL!!!

And I like strategy.

This is basically how I am in Yu-Gi-Oh!, makes easily obtainable decks, unless I'm playing a video game (for me, using cards only in Structure Decks, not turning out too well, yet).
 
BurtonEarny said:
This is what I was getting at last night in my previous post, but was too tired to articulate it to my satisfaction.

Heres the deal:
JohnnySpike is the kind of player to strive to be in this game as far as being competitive goes. Why?


Spike-
Pure spikes are not much better than either of the others tbh. Spikes may steal teams from RMT's, or they will just simply copy and paste the top threats from the StratDex. Thats not really the best aproach either. While bog standard works for some pokemon that have a specific role on any team, often times solid teams are the ones that were made by players who take time to seperate their pokemon from the pack(JohnnySpike again). That doesn't mean reinvinting the wheel, but slight changes to a pokemons standard StratDex set can dramitically affect what that pokemon does. Spike loses because his strategies are overdone. People know how to beat him, because they know what he is using.
Another draw back to Spike is that he doesn't experiment, and by extension doesn't learn that much. He only uses the same pokemon in the same way, and never branches out. This restricts his knowledge of the game to a select group of pokemon. Also, due to lack of experimentation he never learns any new synergies until someone else publishes a successful RMT or he faces a team that impresses him... but by then it is old news (players will look for ways around that paticular combo or synergy). A pure spike is a JohnnySpike with learning to do.
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You must be using the terms a bit differently than how I am then. You assume that 'pure Spikes' are unoriginal, but when you judge how successful each style is, you judge them on their W/L record - a very spike thing to do. Surely if wins and losses are what's motivating a Spike then using teams that are a bit less predictable is just part of the development for a Spike.

I wouldn't think that a pure Johnny for example would care that much about making to no.1 on the leader board for example, so to critique them for not putting themselves in a position to do so is unfair. I don't see these categories as a measure of how creative/good etc. you are, simply what you put more weight on.

Therefore your argument should really read 'to be a successful player, you need to put an emphasis on winning and and that involves being somewhat creative', which to me is the same as 'to be a successful player, you need to put an emphasis on winning' as the second part comes naturally in self improvement. In the end, all you're really saying is 'to be a good Spike, you must be a good Spike'.

No kidding.
 
I'm probably 3/4th Spike, 1/4th Johnny. What's the point of playing if you don't want to win? But also, what's the point of playing if you watch the same select group of Pokemon beat the crap out of each other over and over again?

I usually like to incorporate unusual, homemade sets into my teams, but they are always made in an attempt to win.
 
animenagai said:
I don't see these categories as a measure of how creative/good etc. you are, simply what you put more weight on.
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This is a good way to put it as well. Whether or not you are actually good does not really play a factor in whether you are a Timmy, Johnny or Spike. Any of the three can be good, and any of the three can be equally as bad. Just because Spike strives to win doesn't mean he is going to. He just tries to win. It's how he gets his kicks.
 
Johnny

I really enjoy adding NU pokemon to my team to play against other OU teams, just like when i used to play magic...dam aluren decks...
 
animenagai said:
You must be using the terms a bit differently than how I am then. You assume that 'pure Spikes' are unoriginal, but when you judge how successful each style is, you judge them on their W/L record - a very spike thing to do. Surely if wins and losses are what's motivating a Spike then using teams that are a bit less predictable is just part of the development for a Spike.

I wouldn't think that a pure Johnny for example would care that much about making to no.1 on the leader board for example, so to critique them for not putting themselves in a position to do so is unfair. I don't see these categories as a measure of how creative/good etc. you are, simply what you put more weight on.

Therefore your argument should really read 'to be a successful player, you need to put an emphasis on winning and and that involves being somewhat creative', which to me is the same as 'to be a successful player, you need to put an emphasis on winning' as the second part comes naturally in self improvement. In the end, all you're really saying is 'to be a good Spike, you must be a good Spike'.

No kidding.
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Yes. Actually, that is the point of my statement, but you only got it about half right... I said pure Spikes are just about as handicapped as Timmys and Johnnys when it comes to competitive levels of play. I thought I made that clear enough. I dont know what the hang up your having is though.

This is a COMPETITIVE pokemon site. W/L records are pretty important in competitive play... I based my comments on the grounds of how each player style would perform in competitive play (completly appropriate and "fair" given the site)... and actually they are all bad as stand alone categories for making teams that perform well in competitive play. What I said was "While being a spike is a requirement, to be truly successful in competitive play you must be a hybrid of these categories." There is nothing unfair in being honest. If a Johnny or Timmy doesn't care about winning then so be it, it doesn't make them a bad player per say, but they aren't competitive which is was my point. There was nothing unfair in analyzing each of the categories the way that I did in the context that I did it in. I think our differences are coming form the qualifier I tacked onto my statements...

In casual play, I agree with you, it doesn't matter so much because nothing is really being measured. But thats not what I was talking about.
 
I'm a Johnny/Spike mix with a slightly higher tendency for Johnny, and not only in Pokemon; it's the same in Yugioh and SSBB. I like to win, but I usually will avoid as much of the "top tier" stuff if possible. For example, in Brawl I probably will never use Snake or Metanite (sp? it's been a while since I've played unfortunately) while my mains are Kirby and Yoshi. In Yugioh, I run a Fish deck instead of the top tier Blackwings or Synchro Cat decks. And in Pokemon, I prefer UU over OU. I also like experimenting with different decks (in YGO) or Pokemon (in... Pokemon) and trying to make them work even though most people think they're useless or that there are better options (not so much in Pokemon, though).

Also, FUCK, I didn't realize the poll was multiple choice until AFTER I voted... Only chose Johnny. :(
 
Johnny/Spike.

When I first started I was purely a Spike, despite my complete inability to win. Competitive Pokemon? I'm competitive so I want to win! I think my first team was a bunch of top-OU Pokemon stuck together just because of their popularity. I guess I got a little better and started winning matches and somewhere along the line there I stopped caring so much for winning as having fun playing the game.

So I became more of a Johnny, starting maybe a few weeks ago. I think this is where my Pokemon style will "settle" in the long term because I don't see myself going back to being a pure Spike any time soon. I think the reason I was even a Spike in the first place is because I didn't know well enough to be any other style (not dissing pure-Spike players, of course). What I mean is that I didn't understand metagame trends and prediction enough to be creative with my sets; all I knew to do was faint my opponent's Pokemon before he fainted mine.

Now that I "get" Pokemon a lot more it's easier to take creative freedom with the game than it was before. I still have fun winning (obviously) but I haven't used my "real" OU team in a couple of weeks because I'm too busy messing around with new ideas and new Pokemon I don't regularly use. I wanted to try a hyper offense team like Rey so I made one of those and did okay but not great -- but it was alright because it was fun trying a new style of playing. I even made a UU stall team (which I loved in theory but practically ended up failing miserably in OU because the UU ladder was dead at the time lol) as part of my little style-expansion. Then I decided that Wish was a cool move and built a few teams around Wish Jirachi and Togekiss. I wouldn't say I satisfy most of the Johnny characteristics though because I don't spend too much time thinking about my teams I just think the ideas would be fun to use and put a team together. I even tried a Sharpen Porygonz because I saw it at the bottom of the analysis (for a reason lol) and Mixed Electivire (which is pretty good).

I "want" to become more of a Spike sometime in the future (shift the balance more from Johnny/Spike to Spike/Johnny) and maybe start playing in tournaments and tours and start laddering for points. I dunno though.
 
BurtonEarny said:
Yes. Actually, that is the point of my statement, but you only got it about half right... I said pure Spikes are just about as handicapped as Timmys and Johnnys when it comes to competitive levels of play. I thought I made that clear enough. I dont know what the hang up your having is though.

This is a COMPETITIVE pokemon site. W/L records are pretty important in competitive play... I based my comments on the grounds of how each player style would perform in competitive play (completly appropriate and "fair" given the site)... and actually they are all bad as stand alone categories for making teams that perform well in competitive play. What I said was "While being a spike is a requirement, to be truly successful in competitive play you must be a hybrid of these categories." There is nothing unfair in being honest. If a Johnny or Timmy doesn't care about winning then so be it, it doesn't make them a bad player per say, but they aren't competitive which is was my point. There was nothing unfair in analyzing each of the categories the way that I did in the context that I did it in. I think our differences are coming form the qualifier I tacked onto my statements...

In casual play, I agree with you, it doesn't matter so much because nothing is really being measured. But thats not what I was talking about.
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Dude, you are being completely circular. At least for the only point that is slightly fair. I'm saying that it's silly to dismiss a Johnny or a Timmy for not being a Spike. Do I want there to be more Spikes on smogon? Of course I do, but if that's not what those guys are aiming for (winning), then I don't get why it would be a bad thing for them for not winning all the time. It's like you get a bunch of carnivores and vegetarians together and grade them according to how much meat they eat. W/L records only matter if you have Spike mentality. If you don't have a Spike mentality, it doesn't matter what your W/L record is.
 
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