what is your style of play?

TLDR,

I play en route to college and back, and spin stops in between lectures/classes. I play with mainly my free pass a day, and do extra raids if and only if I just so happen to pass the gym and the raid is a Tier 5 with my own team controlling it.

I do not go to nests. I like catching stuff at the right place at the right time.

Originally my main goal was to have a maxed out top 12 page. Now it's pretty much done, my second goal is to kick out all the weather boosted groudon/kyogre from top 24. That's almost done as well.

My next goal is just to max out 1 best attacker of each type to act as the 'leader', and build more level 40 pokemon to follow if needed.

Ooh, good question:

I usually don't go for "squads" of types of Pokemon, and I always opt for maxing out a few, powerful mons that can be used in many matchups as opposed to partially-powering a large amount of mons.

The way I see it, any "squad" mon used for niche matchups can just be caught weather-boosted and wild. These "squad mons" include, but are not limited to:

- Exeggcutor, Golem, Jolteon, Alakazam, Flareon, Venusaur, Sceptile, Shiftry, Arcanine, Houndoom, Rhydon, Hariyama, Typholosion, Cloyster, Walrein, Piloswine, Jynx, Breloom...

These Pokemon can, for the most part, be found pretty commonly weather-boosted, and don't excel much as generalists or outside of their favorable matchups. Thus, though I think many of them are essential to a Trainer's team, I wouldn't pour stardust into them since I can catch them at level 35. This also makes IVs not a huge issue - a huge weight off of anyone's shoulders.

That being said, there are some mons which are rare (and unable to be mass-produced), and/or are powerful enough, with great stats/movesets, to justifiably be powered up to max, as they both have many favorable matchups in the meta and are powerful generalists as well:

- Machamp, Tyranitar, Gyarados, Dragonite, [Blissey?], Gardevoir, [Scizor?], [Espeon?], Legendaries

The way I play, I don't ever max multiples of these Pokemon (the exception being Tyranitar - and POTENTIALLY different-moveset Legendaries). Why would I need to? Moreover, I don't have the resources to do this - by the time I have enough rare candies for legendaries a new one will come out, and stardust is a very limited resources spread over all of my max-candidates.

I play very similarly, especially I care about defenders (point 4) that give attackers a hopefully hard time dodging something super-effective. I like defenders not many others use or are rare (e.g. Shiftry, Ampharos, Porygon2, Swampert, Forretress, Whiscash, Umbreon, Lanturn, Miltank, etc), and will only place a Chansey if I know it otherwise won't last.

I also dislike armies of the same attackers. I aim for 1-3 of one species with different move sets.

I’m level 39 200k from 40. My style of play is mainly soloing tier 3 raids. If you can solo tier 3s there’s a good chance you’ll get rare candy, a fast TM, and occasionally a charge TM without the hassle of coordinating a tier 5. I can do all of the current ones besides certain Alakazam movesets so one of my priorities right now is powering up my Ttars.

I also like generalists for some reason. I think utility is cool even though I don’t gym battle much anymore. I maxed my only Raikou, a C/SoB Exeg, 100 Espeon, shiny Gyarados, 100 Ttar, and a Dragonite. Working on maxing another Dragonite, a Lugia, and another Ttar.

Although it’d be great to have a Kyogre and a Groudon I don’t have either. I have several powered up Gyarados and Rhydon from the old gym system so I haven’t put any effort into those legendaries.

Machamp is crucial not only for porygon raids but many tier 4 raids and battling gyms. I have a strong team of 6 but none maxed yet.

I don’t have a MewTwo so a very strong team of Psychics and a couple Gengar are huge for tier 3 solos

I put a moltres and 100 articuno to level 30 which I plan to also max down the line. Really want a Gardevoir but ralts are really rare here so that’s my current walking buddy. Idk if I’ll max one when I get it but it’ll be tempting

Defenders I don’t really power up. Blissey would be the one I do power up over 30 because she can attack with massive bulk if needed. Any new gen 3 evolution I’ll put into a gym for no other reason other than to say that I’m still actively playing lol

My style's not for those who want to win at everything.
Collecting: I want to have 1 normal of each species and 1 shiny fully evolved, with the exception of those that have multiple forms. For example, with Gyarados I can have 2 normals (male + female) and 2 shiny (male + female), if Burmy were in, I'd have all the normal Wormadams + Mothim, and all the shiny Wormadams + Mothim.
Exception is made for an Eevee that I will just keep as Eevee and place in gyms with very low turnover.

Evolving: Anything that is 15 attack and 80%+. Or any shiny.

Leveling up: anything I've evolved, but priority is put on my top attackers. However, if I find a better one, I will replace it with the better one. Exceptions are the top tier ones which have a good moveset, they will not be replaced until I ensure I get the same or better moveset on the higher IV ones. Stardust isn't really scarce here, there are pokemon everywhere including around my house, and pokestops are also everywhere.

Defending: Currently, there is no reason for anyone around here to even take it seriously. Gyms are shaking hands daily and everyone seems to get their coins at the end of the day. They're more like places to show off your mons than anything. But there was that one time I've made someone call it quits on gym conquering after I've golden-raz-defended a gym that only had my Lickitung in it.

Attacking team: Usually, I have one of each type in battles against bosses. Vs gyms, I have a generalist team made of Machamp, Dragonite, Exeggutor, Jolteon, Rhydon, and Kabutops. Pretty much all I need for the usuals. Most of the time, only Machamp and Dragonite see any action.

I mostly play on my way to work, suburban enviroment, diglett biome. A little sentimental for powering up. If a pokemon is meta relevant and I like it they get love like sceptile from lv4 to 36,or my beloved venusaur who carried my two generations, but I don't really like exeggutor, eevolution so only evolve high level ones. Don't really have restrictions like only 96+ iv or one and only one of each kind. I have armies of machamp, rhydon and golem which are quite easy to obtain here, but mostly one or two of every pokemon. I mostly power up to lv31, but with weather boost update I'm also levelling my top pokemons to 35 to keep up. For defenders, I have a blissey and snorlax at high levels which I used to get gold gyms, now that I've already got gold on all gyms on my regular route they are enjoying retirement, occasionally get work before raids to hold gym. At weekends I join legendary raids and If timing is suitable some weekdays, mostly solo t3 raids. Aside from sceptile I guess there is not much pokemon of interest for me, so my main focus on power-ups will be highest iv of weather 3.

1. There are a lot of pokemon that are useable, but some are more useable than others. It's very hard to make a complete list of useful pokemon so I'm not going to try it here. Machamp, Dragonite and Tyranitar are the top3 nonlegendaries.

2. Depends on the pokemon. If it's a raid specialist you want 6, like Tyranitar. For Dragonite, 2-3 is usually enough. For Machamp I use 5 because that's how many I have at high level with C/DP.

3. Two maxed Blisseys, 1 maxed Snorlax, a few Chanseys around 1k. Yes I like to have good defenders, important in my area.

4. ZH/DG Blissey, ZH/BS Snorlax, ZH/DG Chansey, Y/PR Slaking and C/DG Gardevoir are the ones I use almost exclusively. I'll put other defenders in for fun, but anything besides the big normal types just isn't as good.

5. Generally 93% IV with 15 attack or better for powering up. 96% IV or better if it's something that isn't a top priority. If it's a legendary that I want to power up, I'll go for the best one I got regardless of IVs.

About future pokemon. We know what's coming and we know their stats and possible movepools, so we can estimate which pokemon are safe to invest in and which are less safe. Machamp is one of the safer ones, it's unlikely that generation 4 has anything that will make Machamps useless. Even if it one day becomes useless, was it a waste to have them when they were good? I don't believe so.

My playstyle is mostly walking around grinding stardust and doing occasional raids. I enjoy solo raids more than group raids because they're a headache where you don't necessarily get rewarded for being a strong player anyway.

I power what I need based on the game at hand, be it for raid bosses, gyms, etc.

I also see the posts here that say, "Don't power up that X, it's trash. Just wait for a good one."

The thing is, unless you're peeled to a tracker and ready to drive around at a moment's notice or do dozens of raids a day, there's a good chance you don't find that "good one".

Take Kyogre for example. I have had bad RNG luck when it comes to getting the high IV ones I've encounted in the balls after excellent throws. So be it. There's a few weeks left, maybe I'll catch a top tier one yet.

If I don't, am I going to look at the best one I have left and say it's "trash" because it only has 14 attack and IVs below 90%? No, because powered up, that one will still easily outclass any other water attacker I currently have.

The alternative is using the same old Vaporeons and Gyaradoses I've been using, and waiting for months/years for Kyogre to return as a raid boss, hope it appears at a gym near where I work, hope people are interested enough in it to show up for a raid group, hope it has better stats than my current best, and finally hope that RNG favors my pokeball throws.

My style is keeping at least 1 mil dust, should I get a/multiple 100% something that I want to boost to 40 asap. At least 250 Rare candy in my bag, for 100% legendaries (or a proper, 96%+ 15atk Mewtwo) only.

I power up pokemon that are relevant for the current meta. However, this could also include pokemon that may not be optimal (I always wanted to have a couple of proper Exeggutor, so during Groudon I boosted a 100% to lvl 40 from lvl 16 and two 98% from 20 to 30). At some point when fire types become useful I'll not only boost an Entei and Moltres to anywhere between 30 and 40, but I'll also boost my 100% and 98% Flareon and maybe my 100% and 98% Arcanine to 40. So I may not be a hardcore min-maxxer, but I'm not boosting things "just because" either.