How Fairy Type Made Ice Type Obsolete So after some…
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How Fairy Type Made Ice Type Obsolete
So after some thinking about ice type's role in the game pre gen 6 it's slowly dawned on me that fairy type has kinda ended up harming it's role so i wanted to discuss it.
# Ice's role as Dragon Killer
So a big thing that a lot of people point out is ice type's have too many weaknesses to justify how late in games they show up. And on a surface level I get it especially when a lot of water types already have access to ice moves. However the point from a game design perspective is the fact it was the only other type that could cut through dragon's already high resistences to most elemental types. However the ice type's massive amount of weaknesses was also serving a balancing act to not make them too OP.
This is partially why they show up late in games since by that point you will actually begin to or about to face Dragon trainers and most dragon types are few or much more rarer to get pre gen 6 and it comes with the caveot if your using dragon type moves to get the STAB bonus your opponent probably also has Dragon type moves.
Basically both of Dragon's weaknesses were built with a kinda high risk/high reward strategy in different directions.
Fairy kinda fucks with that synergy because there isnt anything high risk about bringing one out.
# Fairy's outshines too much
As I was saying while i love fairy type and i think its brought mostly benefits to the type match up it kinda just ruins Dragon having any other weaknesses besides it. For example you still have to wait awhile to get access to ice types and while they have compensated in giving some lower tier dragons early your not gonna get the full benefit of its stab.
Add in a lot of game post its introduction give you fairy type pretty early on than Dragon's other weaknesses. And Fairy also has utility against more common types such as dark and fighting that it genuinely makes no sense to put an ice type on your team unless some niche scenarios happen such as lacking an electric type or really liking the pokemon.
Like genuinely if you have a fairy type which show up much earlier and has better utility than Dragon's other weakness and doesnt come with high risk/high reward strategy what is the point of ice type even existing? It lack a niche now completely so its just kinda here. Especially with its immunity making it even better and more reliable. But from a balance thing yes this pulls from dark and ground but i feel the situations are different. Ground is literally electrics only weakness and electric types or their moves are common so ground has a very specific niche which lets it shine a lot more than it wouldve had if electric had more weaknesses or it didnt get the electric immunity. Dark is a weird situation since it stems from psychics weaknesses in gen 1 kinda sucking. Like even ignoring the programming error that made psychic immune to Ghost the only Ghost line was part poison which means bringing them out is unintended high risk strategy and weirdly ghost moves were physically when even by gen 2 none of the ghosts were built for that. Heck you cant even get misdrevous until Red. Then your other option was bug but bug moves sucked and the strongest one was on beedril whos part poison. And even in gen 2 when bugs got a boost Heracross still needs a shit ton of levels to get megahorn and is part fighting and scizor you have to trade and is mainly good due to steel type. Dark only exists in its current state due to a lot of development fuckups making psychic accidentally too strong.
Fairy did not exist because of development fuck ups and Dragons prior weaknesses existed with a clear intent on how they worked mechanically. But fairy debalances it that now ice types have to find a new niche because rn they have no purpose. Not even for water types who get ice moves unless you through Starmie at a grass type for some reason. Sure the Snow weather affect is a whole lot more useful than what hail was for them. But at this point either gamefreak needs to give ice more resistences to make them have a point in existing.
#games
So after some thinking about ice type's role in the game pre gen 6 it's slowly dawned on me that fairy type has kinda ended up harming it's role so i wanted to discuss it.
# Ice's role as Dragon Killer
So a big thing that a lot of people point out is ice type's have too many weaknesses to justify how late in games they show up. And on a surface level I get it especially when a lot of water types already have access to ice moves. However the point from a game design perspective is the fact it was the only other type that could cut through dragon's already high resistences to most elemental types. However the ice type's massive amount of weaknesses was also serving a balancing act to not make them too OP.
This is partially why they show up late in games since by that point you will actually begin to or about to face Dragon trainers and most dragon types are few or much more rarer to get pre gen 6 and it comes with the caveot if your using dragon type moves to get the STAB bonus your opponent probably also has Dragon type moves.
Basically both of Dragon's weaknesses were built with a kinda high risk/high reward strategy in different directions.
Fairy kinda fucks with that synergy because there isnt anything high risk about bringing one out.
# Fairy's outshines too much
As I was saying while i love fairy type and i think its brought mostly benefits to the type match up it kinda just ruins Dragon having any other weaknesses besides it. For example you still have to wait awhile to get access to ice types and while they have compensated in giving some lower tier dragons early your not gonna get the full benefit of its stab.
Add in a lot of game post its introduction give you fairy type pretty early on than Dragon's other weaknesses. And Fairy also has utility against more common types such as dark and fighting that it genuinely makes no sense to put an ice type on your team unless some niche scenarios happen such as lacking an electric type or really liking the pokemon.
Like genuinely if you have a fairy type which show up much earlier and has better utility than Dragon's other weakness and doesnt come with high risk/high reward strategy what is the point of ice type even existing? It lack a niche now completely so its just kinda here. Especially with its immunity making it even better and more reliable. But from a balance thing yes this pulls from dark and ground but i feel the situations are different. Ground is literally electrics only weakness and electric types or their moves are common so ground has a very specific niche which lets it shine a lot more than it wouldve had if electric had more weaknesses or it didnt get the electric immunity. Dark is a weird situation since it stems from psychics weaknesses in gen 1 kinda sucking. Like even ignoring the programming error that made psychic immune to Ghost the only Ghost line was part poison which means bringing them out is unintended high risk strategy and weirdly ghost moves were physically when even by gen 2 none of the ghosts were built for that. Heck you cant even get misdrevous until Red. Then your other option was bug but bug moves sucked and the strongest one was on beedril whos part poison. And even in gen 2 when bugs got a boost Heracross still needs a shit ton of levels to get megahorn and is part fighting and scizor you have to trade and is mainly good due to steel type. Dark only exists in its current state due to a lot of development fuckups making psychic accidentally too strong.
Fairy did not exist because of development fuck ups and Dragons prior weaknesses existed with a clear intent on how they worked mechanically. But fairy debalances it that now ice types have to find a new niche because rn they have no purpose. Not even for water types who get ice moves unless you through Starmie at a grass type for some reason. Sure the Snow weather affect is a whole lot more useful than what hail was for them. But at this point either gamefreak needs to give ice more resistences to make them have a point in existing.
#games
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