@@DrGandW But aurora veil is on so few pokemon that if there was an equivalent for another weather with similar distribution, I don't think it would make much of an impact.
@@ngmonster1017 not really fam other weathers are so strong that otherwise horrendously bad pokemon became meta simply for getting a weather setting ability ex: pelipper bumping into relevance with drizzle. Other weathers have always been dominant and had to have complex bans every single meta. a rain equivalent of aurora veil for example would break the meta.
@@neyo231 as a Gen 1 fan I strongly dislike when someone says things like "break the meta". It's not breaking, it's changing, redefining, transforming... It, hopefully, always be that way that some pokemon are stronger than others. More rain teams? It's fine! You don't complain how all teams have Intimidate, don't you? And isn't it more interesting to play when every new generation you deal with some new OP thing? Like in Gen 8 it's intimidate, in Gen 9 it's rain, in Gen 10 it's Normal types, In Gen 11 it's Mewtwo and Gen 12... who needs Gen 12 if Mewtwo is OP in Gen 11? (I know it's restricted, just kidding)
The part about Ice resisting Water and Flying are exactly what I was thinking should have happened. One caveat I would add to this, though, is that Scald should work as a reversed Freeze-Dry: Super effective against Ice types. Nerf the base power of scald to compensate, of course. Hail boosting the defense of Ice-types is a common argument that I’ve seen thrown around, and I find it hard to disagree. After all, Rock is technically a weak defensive type too, balanced by a strong offense. This would help Ice out a lot without throwing everything off balance. Any more than that though, I fear that Ice would just tip the balance scale a little too hard.
Scald shouldn't do as much damage as fire but shouldn't do as little as water types. So scald doing 1.5x to ice types makes sense. It's boiling hot water which melts ice at a rate slower than fire but faster than water. And idk about resisting ground or dragon types but resisting grass does make sense.
Gotta say ice types getting a 1.5 defense buff while hail is active was the first thing i thought about and i hope Game Freak will implement it one day
I wonder how he'd deal with a Glass type. There's much potential there and he's not stuck to just Pokémon that look extremely glass like. It could also be ceramic or brittle rock or whatever else. It could give us an interesting dynamic and maybe finally give us another type that's strong against Electric types.
I had a thought- if Ice were changed to resist water, then I think that scald and steam eruption should end up being neutral or even super effective against ice types in the same way freeze dry is effective against water types. Especially if some of these 2nd or 3rd stage buffs were implemented for the ice type, this would help keep it balanced. This may make scald too op considering it’s probably the most common special water move in vgc, but thematically it just makes sense
Please don’t buff Scald. If anything, nerf its base power but make it SE on ice, so that it’s only used for that situation instead of just being a really good move anywhere
Honestly I think instead of removing it’s fire weakness, removing it’s steel weakness makes more sense. Cold and ice make metal more brittle. The neutral damage to fire makes sense though.
How does Fire doing neutral damage to Ice make sense? Low temp is vital to Ice's nature fundamentally. If you want to get rid of Ice, wjat do you do? You warm it up. That makes thematic sense to me and I can't think of a way to explain to children why this wouldn't work in game 😂
So instead of removing Fire as a weakness, I’d remove Steel. Steel machines and tools can break ice, but we haven’t even gotten close to drilling through glaciers. Ice and cold weather can easily wreck the functionality of machines and rust weapons too. So Steel and Ice may as well just be neutral to one another.
I agree. There are very few steel pokemon that are just static solid steel, most involve moving parts or at least parts of the body are steel-y. The only exception I can think of is Steelix where the tail is just one metallic mass.
Ice actually makes steels much more brittle. Not just because of the mechanical properties but the shear temperature of ice will make steel harder but much more brittle, therefore more likely to crack. It's the reason the Titanic sunk, its a combination of the low temperature and then the fracture from the impact from the glacier it crashed into. I never understand why ice is weak to steel, it should be the opposite.
The water and flying resistances make total sense to me and the move changes are a nice little QoL buff. Those and the hail defense buff should honestly just be in the games. But fire interactions are a bit too much IMO.
I could see a grass and bug resistance too and even a normal one but I feel like we're making bad types worse at that point also to add to this under his assumption fire also has to be immune to flying so we're just nerfing flying
@@manguy01 eh anyone can learn. I've just come back to the series (last game was Platinum) and the fairy typing still gives me issues, it feels so... arbitrary. Like 1/2 damage to fire wtf? So honestly you could justify it by asking kids why there aren't forest fires in the winter (tldr it's snow)
@@richard35791 ghost would make zero sense and if Pokemon was realistic ghost types would be immune to everything besides evil (dark) type and ghost and then maybe fairy is neutral everything else couldn't effect it well besides the fact that psychic should be super effective against ghost (psychics can supposedly talk to ghosts and therefore probably know their weaknesses)
I dont understand why Ice doesnt resist Water. I feel like that buff alone would make Ice noticeably better given how prominent Water types are... I also think Ice should resist Dark because darkness is cold lol
@@attheratehandle yea offensively, ice isn't lacking, maybe in the physical department but certainly not the special department. Defense is the issue for it.
It's really weird how many Ice type Pokemon are intended to be tanky despite being weak to so many common types and having no resistances unlike the other types that possess a lot of pokemon intended to be tanky (Steel and Rock).
I've personally been saying Ice should resist Electric for a long time. My logic is that Ice itself is actually almost as good of an insulator of electricity as rubber or soil. I'd also like to say that making Ice resist Flying is absolutely genius! If Ice type Pokémon can't handle a bit of wind then how can they survive on a mountain? It's a Great suggestion and I hope they implement some of these changes.
by that logic it should indeed resist fire; why are igloos made of ice? it has a really poor heat conductivity. its true that flamethrowers are commonly use to melt ice/snow but even then it can take a long time wich would not happened in the middle of a battle
@@deadlyviper_ and ice types normally canon glasses, they're already fast and hit hard, their enemies being a little slow, isn't going to make to much difference, unless u are up against another glass canon, than ice maybe should be in advantage being such a bad type.
We can make another move. Icicle trap. Does 1/16 HP damage and lowers speed by 1 stage upon switch in. Does 1/8 HP damage under hail. Ice types will absorb the icicle trap upon switching in and heal for 1/8 of max HP. Wolfey doesn't talk about moves like this because entry hazards are almost never used in VGC, but this might help out ice types in singles.
@@90Rush That's also a super toxic entry hazard. Hazards in general are mostly unused in vgc and overly centralise the meta in singles. Something like that wouldn't be terribly healthy
The hail buff makes a ton of sense, and I would love to see that implemented, especially since the defense boost could potentially mean mons like Avalugg see more use.
Change nr1 I'd make: Give fewer water types Ice Beam (and other good ice moves). That would make actual ice types more relevant, and it would have the added effect of making grass more reliable as a counter to water (more in line with how good water is vs fire and fire is vs grass).
Plus there's already a bit of precedence for this with how they've greatly reduced the number of Pokemon able to learn toxic, from nearly every Pokemon in the game to now mostly poison types plus some others, which is much more fitting
Or make more moves mutually exclusive in general (not through breeding). Or maybe limit the number of TM/Tutor moves every pokemon can learn unless it's a very special pokemon like Mew so more of them are forced to use their level up moves. Gen 8 already removed Hidden Power so many pokemon needs to look for coverage moves elsewhere, this one might also be a good change.
@@silverkyrie4714 spot on, i suggested the idea of toxic/toxic spikes and stealth rocks becoming exclusive moves to their typings but people said its a bad idea, it would boost their usage a ton. Why the F does Blissey get stealth rock?
This is so huge. A change that doest mess with anyting but the movepool, This is something that gamefreak could actually implement without it being crazy
This gives me a great idea for an ice Pokémon with an ability or even form change that when it’s health drops below 50% it becomes a water type! Could be interesting against fire types if you don’t ohko you are up against a water type that does increased damage to you and resists your attacks!
That’s a really cool idea, and would make a lot more ice types viable if they add this to already existing moms. Something like changing it’s type to water on a super effective move or harsh sunlight, which would counter both fire and rock Type-changing abilities, while probably niche, is such an interesting concept that it’s a shame we haven’t seen much of it
@@xdelbarrio like a regional form of mimikyu, that would be sick. Maybe a Hisuan DLC for the snow biomes where they discover a cave or sm and find hisuan mimikyu with this exact typing. Could be sick
I feel like you can't buff poison too much as it's already a pretty good defensive type, has immunity to a status effect and is one of two types that hit one of the strongest types in the game super effectively.
it sucks that the ice type is so terrible in the game, because i really love most of the designs. i really hope they someday give the weaker pokemon types get a sort of upgrade
You can justify running an ice pokemon for the end game of gs/hgss. They still have the same weaknesses, but Clair and Lance both being dragon give them a use. Weavile, in particular, can be built to sweep both of them in hg/ss with ice punch, surf and steel claws (or steel type cut if you're running one of the popular romhacks)
It's the only weather in the game that does not modify stats or damage income/outcome, like sunny day boosting fire damage, rain boosting water damage, and sandstorm boosting S. Def. I have no idea why Gamefreak haven't decided to balance this out, the only thing I can think of is Aurora Veil, but even that has very sparse distribution, really only A. Ninetales can use it reliably now.
An funky little idea that I heard from one of my friends a while ago is that you could make ice type the only type that is immune to itself. It gives it an odd little buff in the sense that switching into ice type moves is perfectly safe, and a few Pokémon with Ice type as a second type get a nice little buff.
be better for pure ice type to get a heal when hit by water or ice type pokemon the duel type do not really need that advantage due to having more help from second typing.
@@natstar7864 That would be crazy hard to understand, being the only type with an interaction that impactful and the only type interaction that doesn't apply to multitypes. I'd give it something more in line with Dark types being immune to prankster moves, perhaps Ice types can freeze themselves in place so they are immune to phasing moves like roar, whirlwind, or dragon tail. Or the opposite may work, if you hit an Ice type with a pivot move like U-turn or Volt Switch you don't switch out.
I love Freeze-Dry so much as a move. It's so interesting how good it is just because typings that neutralize their ice weakness with a secondary typing are so common and competitive.
There should be one for every type that would provide a resistance to Ice simply because that would be a neat way for some Pokémon to fight back. The most effective would be one affecting Steel. Now Corviknight and Skarmory are no longer safe against that Ice type.
You got one of these added to the games. The defense boost in snow (replacing ice). I also agree that ice should resist water and your flying point makes some sense too.
I don't think I saw one change that involves making a move more inaccurate. To be fair, having some more reliable moves is always nice, and lowering the accuracy is a downgrade, which goes against the video topic, but it would be neat to see more unwieldy yet powerful moves mixed in with the more reliable ones.
...and I completely agree with that. There are plenty of additional effects an attack can have to make it more unique or weaker. Plain random misses are not the best way to balance a move, so I think lower then 100% accuracy should be rare. Think about Overheat or Flare blitz for example.
l think it's not necessarily trying to make all moves more accurate (although more accuracy is always more better obviously), but l think it's important to have at least one well-distributed 100% accurate stab-move with good (80~90) base power in both the physical and special category. It's fine to not have all moves be 100% accurate, but you should have the option to choose whether you want perfect accuracy or more power, and physical-ice types were kinda forced to choose for inaccuracy,, same thing with physical-rock moves :]
Only up to stage 2. Up to that point I always agreed, but both in this vid and Bug one I think Stage 3 changes are bad both thematically and gameplay wise.
@@TheSpartanS196 Yeeeep. Stage 2 makes the types powerful without making them completely broken or stupid sounding. Ice type would benefit a lot with a Water, Flying and maybe a Ground resist, hail buff and that's it.
Instead of having fire and ice both be NEUTRAL to each other I think they should BOTH be super effective. Fire is extreme heat and Ice is extreme cold. Throw one at the other and it substantially reduces the "extreme" of the other. I think this makes more sense thematically, and would be a really interesting dynamic. Similar to when there are two opposing Dragon type Pokémon
Either that or make them resistant to each other anyway. If you throw ice at a big enough fire, the ice is just going to evaporate and not even partially mitigate the fire. Similarly, a fire attack needs to be constant pressure in order to melt the ice, as opposed to the short Poguminz attacks I'd expect. I ... can't quite justify making Fire and Ice _immune_ to each other based on that rule. It kinda has its limits.
Another suggestion for Icicle Crash: turn it into the ice version of rock slide (with the same BP of course) and then introduce a proper physical move for the type.
Instead of removing fire weakness,, I think removing Steel weakness and may be deal bonus damage to steel make more sense since most metal become brittle in cold. The other reason is that since steel typing is stronger than fire, so it can make steel a little less versatile as well
So the tiny offensive damage Steel has is removed because Ice is a bad defensive type. doesn't make alot of sense, even moreso considering fire beating ice is just logical sense.
I disagree because you destroy ice with metal No thanks for this change I do agree with wolfeys changes except the hail bonus which should be plus 25 percent to defense n special defense That way it gets its own identity n not a carbon copy of rock
QOTD: I’d make it resist the water type, and gain a 1.5 defence buff in hail, parallel to rock types in sand. It’s hard to think of any other resistances that work well thematically.
Have now finished the video, I like the flying resistance, though I think the fire type stuff is bit too far. I’m glad I’m not the only one to think that ice types should get a hail buff!
It should resist grass and ground because it hits them for 2x damage The cold can freeze the ground solid, making it impossible to dig The cold can also freeze plants straight through, killing them
When I first discovered the ice type I thought it would resist ice, bug, grass, and water. When I realized the truth it confused me, but then when I realized water resist ice, I was like HUH?! HOW!
@@ThatSpiritMystic Exactly, that's why Wolfey said that ice resisting water makes sense, since water resists ice. Which thematically, makes sense if one has more mass than the other. Sort of.
We don’t need to get that scientific, because I’m sure there’s a lot of type interactions that don’t hold up in that manner, or require great stretches of the imagination. Can’t we just accept all the common examples in media where ice freezes water without any issue at all, and say that making ice SE on water just follows common public perception?
Great video! Adding water resist makes a lot of sense. I also think Scald should do super effective damage to Ice types just like how Freeze Dry does super effective damage to Water types
Not really sense water naturally resistant to changes in tempature Water actually melts ice faster than ice freezes water Ever wonder why people run water over frozen food to thaw it
I would give Ice a resistance to Ghost. I'm sure most people have heard the presence of a ghost makes the temperature drop, and a cold shiver gets sent through your body when one passes by/through you. I'm assuming the types of attacks launched by Ghost-type Pokémon would have similar chill-inducing effects - something that wouldn't bother any Ice-type Pokémon.
I'd give it a heavy resistance to water, outside of one. Scald. Because that move would function more like a fire move, with it being burning water. Therefore causing that move to deal neutral damage.
@@zynet_eseled That sounds like a cool concept, but I think Scald needs nerfs, not buffs. It's already the most spammable move in the game, and now it has one more type advantage compared to every other water move?
The ice/fire interactions are classic game logic, though, probably don't want to fuck with that imo. I can sort of see your logic on offense (ice hurting fire types by dampening the flames makes sense, it's of course hard to light a fire in a snowstorm) but I don't agree with the defensive logic (sure, ice could cool down the incoming attack, but only by melting itself which surely constitutes grievous damage).
Like someone else said, I dont think it would be THAT crazy since Fire type didnt originally resist Ice anyways, that was a Gen 2 change. Setting that aside, while its true that its a typical game (especially RPG) convention, I dont think that necessarily makes it obligatory to follow, Pokemon already kinda does its own thing sometimes, if they followed every other common RPG element rule Electric would be weak to Water too.
Ice pokemon also need cold to survive. Fire is just heating them. It should actually damage them. Pokemon are not huge icebergs like he was talking lol. But i can see why fire can be damaged with ice but it's a game water already is the fire weakness. We don't need another one.
I agree with major buffs to poison like defensively it's really STRONG but offensively it is garbage and needs significant buffs Like GEN 1 had it right when poison nuked bugs but it should also HIT WATER super effective too We'd also give bugs the change to hit water super effective and immunity to dark I'd also make it a tier but have a high skill cap to compensate
For making the final stage of having them be OP I think what you did was good, but to nudge it, I'd make scald super effective against ice. Extra boiling hot water on some ice? That will melt it quick.
I always thought doing with hail that affects all Ice types would be an interesting buff. Something like in Hail, ice types all get the leftovers effect until hail ends. It could also buff ice types def by 1.5x the same way sandstorm buffs rock types SpDef. (Edit: I wrote this comment right when he asked what changes you'd make, only to find out the def boost in Hail is in the video)
Same logic as ice resisting flying -- ice should resist normal. I've never understood why body slamming a glacier is somehow more effective than doing to same to a boulder or a building...
"I would remove the resistance of fire to ice" Gen 1 flashbacks Also, I would do a different change to icicle crash, instead of raising it's accuracy, maybe it could become a spread move like rock slide, they have similar animations (rocks that fall from above vs ice that falls from above and it also would emphasise the ice/rock counterpartship you mention later with hail/sandstorm
How about making Poison-Attacks super effective against the Fighting-Type? No matter how strong your body is, a terrible sickness withers it down from the inside out.
I think it should beat water. Pollution, chemicals, all that jazz destroys water and fish. Plus it would make one of the worst types beat one of the best types. That change alone would be amazing.
Was looking for this. I really like poison types, the only competitive team i ever made was a mono poison team (Gengar, Nidoking, Drapion, Weezing, Tentacruel, Toxicroak) but it is an underwhelming type for sure
How I'd fix Ice: - Make it resist Water, Flying, and Ground. All of these are great attacking types that could deal with more things resisting them (if you want a lore-reason for Ground, Ice is already strong against Ground, and if you've ever lived anywhere cold, you know that the ground is very inflexible during the winter) - Buff Ice-type Pokemon physical defense by 50% in Hail. Hail would actually be worth using for something other than Blizzard or Slush Rush, and Avalugg would be completely physically cracked - Remove freeze from the game entirely and replace it with a special burn equivalent ("frostbite", we'll call it). Everything that previously interacted with freeze (Ice Beam 10% freeze chance, Aspear Berry curing freeze, etc.) is now an interaction with frostbite, as well as new things like Facade boosting in power when a Pokemon is frostbitten. Then make an auto-frostbite move exclusive to Ice-types, and maybe some other below-average types like Rock or Bug. Sorta like how Will-O-Wisp is near exclusive to both Fire and Ghost. Freeze is such a dumb, uncompetitive mechanic that Ice-types can't even take advantage of better than your average Water-type, and making it so Ice-types can benefit more from being immune to this specific status, as well as giving them the ability to spread it around, would be far more interesting. Assuming a corresponding Frost Orb is introduced, this would also be a slight buff to Guts Pokemon, in case their Ability ends up getting suppresed for some reason, as well as most Facade users who want to use attacks that aren't Facade - In case the buffs are too powerful, I'd also propose Rock resisting Ice, which you could justify by Rock being strong against Ice. Rock is pretty lacking defensively outside of sand, so this change would hopefully be enough to keep Ice in check, as well as a nice little Rock buff
All these sounds very good. Only thing I would add is that I feel a lot of Ice Types need better stat allocation, as many Ice Types have weird or bad stat allocation for what their alleged gameplay design is going for
These buffs would be perfect. I would add that frostbite should reduce the power of special attack moves, just like how burn reduces the power of physical attack moves.
I like the frostbite effect. But i do think it could be added as an extra effect next to freeze. Maybe instead of burn like (atk drop) it could be an allround stat dropper (ATTACK + DEFENSE + SPEED). Seeing as your whole body is affected being below temperature. I also think fire should do neutral dmg. And ice should deal neutral dmg to fire and water. Seeing as fire and water can be put out and get frozen by a strong amount of cold. And a glaciar doesnt melt due to a campfire. In this sense the greater value of the element would win a conflict hence the neutral status
How to make ice types better: a status move that freezes the opponent's mon How to make ice types broken: a 100% accurate status move that freezes the opponent's mon
Would love an evolution of jynx that is a Medusa type that has an ability to freeze when hit with a physical move. And this would make Magma Armor and the other abilities like it actually usable.
I think that ice should: 1. resists grass type. A plant will never grow in ice, and if you take a plant under ice it will die. Look at the trees in winter. 2. resists water type and also be effective 1x against water. I mean, Game Freak this is so obvious, literally ice is freezed water, this is why glaciers exists. Water can't do nothing against ice. 3. be supereffective against bug type. Most bug doesn't resists cold temperature. In fact there are way more bugs in summer. I know all these changes would break the game, but it would be cool if game freak will change even one single thing in the ice type.
idk about being super effective against bug types. From a competitive stand point, bug type is already pretty bad so it is a uneccesary stab at them. Also, you'd be surprised how many bugs either are not that affected or even use the cold to their advantage. True, bugs are not often out in the cold, but that's because it leaves them vulnerable, not because it hurts them.
Bugs will be nerfed a lot then. Problem is Ice type pokemons ar few and they arent strong so their base power should be increasing. Types and there weakness that I'd be giving(copied fron notepad)- FIRE- Water, Ground, Rock, Air WATER- Grass, Electric, Poison GRASS- Fire, Bug, Ice, Air POISON- Psychic, Ground ICE- Fire, Rock, Fight, Steel ELECTRIC- Ground GROUND- Water, Bug, Ice, Grass STEEL- Fire, Electric, Ground, Sound, Fight GHOST- Dark, Ghost AIR- Rock, Ice, Electric PSYCHIC- Ghost, Bug, Dark, Sound FAIRY- Steel, Poison, Dark, Sound BUG- Poison, Fairy, Rock, Fire, Air FIGHT- Air, Psychic, Fairy, DARK- Bug, Fight, Fairy ROCK- Steel, Water, Fight, Ground, Grass DRAGON- Ice, Steel, Fairy NORMAL- Fight, Dragon SOUND- Water, Grass, Rock [REASON: Changing the name of Flying type to Air type, Fighting to Fight type. Air should be super effective(SE) against Fire as strong Wind can blow fire. Steel can conduct electricity more than Water. Poison should be SE against Bug and water coz people use insecticides in the field and home to keep away bugs. Poison also means pollution, water can be polluted. But not giving Air pollution coz all creatures take breath from air not only birds. Sound moves 15 times faster(5150 m/s) in steels than Air, so sound is SE against Steel. Sound is SE against Psychic & Fairy. Coz psychic's cant concentrate due to noise and Fairies have a weak nerves. Sound weak against water coz water muffles sound. Also nobody can create sound underwater coz if u open mouth to create sound, water will get into your mouth. Grass is SE against sound coz cotton can isolate sound, trees can block some sound and trees are quiet. Rock should be SE against Sound becoz hills and walls can reflect sound. Also Poison will be immune to sound coz generally poisonous snakes hearing range is too low(10 - 600HZ only). Dragon should be weak against steel instead of dragon coz at the end, the knight slays the dragon. Also there is no strong logic for dragon weak to dragon rather dragon vs dragon rivalry ends so early in battle which doesn't give fun. Giving dragon SE against Normal just to give dragon strength. Dark and Fairy both should be SE against each other coz angels and Evils both works against each other and wants to harm. Also "good will always prevail" this already applies for fighting so no need fairy again and this is not correct everytime. Fairy SE against Bug coz fairies also means light (angels are created by light) and light attract bugs. Also bug should be SE against ground coz bugs dig holes in ground to make colonies.]
Well about that agreed but i think they should nerf the moveset of some water type pokemon. Because most water type mons can use ice moves while it can't be the same for ice. So Starmie uses Ice Beam and Blizzard while Jynx can't use Surf or Hydro pump. So Water basically has a coverage for grass while Ice doesn't have coverage for Fire. And water the way it is now just nerfs ice to its second, like Steel does to Rock, Fighting does to Normal, and i have to say Grass to Poison since Poison moves can't be used against Steel while Spore or Stun Spore which are Grass can do damage, and Toxic can be learned from any Grass Pokemon plus Grass can recover. Electric are also nerfed that way since thunder wave can be learned from many pokemon. And i think this is the main issue some types and some pokemon have too extensive learnset which comes at a cost to other types.
I always wondered why ice type never seemed too special with how powerful it is against dragon, ground, flying, and grass, and the fact that ice types often seem coveted and rare by being late game Pokemon. While I don't rank many ice types high in my list of favourites, so many of them seem sleek, powerful, beautiful, or mysterious.
You know, I wonder if you could either make a rom hack with your proposed changes to the typings, or make a custom showdown or something, to see how the changes would affect real experiences
Considering both Bug and Ice was covered, it would be fun to see Frosmoth as the starter. I mean, it would get benefits from both bug and ice buffs! Depending on which stage of buffs are applied, I imagine Frosmoth could go anywhere from "pretty good" to "hilariously powerful". Bonus points if the rom hack somehow implements the different stages as a difficulty setting!
I've actually thought a lot about this before because Ice is one of my favorite types in terms of design. Haven't watched your opinions yet, just watched the intro. Here's what I'd do. -First and foremost: Significantly alter the distribution of Ice type moves. Nearly every water type gets some sort of Ice move, and imo this alone devalues icea lot. Why use an ice type when you can use a water type? Decreasing the amount of water types that get ice moves would place a stronger emphasis on ice. -Buff hail. Redistribute Snow Warning, Slush Rush, Snow Cloak, and Ice Body to be more common and usable, and add a stat buff (like rock gets for Sandstorm). Since ice types are generally less physically defensive, I'd say a 1.5x defense buff. Maybe this would be broken, but sandstorm is pretty balanced so I don't think so. This way you also wouldn't have to change any individual Pokemon's stats, and still add some defensive play with ice types. -Add some resistances. Dragon and Grass make the most sense to me, since ice is super effective on those types. Possibly ground as well. More than 4 resistances is pushing it, especially with the above. Pretty sure all these things would make ice A/S tier. curious to see what you say now that i typed all this out, haha Edit: Just watched the video, glad we're on the same page ! Lol. Wish they'd actually do something about ice.
Can we please just cut the realistic bs and make ice SE on water types? Water can more than handle it, and plenty of games use the fire/ice/water relationship. I’m wondering whether ice having a defense buff in hail is the best thing that can be done for it, assuming it doesn’t get any new resistances. It’s a bit crazy but I kinda wish they could universally get a speed or evasion buff (and axe the abilities that otherwise grant those buffs) in hail. Might be too OP though, especially on dual types that don’t suffer some of ice type’s usual burdens lol
With Ice being one of my favorite types, and Alolan Ninetales being my favorite pokemon, I've thought about how to improve it a lot. That being said, I agree with most of the changes and they were actually almost identical to what I came up with. One thing I'd change though, is I don't think Ice needs to be S-tier and neutral Fire is probably overdoing it. Instead, I'd focus more on changes specific to Hail, like adding more types to its immunity (though no types would really fit thematically) or providing more Hail-powered damaging moves since Hail is largely a hyper offense weather already. They might even benefit from a ice entry hazard in the vein of either Spikes or Stealth Rock
I feel like adding either a water, flying or grass resistance to ice would fit so much thematically and I can see it actually beign implemented in the game. Also the hail buff to defense makes a lot of sense and should be in the game as well.
@@rabeechowdhury I do like the frostbite static in legend Arceus. If they replace frozen with frostbite it would give the game a much needed special attackers Nerf the game heavenly needed.
I might be biased do to my love of grass types, but I don't think ice should resist grass. Not only is grass tied with rock for the most weaknesses, but it's already resisted by 7 types. Not to mention there are plenty of plants and trees that survive and thrive in cold weather.
@@Falkaisis you right grass and rock have way too much things that are risist after conversation with others people with buffing ice - type. We all agree with ice should be resistance to electric, flying ground and water. Plus removing frozen do to how lackluster it his as a status condition and pretty rare to activate. Frostbite work perfect as a Nerf too many special attacks pokemon that are being played. All there left is to make a special version of intimidate.
The hum. I really want you to keep in mind that increasing a move from below or at 60 to above 60 means it no longer works with technician. I feel like the entire point of having low power moves other than level-up is that low power moves often have different effects, gaurenteed stat drops, priority, guaranteed crit, causes opponents to switch out, multiple hits. In this way there are sort of two types of moves:the good ones and the interesting ones. (And the really good ones that are kinda both, like fiery dance)And sometimes the interesting ones are good ones in the right positions: electroweb and icy wind, snarl, breaking swipe. By making frost breath 65 instead of 60, instead of being in the interesting but low power tier, it’s now in the primary attacking moves tier. Wich Im not saying that that’s inherently bad, but that abilities like technician depend on that difference.
Like the other commenter pointed out this is an argument that I actually agree with you on in theory, but disagree on in practice. You aren't wrong in the broad sense, but in the specific case of the proposed Freeze-Dry change and its association with Technician then the actual functional changes that would happen are literally as close to zero as it's possible to get since only one Pokemon would be affected in any way. That said, I also think there's a good argument to be made for increasing the variety of, as you call them, "primary attacking moves" available. As an example, one of my favorite changes they ever made was removing Return because it was such an obvious "best choice" as far as Normal physical STABs go. With it gone now there's more variety in who uses which moves since, even though none of them are as good as Return was, now the options behind choosing which one to use are more interesting. As it stands I think Ice is in the same boat as Ice Beam and Blizzard really are the only two options used as core special attacking moves, so adding in just a bit more competition there with Frost Breath I don't think would be a bad thing.
@@CodenameJD @Connaeris Actually I thought of that fact. But that only accounts for the present, not the future. And more importantly (and I didn’t phrase it well so my bad there), technician isn’t the center of my comment. My argument is that 60 seems to be the threshold between primary attacking moves and moves which’s primary use is its secondary effect. Moves over that threshold usually have a secondary effect that you don’t count on in your gameplan. If you’re using Ice beam, thunderbolt and flame thrower (or blizzard, thunder and fireblast) in your moveset, you aren’t counting on landing a status condition. You don’t run psychic or shadow ball or moonblast or muddy water only because of the stat drop chance. Meanwhile if you’re using electroweb or nuzzle or icy wind or breaking swipe or snarl, or rock tomb or mud shot or bulldoze Or heck even fake-out, especially fake-out, you’re counting on the secondary effect. I haven’t seen aincent power very often, and the Pokémon I saw it on I don’t think had any other rock-type coverage. But I’m pretty darn sure that ancient power wouldn’t have been in the moveset if it didn’t have that slim chance of the secondary effect activating. And If you’re using frost breath, generally it’s because you want to self-activate anger point. There’s a trade off between power and utility for moves that aren’t exclusive or rare at around 60 base power(and then there’s Kyrem’s signature move wich is somehow just a worse icy wind). Past 95 there’s generally a trade off between power and either accuracy (unless the move is a signature move, and sometimes even if it is(looking at you groudon and kyogre) or stat drops or loosing a turn. If you make Frost breath reliably do the same damage as ice beam, you effectively make ice beam completely irrelevant on all Pokémon that get frost breath. Which again you do you, but there’s a reason some moves are capped at the base damage they are. But by moving the base power of frost breath somewhere in between 60 and that other number, suddenly its in the weird tier of that 65-75 range: moves that have a cool but low-chance not-always-helpfull utility that you would rather just have a more powerful move. If you’re using smart strike, you’re generally not using it because of its accuracy negation, but because you don’t have Iron head. If you’re using cross poison, you’re generally not using it because of it’s higher crit rate but because you don’t get poison jab, or don’t want to risk your luck with gunk shot. And then there’s skitter smack. You don’t use skitter smack. I tried once on a support charjabug(using its battery ability to boost Kyogre) but using bug bite to steal my enemies’s health berries was more useful than lowering their spattk(partially because of how slow charjabug is). And while chargabug doesn’t get this move, the move struggle bug would have likely been more useful on another Pokémon, as this lowers the spattk of both opponents. Even infestation traps tour opponents in. And all of these other moves? 60 Base power or less. I really wish there were more moves in the odd 65-75 range like scorching sands and burning jealousy, wich seem to be added to teams for their secondary effects almost as much as they are for damage and coverage. Secondary effects that strike a middle ground but aren’t kinda worthless most of the time like other moves. Parabolic Charge is unique. Problem is the Pokémon that gets it is very frail but has a gameplan where it hits so hard that you really really should use moves with a higher base power. Sucker Punch is I guess also in this range but executed well. Priority move that’s really used because it can actually do good damage, but with a trade off that sometimes it wont work. Freeze dry is also a good example in this range. Giving up 20 base power for the ability to hit water types. Suddenly Water types that thought they were safe aren’t. Gastrodon, Dracovish, *4 get outta here! So I could probably keep going for a good while, but mainly, Technician is an ability that is supposed to exploit that existing system- a system that I believe raising frost breath above 60 Base Power would not agree with- but I recognize that my assessment could easily be wrong, and even if my assessment isn’t wrong, that having a few moves outside of that system isn’t going to break the game. In fact I think signature moves like fiery dance or rare moves like extreme speed that break this system are good because they break up the monotony and make each Pokémon just a little more special, so long as they’re not easy to come by. And while a move that only one type can use is kinda rare depending on the type (looking at you, water and normal) I don’t feel like it’s rare enough to justify breaking the system for. So my argument isn’t about technician specifically, not only because singling out one ability for a single move is a stupidly not-impactful problem even if technician Pokémon did get frost breath, but because the underlying power balance of moves is important and something I never really thought about as hard as I did today And for my last thing I’d like to mention is that frost breath has a fighting type counterpart. I think it’s called storm throw. Always crits. Methinks that these should remain parallel. So if the base power of FB is increased, than ST should also be increased by the same amount. I don’t have an appealing reason I just think so
I've been pushing for ice to resist water for years. I'm glad that was your first change. I think it makes the most sense, both competitively and thematically.
Hey Wolfey, this is a great video, and I appreciate the thought and effort that went into it. Just one thing: fire doesn’t need heat, it needs a source of ignition. Heat is the product of combustion. So in that case, I (by the rules I’m making up right now) don’t think the Ice type should lose the weakness to fire. But everything else is spot-on!
Hey! Have you ever thought of having an acid rain wether effect? This effect could damage all non-poison pokemon every turn while poison types could have some sort of buff while within the effect
I would be hesitant on adding too many weather effects to the game. We have 4, and those 4 already end up competing with each other's weather quite frequently. Adding too many weather effects reduces the strength of all of them. That said, acid rain is an interesting effect, so how about making it a weather modification to *existing* rain instead of being a weather effect itself. Perhaps when certain poison type moves are used in rain, existing rain gets modified into acid rain. Acid rain damages non-poison types and buffs poison types, no longer benefiting water. Trying to reapply the water with Drizzle or Rain Dance won't work. Acid rain otherwise behaves as normal, being beaten out by other weather effects, including Primordial Sea. As a result, I also have an interesting idea for a new ability, called purity. Suicune has the ability to purify dirty water, and so this ability would be either unique to Suicune, or available to a very select few Pokemon including Suicune. When a Pokemon with this ability enters battle, it purifies the acid rain, turning it back into normal rain. Additionally, while the Pokemon is on the field acid rain cannot be applied. The ability would logically allow the user to resist poison and become immune to the poison effect, but considering this would be on Suicune that's pushing things too far. There could also be a few moves that can purify acid rain. This would be powerful for a few reasons. It obviously benefits poison types greatly, but non-weather teams can benefit from this as well. Rain benefits only water, but Acid Rain benefits no one, so if neither side has poison types turning rain into acid rain will even the player field, and force the opposing team to run a purifying move simultaneously with rain to maintain their advantage. This could open the door to other weather modifications for other types, like perhaps a dark/ghost type weather modification on sun that changes it into solar eclipse. I can't think of anything for sandstorm or hail off the top of my head, but there should be something for those as well.
It would guarantee a normal Poison proc on any moves that have a chance to poison. But it wont do the second stage of it. So, you'll have to fight against the clock to win before it manages to chip away at your health at a consistent rate.
it probably fits Weezing to have an ability that creates like weather effect, but like poisonous gas, it helps poison types hit steel types with that ability and boost their hp stat
Another issue I've noticed when it comes to ice types is that despite being a good offensive type, Gamefreak has this weird design philosophy where they make a lot of Ice types defensive, either through stat spreads or abilities Take a look at a lot of them, they have a beefy defensive stat somewhere in there, either through HP, Def or Sp.Def. And when they do make an offensive Ice type, they gimp it in some way (with some obvious exceptions)either through coverage or offensive stats just being lacking, or relying on gimmicks to shore up some major flaws. Case in point, look at Frosmoth. A horrible defensive typing, yet it's second highest stat is its special defense? And its two abilities are defensive? Who designed this? If they switched around its Special Defense and Speed, and gave it Tinted Lens instead, it would be so much better off as a Pokémon. But that's just my thoughts anyway
Given that a lot of the defensive ice types are Ice/water types, having a 4x resistance to Ice and water and an extra 50% defence in hail is probably going overboard on top of their base stats.
@@blissfulstatic2563 I thought he was replying specifically to my comment, didn't know the context was the video since I think Wolfe already explained it so I didn't make mention of it. I had a completely different concern which is part of the Ice type's overall problem, not just the typing itself but even the kind of stats Gamefreak pairs with it. Two different contexts, since this vid IS about fixing the Ice type
I’ve been really enjoying these rebalancing videos! Generally I think it’s more interesting and compelling to adjust up than down in discussions like these, so I might be more interested in hearing how you would take our last lower-tier archetype and give it a bump. Nerfing Fairy could be interesting too, though! I would love the idea of making a Showdown mod implementing your suggestions and let people see how different formats would shake out with the changes. One quick note is that it makes it easier to find your clips channel if you put a link in the video description, it’s weird when something gets mentioned and the link isn’t immediately accessible.
If anything gets changed from this I would love for Hail to increase ice type defense. It would be a huge buff for hail in general and it as of rn is easily the worst weather. That one change could at least make it decently viable but probably still the worst lol
Another problems that Ice types seem to have is that a lot of Ice Pokemon, outside of the likes of Mamo, Weaville, Kyrugem, have really bad and weird stat allocation
The main problem is that the majority of ice types have bad speed stats, usually around 50-60 which needs major investment for slush rush and doesn't even work that well on trick room
I remember back in Gen 1 where Fire didn’t resist ice for some reason. How nice to see a potential reversion of that one interaction that has been a thing for over 7 generations of Pokémon
I've always felt the water-ice relationship should be reversed, thematically speaking. Put water on a bunch of ice, it makes more ice, assuming both are of average temperature (ice being cooler by necessity.) Therefore, ice should be resistant to water. Freeze a puddle, it becomes ice. I would count that as a win for the ice type. It's essentially the same reason as it is super effective against ground, really.
@@Dexuz But if we assume both types are room temperature, ice type by itself just commits suicide by melting, and fire types should be too cold to do any real damage. If fire types are hot, shouldn't ice types be cold? I dunno man, feels weird
@@sirreginaldfishingtonxvii6149 Ice types shouldn't melt as their bodies aren't made out of ice, at least not entirely; their moves however, are. In the case of Fire-types, flamethrowers are actual weapons, and they're used at room temperature.
Proposed Change 1: Remove Steel's resistance to Psychic type attacks Proposed Change 2: While not a direct change to the Psychich type, giving Steel it's resistance to Dark type back would make dark types worse and therefore indirectly make Psychic types better Proposed Change 3: Make Psychic type attacks Super Effective against Steel. I mean aren't psychics supposed to be able to spend spoons/metal after all? I know all of these 3 changes are all about changing the Psychic types relation to the Steel type but considering Steel is one of the best types in the game AND that out of the 3 types that is Ghost, Psychic and Dark, Steel losing it's resistance to Dark in gen 4/5 (not sure which) is the choice that makes the least sense to me considering that most Dark type attacks are really just foul play tactics you'd see in a street brawl (biting, sucker punching, feint attacking etc) which really shouldn't have much of an effect on Steel compared to Psychic and Ghost type attacks. I'd also just like to clarify that i'm not a Steel type hater. I like the Steel type and think it's pretty cool and i personally wouldn't even be opposed to Steel losing it's Fighting Type Weakness at least thematically or making the Steel type offensively better by adding more Steel Type Weaknesses to certain types. Though i do recognize Steel Type is in a good place and doesn't need any buffs.
I think Psychic types biggest issue is that they are outclassed by Ghost types offensively, and that has become pretty clear with Pursuit’s removal in Gen 8
@@theimpersonator7086 Pretty sure it's in reality Ghost which outclasses Dark. There are only five psychic type pokemon that are better countered by Dark type coverage. Indeedee-F, Indeedee-M, Girafarig, Meloetta, and Oranguru. In a majority of other cases Ghost is a much better counter to psychic type pokemon. Especially the dual psychic - fighting/fairy type Pokemon.
@@rabeechowdhury Disagree, as Dark is far more defensive than Ghost( because of Ghost and Knockoff). Pshyics tends to be more offensive with Calm MInd, and are thus outclassed by Ghosts
I would love to see a video on the poison type. I am currently doing a monopoison run of radical red and I think there is a lot that could be done to help them out.
@@JordanWindhamBenford I agree. On its own, poison is pretty lame. There are interesting moves that play with poison like venom drench or venoshock, but they are underwhelming considering steel makes these moves extremely unreliable.
@@JordanWindhamBenford I always thought that poisoned should have some distinction from just being a great value toxic, so what if poison halved special attack like burns do for regular attack?
@@galaxianinsomniac9953 It's not just the pokemon themselves though. Their moves are mediocre. Outside of attacking fairy types what reason do you have to choose stab poison move over non-stab anything else? To inflict the poison condition? Compared to attract, confusion, flinch, paralysis, sleep, burn, leech seed, ability destruction? Pokemon would rather get poisoned than anything else. Poison should be a death sentence like the other status moves.
I was comming here to ask about this. In his tier list the bottom 3 are bug as the worse and ice and poison as bellow average, and poison is the only one missing
One idea I saw is making Water-type weak to Poison attacks. The logic was based on pollution killing aquatic life. This nerfs Water defensively while buffing the viability of Poison attacks.
8:34 if abomasnow SWITCHED INTO the water spout, then the rain would be replaced by hail, effectively cutting water spout's damage by a 3rd. so the damage would be 107-126 (64.8 - 76.3%).
Thematically, it would make sense to make ice resist electric. Many of you probably know that pure water is an insulator, and it's the dissolved ions in it that conduct electricity. Well, when water crystallizes (freezes), those ions are largely pushed out of that structure. (And other chemistry/physics I won't go into, but suffICE it to say that ice is a natural insulator.)
Well, that would also open a new electric move, that would bypass that. As far as I know, every insulator also have breakdown voltage point, from which would allow conduction. Supereffectiveness of this move on Ice (and probably Steel) would make sense, if the Ice type resisted Electric. There also this Supraconductivity thing that I don't know how to apply (don't quite understand how that works: Apparently, no electric resistance and levitation on a smaller scale, while close to absolute zéro. Feel free to correct me on that). Anyway, I'm in for an Ice type resistant to Water, Ice, Electric and Flying. Would do just fine for me.
@@NerdHerder545 Yeah, finally ice as a secondary type for waters wouldn't just be a sentencing to little competitive use. It would at least remove one weakness where it adds two others.
@@luxiwayfarer369 Superconductivity (supra- in many languages) is a cool idea to use, for sure. In nature, it would require a specific type of material (usually a metal or a particular type of ceramic). It's a bit harder to think of a move that would fill the role; it feels more like a passive ability that a rock and/or steel type would have. Especially a mon like Probopass or Alolan Golem. I imagine it would be like motor drive but when hit by ice moves. Maybe the electric move that would be super effective against ice types would involve melting the ice or ionizing it to make it conductive.
Hail should give ice a defense boost like sandstorm does for rock types a spdef boost. Add that and the water resist as you suggested and I think i’d be pretty content.
I know that water and flying is stated but I also considered having ghost and fairy be contenders for resistances especially ghost. Ever since steel lost its ghost resist (with nothing to compensate), the type basically has one less thing to check it which effectively meant that it can hit almost everything neutrally which eventually lead to something like Calyrex shadow being a monster in its own right.
Ice type should've resisted Water and Ground types from the beginning, honestly. Would've helped them out a lot and wouldn't've made them such a laughing stock as a defensive type.
I never got why water resisted ice. Surely it would be the other way round, since cold temperatures freeze water and not many sea creatures live in cold temperatures?
@@ahumanbeingfromtheearth1502 Wolfey even made the analogy. If you throw a cube of ice in the sea, it would melt and just turn into more water. Water and Ice should be like Bug and Fighting where they both resist each other, since water in cold temperatures would also turn into ice.
@@Koenig_Luiz yeah, I like his explanation for why both should resist each other, but if only one could have a resistance to the other it would make far more sense for it to be ice than water
here's how i would make the ice type viable: add one (1) additional resistance to ground. being able to resist earthquakes is good. add the 1.5x defense buff from hail you mentioned. also make water types immune to hail damage to make it a legitimately good weather. instead of giving frost breath a power buff, make it have perfect accuracy. that way it's a trade off between having a 10% freeze chance and hitting through evasion and defense buffs. (also so that we can have a ticking time bomb counting down until Technician goes on an ice type) speaking of freeze, make freeze work like Paralysis in TCG where it's like a one turn sleep that also traps. as a trade off make Fire types immune to freeze. also add some new moves, like a special variation of Ice Shard. that way Ice can solidify itself as a strong offensive type similar to Fighting. also another physical Ice move, maybe one that does increased damage in Hail. also maybe a new ability that grants Water immunity that can go on an Ice type
How is dragon a solid offensive move? It only hits dragons super effectively. On anything but a dragon type pokemon (STABmove with few resistances) I'd heavily prefer an ice type move over a dragon typed one.
I don't agree with resisting dragon because it's whole thing is to hit almost everything neutrally except for steels and fairies (the type created to nerf dragons)
I would make Ice resistant to Ground, so it can actually switch into common Earthquakes/tantrums and not take massive damage, then threaten one of the types it is super effective against. Plus resisting Earthquake adds a nice doubles buff
Ice types have always been one of my favorite types, and I’m really happy you came up with the 1.5x boost to defense in hail. I always wondered why they didn’t do that originally since it Hail works similarly to Sandstorm, but again, I’m really glad you brought this idea up
I decided what Frostmoth would look like with all the bug and ice changes and HOLY MOLY. 8 resistances, 3 weakness, 7 super effective. With only steel resisting both.... I kinda want to see it
Predicting hail would give ice a defense boost was awesome. If you didn't want to increase the strength of non-ice pokemon but wanted to make ice type moves better there are two changes I thought might be interesting. Such as ice type pokemon get an increased accuracy when using ice type moves (5-10%). Or, ice type moves that freeze only have that secondary freeze effect when used by ice type pokemon. I know freeze is a less common effect than sleep because there's no Spore effect for freeze. I thought about making it to where freeze always thaws after 2 turns if an ice type pokemon did the freezing. If you adjust the freeze mechanic to work better with ice types and not with others, it could make more sense to have a Spore for Freeze.
Stage 3 Ice being neutral on Fire actually makes sense. An avalanche could easily put out a fire, given enough mass. However, Ice not being weak to Fire ... just doesn't. Ice is melted easily by fire, and presumably the fuel for the fire is coming from inside the fire-using pokemon's body. Or from its magic, or whatever. The Ice pokemon is just a target, and it independently has no defences against the fire. In other words: ice in the right circumstances can put out fire, so it makes sense for Ice to be neutral on Fire. Fire can always melt ice, so Fire has to be super effective on Ice.
The same applies to having defenses against the cold. Since heat and cold are the result of how much energy is in an area then whoever wins is the side that has the greater energy difference.
It's often said though that a bunch of ice-types make ice that doesn't actually melt as easily as it's supposed to, and can easily and persistently create extremely low temperatures or flash-freeze things. Cold is really just an absence of heat, so in slightly more scientific terms, they're not simply "making cold", they're doing that by being very good at getting rid of heat. Also, to look at the line of "the ice pokemon is just a target, and independently has no defenses" Then by extension of that line, most water mons wouldn't resist fire, since they're mostly not literally water, they'd all face a major danger of dehydrating, and many real aquatic/amphibious creatures are in fact not good with smoke inhalation or pollutants either. However, I still don't treat any stage 3 stuff as being "I think GF could get away with actually doing it now", in either the bug video or this one. At that point, to me it's more like "stuff that would be fun to consider if Pokemon were remade from the ground up"
maybe not remove the fire weakness of ice, and just make ice moves super effective against fire. right? better yet, going on about how ice is similar to steel and rock. let's make ice resistant to bug, additionally we can make ice resistant to grass, maybe even normal types too.
@@gesundheitoh814 fire and ice being neutral to each other makes sense due to the nature of temperature and isn't too disruptive. Ice resisting grass and bug honestly doesn't make much sense beyond surface level reasoning. There are plenty of arthropods and plants that thrive on cold environments and there isn't really a direct reason why ice would resist those types. Besides they don't need another type resisting them.
Ok but by that all of the above logic, water and fire should be neutral to each other then. Water can evaporate with enough fire, fire can be doused by enough water. Hell, make grass types neutral to water as well since water can drown plants! Make steel weak to it too since water can rust it. And hell while we’re at it let’s just make bug weak to water since most bugs drown in enough water. Do you see where I’m going with this or do I need to be more sarcastic? Sometimes it’s better to use thematic reasoning (fire melts ice, therefore it is both strong against it and resists it) vs scientific reasoning. It’s a ~video game.~
Taking a guess before I see your suggestions: Remove the weakness to Rock, and give it a resistance to Water and Flying. That would cover a lot of common offensive options, letting bulkier Ice types switch in on a good read (particularly vs Water and Rock) and makes good sense canonically. Edit: that's a big lol from me. I don't think removing the weakness to Fire makes much sense thematically. Thematically, pokemon moves are meant to chip away at each other, not outright one-shot. Throwing a rock at an iceberge and pretending it'll crack the ice is silly, setting the iceberg on fire (it's a magical world so it works) will do some damage. I was actually not aware that sandstorm gave a 1.5% sdef boost, hail giving a 1.5% def boost does make sense.
I definitely prefer the Rock change, since that's a lot more impactful given the existence of Stealth Rock, and that Rock is an overall more common coverage type (especially among mons that Ice is ostensibly supposed to threaten, like Ground).
Agreed what Ice needs most is to remove the Rock weakness that makes no sense so that Ice Pokemon can survive stealth rocks. You have to wonder why Stealth Rock doesn't come in more types? Fire, Ice, & Flying are all weak to Stealth Rocks.
I disagree with the Rock point. I think Fighting makes sense. Think about it, its almost impossible to break ice with bare hands without them getting pretty damaged and its a great way to buff them as theyre not weak to 1 of the best offensive typings. And Rock actually makes sense for it since u'd need an iron or stone tool to reliably break ice
I feel like how I would buff the ice type would be changing how hail works. I think an interesting change to hail would be when it is active it gains a resistance to water ( since the weather is so cold it makes the water less effective against ice types) and make all super effective damage dealt to ice be 1.5 times Instead of 2.0 times (the hail accumulates on the ice types body giving it a form of Armor) to not make this too powerful the currently existing effects of hail would be removed. I think this would be really cool as it both improves an otherwise stale weather condition and gives love to the much neglected ice types Edit: never mind he had the exact same idea
Interesting ideas. Personally I like the ideas of giving ice types a defense boost in hail and giving them a resistance (to water) the most. One thing I have to mention with the former though is aurora veil already serving as a way to boost a team's defenses in hail. The idea of making it so that there's more viable physical ice moves sounds good too, and some more widespread distribution.
Ooh, another entry into fixing Pokemon Types, especially Ice! 🥰 Glad to see Ice getting some love, because it's been neglected by Game Freak for some time now
"Ice is just rock made out of water" Wait, I got this from mineralogy class. Rocks are pretty much minerals that occur naturally. And minerals are just solids with defined chemical composition and crystal structure. Ice fits all of these, therefore Ice is a Rock made out of water. Also, magma is just molten rocks. Therefore, water is magma made out of water.
Here's how I would change the Frozen status condition, because it's pretty much forgotten when it comes to Ice-type changes We should remove Frozen's RNG check and make it more interesting with respect to how other non-volitile status conditions work Other non-volatile status conditions cripple one stat (Burn debuffs offense, Paralysis debuffs speed, Poison debuffs health) What's lacking here, and what Frozen should could effectively debuff is defense Rather than applying multipliers that debuff a Frozen Pokemon's defense and special defense, I would suggest that Frozen Pokemon gain the Ice-type Since Ice is such a bad defensive typing, and because frozen objects in the real world tend to gain qualities of ice, this would make a lot of sense Playing off a current mechanic, the Ice-type would be removed if it were hit by a move Ice is weak to: Fire would melt the ice, and Rock, Steel, and Fighting would break it Ice-types would obviously be immune to Frozen, moves that can freeze have a higher chance to apply, and Hail may also have a chance to apply Frozen at the end of each turn
This is a neat idea - basically, you can “shatter” the frozen Pokémon for bonus damage. I still think it feels pretty bs to play against - you get frozen randomly, your guy is out for multiple turns, and now you have the (high) chance to take massive damage. Being able to completely remove a pokemon’s ability to act with very few counters (compare to sleep, which has at least a few counters/resists in various abilities and types and also is so strong that most battles are played with sleep clause) feels really strong to me, and if the goal is to remove RNG from frozen then by increasing the reliability of freeze moves you basically have this guaranteed 1-2 punch combo that will obliterate most pokemon. Maybe you could actually _increase_ the frozen pokemon’s defense to counteract this. There’s a thematic sense to this (chipping at the ice around the Pokémon isn’t going to do much compared to shattering it entirely), and the person who has the frozen Pokémon now has a two-turn brick - maybe they switch it out and send it back in later to tank a hit that wouldn’t shatter the ice, and then thaw on the switch. On the other hand, if the player who got the freeze is able to predict properly, they can shatter that Pokémon to deal massive damage and remove a threat. Then you can increase the reliability and predictability of freeze moves, because now the status actually has some counterplay on both sides. Man - now I’d love to see a Pokémon that buffs when it gets encased in ice, almost like an ice-type rest. What a world that would be…
@@snoozbuster i thought the original commenter meant replacing the "not being able to move" entirely with turning it into ice-type, but buffing its defense sounds intriguing.
@@snoozbuster Yes my original thought was to remove the RNG element (save for the initial application); non-volatile status conditions rarely give the affected Pokemon an advantage unless that Pokemon has a kit that uses it to its benefit (Sleep Talk, Poison Heal, Trick Room, Guts) so I would assume if this were implemented, an Ability or move would benefit an affected Pokemon in some way (maybe the increased defenses would be used here) I will edit for clarity!
From what I’ve seen personally I believe that ice type Pokémon generally have stats that would make them want to be bulky, however due to the defenses of the ice type it is hard for them to be as tanky as they want to be. So these changes generally help the type in a way that I think is much more suited for the pokemon in it
What do you think of making Freeze condition a special attack-reducing version of Burn? And then adding in status moves that directly cause the Freeze condition + increasing probability of Freeze above 10% for some moves?
@@CaptainNarwhal1997 he saying replace the freeze condition since as of now it's useless to build around and total RNG. Every other status condition can be built around (poison kinda sucks in doubles) and has many more chances of inflicting them than freeze. Additionally special attacks kind of get off easy with no burn or intimidate equivalent.
maybe even do something similar to poison: regular frozen pokemon have their special attack halfed and badly frozen pokemon can't move (how freeze works rn)
I am not so sure about this. When dynamax is removed, physical attacks seem much more powerful than special, according to base power. When we no longer have dynamax, having this special attack-reducing will buff physical moves too much.
Late to this but this is a topic I've also had a lot of thought about myself and it's great to see everything up to stage two were ideas I shared myself and more! I'm honestly offended that hail doesnt already work like that! In terms of considering resistances, I have considered the idea of adding dark to it's resistances along with water and flying. My thought process to justify these are essentially the concepts Ice resists are forces that inherently make it stronger; wet and cold is deadly, high winds blowing hail and the absence of light creating chilling shadows. If I were to make it an OP type, I would also make it resist Dragon. I can't really justify this one other than Ice's preestablished super-effectiveness against it but then again their isn't really a justification for that other than lizards not doing so hot in the cold.
When I was a kid, I always thought Ice and Fire should have been super effective against each other. Yes fire melts ice, but ice smothers/cools fire. I also thought ice should've been super effective against water. My thought process was "well, wouldn't ice freeze the water and make it ice?" But you make a good point about the quantity. Plus, that's what Freeze Dry does.
With ice being my favorite typing thematically and aesthetically, here's my initial change suggestions Give ice water, and flying resistance and remove it's steel weakness. I think offensively it's fine so no real changes are necessary there but it's defensive spread is in need of an overhaul. After watching however I think that the change to hail would be neat, but instead of increasing ice types defense it should lower non-ice types speed, as that's a common trope in fiction of slow, sluggish movements through snow or during blizzards
I think ice and fire should be super effective against each other. But otherwise as a big ice fan I do hope gf implement some of these changes you suggested.
I kind of like ice being the in-between of fire and water. In other words, water beats fire, fire beats ice, and ice beats water. I dont think water should resist ice at all, and that freeze-dry should be made redundant if all ice moves are super-effective.
You could've also buffed Blizzard's accuracy to the same as Fire Blast, which is 85%. That change won't make Blizzard overpowered but give special attacking ice types a stronger alternative to Ice Beam on the cost of accuracy.
I always feel sorry for ice types. They have some of the most common moves (Ice Beam, Blizzard, Icy Wind, etc) but the Pokemon themselves are never used because it’s so defensively weak. Why use Icy Wind Articuno when you have Icy Wind Cresselia, which has less weaknesses and more resistances.
Nope Fire DID hit Ice for super effective damage, is just that a Gen 1 oversight caused the battle text to IGNORE the second type. (Still properly calculated damage) So hitting a Lapras, Cloyster or Dewgong (oh look 60% of the Ice types) with fire would result on the message "It's not very effective" But yeah fire didnt resist fire back then (one of the reasons Charizard sucked in Gen 1 lol)
As much as I love Ground-type, I feel like Ice should resist it. That would give it a huge ranking boost. With how many Ice types are slow and bulky Pokemon, they seriously need resistances to have any sort of balance.
no, ice in the artic is actually melting much faster because it is covered by sand. the sand absorbs more sunlight and melts the ice faster. just keep them neutral
@@luladrgn9155 you need the heat from the sun for sand to do anything if you say that maybe scorching sands is super effective against ice but everything else is resisted
I think Ice should resist Normal. That way, all three original Regis are made of hard materials that resist Normal and are weak to Fighting. (Plus, it should resist Flying and Grass, maybe even Bug)
Wolfey: "Here are my proposed changes to change Ice into a better type!"
Game Freak: "Aurora Veil. Take it leave it."
Tbf Aurora Veil would be bonkers if any weather that wasn’t the worst had an equivalent
@@DrGandW But aurora veil is on so few pokemon that if there was an equivalent for another weather with similar distribution, I don't think it would make much of an impact.
@@ngmonster1017 not really fam other weathers are so strong that otherwise horrendously bad pokemon became meta simply for getting a weather setting ability ex: pelipper bumping into relevance with drizzle. Other weathers have always been dominant and had to have complex bans every single meta. a rain equivalent of aurora veil for example would break the meta.
@@ngmonster1017 imagine a rain team with greninja,and mega swampert/scizor
But with aurora veil
@@neyo231 as a Gen 1 fan I strongly dislike when someone says things like "break the meta". It's not breaking, it's changing, redefining, transforming... It, hopefully, always be that way that some pokemon are stronger than others. More rain teams? It's fine! You don't complain how all teams have Intimidate, don't you? And isn't it more interesting to play when every new generation you deal with some new OP thing? Like in Gen 8 it's intimidate, in Gen 9 it's rain, in Gen 10 it's Normal types, In Gen 11 it's Mewtwo and Gen 12... who needs Gen 12 if Mewtwo is OP in Gen 11? (I know it's restricted, just kidding)
“Ice is just rock made out of water” never change wolfey, never change.
It’s actually kinda true though- ice is considered a mineral geologically
@@nutbustulon well, you learn something new everyday.
@@nutbustulon there is something called Ice 7 that never melts
@@nutbustulon that doesnt really prove anything, as water itself is a mineral as well
Ice, Rock and Steal are all some kind of rigid more or less crystalline based structures, so I think he has a point.
The part about Ice resisting Water and Flying are exactly what I was thinking should have happened. One caveat I would add to this, though, is that Scald should work as a reversed Freeze-Dry: Super effective against Ice types. Nerf the base power of scald to compensate, of course.
Hail boosting the defense of Ice-types is a common argument that I’ve seen thrown around, and I find it hard to disagree. After all, Rock is technically a weak defensive type too, balanced by a strong offense. This would help Ice out a lot without throwing everything off balance.
Any more than that though, I fear that Ice would just tip the balance scale a little too hard.
It should resist grass, ground, and dragon as well. Since ice does super effective damage to those three.
@@Momo-xs8mo at that point ice would be way too overpowered and it wouldn't make sense thematically
@@sahilshaji5709 if you take out the changes to the fire and water interactions those changes are reasonable
Scald shouldn't do as much damage as fire but shouldn't do as little as water types. So scald doing 1.5x to ice types makes sense. It's boiling hot water which melts ice at a rate slower than fire but faster than water.
And idk about resisting ground or dragon types but resisting grass does make sense.
@@Momo-xs8mo Grass type doesn’t need to be made even weaker.
Gotta say ice types getting a 1.5 defense buff while hail is active was the first thing i thought about and i hope Game Freak will implement it one day
good news
you got your wish
And the DOT is removed so snow teams don’t force mono-ice! :D
great news for you
@Michael Harris useless. The first comment said it
Requesting this on every wideo:
I’d like to see Wolfey create a new type and how he would implement it competitively and thematically.
Yes! I'd love to see him come up with his own type.
Agree! What's the best new type that could fit into the chart, and maybe add balances to some of the types that could get a buff from that also
milk gang
I’d like to see him tackle the concept of Sound type. It could give the Whismer and Noivern lines something more interesting in their toolkit.
I wonder how he'd deal with a Glass type. There's much potential there and he's not stuck to just Pokémon that look extremely glass like. It could also be ceramic or brittle rock or whatever else. It could give us an interesting dynamic and maybe finally give us another type that's strong against Electric types.
I had a thought- if Ice were changed to resist water, then I think that scald and steam eruption should end up being neutral or even super effective against ice types in the same way freeze dry is effective against water types. Especially if some of these 2nd or 3rd stage buffs were implemented for the ice type, this would help keep it balanced. This may make scald too op considering it’s probably the most common special water move in vgc, but thematically it just makes sense
Please don’t buff Scald. If anything, nerf its base power but make it SE on ice, so that it’s only used for that situation instead of just being a really good move anywhere
Scald being super effective on ice but having its burn chance reduced or removed would be good, IMO.
what if ice types couldnt be burnt since they're made of ice cant burn ice
@@phealtalk I mean water types can still be burnt so probably not.
I think it would be better to just make a different move that functions like freeze dry for water types rather than touching scald or steam eruption
I come to these for the competitive insight, I stay for the cute edits. Seriously, these editors do a great job.
How about you subscribe then!!! 👀 👀
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Yessirr, was gonna comment sth like this but u summed it up pretty well
@@yukotrey9422 I have. I’ve been subscribed for a few years now.
@@averytubestudios lol I was being over the top. You good
Honestly I think instead of removing it’s fire weakness, removing it’s steel weakness makes more sense. Cold and ice make metal more brittle. The neutral damage to fire makes sense though.
How does Fire doing neutral damage to Ice make sense?
Low temp is vital to Ice's nature fundamentally.
If you want to get rid of Ice, wjat do you do? You warm it up.
That makes thematic sense to me and I can't think of a way to explain to children why this wouldn't work in game 😂
@@friendlyanomaly6109 they meant ice to fire, not the other way around
@@rudywilk100
Even then.
Try explaining to a kid that Fire doesn't resist Ice.
@@friendlyanomaly6109 jeez. Show them this video then
@@rudywilk100
Nah g nah.
So instead of removing Fire as a weakness, I’d remove Steel. Steel machines and tools can break ice, but we haven’t even gotten close to drilling through glaciers. Ice and cold weather can easily wreck the functionality of machines and rust weapons too. So Steel and Ice may as well just be neutral to one another.
I agree. There are very few steel pokemon that are just static solid steel, most involve moving parts or at least parts of the body are steel-y. The only exception I can think of is Steelix where the tail is just one metallic mass.
Ice actually makes steels much more brittle. Not just because of the mechanical properties but the shear temperature of ice will make steel harder but much more brittle, therefore more likely to crack. It's the reason the Titanic sunk, its a combination of the low temperature and then the fracture from the impact from the glacier it crashed into.
I never understand why ice is weak to steel, it should be the opposite.
@@foxmccloudizsexy *sheer
what if hail made it resist both, but if hail wasnt set up it would be weak to both
I’d actually make Fire and ice super effective against each other cuz that just seems so interesting
The water and flying resistances make total sense to me and the move changes are a nice little QoL buff. Those and the hail defense buff should honestly just be in the games. But fire interactions are a bit too much IMO.
I agree. Little kids are never going to understand or accept that change.
I could see a grass and bug resistance too and even a normal one but I feel like we're making bad types worse at that point also to add to this under his assumption fire also has to be immune to flying so we're just nerfing flying
@@manguy01 eh anyone can learn. I've just come back to the series (last game was Platinum) and the fairy typing still gives me issues, it feels so... arbitrary. Like 1/2 damage to fire wtf?
So honestly you could justify it by asking kids why there aren't forest fires in the winter (tldr it's snow)
flying resistance? no, i prefer ghost type resistance, since ghost more dangerous in attack, while flying attack can be replaced by fire and pyschic
@@richard35791 ghost would make zero sense and if Pokemon was realistic ghost types would be immune to everything besides evil (dark) type and ghost and then maybe fairy is neutral everything else couldn't effect it well besides the fact that psychic should be super effective against ghost (psychics can supposedly talk to ghosts and therefore probably know their weaknesses)
I dont understand why Ice doesnt resist Water. I feel like that buff alone would make Ice noticeably better given how prominent Water types are... I also think Ice should resist Dark because darkness is cold lol
Just make ice resist Dragon and water.
Ice really ought to resist grass. Water should lose ice resistance, but this one might make ice too powerful offensively.
@@attheratehandle bruh grass is already a very resisted type (seven types) , no need to give ice a useless resistance.
@@attheratehandle yea offensively, ice isn't lacking, maybe in the physical department but certainly not the special department. Defense is the issue for it.
@@rabeechowdhury ooh yea thats true, would certainly be a bad change.
It's really weird how many Ice type Pokemon are intended to be tanky despite being weak to so many common types and having no resistances unlike the other types that possess a lot of pokemon intended to be tanky (Steel and Rock).
One of the worst is probably Avalugg...
And if it's not the one from Kalos hisuian Avalugg definitely is the one you looking for...
@@cannabishornliu6119 "Hey, how do we make Avalugg better?"
"Double it's weaknesses and give it 38 speed."
"Brilliant!"
@@alibekzholaman2923
Yeah, hisuian Avalugg is a downgrade to Avalugg.
@@cannabishornliu6119maybe that was the point. Idk
@@alibekzholaman2923"also make its pitiful Special Defence even worse lmao"
I've personally been saying Ice should resist Electric for a long time. My logic is that Ice itself is actually almost as good of an insulator of electricity as rubber or soil. I'd also like to say that making Ice resist Flying is absolutely genius! If Ice type Pokémon can't handle a bit of wind then how can they survive on a mountain? It's a Great suggestion and I hope they implement some of these changes.
I liked that initially, but then I realized it would buff water defensively more than ice, and water doesn't need that it's bulky enough.
i live in Alaska, and have had batteries drained from the cold itself(i didn't know this was a thing until it actually started happening)
pure water is actually a good insulator, it's when you have impurities and electrolytes in that water when it begins to conduct electricity
Kumamon/Korikakumon/AncientMegatheriummon Is The Best Ice Digimon!GREAT SNOWPLOW!😁😁
by that logic it should indeed resist fire; why are igloos made of ice? it has a really poor heat conductivity. its true that flamethrowers are commonly use to melt ice/snow but even then it can take a long time wich would not happened in the middle of a battle
It would be interesting if non-ice types had their speed reduced to 0.75 during hail. Makes a lot of sense to me.
that would be pretty broken
@@kxngrxse1562 not really, -1 speed is 66%, so it would be like a worse version of sticky web
@@deadlyviper_ and ice types normally canon glasses, they're already fast and hit hard, their enemies being a little slow, isn't going to make to much difference, unless u are up against another glass canon, than ice maybe should be in advantage being such a bad type.
We can make another move.
Icicle trap. Does 1/16 HP damage and lowers speed by 1 stage upon switch in. Does 1/8 HP damage under hail.
Ice types will absorb the icicle trap upon switching in and heal for 1/8 of max HP.
Wolfey doesn't talk about moves like this because entry hazards are almost never used in VGC, but this might help out ice types in singles.
@@90Rush That's also a super toxic entry hazard. Hazards in general are mostly unused in vgc and overly centralise the meta in singles. Something like that wouldn't be terribly healthy
The hail buff makes a ton of sense, and I would love to see that implemented, especially since the defense boost could potentially mean mons like Avalugg see more use.
mayhaps...
ZACIAN USE CLOSE COMBAT
does 2% to avalugg under hail
Yes, they should have implemented that alongside the sandstorm sp def buff
Hoping for a third part of this series.
My suggestion is poison. I suggest that it become super effective against water.
Water dilutes poison, making it literally less effective
Change nr1 I'd make: Give fewer water types Ice Beam (and other good ice moves).
That would make actual ice types more relevant, and it would have the added effect of making grass more reliable as a counter to water (more in line with how good water is vs fire and fire is vs grass).
Yeah. It always felt unfair in my opinion that basically every water mon is able to know some ice moves
Plus there's already a bit of precedence for this with how they've greatly reduced the number of Pokemon able to learn toxic, from nearly every Pokemon in the game to now mostly poison types plus some others, which is much more fitting
Or make more moves mutually exclusive in general (not through breeding).
Or maybe limit the number of TM/Tutor moves every pokemon can learn unless it's a very special pokemon like Mew so more of them are forced to use their level up moves. Gen 8 already removed Hidden Power so many pokemon needs to look for coverage moves elsewhere, this one might also be a good change.
@@silverkyrie4714 spot on, i suggested the idea of toxic/toxic spikes and stealth rocks becoming exclusive moves to their typings but people said its a bad idea, it would boost their usage a ton.
Why the F does Blissey get stealth rock?
This is so huge. A change that doest mess with anyting but the movepool, This is something that gamefreak could actually implement without it being crazy
This gives me a great idea for an ice Pokémon with an ability or even form change that when it’s health drops below 50% it becomes a water type! Could be interesting against fire types if you don’t ohko you are up against a water type that does increased damage to you and resists your attacks!
this is such a great idea, shame game freak refuse to listen to fans
We need this!
a mimikyu like could work were the first fire tipe move that hits does a base amount of damage and transforms it
That’s a really cool idea, and would make a lot more ice types viable if they add this to already existing moms. Something like changing it’s type to water on a super effective move or harsh sunlight, which would counter both fire and rock
Type-changing abilities, while probably niche, is such an interesting concept that it’s a shame we haven’t seen much of it
@@xdelbarrio like a regional form of mimikyu, that would be sick. Maybe a Hisuan DLC for the snow biomes where they discover a cave or sm and find hisuan mimikyu with this exact typing. Could be sick
Since you’ve handled the other weak types, I’d like to see you handle the Poison type next and make it viable.
I feel like you can't buff poison too much as it's already a pretty good defensive type, has immunity to a status effect and is one of two types that hit one of the strongest types in the game super effectively.
Make it strong against Water and maybe buff a physical move or two
@@BlackPenzo Gunk shot being more accurate would be great
@@hairmonster This makes me wonder how poison/dark combination would be combated if poison is strong against ground as well lol, idk even
Make it super effective against Bug again because pesticides.
it sucks that the ice type is so terrible in the game, because i really love most of the designs. i really hope they someday give the weaker pokemon types get a sort of upgrade
You can justify running an ice pokemon for the end game of gs/hgss. They still have the same weaknesses, but Clair and Lance both being dragon give them a use. Weavile, in particular, can be built to sweep both of them in hg/ss with ice punch, surf and steel claws (or steel type cut if you're running one of the popular romhacks)
The Hail buff should be already in game, and would help hail teams immensely
It’s unfair that it’s not there already
It's the only weather in the game that does not modify stats or damage income/outcome, like sunny day boosting fire damage, rain boosting water damage, and sandstorm boosting S. Def. I have no idea why Gamefreak haven't decided to balance this out, the only thing I can think of is Aurora Veil, but even that has very sparse distribution, really only A. Ninetales can use it reliably now.
I guess its big selling point is perfect accuracy blizzards. But then again rain gets both thunder and hurricane on top of a water buff.
Your wish is gamefreaks command
Its in the game now :)
An funky little idea that I heard from one of my friends a while ago is that you could make ice type the only type that is immune to itself. It gives it an odd little buff in the sense that switching into ice type moves is perfectly safe, and a few Pokémon with Ice type as a second type get a nice little buff.
be better for pure ice type to get a heal when hit by water or ice type pokemon the duel type do not really need that advantage due to having more help from second typing.
That is also a nerf to Ice though, I'm not sure I like their STAB move getting an immune type is a good way to buff the type
@@natstar7864 That would be crazy hard to understand, being the only type with an interaction that impactful and the only type interaction that doesn't apply to multitypes. I'd give it something more in line with Dark types being immune to prankster moves, perhaps Ice types can freeze themselves in place so they are immune to phasing moves like roar, whirlwind, or dragon tail. Or the opposite may work, if you hit an Ice type with a pivot move like U-turn or Volt Switch you don't switch out.
They can do that as well as add Ice type version of Stealth Rocks. That will kill some dragons on the ranking.
@@everretwavince1843 bro that's a good ass idea
I love Freeze-Dry so much as a move. It's so interesting how good it is just because typings that neutralize their ice weakness with a secondary typing are so common and competitive.
There should be one for every type that would provide a resistance to Ice simply because that would be a neat way for some Pokémon to fight back.
The most effective would be one affecting Steel. Now Corviknight and Skarmory are no longer safe against that Ice type.
You got one of these added to the games. The defense boost in snow (replacing ice). I also agree that ice should resist water and your flying point makes some sense too.
Wolfeys “buff type X” is really just “make moves 100% accurate” simulator
I don't think I saw one change that involves making a move more inaccurate. To be fair, having some more reliable moves is always nice, and lowering the accuracy is a downgrade, which goes against the video topic, but it would be neat to see more unwieldy yet powerful moves mixed in with the more reliable ones.
...and I completely agree with that. There are plenty of additional effects an attack can have to make it more unique or weaker.
Plain random misses are not the best way to balance a move, so I think lower then 100% accuracy should be rare.
Think about Overheat or Flare blitz for example.
l think it's not necessarily trying to make all moves more accurate (although more accuracy is always more better obviously), but l think it's important to have at least one well-distributed 100% accurate stab-move with good (80~90) base power in both the physical and special category. It's fine to not have all moves be 100% accurate, but you should have the option to choose whether you want perfect accuracy or more power, and physical-ice types were kinda forced to choose for inaccuracy,, same thing with physical-rock moves :]
Once this series ends, I'd love to see a Drayano-style rom hack with these changes implemented.
Please someone do this
Only up to stage 2. Up to that point I always agreed, but both in this vid and Bug one I think Stage 3 changes are bad both thematically and gameplay wise.
That would be immense
@@TheSpartanS196 Yeeeep. Stage 2 makes the types powerful without making them completely broken or stupid sounding. Ice type would benefit a lot with a Water, Flying and maybe a Ground resist, hail buff and that's it.
@@TheSpartanS196 Bug's stage 3 didn't seem all that powerful- but yeah. As he said in the video- he went a bit too far with stage 3 on ice types
Instead of having fire and ice both be NEUTRAL to each other I think they should BOTH be super effective. Fire is extreme heat and Ice is extreme cold. Throw one at the other and it substantially reduces the "extreme" of the other. I think this makes more sense thematically, and would be a really interesting dynamic. Similar to when there are two opposing Dragon type Pokémon
Either that or make them resistant to each other anyway.
If you throw ice at a big enough fire, the ice is just going to evaporate and not even partially mitigate the fire. Similarly, a fire attack needs to be constant pressure in order to melt the ice, as opposed to the short Poguminz attacks I'd expect.
I ... can't quite justify making Fire and Ice _immune_ to each other based on that rule. It kinda has its limits.
@@RaceBandit Ice isn't always literally ice, it's sometimes coldness. It makes sense to fire to resist it and fire to be effective against it.
Hence, Neutrality...
Yes, this is really interesting
No ,steel shouldnt be resistance to ice
Another suggestion for Icicle Crash: turn it into the ice version of rock slide (with the same BP of course) and then introduce a proper physical move for the type.
Maybe a move called Ice Edge that works like Stone Edge
They actually have now added a proper physical attack for they type: Ice Spinner.
Instead of removing fire weakness,, I think removing Steel weakness and may be deal bonus damage to steel make more sense since most metal become brittle in cold. The other reason is that since steel typing is stronger than fire, so it can make steel a little less versatile as well
Same. Steel is my favorite type, but it's a more defensive type. Losing super effective to Ice type would not ruin steel at all
So the tiny offensive damage Steel has is removed because Ice is a bad defensive type. doesn't make alot of sense, even moreso considering fire beating ice is just logical sense.
I disagree because you destroy ice with metal
No thanks for this change
I do agree with wolfeys changes except the hail bonus which should be plus 25 percent to defense n special defense
That way it gets its own identity n not a carbon copy of rock
In addition, the Fire weakness still makes a lot of sense due to fire's heat just melting through the ice.
@@nautgamingnautgaming9949 the carbon copy is needed because it's the polar opposite, rock get SP.DEF in sand, while ice would get DEF in hail.
QOTD: I’d make it resist the water type, and gain a 1.5 defence buff in hail, parallel to rock types in sand. It’s hard to think of any other resistances that work well thematically.
Have now finished the video, I like the flying resistance, though I think the fire type stuff is bit too far. I’m glad I’m not the only one to think that ice types should get a hail buff!
What I did for a ROM hack I'm playing is remove Steel's resistance to it (as well as resisting water). Steel can get brittle in the cold.
It should resist grass and ground because it hits them for 2x damage
The cold can freeze the ground solid, making it impossible to dig
The cold can also freeze plants straight through, killing them
@@Momo-xs8mo Exactly, grass and ground make sense, also Poison optionally. But that'd mess up Grass even more...
Aww that was my idea.
When I first discovered the ice type I thought it would resist ice, bug, grass, and water. When I realized the truth it confused me, but then when I realized water resist ice, I was like HUH?! HOW!
Ice is less dense than water, so it can theoretically never penetrate a water types defenses
@@ryanoak9 it can also theoretivally freeze the water
@@ryanoak9 Wouldn't this go both ways tho, I would understand it if both had a resistance to each other but only water?
@@ThatSpiritMystic Exactly, that's why Wolfey said that ice resisting water makes sense, since water resists ice. Which thematically, makes sense if one has more mass than the other. Sort of.
We don’t need to get that scientific, because I’m sure there’s a lot of type interactions that don’t hold up in that manner, or require great stretches of the imagination.
Can’t we just accept all the common examples in media where ice freezes water without any issue at all, and say that making ice SE on water just follows common public perception?
Great video! Adding water resist makes a lot of sense. I also think Scald should do super effective damage to Ice types just like how Freeze Dry does super effective damage to Water types
Definitely.
Maybe Brine too
Not really sense water naturally resistant to changes in tempature
Water actually melts ice faster than ice freezes water
Ever wonder why people run water over frozen food to thaw it
@@ethribin4188 Eehh, can you explain why out of all moves, Brine should get such treatment?
@@TunaBear64 Brine is salt water, and salt is commonly used to melt ice by lowering its melting point.
I would give Ice a resistance to Ghost. I'm sure most people have heard the presence of a ghost makes the temperature drop, and a cold shiver gets sent through your body when one passes by/through you. I'm assuming the types of attacks launched by Ghost-type Pokémon would have similar chill-inducing effects - something that wouldn't bother any Ice-type Pokémon.
Plus it would be neat to have more options to deal with Shadow Ball spam.
Ghosts are gaseous, and gases condense under cold temperatures.
I'd give it a heavy resistance to water, outside of one. Scald. Because that move would function more like a fire move, with it being burning water. Therefore causing that move to deal neutral damage.
Fair, and it would also be a real nice counter to shadow rider calyrex if it was done since astral barrage would doil much less
@@zynet_eseled That sounds like a cool concept, but I think Scald needs nerfs, not buffs. It's already the most spammable move in the game, and now it has one more type advantage compared to every other water move?
The ice/fire interactions are classic game logic, though, probably don't want to fuck with that imo. I can sort of see your logic on offense (ice hurting fire types by dampening the flames makes sense, it's of course hard to light a fire in a snowstorm) but I don't agree with the defensive logic (sure, ice could cool down the incoming attack, but only by melting itself which surely constitutes grievous damage).
The main issue with lighting a fire in a snowstorm has more to do with the high wind speeds
Fun fact in Gen I fire type didn’t resist Ice
Like someone else said, I dont think it would be THAT crazy since Fire type didnt originally resist Ice anyways, that was a Gen 2 change.
Setting that aside, while its true that its a typical game (especially RPG) convention, I dont think that necessarily makes it obligatory to follow, Pokemon already kinda does its own thing sometimes, if they followed every other common RPG element rule Electric would be weak to Water too.
@@Begeru to be fair tho, gen 1 was super broken lol
Ice pokemon also need cold to survive. Fire is just heating them. It should actually damage them. Pokemon are not huge icebergs like he was talking lol. But i can see why fire can be damaged with ice but it's a game water already is the fire weakness. We don't need another one.
I would "love" to see the tier one through two changes implemented. We need better Bug Ice and Poison typing in Pokemon. I love poison types.
Poison gang rise up!
I agree with major buffs to poison like defensively it's really STRONG but offensively it is garbage and needs significant buffs
Like GEN 1 had it right when poison nuked bugs but it should also HIT WATER super effective too
We'd also give bugs the change to hit water super effective and immunity to dark
I'd also make it a tier but have a high skill cap to compensate
Team Koga since day 1
For making the final stage of having them be OP I think what you did was good, but to nudge it, I'd make scald super effective against ice. Extra boiling hot water on some ice? That will melt it quick.
Yeah then it could be like a reverse freeze-dry
too bad now only volcanion can learn it.
I always thought doing with hail that affects all Ice types would be an interesting buff. Something like in Hail, ice types all get the leftovers effect until hail ends. It could also buff ice types def by 1.5x the same way sandstorm buffs rock types SpDef.
(Edit: I wrote this comment right when he asked what changes you'd make, only to find out the def boost in Hail is in the video)
could add a move like Aqua Ring, which restores HP during Rain
@@coebaltraizure6137 aqua ring dont need rain to restore hp
Pokemons with ice body = double leftovers? idk how much ice body heals
@@user-nq4ng1ul1q Ice Body is 1/16 HP recover every turn
Nice one
Same logic as ice resisting flying -- ice should resist normal. I've never understood why body slamming a glacier is somehow more effective than doing to same to a boulder or a building...
shit you right i never thought of it that way lmfao
well, most ice types aren't literally ice, while most rock types are made of rock for the most part.
Ice should resist Water, Flying, Dragon, Ground, and Ice imo. It shouldn’t resist grass just because of how bad the grass type already is.
You can apply this logic to every type. Normal just becomes the worst type in the game.
@@galarstar052 Okay yeah but if Lycanroc can resist Normal, then Avalugg _absolutely_ should.
"I would remove the resistance of fire to ice"
Gen 1 flashbacks
Also, I would do a different change to icicle crash, instead of raising it's accuracy, maybe it could become a spread move like rock slide, they have similar animations (rocks that fall from above vs ice that falls from above and it also would emphasise the ice/rock counterpartship you mention later with hail/sandstorm
they would need to add a new move to mirror Stone Edge then
Yeah making it a spread move is kinda a double edged sword because of the damage reduction. You'd need a good single target physical ice move first
@@deadlyviper_ Ice Spikes
Love these changes. I'd also like Ice Burn & Freeze Shock to be in more Ice Pokemon's movesets
Very interested to see how you would tackle the poison type. If it needs that same level of care and attention that is. But you did rank it quite low.
I'd love to see that. Poison is my favorite type
How about making Poison-Attacks super effective against the Fighting-Type?
No matter how strong your body is, a terrible sickness withers it down from the inside out.
IMO poison should be strong vs fighting and dragon types.
I think it should beat water. Pollution, chemicals, all that jazz destroys water and fish. Plus it would make one of the worst types beat one of the best types. That change alone would be amazing.
Was looking for this. I really like poison types, the only competitive team i ever made was a mono poison team (Gengar, Nidoking, Drapion, Weezing, Tentacruel, Toxicroak) but it is an underwhelming type for sure
How I'd fix Ice:
- Make it resist Water, Flying, and Ground. All of these are great attacking types that could deal with more things resisting them (if you want a lore-reason for Ground, Ice is already strong against Ground, and if you've ever lived anywhere cold, you know that the ground is very inflexible during the winter)
- Buff Ice-type Pokemon physical defense by 50% in Hail. Hail would actually be worth using for something other than Blizzard or Slush Rush, and Avalugg would be completely physically cracked
- Remove freeze from the game entirely and replace it with a special burn equivalent ("frostbite", we'll call it). Everything that previously interacted with freeze (Ice Beam 10% freeze chance, Aspear Berry curing freeze, etc.) is now an interaction with frostbite, as well as new things like Facade boosting in power when a Pokemon is frostbitten. Then make an auto-frostbite move exclusive to Ice-types, and maybe some other below-average types like Rock or Bug. Sorta like how Will-O-Wisp is near exclusive to both Fire and Ghost. Freeze is such a dumb, uncompetitive mechanic that Ice-types can't even take advantage of better than your average Water-type, and making it so Ice-types can benefit more from being immune to this specific status, as well as giving them the ability to spread it around, would be far more interesting. Assuming a corresponding Frost Orb is introduced, this would also be a slight buff to Guts Pokemon, in case their Ability ends up getting suppresed for some reason, as well as most Facade users who want to use attacks that aren't Facade
- In case the buffs are too powerful, I'd also propose Rock resisting Ice, which you could justify by Rock being strong against Ice. Rock is pretty lacking defensively outside of sand, so this change would hopefully be enough to keep Ice in check, as well as a nice little Rock buff
Agree with all of this. Maybe a few Ghost types could learn it too because ghosts give shivers to people.
All these sounds very good. Only thing I would add is that I feel a lot of Ice Types need better stat allocation, as many Ice Types have weird or bad stat allocation for what their alleged gameplay design is going for
@@GoinGreninja I like 'shiver' as a status name
These buffs would be perfect. I would add that frostbite should reduce the power of special attack moves, just like how burn reduces the power of physical attack moves.
I like the frostbite effect. But i do think it could be added as an extra effect next to freeze. Maybe instead of burn like (atk drop) it could be an allround stat dropper (ATTACK + DEFENSE + SPEED). Seeing as your whole body is affected being below temperature.
I also think fire should do neutral dmg. And ice should deal neutral dmg to fire and water. Seeing as fire and water can be put out and get frozen by a strong amount of cold. And a glaciar doesnt melt due to a campfire.
In this sense the greater value of the element would win a conflict hence the neutral status
How to make ice types better: a status move that freezes the opponent's mon
How to make ice types broken: a 100% accurate status move that freezes the opponent's mon
Would love an evolution of jynx that is a Medusa type that has an ability to freeze when hit with a physical move.
And this would make Magma Armor and the other abilities like it actually usable.
Oh hell no keep that away from me
#gen1
How to balance this: Make the Frozen status last at max two turns
@@ExcalibeonSwordofEeveelutions So, make ðe Frozen Status last less ðan ðe Sleep Status?
I think that ice should:
1. resists grass type. A plant will never grow in ice, and if you take a plant under ice it will die. Look at the trees in winter.
2. resists water type and also be effective 1x against water. I mean, Game Freak this is so obvious, literally ice is freezed water, this is why glaciers exists. Water can't do nothing against ice.
3. be supereffective against bug type. Most bug doesn't resists cold temperature. In fact there are way more bugs in summer.
I know all these changes would break the game, but it would be cool if game freak will change even one single thing in the ice type.
idk about being super effective against bug types. From a competitive stand point, bug type is already pretty bad so it is a uneccesary stab at them. Also, you'd be surprised how many bugs either are not that affected or even use the cold to their advantage. True, bugs are not often out in the cold, but that's because it leaves them vulnerable, not because it hurts them.
Antarctic midges, one of the only decently sized animals to live full time in the frozen wastes of antarctica:
i wouldnt nerf the bugs
Bugs will be nerfed a lot then. Problem is Ice type pokemons ar few and they arent strong so their base power should be increasing. Types and there weakness that I'd be giving(copied fron notepad)-
FIRE- Water, Ground, Rock, Air
WATER- Grass, Electric, Poison
GRASS- Fire, Bug, Ice, Air
POISON- Psychic, Ground
ICE- Fire, Rock, Fight, Steel
ELECTRIC- Ground
GROUND- Water, Bug, Ice, Grass
STEEL- Fire, Electric, Ground, Sound, Fight
GHOST- Dark, Ghost
AIR- Rock, Ice, Electric
PSYCHIC- Ghost, Bug, Dark, Sound
FAIRY- Steel, Poison, Dark, Sound
BUG- Poison, Fairy, Rock, Fire, Air
FIGHT- Air, Psychic, Fairy,
DARK- Bug, Fight, Fairy
ROCK- Steel, Water, Fight, Ground, Grass
DRAGON- Ice, Steel, Fairy
NORMAL- Fight, Dragon
SOUND- Water, Grass, Rock
[REASON: Changing the name of Flying type to Air type, Fighting to Fight type. Air should be super effective(SE) against Fire as strong Wind can blow fire. Steel can conduct electricity more than Water. Poison should be SE against Bug and water coz people use insecticides in the field and home to keep away bugs. Poison also means pollution, water can be polluted. But not giving Air pollution coz all creatures take breath from air not only birds.
Sound moves 15 times faster(5150 m/s) in steels than Air, so sound is SE against Steel. Sound is SE against Psychic & Fairy. Coz psychic's cant concentrate due to noise and Fairies have a weak nerves. Sound weak against water coz water muffles sound. Also nobody can create sound underwater coz if u open mouth to create sound, water will get into your mouth.
Grass is SE against sound coz cotton can isolate sound, trees can block some sound and trees are quiet. Rock should be SE against Sound becoz hills and walls can reflect sound.
Also Poison will be immune to sound coz generally poisonous snakes hearing range is too low(10 - 600HZ only).
Dragon should be weak against steel instead of dragon coz at the end, the knight slays the dragon. Also there is no strong logic for dragon weak to dragon rather dragon vs dragon rivalry ends so early in battle which doesn't give fun. Giving dragon SE against Normal just to give dragon strength. Dark and Fairy both should be SE against each other coz angels and Evils both works against each other and wants to harm. Also "good will always prevail" this already applies for fighting so no need fairy again and this is not correct everytime.
Fairy SE against Bug coz fairies also means light (angels are created by light) and light attract bugs. Also bug should be SE against ground coz bugs dig holes in ground to make colonies.]
Well about that agreed but i think they should nerf the moveset of some water type pokemon. Because most water type mons can use ice moves while it can't be the same for ice. So Starmie uses Ice Beam and Blizzard while Jynx can't use Surf or Hydro pump. So Water basically has a coverage for grass while Ice doesn't have coverage for Fire. And water the way it is now just nerfs ice to its second, like Steel does to Rock, Fighting does to Normal, and i have to say Grass to Poison since Poison moves can't be used against Steel while Spore or Stun Spore which are Grass can do damage, and Toxic can be learned from any Grass Pokemon plus Grass can recover. Electric are also nerfed that way since thunder wave can be learned from many pokemon. And i think this is the main issue some types and some pokemon have too extensive learnset which comes at a cost to other types.
I always wondered why ice type never seemed too special with how powerful it is against dragon, ground, flying, and grass, and the fact that ice types often seem coveted and rare by being late game Pokemon. While I don't rank many ice types high in my list of favourites, so many of them seem sleek, powerful, beautiful, or mysterious.
You know, I wonder if you could either make a rom hack with your proposed changes to the typings, or make a custom showdown or something, to see how the changes would affect real experiences
Considering both Bug and Ice was covered, it would be fun to see Frosmoth as the starter. I mean, it would get benefits from both bug and ice buffs! Depending on which stage of buffs are applied, I imagine Frosmoth could go anywhere from "pretty good" to "hilariously powerful". Bonus points if the rom hack somehow implements the different stages as a difficulty setting!
I've actually thought a lot about this before because Ice is one of my favorite types in terms of design.
Haven't watched your opinions yet, just watched the intro. Here's what I'd do.
-First and foremost: Significantly alter the distribution of Ice type moves. Nearly every water type gets some sort of Ice move, and imo this alone devalues icea lot. Why use an ice type when you can use a water type? Decreasing the amount of water types that get ice moves would place a stronger emphasis on ice.
-Buff hail. Redistribute Snow Warning, Slush Rush, Snow Cloak, and Ice Body to be more common and usable, and add a stat buff (like rock gets for Sandstorm). Since ice types are generally less physically defensive, I'd say a 1.5x defense buff. Maybe this would be broken, but sandstorm is pretty balanced so I don't think so. This way you also wouldn't have to change any individual Pokemon's stats, and still add some defensive play with ice types.
-Add some resistances. Dragon and Grass make the most sense to me, since ice is super effective on those types. Possibly ground as well. More than 4 resistances is pushing it, especially with the above.
Pretty sure all these things would make ice A/S tier. curious to see what you say now that i typed all this out, haha
Edit: Just watched the video, glad we're on the same page ! Lol. Wish they'd actually do something about ice.
Can we please just cut the realistic bs and make ice SE on water types? Water can more than handle it, and plenty of games use the fire/ice/water relationship.
I’m wondering whether ice having a defense buff in hail is the best thing that can be done for it, assuming it doesn’t get any new resistances. It’s a bit crazy but I kinda wish they could universally get a speed or evasion buff (and axe the abilities that otherwise grant those buffs) in hail. Might be too OP though, especially on dual types that don’t suffer some of ice type’s usual burdens lol
@@emblemblade9245 Haha, well I have good news for you about hail!
Ngl I think Ice should resist all 4 of the types weak to it but then again I don't want to gut Grass even further lmao
With Ice being one of my favorite types, and Alolan Ninetales being my favorite pokemon, I've thought about how to improve it a lot. That being said, I agree with most of the changes and they were actually almost identical to what I came up with. One thing I'd change though, is I don't think Ice needs to be S-tier and neutral Fire is probably overdoing it. Instead, I'd focus more on changes specific to Hail, like adding more types to its immunity (though no types would really fit thematically) or providing more Hail-powered damaging moves since Hail is largely a hyper offense weather already. They might even benefit from a ice entry hazard in the vein of either Spikes or Stealth Rock
The point of Phase 3 isn't that it should be top tier, it's 'what if'.
I feel like adding either a water, flying or grass resistance to ice would fit so much thematically and I can see it actually beign implemented in the game. Also the hail buff to defense makes a lot of sense and should be in the game as well.
I would have ice resist electric, flying, ground and water
@@majesticgothitelle1802 would be pretty cool if it did.
@@rabeechowdhury I do like the frostbite static in legend Arceus. If they replace frozen with frostbite it would give the game a much needed special attackers Nerf the game heavenly needed.
I might be biased do to my love of grass types, but I don't think ice should resist grass. Not only is grass tied with rock for the most weaknesses, but it's already resisted by 7 types. Not to mention there are plenty of plants and trees that survive and thrive in cold weather.
@@Falkaisis you right grass and rock have way too much things that are risist after conversation with others people with buffing ice - type. We all agree with ice should be resistance to electric, flying ground and water. Plus removing frozen do to how lackluster it his as a status condition and pretty rare to activate. Frostbite work perfect as a Nerf too many special attacks pokemon that are being played. All there left is to make a special version of intimidate.
The hum. I really want you to keep in mind that increasing a move from below or at 60 to above 60 means it no longer works with technician. I feel like the entire point of having low power moves other than level-up is that low power moves often have different effects, gaurenteed stat drops, priority, guaranteed crit, causes opponents to switch out, multiple hits. In this way there are sort of two types of moves:the good ones and the interesting ones. (And the really good ones that are kinda both, like fiery dance)And sometimes the interesting ones are good ones in the right positions: electroweb and icy wind, snarl, breaking swipe. By making frost breath 65 instead of 60, instead of being in the interesting but low power tier, it’s now in the primary attacking moves tier. Wich Im not saying that that’s inherently bad, but that abilities like technician depend on that difference.
True, but at present there are no Pokémon which can have both Technician and Frost Breath except Smeargle, who's not exactly hurting for options.
Like the other commenter pointed out this is an argument that I actually agree with you on in theory, but disagree on in practice. You aren't wrong in the broad sense, but in the specific case of the proposed Freeze-Dry change and its association with Technician then the actual functional changes that would happen are literally as close to zero as it's possible to get since only one Pokemon would be affected in any way.
That said, I also think there's a good argument to be made for increasing the variety of, as you call them, "primary attacking moves" available. As an example, one of my favorite changes they ever made was removing Return because it was such an obvious "best choice" as far as Normal physical STABs go. With it gone now there's more variety in who uses which moves since, even though none of them are as good as Return was, now the options behind choosing which one to use are more interesting. As it stands I think Ice is in the same boat as Ice Beam and Blizzard really are the only two options used as core special attacking moves, so adding in just a bit more competition there with Frost Breath I don't think would be a bad thing.
There are no Ice types with Technician and very few special attackers, so I don't think it would matter that much.
@@connaeris8230 They can just give them that ability and those moves
@@CodenameJD @Connaeris Actually I thought of that fact. But that only accounts for the present, not the future. And more importantly (and I didn’t phrase it well so my bad there), technician isn’t the center of my comment. My argument is that 60 seems to be the threshold between primary attacking moves and moves which’s primary use is its secondary effect. Moves over that threshold usually have a secondary effect that you don’t count on in your gameplan. If you’re using Ice beam, thunderbolt and flame thrower (or blizzard, thunder and fireblast) in your moveset, you aren’t counting on landing a status condition. You don’t run psychic or shadow ball or moonblast or muddy water only because of the stat drop chance. Meanwhile if you’re using electroweb or nuzzle or icy wind or breaking swipe or snarl, or rock tomb or mud shot or bulldoze Or heck even fake-out, especially fake-out, you’re counting on the secondary effect. I haven’t seen aincent power very often, and the Pokémon I saw it on I don’t think had any other rock-type coverage. But I’m pretty darn sure that ancient power wouldn’t have been in the moveset if it didn’t have that slim chance of the secondary effect activating. And If you’re using frost breath, generally it’s because you want to self-activate anger point.
There’s a trade off between power and utility for moves that aren’t exclusive or rare at around 60 base power(and then there’s Kyrem’s signature move wich is somehow just a worse icy wind). Past 95 there’s generally a trade off between power and either accuracy (unless the move is a signature move, and sometimes even if it is(looking at you groudon and kyogre) or stat drops or loosing a turn. If you make Frost breath reliably do the same damage as ice beam, you effectively make ice beam completely irrelevant on all Pokémon that get frost breath. Which again you do you, but there’s a reason some moves are capped at the base damage they are. But by moving the base power of frost breath somewhere in between 60 and that other number, suddenly its in the weird tier of that 65-75 range: moves that have a cool but low-chance not-always-helpfull utility that you would rather just have a more powerful move. If you’re using smart strike, you’re generally not using it because of its accuracy negation, but because you don’t have Iron head. If you’re using cross poison, you’re generally not using it because of it’s higher crit rate but because you don’t get poison jab, or don’t want to risk your luck with gunk shot. And then there’s skitter smack. You don’t use skitter smack. I tried once on a support charjabug(using its battery ability to boost Kyogre) but using bug bite to steal my enemies’s health berries was more useful than lowering their spattk(partially because of how slow charjabug is). And while chargabug doesn’t get this move, the move struggle bug would have likely been more useful on another Pokémon, as this lowers the spattk of both opponents. Even infestation traps tour opponents in. And all of these other moves? 60 Base power or less. I really wish there were more moves in the odd 65-75 range like scorching sands and burning jealousy, wich seem to be added to teams for their secondary effects almost as much as they are for damage and coverage. Secondary effects that strike a middle ground but aren’t kinda worthless most of the time like other moves. Parabolic Charge is unique. Problem is the Pokémon that gets it is very frail but has a gameplan where it hits so hard that you really really should use moves with a higher base power. Sucker Punch is I guess also in this range but executed well. Priority move that’s really used because it can actually do good damage, but with a trade off that sometimes it wont work. Freeze dry is also a good example in this range. Giving up 20 base power for the ability to hit water types. Suddenly Water types that thought they were safe aren’t. Gastrodon, Dracovish, *4 get outta here!
So I could probably keep going for a good while, but mainly, Technician is an ability that is supposed to exploit that existing system- a system that I believe raising frost breath above 60 Base Power would not agree with- but I recognize that my assessment could easily be wrong, and even if my assessment isn’t wrong, that having a few moves outside of that system isn’t going to break the game. In fact I think signature moves like fiery dance or rare moves like extreme speed that break this system are good because they break up the monotony and make each Pokémon just a little more special, so long as they’re not easy to come by. And while a move that only one type can use is kinda rare depending on the type (looking at you, water and normal) I don’t feel like it’s rare enough to justify breaking the system for. So my argument isn’t about technician specifically, not only because singling out one ability for a single move is a stupidly not-impactful problem even if technician Pokémon did get frost breath, but because the underlying power balance of moves is important and something I never really thought about as hard as I did today
And for my last thing I’d like to mention is that frost breath has a fighting type counterpart. I think it’s called storm throw. Always crits. Methinks that these should remain parallel. So if the base power of FB is increased, than ST should also be increased by the same amount. I don’t have an appealing reason I just think so
I've been pushing for ice to resist water for years. I'm glad that was your first change. I think it makes the most sense, both competitively and thematically.
Hey Wolfey, this is a great video, and I appreciate the thought and effort that went into it. Just one thing: fire doesn’t need heat, it needs a source of ignition. Heat is the product of combustion. So in that case, I (by the rules I’m making up right now) don’t think the Ice type should lose the weakness to fire. But everything else is spot-on!
Hey! Have you ever thought of having an acid rain wether effect?
This effect could damage all non-poison pokemon every turn while poison types could have some sort of buff while within the effect
I'd like a .33 increase in special attack or something to help them offensively
I would be hesitant on adding too many weather effects to the game. We have 4, and those 4 already end up competing with each other's weather quite frequently. Adding too many weather effects reduces the strength of all of them.
That said, acid rain is an interesting effect, so how about making it a weather modification to *existing* rain instead of being a weather effect itself. Perhaps when certain poison type moves are used in rain, existing rain gets modified into acid rain. Acid rain damages non-poison types and buffs poison types, no longer benefiting water. Trying to reapply the water with Drizzle or Rain Dance won't work. Acid rain otherwise behaves as normal, being beaten out by other weather effects, including Primordial Sea.
As a result, I also have an interesting idea for a new ability, called purity. Suicune has the ability to purify dirty water, and so this ability would be either unique to Suicune, or available to a very select few Pokemon including Suicune. When a Pokemon with this ability enters battle, it purifies the acid rain, turning it back into normal rain. Additionally, while the Pokemon is on the field acid rain cannot be applied. The ability would logically allow the user to resist poison and become immune to the poison effect, but considering this would be on Suicune that's pushing things too far. There could also be a few moves that can purify acid rain.
This would be powerful for a few reasons. It obviously benefits poison types greatly, but non-weather teams can benefit from this as well. Rain benefits only water, but Acid Rain benefits no one, so if neither side has poison types turning rain into acid rain will even the player field, and force the opposing team to run a purifying move simultaneously with rain to maintain their advantage.
This could open the door to other weather modifications for other types, like perhaps a dark/ghost type weather modification on sun that changes it into solar eclipse. I can't think of anything for sandstorm or hail off the top of my head, but there should be something for those as well.
It would guarantee a normal Poison proc on any moves that have a chance to poison. But it wont do the second stage of it. So, you'll have to fight against the clock to win before it manages to chip away at your health at a consistent rate.
it probably fits Weezing to have an ability that creates like weather effect, but like poisonous gas, it helps poison types hit steel types with that ability and boost their hp stat
Another issue I've noticed when it comes to ice types is that despite being a good offensive type, Gamefreak has this weird design philosophy where they make a lot of Ice types defensive, either through stat spreads or abilities
Take a look at a lot of them, they have a beefy defensive stat somewhere in there, either through HP, Def or Sp.Def. And when they do make an offensive Ice type, they gimp it in some way (with some obvious exceptions)either through coverage or offensive stats just being lacking, or relying on gimmicks to shore up some major flaws.
Case in point, look at Frosmoth. A horrible defensive typing, yet it's second highest stat is its special defense? And its two abilities are defensive? Who designed this? If they switched around its Special Defense and Speed, and gave it Tinted Lens instead, it would be so much better off as a Pokémon.
But that's just my thoughts anyway
Given that a lot of the defensive ice types are Ice/water types, having a 4x resistance to Ice and water and an extra 50% defence in hail is probably going overboard on top of their base stats.
@@bigfudge2031 Hail doesn't give any boosts tho? Unless you're talking about Aurora Veil
@@brucewayne8550 you could figure out what they're talking about if you watch the video
@@blissfulstatic2563 I thought he was replying specifically to my comment, didn't know the context was the video since I think Wolfe already explained it so I didn't make mention of it. I had a completely different concern which is part of the Ice type's overall problem, not just the typing itself but even the kind of stats Gamefreak pairs with it.
Two different contexts, since this vid IS about fixing the Ice type
Yeah, give me my ice type kartana gamefreak!
I’ve been really enjoying these rebalancing videos! Generally I think it’s more interesting and compelling to adjust up than down in discussions like these, so I might be more interested in hearing how you would take our last lower-tier archetype and give it a bump. Nerfing Fairy could be interesting too, though! I would love the idea of making a Showdown mod implementing your suggestions and let people see how different formats would shake out with the changes. One quick note is that it makes it easier to find your clips channel if you put a link in the video description, it’s weird when something gets mentioned and the link isn’t immediately accessible.
Like how gamefreak actually added the ice defense boost, I do hope they buff it more since I love the type
If anything gets changed from this I would love for Hail to increase ice type defense. It would be a huge buff for hail in general and it as of rn is easily the worst weather. That one change could at least make it decently viable but probably still the worst lol
I wish ice was better because so much pokemon could be better but ice’s horrible defences hold them back
Another problems that Ice types seem to have is that a lot of Ice Pokemon, outside of the likes of Mamo, Weaville, Kyrugem, have really bad and weird stat allocation
@@theimpersonator7086 usually spdef
How common do you see the ice type weekness is like a big pain... once it's got a dual type, many time it overlaps into a 4 time...
The main problem is that the majority of ice types have bad speed stats, usually around 50-60 which needs major investment for slush rush and doesn't even work that well on trick room
Yea, theres weaviles whos fast but if its get outsped it cant do anything
I remember back in Gen 1 where Fire didn’t resist ice for some reason. How nice to see a potential reversion of that one interaction that has been a thing for over 7 generations of Pokémon
"Never seen a moveset with 4 ice type moves" - nikhil reddy articuno goes to regionals and just win xD
I've always felt the water-ice relationship should be reversed, thematically speaking.
Put water on a bunch of ice, it makes more ice, assuming both are of average temperature (ice being cooler by necessity.) Therefore, ice should be resistant to water.
Freeze a puddle, it becomes ice. I would count that as a win for the ice type. It's essentially the same reason as it is super effective against ground, really.
Run room temp water over ice and it melts faster.
@@scottbecker4367 That's fair.
But room temperature is generally pretty warm though, especially compared to most natural sources of water
I agree with Scott, from a thematic perspective, Pokémon battles usually happen at room temperature, giving the advantage to water.
@@Dexuz But if we assume both types are room temperature, ice type by itself just commits suicide by melting, and fire types should be too cold to do any real damage.
If fire types are hot, shouldn't ice types be cold?
I dunno man, feels weird
@@sirreginaldfishingtonxvii6149
Ice types shouldn't melt as their bodies aren't made out of ice, at least not entirely; their moves however, are.
In the case of Fire-types, flamethrowers are actual weapons, and they're used at room temperature.
it's actually really funny I've always been big on Ice and Fire having a more neutral relation to each other and it's just always made sense to me
Next wideo idea: How would Wolfey fix the Psychic type to restore some of its original Gen 1 glory?
Proposed Change 1: Remove Steel's resistance to Psychic type attacks
Proposed Change 2: While not a direct change to the Psychich type, giving Steel it's resistance to Dark type back would make dark types worse and therefore indirectly make Psychic types better
Proposed Change 3: Make Psychic type attacks Super Effective against Steel. I mean aren't psychics supposed to be able to spend spoons/metal after all?
I know all of these 3 changes are all about changing the Psychic types relation to the Steel type but considering Steel is one of the best types in the game AND that out of the 3 types that is Ghost, Psychic and Dark, Steel losing it's resistance to Dark in gen 4/5 (not sure which) is the choice that makes the least sense to me considering that most Dark type attacks are really just foul play tactics you'd see in a street brawl (biting, sucker punching, feint attacking etc) which really shouldn't have much of an effect on Steel compared to Psychic and Ghost type attacks.
I'd also just like to clarify that i'm not a Steel type hater. I like the Steel type and think it's pretty cool and i personally wouldn't even be opposed to Steel losing it's Fighting Type Weakness at least thematically or making the Steel type offensively better by adding more Steel Type Weaknesses to certain types. Though i do recognize Steel Type is in a good place and doesn't need any buffs.
agreed, this would be cool. it should be at least super effective against one more type
I think Psychic types biggest issue is that they are outclassed by Ghost types offensively, and that has become pretty clear with Pursuit’s removal in Gen 8
@@theimpersonator7086 Pretty sure it's in reality Ghost which outclasses Dark. There are only five psychic type pokemon that are better countered by Dark type coverage. Indeedee-F, Indeedee-M, Girafarig, Meloetta, and Oranguru. In a majority of other cases Ghost is a much better counter to psychic type pokemon. Especially the dual psychic - fighting/fairy type Pokemon.
@@rabeechowdhury Disagree, as Dark is far more defensive than Ghost( because of Ghost and Knockoff). Pshyics tends to be more offensive with Calm MInd, and are thus outclassed by Ghosts
14:10 Apparently wolfey used future sight and foresaw an attack
Yeah but no chip damage :(
I would love to see a video on the poison type. I am currently doing a monopoison run of radical red and I think there is a lot that could be done to help them out.
The poison status condition needs a buff. Paralysis, Burn, and even confusion are more effective than poison is
@@JordanWindhamBenford I agree. On its own, poison is pretty lame. There are interesting moves that play with poison like venom drench or venoshock, but they are underwhelming considering steel makes these moves extremely unreliable.
Agreed the poison type feels very mediocre both offensively and defensively even after the introduction of fairies
@@JordanWindhamBenford I always thought that poisoned should have some distinction from just being a great value toxic, so what if poison halved special attack like burns do for regular attack?
@@galaxianinsomniac9953
It's not just the pokemon themselves though. Their moves are mediocre. Outside of attacking fairy types what reason do you have to choose stab poison move over non-stab anything else?
To inflict the poison condition?
Compared to attract, confusion, flinch, paralysis, sleep, burn, leech seed, ability destruction?
Pokemon would rather get poisoned than anything else.
Poison should be a death sentence like the other status moves.
Go for poison next! This could also be a cool series involving bringing s tier types down
I was comming here to ask about this.
In his tier list the bottom 3 are bug as the worse and ice and poison as bellow average, and poison is the only one missing
One idea I saw is making Water-type weak to Poison attacks. The logic was based on pollution killing aquatic life. This nerfs Water defensively while buffing the viability of Poison attacks.
8:34 if abomasnow SWITCHED INTO the water spout, then the rain would be replaced by hail, effectively cutting water spout's damage by a 3rd. so the damage would be 107-126 (64.8 - 76.3%).
Still a 2HKO and Abomansnow is very slow
@@TunaBear64 yeah, but just wanted to be exact.
YO!! They actually replaced hail with the def-boosting snow!
Thematically, it would make sense to make ice resist electric. Many of you probably know that pure water is an insulator, and it's the dissolved ions in it that conduct electricity. Well, when water crystallizes (freezes), those ions are largely pushed out of that structure. (And other chemistry/physics I won't go into, but suffICE it to say that ice is a natural insulator.)
Lol came here to say this. Might be a really interesting change competitively as a lot of ice/water dual types would appreciate the change.
Well, that would also open a new electric move, that would bypass that. As far as I know, every insulator also have breakdown voltage point, from which would allow conduction. Supereffectiveness of this move on Ice (and probably Steel) would make sense, if the Ice type resisted Electric.
There also this Supraconductivity thing that I don't know how to apply (don't quite understand how that works: Apparently, no electric resistance and levitation on a smaller scale, while close to absolute zéro. Feel free to correct me on that).
Anyway, I'm in for an Ice type resistant to Water, Ice, Electric and Flying. Would do just fine for me.
@@NerdHerder545 Yeah, finally ice as a secondary type for waters wouldn't just be a sentencing to little competitive use. It would at least remove one weakness where it adds two others.
@@luxiwayfarer369 Superconductivity (supra- in many languages) is a cool idea to use, for sure. In nature, it would require a specific type of material (usually a metal or a particular type of ceramic). It's a bit harder to think of a move that would fill the role; it feels more like a passive ability that a rock and/or steel type would have. Especially a mon like Probopass or Alolan Golem. I imagine it would be like motor drive but when hit by ice moves.
Maybe the electric move that would be super effective against ice types would involve melting the ice or ionizing it to make it conductive.
Hail should give ice a defense boost like sandstorm does for rock types a spdef boost. Add that and the water resist as you suggested and I think i’d be pretty content.
I would find it interesting to see how you would make fairy or steel worse, like you did here just the opposite
I know that water and flying is stated but I also considered having ghost and fairy be contenders for resistances especially ghost. Ever since steel lost its ghost resist (with nothing to compensate), the type basically has one less thing to check it which effectively meant that it can hit almost everything neutrally which eventually lead to something like Calyrex shadow being a monster in its own right.
Sure, but how does that make sense thematically?
Ice type should've resisted Water and Ground types from the beginning, honestly. Would've helped them out a lot and wouldn't've made them such a laughing stock as a defensive type.
I never got why water resisted ice. Surely it would be the other way round, since cold temperatures freeze water and not many sea creatures live in cold temperatures?
@@ahumanbeingfromtheearth1502 Wolfey even made the analogy. If you throw a cube of ice in the sea, it would melt and just turn into more water. Water and Ice should be like Bug and Fighting where they both resist each other, since water in cold temperatures would also turn into ice.
@@Koenig_Luiz yeah, I like his explanation for why both should resist each other, but if only one could have a resistance to the other it would make far more sense for it to be ice than water
Yea, to me the ground resist makes more sense than ditching the fire weakness. With the Hail buff, Ice Types could tank so many EQs
That double contraction is revolutionary
here's how i would make the ice type viable:
add one (1) additional resistance to ground. being able to resist earthquakes is good.
add the 1.5x defense buff from hail you mentioned. also make water types immune to hail damage to make it a legitimately good weather.
instead of giving frost breath a power buff, make it have perfect accuracy. that way it's a trade off between having a 10% freeze chance and hitting through evasion and defense buffs. (also so that we can have a ticking time bomb counting down until Technician goes on an ice type)
speaking of freeze, make freeze work like Paralysis in TCG where it's like a one turn sleep that also traps. as a trade off make Fire types immune to freeze.
also add some new moves, like a special variation of Ice Shard. that way Ice can solidify itself as a strong offensive type similar to Fighting. also another physical Ice move, maybe one that does increased damage in Hail. also maybe a new ability that grants Water immunity that can go on an Ice type
Have hail give a minor buff to ice water and rock
You could also make a solid case for ice resisting dragon and ground type moves (both important offensive types)
"Solid". I see what you did there.
How is dragon a solid offensive move? It only hits dragons super effectively. On anything but a dragon type pokemon (STABmove with few resistances) I'd heavily prefer an ice type move over a dragon typed one.
I don't agree with resisting dragon because it's whole thing is to hit almost everything neutrally except for steels and fairies (the type created to nerf dragons)
@@bigmonke3348 who cares, it's still broken
Based
I love that Wolfey predicted the hail buff (though nobody expected it to disappear and be replaced with snow)
I would make Ice resistant to Ground, so it can actually switch into common Earthquakes/tantrums and not take massive damage, then threaten one of the types it is super effective against. Plus resisting Earthquake adds a nice doubles buff
Ice types have always been one of my favorite types, and I’m really happy you came up with the 1.5x boost to defense in hail. I always wondered why they didn’t do that originally since it Hail works similarly to Sandstorm, but again, I’m really glad you brought this idea up
I decided what Frostmoth would look like with all the bug and ice changes and HOLY MOLY. 8 resistances, 3 weakness, 7 super effective. With only steel resisting both.... I kinda want to see it
Predicting hail would give ice a defense boost was awesome. If you didn't want to increase the strength of non-ice pokemon but wanted to make ice type moves better there are two changes I thought might be interesting. Such as ice type pokemon get an increased accuracy when using ice type moves (5-10%). Or, ice type moves that freeze only have that secondary freeze effect when used by ice type pokemon. I know freeze is a less common effect than sleep because there's no Spore effect for freeze. I thought about making it to where freeze always thaws after 2 turns if an ice type pokemon did the freezing. If you adjust the freeze mechanic to work better with ice types and not with others, it could make more sense to have a Spore for Freeze.
Stage 3 Ice being neutral on Fire actually makes sense. An avalanche could easily put out a fire, given enough mass. However, Ice not being weak to Fire ... just doesn't. Ice is melted easily by fire, and presumably the fuel for the fire is coming from inside the fire-using pokemon's body. Or from its magic, or whatever. The Ice pokemon is just a target, and it independently has no defences against the fire. In other words: ice in the right circumstances can put out fire, so it makes sense for Ice to be neutral on Fire. Fire can always melt ice, so Fire has to be super effective on Ice.
The same applies to having defenses against the cold. Since heat and cold are the result of how much energy is in an area then whoever wins is the side that has the greater energy difference.
It's often said though that a bunch of ice-types make ice that doesn't actually melt as easily as it's supposed to, and can easily and persistently create extremely low temperatures or flash-freeze things. Cold is really just an absence of heat, so in slightly more scientific terms, they're not simply "making cold", they're doing that by being very good at getting rid of heat.
Also, to look at the line of "the ice pokemon is just a target, and independently has no defenses"
Then by extension of that line, most water mons wouldn't resist fire, since they're mostly not literally water, they'd all face a major danger of dehydrating, and many real aquatic/amphibious creatures are in fact not good with smoke inhalation or pollutants either.
However, I still don't treat any stage 3 stuff as being "I think GF could get away with actually doing it now", in either the bug video or this one. At that point, to me it's more like "stuff that would be fun to consider if Pokemon were remade from the ground up"
maybe not remove the fire weakness of ice, and just make ice moves super effective against fire. right?
better yet, going on about how ice is similar to steel and rock. let's make ice resistant to bug, additionally we can make ice resistant to grass, maybe even normal types too.
@@gesundheitoh814 fire and ice being neutral to each other makes sense due to the nature of temperature and isn't too disruptive.
Ice resisting grass and bug honestly doesn't make much sense beyond surface level reasoning. There are plenty of arthropods and plants that thrive on cold environments and there isn't really a direct reason why ice would resist those types. Besides they don't need another type resisting them.
Ok but by that all of the above logic, water and fire should be neutral to each other then.
Water can evaporate with enough fire, fire can be doused by enough water.
Hell, make grass types neutral to water as well since water can drown plants! Make steel weak to it too since water can rust it. And hell while we’re at it let’s just make bug weak to water since most bugs drown in enough water.
Do you see where I’m going with this or do I need to be more sarcastic? Sometimes it’s better to use thematic reasoning (fire melts ice, therefore it is both strong against it and resists it) vs scientific reasoning. It’s a ~video game.~
Taking a guess before I see your suggestions:
Remove the weakness to Rock, and give it a resistance to Water and Flying. That would cover a lot of common offensive options, letting bulkier Ice types switch in on a good read (particularly vs Water and Rock) and makes good sense canonically.
Edit: that's a big lol from me. I don't think removing the weakness to Fire makes much sense thematically. Thematically, pokemon moves are meant to chip away at each other, not outright one-shot. Throwing a rock at an iceberge and pretending it'll crack the ice is silly, setting the iceberg on fire (it's a magical world so it works) will do some damage.
I was actually not aware that sandstorm gave a 1.5% sdef boost, hail giving a 1.5% def boost does make sense.
I definitely prefer the Rock change, since that's a lot more impactful given the existence of Stealth Rock, and that Rock is an overall more common coverage type (especially among mons that Ice is ostensibly supposed to threaten, like Ground).
Agreed what Ice needs most is to remove the Rock weakness that makes no sense so that Ice Pokemon can survive stealth rocks. You have to wonder why Stealth Rock doesn't come in more types? Fire, Ice, & Flying are all weak to Stealth Rocks.
I disagree with the Rock point. I think Fighting makes sense.
Think about it, its almost impossible to break ice with bare hands without them getting pretty damaged and its a great way to buff them as theyre not weak to 1 of the best offensive typings. And Rock actually makes sense for it since u'd need an iron or stone tool to reliably break ice
@@skullerclawerbandicoot7966 ah yes, and chopping a stone or a *steel beam* in half makes perfect sense.
@@skullerclawerbandicoot7966 Fighting is super effective against both Steel & Rock which you establish are both harder than Ice.
I feel like how I would buff the ice type would be changing how hail works. I think an interesting change to hail would be when it is active it gains a resistance to water ( since the weather is so cold it makes the water less effective against ice types) and make all super effective damage dealt to ice be 1.5 times Instead of 2.0 times (the hail accumulates on the ice types body giving it a form of Armor) to not make this too powerful the currently existing effects of hail would be removed. I think this would be really cool as it both improves an otherwise stale weather condition and gives love to the much neglected ice types
Edit: never mind he had the exact same idea
if they do it, it's not gonna be ice resists water but water deals 0.5x to everything.
Interesting ideas. Personally I like the ideas of giving ice types a defense boost in hail and giving them a resistance (to water) the most. One thing I have to mention with the former though is aurora veil already serving as a way to boost a team's defenses in hail. The idea of making it so that there's more viable physical ice moves sounds good too, and some more widespread distribution.
Ooh, another entry into fixing Pokemon Types, especially Ice! 🥰 Glad to see Ice getting some love, because it's been neglected by Game Freak for some time now
"Ice is just rock made out of water"
Wait, I got this from mineralogy class. Rocks are pretty much minerals that occur naturally. And minerals are just solids with defined chemical composition and crystal structure.
Ice fits all of these, therefore Ice is a Rock made out of water.
Also, magma is just molten rocks. Therefore, water is magma made out of water.
Here's how I would change the Frozen status condition, because it's pretty much forgotten when it comes to Ice-type changes
We should remove Frozen's RNG check and make it more interesting with respect to how other non-volitile status conditions work
Other non-volatile status conditions cripple one stat (Burn debuffs offense, Paralysis debuffs speed, Poison debuffs health)
What's lacking here, and what Frozen should could effectively debuff is defense
Rather than applying multipliers that debuff a Frozen Pokemon's defense and special defense, I would suggest that Frozen Pokemon gain the Ice-type
Since Ice is such a bad defensive typing, and because frozen objects in the real world tend to gain qualities of ice, this would make a lot of sense
Playing off a current mechanic, the Ice-type would be removed if it were hit by a move Ice is weak to: Fire would melt the ice, and Rock, Steel, and Fighting would break it
Ice-types would obviously be immune to Frozen, moves that can freeze have a higher chance to apply, and Hail may also have a chance to apply Frozen at the end of each turn
This is a neat idea - basically, you can “shatter” the frozen Pokémon for bonus damage. I still think it feels pretty bs to play against - you get frozen randomly, your guy is out for multiple turns, and now you have the (high) chance to take massive damage. Being able to completely remove a pokemon’s ability to act with very few counters (compare to sleep, which has at least a few counters/resists in various abilities and types and also is so strong that most battles are played with sleep clause) feels really strong to me, and if the goal is to remove RNG from frozen then by increasing the reliability of freeze moves you basically have this guaranteed 1-2 punch combo that will obliterate most pokemon.
Maybe you could actually _increase_ the frozen pokemon’s defense to counteract this. There’s a thematic sense to this (chipping at the ice around the Pokémon isn’t going to do much compared to shattering it entirely), and the person who has the frozen Pokémon now has a two-turn brick - maybe they switch it out and send it back in later to tank a hit that wouldn’t shatter the ice, and then thaw on the switch. On the other hand, if the player who got the freeze is able to predict properly, they can shatter that Pokémon to deal massive damage and remove a threat. Then you can increase the reliability and predictability of freeze moves, because now the status actually has some counterplay on both sides.
Man - now I’d love to see a Pokémon that buffs when it gets encased in ice, almost like an ice-type rest. What a world that would be…
@@snoozbuster i thought the original commenter meant replacing the "not being able to move" entirely with turning it into ice-type, but buffing its defense sounds intriguing.
@@snoozbuster Yes my original thought was to remove the RNG element (save for the initial application); non-volatile status conditions rarely give the affected Pokemon an advantage unless that Pokemon has a kit that uses it to its benefit (Sleep Talk, Poison Heal, Trick Room, Guts) so I would assume if this were implemented, an Ability or move would benefit an affected Pokemon in some way (maybe the increased defenses would be used here) I will edit for clarity!
What if freeze reduced special attack like burn dose for physical attack
From what I’ve seen personally I believe that ice type Pokémon generally have stats that would make them want to be bulky, however due to the defenses of the ice type it is hard for them to be as tanky as they want to be. So these changes generally help the type in a way that I think is much more suited for the pokemon in it
Somewhere around 12 mins:
Yeah, from a geological standpoint ice is literally a rock lol. It fits every definition of one
Not necessarily as it’s not a mineral based structure
@@jmurray1110 I've had this debate before, it is a mineral
@@jmurray1110 It is a mineral
Ice should also get a strong physical move. Something like an ice type flare blitz. Frost Blitz
cold snap
That move exists in Ice Hammer, but it’s Crabominables signature move. They really need to broaden its distribution
@@lukefilcek3020 imagine Kyurem with Ice Hammer
@@lukefilcek3020 Ice Hammer isn't that great though. Only for slower mons. It lowers speed. Great for TR, but bad for slush rush/mamoswine/etc
I strongly agree with this.
What do you think of making Freeze condition a special attack-reducing version of Burn? And then adding in status moves that directly cause the Freeze condition + increasing probability of Freeze above 10% for some moves?
Pokemon can't already attack while Frozen so I see now use of this.
@@CaptainNarwhal1997 he saying replace the freeze condition since as of now it's useless to build around and total RNG. Every other status condition can be built around (poison kinda sucks in doubles) and has many more chances of inflicting them than freeze. Additionally special attacks kind of get off easy with no burn or intimidate equivalent.
this. I've seen this suggested so many times I even implemented in a fangame.
they really need to fix the broken status effects like freeze and sleep.
maybe even do something similar to poison: regular frozen pokemon have their special attack halfed and badly frozen pokemon can't move (how freeze works rn)
I am not so sure about this. When dynamax is removed, physical attacks seem much more powerful than special, according to base power. When we no longer have dynamax, having this special attack-reducing will buff physical moves too much.
Late to this but this is a topic I've also had a lot of thought about myself and it's great to see everything up to stage two were ideas I shared myself and more! I'm honestly offended that hail doesnt already work like that! In terms of considering resistances, I have considered the idea of adding dark to it's resistances along with water and flying. My thought process to justify these are essentially the concepts Ice resists are forces that inherently make it stronger; wet and cold is deadly, high winds blowing hail and the absence of light creating chilling shadows. If I were to make it an OP type, I would also make it resist Dragon. I can't really justify this one other than Ice's preestablished super-effectiveness against it but then again their isn't really a justification for that other than lizards not doing so hot in the cold.
When I was a kid, I always thought Ice and Fire should have been super effective against each other. Yes fire melts ice, but ice smothers/cools fire. I also thought ice should've been super effective against water. My thought process was "well, wouldn't ice freeze the water and make it ice?" But you make a good point about the quantity. Plus, that's what Freeze Dry does.
With ice being my favorite typing thematically and aesthetically, here's my initial change suggestions
Give ice water, and flying resistance and remove it's steel weakness. I think offensively it's fine so no real changes are necessary there but it's defensive spread is in need of an overhaul. After watching however I think that the change to hail would be neat, but instead of increasing ice types defense it should lower non-ice types speed, as that's a common trope in fiction of slow, sluggish movements through snow or during blizzards
I think ice and fire should be super effective against each other.
But otherwise as a big ice fan I do hope gf implement some of these changes you suggested.
I kind of like ice being the in-between of fire and water. In other words, water beats fire, fire beats ice, and ice beats water. I dont think water should resist ice at all, and that freeze-dry should be made redundant if all ice moves are super-effective.
You could've also buffed Blizzard's accuracy to the same as Fire Blast, which is 85%. That change won't make Blizzard overpowered but give special attacking ice types a stronger alternative to Ice Beam on the cost of accuracy.
85% but with gen 1 freeze hax which I believe was 30% chance
I always feel sorry for ice types. They have some of the most common moves (Ice Beam, Blizzard, Icy Wind, etc) but the Pokemon themselves are never used because it’s so defensively weak. Why use Icy Wind Articuno when you have Icy Wind Cresselia, which has less weaknesses and more resistances.
21:30 the irony of these changes is that this was the interaction between Ice and Fire in RBY (each hit the other for neutral damage)
Nope Fire DID hit Ice for super effective damage, is just that a Gen 1 oversight caused the battle text to IGNORE the second type. (Still properly calculated damage)
So hitting a Lapras, Cloyster or Dewgong (oh look 60% of the Ice types) with fire would result on the message "It's not very effective"
But yeah fire didnt resist fire back then (one of the reasons Charizard sucked in Gen 1 lol)
As much as I love Ground-type, I feel like Ice should resist it. That would give it a huge ranking boost.
With how many Ice types are slow and bulky Pokemon, they seriously need resistances to have any sort of balance.
I honestly do not think it makes sense, though. Why would it resist?
Yeah
@@jameskelly-smith1279 ground doesn’t really have a way to break ice
no, ice in the artic is actually melting much faster because it is covered by sand.
the sand absorbs more sunlight and melts the ice faster.
just keep them neutral
@@luladrgn9155 you need the heat from the sun for sand to do anything if you say that maybe scorching sands is super effective against ice but everything else is resisted
I think Ice should resist Normal. That way, all three original Regis are made of hard materials that resist Normal and are weak to Fighting.
(Plus, it should resist Flying and Grass, maybe even Bug)