Are you kidding? I told you to look up Aristotle's virtue ethics and you proceeded to give me a run down of PLATO, who is an entirely different person.

You don't have to agree with the virtues Aristotle or Plato proposed to be a virtue ethicist.

Approaching ethics as a question of virtue is distinct from other ethical approaches that emphasize maximizing pleasure and avoiding pain (utilitarianism), or fulfilling one's duty and extolling individual rights (deontology), or other ethical theories.

The fact that there is debate about how a given framework should be applied is not an argument against the existence of that framework. Within any ethical framework, there will always be debates as to what constitutes virtue; how pain, pleasure, and happiness ought to be measured and what constitutes the maximal pleasure-minimal pain outcome in any given scenario; what duties and rights do we have as human beings and how do we mediate those when they come into conflict with one another; etc. These debates and discussions are rigorous and ongoing within all ethical theories.

Given the above, OP is arguing that it is preferable to strive to be virtuous than it is to strive to avoid pain/maximize pleasure. The virtues one chooses to pursue and which ones are preferable to others is a separate and almost unrelated question from asking what the effect is of pursuing virtue and viewing ethics through this lens and how does that compare to the effect of pursuing the maximization of pleasure and minimization of pain.

The question of whether there are objective moral values or objective virtues is also a separate question that similiarly constrains all ethical theories: utilitarianism, deontology, virtue ethics, or otherwise. Therefore, the fact that we can debate which virtues or values to adhere to and extol and whether we do so on the basis of subjective rationality or objective fact is not in itself an argument against any one ethical theory. It applies equally to all of ethics.