"An analysis of Ice as an offensive type"

#PokemonGO: Hi all,I recently did analysis of Steel types when I was trying to figure out if it was worth powering up a Steel move Scizor. I thought I would continue the series with a look at Ice types. This was mainly spurred by my interest in powering up an Articuno. This post will be formatted very similarly to my Steel one, with a few changes. The most important change is that we've now experienced some legendary raids, and know that with the extended timer, pure DPS isn't the be-all-end-all. So I will be including some bulkier attackers in my analysis this time.Here is the tl;dr: Ice types don't have that many useful matchups and have few resistances, making them bad duelers. If you need an Ice attacker right now, Articuno is your best bet overall, but Cloyster is pretty comparable, and Jynx is a glass cannon.Which Pokemon are decent Ice-type attackers?As far as a snapshot of the current Gen 1&2 Pokemon, the hard work has already been done for us by /u/saqwedcxz in this thread: http://ift.tt/2uXeF6n. To summarise, we have Jynx (223 attack, 2515 Max CP), Articuno (192 attack, 2933 Max CP), Cloyster (186 attack, 2475 Max CP), and Lapras (165 attack, 2603 Max CP).The rankings from pogomoves (http://ift.tt/2t6xrIM) put a Frost Breath/Avalanche Jynx at 67th in neutral offensive DPS, and Cloyster with the same moveset at 252nd. Unfortunately they don't rank Legendaries, but Articuno with its best moveset of Frost Breath/Blizzard would rank fairly close to Frost Breath/Blizzard Cloyster, which sits at 317th. Lapras' first all Ice moveset is 507th - thats too low for me to consider her as an attacker option.Gen 3 doesn't bring us much, with the 2 strong Ice types Regice (179 attack, 3087 Max CP, also a legendary) and Walrein (182 attack, 2606 Max CP) being quite defence oriented. Gen 4 brings the best Ice attackers all at once, with Mamoswine (247 attack, 3289 Max CP), Weavile (243 attack, 2815 Max CP), and Glaceon (238 attack, 2866 Max CP). I won't be considering those here because thats just too far off to plan for.So we're basically left with Jynx as a glass cannon attacker and Articuno/Cloyster as bulkier attackers.How does Ice fare as a type?Ice is super effective against Grass, Ground, Flying and Dragon, and not very effective against Fire, Water, Ice and Steel.Grass types have an array of other weaknesses - Fire, Poison, Flying and Bug. Ground is also weak to Water and Grass, Flying is also weak to Rock and Electric, and Dragon is also weak to Dragon and Fairy.As a defensive type, Ice is weak to Fire, Fighting, Rock and Steel, and resists only Ice.Before getting into any match-ups, you can see if an Ice type is going to have a favorable match-up (i.e. dealing super effective whilst resisting attacks), its probably going to need to get the resisting component from its dual type. For example, Articuno has an ideal match-up against Ground types, thanks to his Flying typing.How do Ice attacks fare compared to other types?As a redeeming quality, Ice has some pretty decent quick and charge moves.There are 3 Ice type quick moves in the game currently - Frost Breath, Ice Shard, and Powder Snow. They all have a pretty similar speed, but Powder Snow is a low DPS high EPS move, while the others have better DPS. Frost Breath is probably the best overall.As for charge moves, Blizzard has the highest raw DPS, whilst having the liability of being a 1-bar charge move. Avalanche is a good compromise with a lower DPS but coming with a 2-bar for best-in-class weave DPS. Ice Beam is OK, and other charge moves (Ice Punch, Aurora Beam, Icy Wind) lag behind.There is no Pokemon in the pogomoves Gym Offense rankings above Frost Breath/Avalanche Jynx that has a lower attack stat that Jynx. What that says to me is that Frost Breath/Avalanche is an incredibly good moveset.So when would you want an Ice attacker?We'll look at a few different use cases for your Ice attacker. Where it is relevant I'll try and mention legendary raids, since that is effectively the hardest content in the game, and the most likely place you will want to be bringing strong counters.Case 1: generalist attackerAs I already mentioned, Frost Breath/Avalanche Jynx is ranked 67th in neutral offensive DPS, so Ice type attackers have the potential to be big damage dealers with the right moveset.The problem is that Ice has 4 types that resist it, no practical type resistances, and no Pokemon with a great stat mix of offensive power and defence (i.e. that Dragonite has). As a result your Ice attackers are unlikely to make it to the top of your generalist attackers list.Case 2: vs. pure Grass, Ground or Flying typesIce's lack of resistances puts it in a bad spot for these pure type match-ups. I will use Venusaur as an example (even though it is not a pure Grass type, it's typing will still serve to illustrate this point). Venusaur is weak to Ice, but is also weak to Fire which resists Grass, so you're better off picking Flareon or another Fire type.Ground is weak to Ice, but also weak to Grass which resists Ground. And Flying is weak to Ice, but also to Rock, which resists Flying. In all these pure match-ups there are better options than Ice.Note that I've intentionally left Dragon off here because Ice fares a bit better against them so I'll discuss that separately.Case 3: vs. Grass, Ground or Flying types with complicationsHow about Grass/Ground/Flying types that cover their other weaknesses? In general dual types with a single Ice weakness are rare and have other weaknesses that could be exploited by a more versatile attacker.Some type combinations where Ice might shine simply don't have any Pokemon, such as Grass/Electric. Others, like Flying/Steel, also remove Ice's effectiveness. Others, like Flying/Electric (e.g. Zapdos) have better counters (e.g. Golem, whose Ground typing resists Eletric attacks and Rock moves deal super effective damage).What about defenders with moves which exploit the weakness of their attackers? For example Lugia - a Flying type with a Water move. Well Rock is definitely going to suffer, but Ice is still on equal terms with Electric (and Dark and Ghost for Lugia specifically). Something like Cloyster, which also resist Water attacks, will do well in this specific case.Another troublesome defender is Rhydon with Megahorn, which punishes it's regular Grass attackers. Ice is neutral to Bug moves... but so is Water, which has a double super effective match-up vs. Rhydon. Articuno's Flying type actually resists most of Rhydon's attacks, but a Stone Edge will wipe it out. It would be hard to argue that powering up an Ice attacker like Articuno is worth it for this, especially if you have a powered up Vaporeon already.Case 4: vs. Grass/Ground/Flying dual typesHow about when Ice can have a double super effective advantage? These combos are quite rare, but here they are: Grass/Ground - Torterra (Gen 4) Grass/Flying - Jumpluff (Gen 2), Tropius (Gen 3) Ground/Flying - Gligar (Gen 2), Gliscor (Gen 4), Landorus (Gen 5)Ice types will persecute these Pokemon's double Ice weakness. Furthermore, most of these type-combos are very good at covering their other weaknesses. For example, the Ground/Flying typing covers Flying's weakness to Rock and Electric, as well as Ground's weakness to Grass, adding only a regular weakness to Water. This gives Ice a clear advantage.But just how relevant will it be to counter these Pokemon? The only really threatening ones are Torterra, Gliscor and (especially) Landorus - you will want some Ice attackers for going into raid battles with these bosses, for sure. However, since they are all Gen 4+, I would argue that you could wait and power up a Mamoswine/Weavile/Glaceon instead. So I don't think it's worth investing anything now just for this case.Case 5: vs. Dragon and Dragon dual typesDragon types bear two other weaknesses - Dragon and Fairy. Fairy is arguably the better counter as it also boasts an immunity-tier resistance to Dragon attacks. But there are no Fairy type quick moves in the game (I'm convinced that Hidden Power fairy doesn't exist unless shown otherwise), so Fairy is a pretty hard type to have a good attacker for currently. And any Dragon-type attacker with Dragon moves is also going to be weak to the Dragon it is attacking. So Ice attackers are probably the attacker of choice.Problem is: Dragon types are rare. For the current game, there's Dragonite and Kingdra. I would speculate that Kingdra will never be a raid boss, because that would invalidate Niantic's introduction of evolution items, but Kingra's Water type neutralises its Ice weakness anyway.But do Ice types do well against Dragonite? You bet! I expect sometime in the near future we will have Dragonite raids, and Ice attackers will probably be your best bet for that. Thinking about Articuno specifically, it is weak to Dragonite's quick move Steel Wing, whilst not offering resistance to any of Dragonite's moves. I'm sure Articuno will do just fine against Dragonite, but not well enough for me to see this as a justification to power one up.Gen 3 will bring more Dragon types in Salamence, Altaria, Flygon, and the legendaries Latias, Latios and Rayquaza. Meanwhile, we will only get 1 decent Fairy type attacker in Gardevoir (if it can even learn a Fairy type quick move, who knows). It will definitely be worth considering powering up an Ice attacker for the Gen 3 fleet of strong Dragons, but without knowing their move-sets its hard to say who will be best (e.g. if Salamence has Fire Blast, Cloyster would be preferable over Articuno and Jynx).edit: it's worth pointing out that many dragons in fact have a double weakness to ice, thanks to Dragon/Flying typing (Dragonite, Altaria, Salamence, Rayquaza) or Dragon/Ground (Flygon).ConclusionSo I think Ice fares a bit better than Steel did, but it's still not great. The lack of resistances holds back Ice types from being optimal counters. Personally I have a couple level 30 Jynx and Cloysters, so I don't think it's worth powering up Articuno myself, even if it is the best "overall" Ice type for the time being.One Pokemon I didn't mention earlier is Piloswine. Piloswine has a respectable 181 attack and 2284 Max CP. He has a decent match-up against Zapdos thanks to his Ground typing. More importantly, he will eventually evolve into the king of Ice attackers Mamoswine. So if you want to invest in something that will be useful now, and the best in the future, maybe Piloswine is a good compromise.Thanks for reading this far. If you have any thoughts or personal experience with Ice attackers, please let me know! via /r/TheSilphRoad http://ift.tt/2f4M0WT