How do you differ as a trainer?

[Frozen Lotus]

Most of us started Pokemon when we were much, much younger... and our style of Pokemon battling has likely changed considerably. Whether it's due to learning new mechanics and getting more use to how the game works, a simple maturing of mindset and trying to be more strategic and clever, or just a personal difference in what's the most fun.

So for you... how different are you as a trainer now from when you FIRST started playing the games? What kind of trainer were you back then? Did you always try to use the most powerful Pokemon possible, including legendaries, entirely because they were so good? Did you ONLY use sweepers and never care about the more tactical moves? Did you always play it safe and try to keep everything healed up constantly?

I use to pretty much give everything the strongest moves I could find for them, and I'd use the Pokemon I liked that I found. I never went way out of my way to find specific Pokemon, and I never really paid that much attention to type variety or how my team works together. I just gave them the strongest move possible and went with it. I distinctly remember giving one of my Silver version Pokemon Zap Cannon. >> Just because it had 150 power. Back with the Stadium games I actually used Guillotine/Fissure as OFTEN as possible just because the first time I ever used one it landed. Currently, though? I go for variety and the Pokemon I like the absolute most. I try to keep my teams as mixed as possible type-wise. Though... I am still guilty of MOSTLY going for offense moves rather than status, and I don't put as much attention into "how do all of these work together as ONE team" as I should.

 

[Sopheria]

Basically what Achromatic said. I only trained and used one Pokemon when I was a kid. Now I usually have a whole set of 11 or 12 that I keep on rotation throughout my playthrough (boxing some as necessary). I also know a lot about battling and stats, so I'm more into competitive battling than I was before ^^

 

[esperance]

Apart from now understanding how the type system and Pokémon stats/moves works, I'm still pretty much the same. I train a core team of six Pokémon, never use items in battle, and I don't catch anything else until I've beaten the Elite 4. And my Pokémon attacks are all offense all the time.

 

[Taemin]

Oh, gosh. I started playing when I was 10, and I'm now in my twenties. I would say the biggest change is that when I was younger, I would raise my starter Pokemon to levels much higher than the rest of my party. So my starter would kick ass, but as soon as they were knocked out, the rest of my party stood zero chance.

Also, whenever I would get a Legendary, I would use it a lot and not really care about the rest of my party.

Nowadays, my party's levels stay fairly even, I EV train sometimes, and when I catch a Legendary, I use it for a little bit because "Yay, Legendaryyy" (I'm talkin' maybe 40 minutes), but then it goes back into the PC and I use my normal team.

 

[Embernight]

When I first started playing, i used to waste time grinding my pokemon at the beginning and go up against my rival with a Marshtomp in our first battle. When battling I also never found much use in stat changing moves and instead was very offensive. Tailwhip? Nah, that's useless. Just keep tackling it Poocheyena. You gots this. I also bred a lot pokemon, but only to have boxes full of Eevee, Lapras, and Dratini. I would usually hand my game over to my brother when it came to catching legendaries, because I just couldn't catch them. Now I catch them in basic poke balls.
I still prefer power over strategy in most cases, but I have started to use more status inflicting moves and beneficial moves like recover and rain dance. I also now breed for IVs and EV train my pokemon thanks to the new features Gen 6 that make this easier.

 

[Astinus]

Even though I started playing at a little bit of an older age than most that I've seen around PC (10, so the perfect age to become a Pokemon trainer

), I still didn't get all the different status effects, the need to diversify my team, or how the type chart matched up. So I would play with the strongest Pokemon I could get my hands on, bypassing many weak ones.

These days, it's much different. Normal Pokemon are my favorite type to play with because of how diverse their moves can be, and I like covering as many weaknesses as possible. My teams are more balanced. The different status effects I'm more prepared to handle. The type chart is easy to pick up now. And my favorite thing to do is look for Pokemon that aren't that strong and use them to play through the game.

 

[Wicked3DS]

I wasn't very smart when training, my philosophy for a long time was "the higher leveled Pokémon are the best" so I would just use the ones that were the highest leveled, meaning if I caught a Pokémon that was higher than one or more on my team, the lowest one got booted. That, and I used to just order my Pokémon from weakest to strongest regardless of who I was fighting so that the weak ones could get more experience.

Now? Balanced teams and starting with the one that's going to best set me up for a victory. Ya know, basic stuff :P

 

[Calgar]

Back then I would play the game to try and get the best Pokes to beat my friends at school in battles. Now I mainly play to breed, collect Pokes and to enjoy the story as well.

 

[Hikamaru]

I was around 11 (in fact, just turned 11 at the time) when I first played a Pokemon game, and back then I never understood type diversity with teambuilding and that resulted in me just having a not-so-good team that had like two type overlaps at once.

These days, I am more serious with balancing and have more awareness of stuff like natures, abilities, EVs/IVs and such. It's all part of you becoming smarter as you continue playing.

 

[Poké Bean]

To be honest I don't really think I've changed that much from when I first started. I'm definitely more aware of what makes a good team and good moves to use and such but I still generally stick to just using my favourites and winning gyms by being over powered so I don't have to switch out.

 

[Lycanthropy]

I had the advantage I knew the entire type advantage table already before I started playing my first game. My main trouble used to be not knowing there was a difference between special and physical attacks and not knowing which attacks were stronger in general (even when you can see a description when your Pokémon is about to learn it), so I learned any move I knew it was not useless (status moves were considered useless because they didn't do damage) and tried to estimate how strong it was by using it in combat and comparing the result.

 

[Nurse Joy]

Let's see... when I first started, all I had was a Farfetch'd and a few Pokemon I never used and only kept for HM moves. That was when I was 4 or 5. I believe my first team was Farfetch'd, Golduck, Dragonair, Wobbuffet... I can't remember the other two. I had no idea what I was doing so all I ever did was battle trainers (this was Crystal btw) and tried to beat the Elite 4. Farfetch'd was only lv 50 while Wobbuffet 40, and others were like... 10-20, so I never got far. In fact, I only ever beat Will once, and then was promptly defeated by was it Koga who was next? I don't know. After that I remained the same, just using whatever Pokemon I had that were most powerful for the next several years. It actually wasn't until doing a wonderlocke with X that i even considered leveling up other Pokemon in my team. My strategy was just to fill up my team with whatever strongest Pokemon I just caught, and use them as backup when fighting gym leaders and elite 4. When I say backup, I mean I used them to revive my starter. I only ever used my starter and I taught it the strongest moves possible that would hit occasionally.

I'm still kind of the same. While I do my best to use all my team members now, I will only teach them offensive moves unless other moves would be better (like Hypnosis or something). I don't teach them ANY MOVE, though, I try to go by what my team is lacking, whether it's an electric or Fire type or whatever, and I look for moves that work better with whichever stat is highest (attack of sp. attack), and i don't teach moves with Accuracy lower than 95. I'm too impatient to have moves miss, but I don't mind lower attack power.
I also try to use Pokemon I really like instead of just picking whatever is strongest. In OR my team was Swampert, Delcatty, Manectric, Banette, and my HM pokemon Tropius and Sharpedo. It wasn't the best lineup, though, since Delcatty was cursed with the ability Normalize, so it was useless to teach it certain types of moves. I still managed to defeat the League though, easily. Now I wonder if I'm actually doing something wrong since it was so easy hahaha​

 

[rarmstar]

I started with Pokemon Red when I was 4. I'd have a main team of 6, who I trained equally. I'd have to train them to a multiple of 5 before each gym - Level 15 for Brock, 20 for Misty, 25 for Lt. Surge, etc. I'd always use the coolest looking attacking moves (my Gyarados would only use Dragon Rage/Charizard wouls only use Fire Spin!). In terms of typing, I had to have a fire type, a water type, a grass type, and electric type, then two of the remaining types.

Nowadays, even thought I know much more about competitive battling/moves in general, I'm much more casual about how I play. I normally have a wider pool of Pokemon (10-12), don't worry so much about their level, and use whatever moves feel right a the time. I'm much more likely to use non-attacking moves/status moves to try and defeats foes though strategy rather than spamming Surf, but sometimes I'll just mash on throught.

I think I'm at the stage where I've played so many times that I just play however I'm feeling at the time, without so many restrictions on myself. I guess that's what's ace about Pokemon: each run you can totally change the way you play, every time is fresh :)

Good thread!

My classic First Gen. team:
:t003: :t006: :t009: :t026: ::t076: :t018:

 

[SleepyTrainer]

I wasn't MUCH younger when I first played.
But things changed anyways, back then I was rather battling with legendaries,
and wasn't good at training. Now I'm able to train pokemon more proper.
I'm getting into everything more, and understand way more stuff.

I'm still not an "elite" trainer, but definitely better than before.

 

[Megan]

When I first got a Pokemon game, I Blastoise'd my way through, while leaving some random Pokemon, that I don't even remember, in my party, as well. I think, I also had a Haunter, or a Ghastly, that I never used.

Now I'm using teams, while also trying to use whatever random mon I want to use, independent on whether it's good, or not.

 

[Thief of Demons]

I only ever used the most powerful looking moves and had a bad habit of just sticking with my starter for the vast majority of the game. Needless to say I'm a much more tactical player now, though not necessarily a pro aha.

 

[Sun]

I love Water-types since the beginning, but I haven't really tried focusing on the Water-type until Generation III. With the moves categorized getting into Physical, Special and Status, I found myself trying other types, such as Fighting-types, Steel-types and other types that I haven't used before.

Nowadays I'm training different kinds of Pokémon. :)

 

[Return]

I'm not very good in Pokemon trainer, my team always end up into strongest to the weakest(for ex: Blastoise- 50 level, Nidoran- 14) but after the time passes i train , learn and finally understand the levelling is not much important we have to balance our Team Pokemon level ratio, that what i feel this strategy till now.

 

[Azelfino]

When I was younger I'd use legends and any Pokemon that looked cool to me. Nowadays I pay attention to the special/physical split, I like using dual types with 3 stage evolutions and I like to run at least one status/defensive move on my Pokemon, the rest are coverage and STAB.

 

[Itcheeee]

My first game (besides breifly owning Snap & Stadium) was Colosseum. Where I wanted to catch every avalible Pokemon, just was awful at it :P
Then getting Diamond, I skipped almost every Pokemon in the entire game except the 9 or 10 I wanted -_-;
Only after really getting into the main series of games with Heartgold & Soulsilver did I realize how funny this actually was :P
Now my goal is to 100% every main series game, and atleast fnish the story in all the side games. My teams always include mostly attacking moves of every type possible, and most importantly: my favorite Pokemon come first :) Though in some cases, I've had to fill in spots of my team with Pokemon that started to grow on me. Even those that I never cared an ounce for :P