Shafted by Design: What's Wrong with the Ice Type?

Art by FellFromtheSky.

Introduction

The Pokémon games are widely appreciated for the extremely diverse set of creatures we can play with. There are hundreds of different Pokémon with a wide range of designs and battle properties, ranging from small and cute to huge and badass. One of the foremost aspects of this diversity is the eighteen elemental Pokémon types, which give Pokémon and moves notable characteristics that affect their performance in battle. The relationship between the types is determined by a complex kind of rock-paper-scissors ruleset, commonly known as the "type chart". This means that no type dominates the game, since every type will have its counter, and ensures that all types play on a roughly level field and that all types will get an equal number of opportunities to shine in the long run.

For the most part.

When you crunch the numbers and scrutinize the match-ups, you may find that some types perform drastically worse than others. Notably, the Ice-type seems to get the short end of the stick unusually often. Both for tiered in-game and competitive play, you will find the vast majority of the Ice-types resting in the lowest tiers. High-tier Ice-types are uncommon in any setting. Why is that so? This article aims to take an in-depth look at the Ice-type and see where its faults lie.

Qualities of the Ice type

The merits of a Pokémon type in battle on a conceptual level are determined by the type chart. It reveals that the Ice-type is actually a pretty good type offensively. It hits the common Flying-type super effectively, punishes the powerful Dragon-type likewise, and also gets the super effective bonus against Grass and Ground, threatening any STAB users of the ubiquitous Earthquake. Its offensive weaknesses include Water, which is very common, but that's Ice's only Achilles heel and perhaps the only one that can be put into question. The other Ice-resisting types are Fire, whose Ice resistance is a welcome counterpoint to an otherwise nasty set of weaknesses; Steel, which resists basically everything; and Ice itself—as many types indeed resist their own type. Combinations of the types above are also relatively rare, meaning that few Pokémon carry a quadruple Ice resistance. No types or abilities grant immunity to Ice-type attacks.

In general, Ice-type moves are a solid choice offensively. Firing off an Ice-type attack deals decent damage in most situations, even when the opponent switches out and you don't know what will come in: Fire-types are usually not bulky enough to sponge an unknown attack as they switch in, there's a great chance that a Steel type would resist any other move you could have used instead anyway, and nobody switches in an Ice-type to counter an Ice-type. The odds of a random foe taking super effective damage from an Ice-type attack seems greater than the odds of the foe resisting it.

On the defensive side, the Ice-type struggles a lot more. It takes super effective damage from Fire, Fighting, Rock, and Steel. All of these bar the latter are offensively oriented types in general, where high-power moves are common, as are high attacking stats. An Ice-type taking super effective hits will lose a lot of health, since the attacks that hit it super effectively usually have high Base Power to boot.

Ice's set of resistances is also pitiful; it only resists itself and has no immunities. This makes Ice the worst defensive typing in the game, even worse than Normal, which doesn't have any resistances but has a full immunity instead. Weakness to common entry hazards is not a good property either. Most Ice-types that avoid Spikes and Toxic Spikes by flying take 4x damage from Stealth Rock.

In general, then, it can be concluded that Ice is a good offensive typing and a terrible defensive one. Ice is not a bad typing overall, as long as the Pokémon and moves it receives are tuned appropriately. The Ice-type seems to be created for "glass cannon" builds that both deal and take massive damage and whose Speed is crucial to get attacks off in Pokémon's turn-based battles. Judging by the type chart alone, Ice-type Pokémon should focus on high-power moves and speed control, while defensive stats and passive damage could be disregarded completely; it simply wouldn't suit the playstyle.

The Ice-type Pokémon

The creature designers at Game Freak seem not to have given the type chart much consideration. In spectacular defiance to the paragraphs above, the median Ice-type is built like an iceberg, with high defensive stats, average offenses at best, and a Speed stat that can literally—in the appropriate sense of the word—be described as glacial. With few exceptions, Ice-type Pokémon are given stats that would benefit a defensive build, but with the type chart being what it is, they still take massive damage in battle.

Some Ice-type Pokémon have good Attack stats, allowing them to strike for respectable damage. Crabominable, Beartic, Mamoswine, and Mega Abomasnow all have Attack stats of base 130 or above. However, they will rarely get to strike first— high offensive stats on an Ice-type is often accompanied by Weedle-like levels of Speed. Actually, of the ones mentioned above, Mamoswine is the only one with higher Speed than Weedle (which has base 50), sitting at a somewhat-OK base 80.

Specially focused Ice-types also exist. Vanilluxe, Jynx, Glaceon, and Regice all break the base 100 barrier for Special Attack. However, none of them has the Speed to do much with it. Jynx is the fastest at base 95, which is not enough to sweep any tier anytime soon. It is enough to make it the only one among them outside the PU tier, at least.

Fast Ice-types are not unheard of either. Froslass, Cryogonal, Weavile, and Alolan Ninetales all have more than base 100 Speed, but most of those lack the offensive stats and moves to put their Speed to good use. Weavile is the notable exception, and it will be discussed below. Cryogonal might be able to hold its own too, but is hampered by an extremely low base Defense (although it improved by 20 points in the transition to Gen VII, it is still a mere 50).

Another large problem faced by Ice-types is that their movepools are so shallow (or just frozen over?), which is especially problematic for pure Ice-types. The aforementioned Glaceon and Vanilluxe, for instance, have decent offensive stats, and their Speed isn't directly awful either. But outside of Ice- and Normal-type moves, they have very little to work with. Glaceon gets Bite, Shadow Ball, Synchronoise, and Stored Power in Gen VII. Vanilluxe has Astonish, Mirror Shot, and Flash Cannon. Both had Signal Beam and Water Pulse as tutor moves in Gen VI, and Glaceon also had Aqua Tail and Iron Tail as options for its base 60 Attack. Those are literally every non-Ice, non-Normal offensive move both Pokémon learn (8 for Glaceon, 5 for Vanilluxe). Not much to build any sort of coverage on, and it makes them very predictable foes to face.

However, instead of wallowing in misery, let us see what makes the good Ice-types succeed, by contrast. Mamoswine, Weavile, Cloyster, and the Kyurem formes all enjoyed presence in the OU tier or above in the past, or even currently. For the latter, it might have been their base stat total of 700 that did it, so let us quietly disregard them and focus on the other three:

Mamoswine has a passable Speed stat helped further by Ice Shard, and hits like a truck with Earthquake and Icicle Crash coming off its base 130 Attack. Access to Stone Edge, Superpower, Freeze-Dry, and Stealth Rock gives it very good coverage. It skimps on the defensive stats to put extra points into HP and, to some extent, Speed, giving it a stat spread befitting of a mammoth.

Weavile is the frozen hunter of OU, boasting the highest Speed stat of all Ice-types and a complimentary base 120 Attack stat. It is the only Ice-type to follow the glass cannon build dictated by the type chart, and it shows: it is a feared revenge killer with a STAB combination resisted by only a handful of Pokémon and solid moves from both its types (as solid as they get, anyway, since both Dark and Ice have a certain lack of high-power moves; see Appendix 1). Weavile is quite easy to KO, but not before it can do its job. Speed is what separates a good Ice-type from the many bad ones. Weavile doesn't fulfill all of its potential, though: its abilities are still oriented towards a defensive playstyle.

Cloyster is an interesting case. It has sky-high Defense and only passable Attack and Speed, just like your typical Ice-type. Two of its abilities are also defensive, in typical Ice fashion. But Cloyster has two aces up its... umm... wherever: an offensive ability in Skill Link and the move Shell Smash. This allows it to trade its useless Defense for heaps of Speed and Attack and dish out loads of pain with multi-strike moves. That's right, what makes this Ice-type succeed is its ability to shed the typical properties of the Ice-type.

Ice-type moves

By far the most used and useful Ice-type move is Ice Beam. It enjoys semi-perfect accuracy, a respectable base power of 90, enough PP to last through most matches, and wide distribution. With the great coverage granted by the Ice typing (particularly in combination with the equally ubiquitous Thunderbolt), Ice Beam might very well be among the best moves in the game.

Ironically enough, though, Ice Beam sees most of its use in standard play as a coverage move on non-Ice Pokémon. Few of the specially focused Ice Pokémon are viable enough to be featured in the higher tiers, although there are notable exceptions in the Ubers tier, where Kyurem-W and (rarely) Protean Greninja may carry STAB Ice Beam to utilize their excellent stats to slay the tier's many Dragon-types.

Blizzard is a respectable move too, although it has fallen a fair bit since its glory days in RBY. But a Base Power of 110 is nothing to scoff at, and its shaky accuracy becomes perfect in the appropriate weather. Pokémon with Snow Warning will nearly always carry Blizzard as their STAB move of choice, even those that generally don't specialize in special offense.

Furthermore, there is Freeze-Dry. While this move has a Base Power of only 70, it hits Water-types for super effective damage. That makes it a dangerous move, albeit one with limited distribution.

For physical moves, the situation is somewhat bleaker. You have to go all the way down to 85 BP to find the strongest physical non-exclusive Ice-type move in Icicle Crash. And despite its comparatively low BP, it still doesn't enjoy perfect accuracy. To pour more salt in the wound, it is acessible to a grand total of ten Pokémon, one of which (Pikachu-Belle) is exclusive to Omega Ruby and Alpha Sapphire. For being the strongest physical move of its type, it is pretty weak. All the other types, bar Psychic, have stronger physical non-signature moves than Icicle Crash (most of which also come without accuracy drawbacks). The performance of Ice moves compared to moves of other types is elaborated in Appendix 1.

Other moves include Ice Punch, which is somewhat widely distributed, but with 75 BP it doesn't hurt many things. Ice Fang is even weaker at 65 Base Power, and imperfect accuracy doesn't help it. Ice Hammer is a strong, accurate move, but it is exclusive to Crabominable.

Other notable Ice moves include Avalanche, which hits respectably hard if the user takes damage beforehand. Since it has negative priority, that last bit is not hard to pull off; the problem is surviving the hit. Avalanche isn't learned by very many Pokémon either; it was a single-use TM in Gen IV, but it hasn't gotten wide distribution since. And 7 of the 10 Pokémon to learn it through level-up are more focused on Special Attack than Attack.

Icicle Spear isn't too bad either, especially not in the non-existant hands of Cloyster. It is an unreliable move otherwise, though, and you need to have favor with the RNG gods for it to roll as much damage as Ice Beam does for special damage.

Ice Shard might be the only truly great physical Ice-type move. It has a Base Power of only 40, but it allows Attack-oriented Ice-types to overcome their pitiful Speed and use their stats to deal actual damage.

In general, and combined with the section above, it can be said that the strong, physical Ice Pokémon lack strong, physical Ice moves, whereas the strong, special Ice moves lack strong, special Ice users.

As for status moves, the Ice type is notable in that it only has four. Mist and Haze are defensive moves, preventing and nullifying stat changes, respectively. Aurora Veil is Game Freak's way of saying: "We really want Ice-types to succeed defensively, so let's give them a one-turn move that combines Reflect and Light Screen. This ought to fix things, dammit!"

And the last status move... is Hail.

All Hail the... wait, let's not use Hail

Hail gets a mention here because it is the weather condition most commonly associated with Ice-types, and in typical Ice-type fashion it is arguably the worst weather condition to base a strategy around. Whereas Sandstorm boosts the Special Defense of Rock-types, and Rain Dance/Sunny Day affect moves of the Water- and Fire-type, respectively, Hail has no such passive benefits. Its only notable properties are dealing passive damage to every type apart from Ice, lowering the power of certain recovery moves, and boosting the accuracy of Blizzard.

Thus, Hail's effects are always neutral or strictly negative, unless the Pokémon carries an one of the three abilities (Snow Cloak, Ice Body, and Slush Rush) and/or the three moves (Blizzard, Weather Ball, and Aurora Veil) that can take advantage of it. There is no passive boost from Hail, only passive ways to avoid taking damage. And unlike with Sandstorm, where three types are immune to the inflicted damage, the Ice-type is the only type not to be afflicted by Hail. In short, Hail will be detrimental to all non-Ice-types on your team, and said Ice-types even need to be specifically tuned to take advantage of the weather. Building a team around Hail is possible, of course, by filling your team with Ice-types, but that comes with the problems associated with filling one's team with Ice-types.

The Ice type in-game

A common rebuttal to competitive arguments is that Game Freak does not design with competitive play in mind. After all, the primary reason why millions of people buy the Pokémon games is to play through the story and battle with their friends without over-analyzing everything. Surely, that in-game experience ought to weigh more than the competitive aspects we tend to value at Smogon? My counter-rebuttal to this is that Ice-types, for all their competitive deficiencies, arguably fare even worse in casual cartridge play than they do competitively.

The main problem can be summed up in a single word: availability. Not only is Ice the least common Pokémon type, Ice-types are usually the last type to be introduced in the game too, often by quite a large margin (See Appendix 2 for details). The areas where Ice-types can be found in the wild, with repeatable encounters possible at all times, are usually after the game's sixth Gym has been beaten. If you look specifically for them, you may be able to find Ice-types through more convuluted means earlier in the game, outlined in Appendix 2.

As varied as the Pokémon games and their in-game worlds are, Black & White remain the only ones with a reliable way to get an Ice-type that will actually help your team before the second half, or last third, of the game. Earlier Ice-types in other games may force you to go out of your way, do things out of order, or sacrifice a better option. For the all other types, you can find a representative Pokémon earlier than the first Gym in at least one game (see Appendix 2). Even the mythical Dragon-type has been given availability early on in recent games, but Ice-types are still delayed until very late in the game. Likewise, Eevee is available early on in several games, but it can't be evolved into Glaceon until very late-game. In Sun and Moon, the Icium Z is the last Z-Crystal you acquire, and Ice is the only type without a speciality trainer.

The absence of Ice-types in the games is also reflected in the roster of Ice-type Pokémon in general. Most Pokémon types are represented in at least five three-stage evolutionary families, either as a primary or secondary type of at least one member (see Appendix 4). The only exception is the Ice-type, with only three three-stage families (those of Swinub, Spheal, and Vanillite). Ice is also one of only five types (the others are Rock, Bug, Normal, and Dragon) not to have been featured in a Starter Pokémon family in any main series Pokémon game. Ice also ties with Electric in having the fewest Mega Evolutions of any type.

Evolving Ice-type Pokémon nearly warrants a chapter unto itself, which is why there is an entire section on it in the appendices (Appendix 5). There are 18 non-legendary Ice-type evolutionary families, three of which don't evolve, three which evolve twice, and one branched evolution, adding up to 19 evolutions in total. Almost half of all Ice-type evolutions need some condition besides level for evolution to take place, with various degrees of complexity. Appendix 5A shows that 9 of the 15 evolutionary families require at least one hoop to jump through besides being at the right level, ranging from the mundane (Amaura requires it to be night), to the insane (Sneasel requires a Razor Claw, which is usually an expensive post-game item if available at all). Interestingly, all the "successful Ice-types" mentioned in the Ice-type Pokémon section above require various degrees of convuluted circumstances to evolve, making them somewhat poor choices for in-game teams.

10 Ice-types from 8 different families evolve through straightforward level-up. The earliest level at which an Ice-type Pokémon evolves is Smoochum at level 30. For comparison, no other type has its earliest evolution later than level 25 (in fact, only three other types have their earliest evolution after level 20, as per Appendix 5B) and the average level at which any Pokémon evolve is 30. This also means that no Ice-type evolves earlier than the average, which is unique, and frankly, not surprising at this point.

With all the problems of the Ice-type, players will quickly begin to question why they should bother with Ice-types at all in-game. Most of them come too late, evolve too late, lack good moves and take too much damage to be worth serious consideration.

Why is the Ice type designed so poorly?

As tempting as it may be to conclude that Game Freak have failed at basic game design, it will not be the (only) conclusion I will make. There are legitimate reasons and arguments that prevent the Ice-type from greatness.

The designers appear to take inspiration from ice in nature when they create Ice-type Pokémon. In nature, you find picturesque glaciers and large, sedate icebergs. The creatures living in icy areas are slow and patient, to conserve heat. Standing still, hiding, or hibernating is a good survival tactic when the temperatures creep far below the freezing point of water. Real-world examples of ice in nature involves slow-moving geological features and sedate and defensive creatures. Polar predators are powerful, but patient. With this in mind, it makes sense not to design Ice-type Pokémon with high Speed or attacking stats.

Meanwhile, Ice's performance in the type chart can be explained by the properties of ice as a substance. Glaciers and icebergs may seem solid, even indestructible for practical purposes, but ice itself is very fragile. You can destroy a small chunk of ice by putting it in your hand and then doing absolutely nothing. Ice is relatively easy to shatter, and snow formations even more so. It makes sense for Ice not to resist anything other than itself; pouring any substance onto ice and snow will usually result in the latter being badly dented or melted away. Hence the Ice-type's total lack of resistances.

The natural habitat of the Ice-type may also explain its poor availability in-game. It is a common convention in role-playing games to have the snow and ice areas appear very late, for understandable reasons: icy areas are very inhospitable. They are known for freezing temperatures, slippery surfaces, howling winds, spike-like icicles hanging from the ceiling, and suffocating snowdrifts that slow walking down to a strenuous crawl. It's the ultimate wilderness in nature, harder and more dangerous to traverse than any other landscape. Pokémon games are built up with a certain degree of landscape progression, from the early routes being representative of "the cozy woods behind your house", through various biomes until you're a master of the wilderness. Making the areas increasingly dramatic as the game progresses, the icy biomes will always appear very late.

Arguably, the Ice-type was designed to be a bit of a one-trick pony from the early beginning, being a rare counter to Dragon-types. In the first Pokémon games, Dragon-types were really rare and really strong, and they had no real weaknesses except Ice (and Dragon itself, but the only Dragon-type move in Gen I was Dragon Rage, which deals fixed damage). Ice could be seen as a specialized "dragon slayer" type, which does every job poorly apart from countering Dragons (just like That One Sword in every RPG ever). Another trait in line with this RPG convention is that Ice-types are typically hard to find and often constrained to side dungeons.

However, this effect was somewhat ruined by the fact that Dragon-types had really high stats and wide movepools and could easily KO Ice-types with coverage moves. Besides, apart from Lance and his Dragonite, there weren't any Dragon-types to fight either, so the utility of Ice-types was rather limited. The idea of the Ice type countering dragons can also be seen in later games, which make Ice-types available shortly before a Dragon-type Gym, or a Dragon-type Elite Four member. Since Dragon is a very late-game type, this gives another reason why Ice-types are found so late. Later on, the Fairy type came along to do dragon-slaying a lot more effectively, as a designated Dragon counter both on the offensive and defensive side. With Fairy taking over the anti-Dragon role, time will tell whether Ice becomes completely untied from Dragon in future games.

The various regions of the Pokémon world also appear to have an overall temperate climate, often completely tropical. When the default weather is "always spring" or "always summer", snow and ice has to be confined to deep caves, mountaintops, or inexplicably frozen valleys (here's looking at Kalos Route 17, which is on the same latitude as the region's desert). Pokémon Trainers out on their first adventure would not bump into cold, wintery locations just around the corner from their home town.

The Fire-type is troubled by similar conventions, since its designated habitats, volcanoes, are also usually late-game areas. And interestingly, the Bug-type suffers from the reverse problem to some degree. Bug-types are often designated to the "woods behind your house" biomes, resulting in a slew of very weak critters designed for the early-game. But Ice-types are victims of the unlucky combination of being designated to late-game areas, being based on "slow" creatures and natural phenomena, and being as easy to destroy as a snowman.

Conclusion: can the Ice type be fixed?

This article shows that there is a lot of gloom and doom regarding Ice-types. But can these problems be overcome, without defying game design conventions and creature design bases? I think the answer here is a resounding yes, oddly enough.

In the type chart, the Ice type seems tailored for offense. Ice has several powerful special moves at its disposal but lacks good users. An Ice-type built as a speedy special attacker, with decent coverage moves, would make a great splash in the metagame. There should be plenty of design bases to pick from too; anybody who has experienced the power of an avalanche, an ice storm burying an area in black ice, or the piercing cold of high-altitude winds knows that ice can be a powerful and lethal force of nature. As an alternative to making new creatures, existing fast Ice-types could also be helped tremendously just by giving them better STAB and coverage moves.

In-game, it is time to take the Ice-types out of their natural habitat and put them somewhere players are actually likely to find them before they have filled their team. As a comparison, Fire-types have been delegated to "fiery" areas such as volcanoes and burnt-out buildings in recent games, but in Generation I they were mostly grassland creatures. Growlithe, Vulpix and Ponyta were all found in grasslands in the early-mid-game. It is not inconceivable to do the same with the three-stage Ice-types: put Spheal on a beach somewhere, or Swinub in an early-game forest. Swinub's base stat total is actually lower than that of Rattata and Pidgey, so it could be featured on the second or third Route of the game without breaking the power curve. Likewise, Vanillite has stats comparable to many starter Pokémon, Abra, and Gastly, which are usually available early. Spheal is somewhere in between the two, with stats comparable to those of Purrloin and Tympole. They would all make for interesting early-game Pokémon, although their evolution levels (see Appendix 5) could be a bit of a hindrance.

In conclusion: The Ice-type is weak defensively, yet its Pokémon are mostly designed to be defensive. They lack good moves, they are found hopelessly late in the game, evolving them is a chore if they can be evolved at all, and the returns are marginal because of all the above. None of these obstacles are insurmountable, however, if the designers put their minds to it. There is plenty of potential for Ice-types to be, if not good, at least not significantly worse than the other types. The problem is not how their characteristics are set up, but rather how they are executed.

Appendices: research data