Both!

What I love about Pathfinder character creation is that it doesn’t feel like either/or to me. In the games I was familiar with, there were usually only a few viable archetypes that would remain fun to play as you progressed through the levels.

Here, I don’t feel like you have to choose. Flavor supports mechanics which supports flavor back in turn. I’ve yet to come up with a concept that I couldn’t express with the normal character creation process, and I’ve never felt like there was a single “correct” build that I had to play if I didn’t want to be left behind by min/maxers at the table. I never would have seen it this way until I experienced, but crunchy tactical mechanics is the best thing that has ever happened to my role playing.