Ice Beam or Frost Breath?

Question

Which is more powerful overall?

Answer 1

Frost Breath - 60 BP 90 Acc

Always results in a critical hit.

That means it's Base Power is always 90BP, and it ignores stat changes. (SpD boost)

Ice Beam - 90 BP

10% chance to freeze the target.

Has the same amount of BP as Frost Breath, but can Freeze your opponent, which can be game changing, and it has 100 Acc.

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So overall, they have the same "power" but different uses: if you need a set-up (Calm Mind) breaker, go with Frost Breath, if you want reliabilty and maybe a Freeze, go with Ice Beam.

Answer 2

Ice beam

It has 90 base power, 100% accuracy and a 10% chance to freeze.
Ice beam with STAB results in 135 damage.

Frost breath

Has 60 base power and 90% accuracy. Always results in a critical hit.
With STAB and the critical hit it results in 180 damage in any generation before 6 and 135 in generation 6.

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The answer here is pretty obvious.
If this is for Generation 6, Ice beam is better as it has the same damage, better accuracy and an additional effect(though unlikely).

If it's for any generation before however, you just have to decide what you prefer, more accuracy and a very small freeze chance or more power and less accuracy.

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Source: some calcs and knowledge
Hope I helped.

Comments

Crits ignore stat changes, m8.

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I didn't mention anything about stat changes, so why does that matter?

If you mean them setting up, then yeah. But I was giving a more general answer, no stat boosts/drops.

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It matters because it means Ice Beam isnt necessarily better

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It isn't. But a lot of the time it is.

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If your opponent has shell armor or lucky chant or..... something that protects crits, it won't do much.

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people dont use those in competitive anymore, the meta has changed since gen 5.

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@Talonflamers, why would you wanna use frost breath on shell armour pokemon? Cause most shell armour pokemon resists ice apart from turtwig and grotle. Who uses a HA turtwig in competitive anyways? Moreover, lucky chant is an extremely situational move and most pokemon do not bear the move. The only possible lucky chant user i can think of is mismagus(no, not even delphox).