So much emphasis on teaching the guitar is on the neck end of the instrument, that a lot of the subtleties of playing the guitar are lost. Both hands are equally important and if you truly want to be a good / better / best guitarist, then don’t ignore practicing and developing techniques for your strumming hand.
It’s an age-old argument. Use a pick or use your fingers? And of course, I’m going to raise the bar and tell you that it’s important to be able to play both ways … with and without a pick.
Like just about everything else concerning the guitar, there are at least eight million “methods” of fingerpicking. And there are at least as many ways to use a pick as there are ways to use your fingers. Using different picks allows you to achieve numerous different “effects” with your guitar. Also changing the way you hold or use the pick can have different effects too.