I relied on backtesting. But that only works for systematic, rules based trading. From what I understand PA is not systematic, rules based trading.
Depends. PA also includes patterns like flags, double tops/bottoms, reactions to S/R levels so uts certainly rulw bbased to some point.
I am not familiar with PA but to me it looks like patterns like flags, double tops/bottoms, reactions to S/R levels are never as accurate as mathematical formulas. If you backtest PA 10 times you will probably have 10 times a different result. I have seen people drawing S/R levels, and a few days later when they had to draw S/R levels again on the same chart, they where not exactly the same. Some levels even changed completely. MA, MACD, stochastics... they are always identical if you recalculate them. Without that accuracy, backtests in PA have a large error margin.
All too complicated and doesn't really work that well, need to go simpler, cleaner and more logical if you've got any chance of sticking this out for the rest of your life! And once you start making $1000 in an hour, I imagine it'll be hard to go back to $15 per hour and having to actually work.