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I've been using one to middling success, but it's great fun to play with. I feel that Ice teams are overlooked, with Pokemon like Ninetales-A to set up instant hail and Aurora Veil, Glastrier and Darmanitan-G to punch holes through anything with their massive Attack stat, Kyurem to function as a special wallbreaker... the list goes on.

However, I've also noticed definite downsides. Quite a few Ice types are either very frail (Weavile and Darmanitan-G), quite slow (Glastrier and Arctozolt, even under the influence of Slush Rush) or both (Mamoswine). Precious few Ice types are viable, making teambuilding fairly linear and predictable. All teams are going to have a Ninetales-A, you can be sure to expect a Weavile/Glastrier/Darmanitan-G, and so forth. Coupling that with the Ice type's myriad of weaknesses makes it clear that Ice teams are predictable and easily exploitable.

The majority of Ice types are either defensive (and Ice is a bad defensive type) or physical attackers, making an Ice team decidedly skewed, with barely any special attackers to speak of. The only viable special attackers are Ninetales-A and Kyurem, and maybe Lapras and Regice. However, Ninetales-A is more of a supporter/lead with Aurora Veil, and Lapras and Regice are both slow, Untiered Pokemon. This means Kyurem and to an extremely lesser extent Lapras and Ninetales-A are the only viable special attackers, and all are easy to take advantage of.

On the other hand, few people expect you to use an Ice team because they're worse than other types, which can lend you an advantage, albeit a convoluted one. Ice also helps against some of the more popular Monotype types, like Dragon and Ground. Therefore, the Ice type isn’t wholly useless, but I already figured that one out for myself, as it’s not a tricky conclusion to draw.

Some Ice types are extremely hard to counter once they get going, including Glastrier, Darmanitan-G, Cloyster, and possibly Kyurem. The trouble is, it’s hard to get them going in the first place. Toxic is commonplace, and eliminates all these Pokemon from the scene in a few turns. Electric teams are common, and what is Cloyster weak to? If you guessed Terrain boosted Rising Voltage from Surge Surfer Raichu-A, you’re absolutely correct. Cloyster is going to be completely fried by any Electric attack thrown at it.

So, back to the question at hand: Exactly how well do Ice teams perform in Gen 8 Monotype? Take into consideration all the points I brought up, such as their offensive capabilities, the potential surprise factor, shoddy defenses, and skewed/easily predictable teams.

Thanks in advance.

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Just hv wide defensive type covergage, like froslass for ghost typing and mamoswine for ground, alolan sandslash for steel. Ice being such a poor defensive type it rly depends on the opponents monotype. If the opponent is like ground, u hv a high chance. But if the opponent is letsay steel, mamoswine becomes useful but the odds of u winning arent that high.
In monotype, tiers dont always matter as u can sometimes see mons like bewear or porygon z on normal monos .
Ice type also has a nice niche in having its own weather unlike sand where it is shared between 3 types. It also has its own aurora veil and a bunch of abilities that hv sand counterparts. So overall if u ask me its not too bad but its not very good
Based on smogon stats, the most popular ice type is alolan ninetails at 16 place.
@sumwun thanks, I posted on that thread as well.
Seems you kinda already have your answer, and are just looking to see if your thoughts match those of others.

The crux of the problem is that Ice has the unholy trifecta of weaknesses:  Fire, Ground, Fighting.  These 3 types are the top 3 for both broad coverage moves, as well as offensive STAB moves.  This fact alone means that for any Ice type to be viable, it has to be valuable enough to a team to use in spite of this devastating weakness.

That's not so say that Ice type is bad.  In fact, as an offensive typing it's actually quite good, pounding some problematic other types hard and having not that many things resist it.  That's why Ice Beam, in particular, is a popular coverage move on other type Pokemon.  But that's generally not enough to justify using an actual Ice type Pokemon on an ordinary team.
@PhailRaptor, Ice isn't weak to Ground.
@PhailRaptor I've come to my own conclusion from my experience, but I'm looking for an answer from someone that's a bit more knowledgeable than me about it. Thanks for giving your insight to my question though, appreciated :)
@Gladion Aether
....strange.  I have distinct memories of my Piloswine taking Super Effective damage from Earthquake in the past.  But you appear to be correct.  Ice has never been weak to Ground.

1 Answer

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Best answer

I asked this on Smogon and Perish Song replied to it.

I would say its tier is somewhere around middle right now, an offensive type that is difficult to pilot and doesnt have too many great matchups, yet can perform against some of the top tiers with proper builld.
Galarian Darmanitan is one of strongest offensive Ice-type Pokemon, Gorilla Tactics is essentially a free Choice Band. It also has decent coverage moves in Flare Blitz and Earthquake, as well as U-turn for momentum. You also have options such as Ninetales-Alola, Mamoswine, Weavile, and Kyurem which are all viable offensively and offer something to Ice teams. Ice-types unfortunately are not good defensively, as by game design they have only one resistance which is ice. Factoring this, and the fact that most viable Ice-types are offensive thus they dont use Heavy-Duty Boots so the majority of type is weak to entry hazards, it is fair to consider Ice types are frail. However, there are some Ice-types that provide defensive utility, such as Eviolite Piloswine which can succesfully take on a Volcarona and Lapras which can block Water-type attacks, as well as Avalugg which has a beastly defense stat and is the team's primary spinner.
When we determine a type's viability, there are a lot of factors that needs to be considered, and one of them is consistency. Consistency is what we call when a type gets frequent usage and gets considerably high amount of success against the entire metagame. The reason why Ice doesnt get usage is there are a lot of types that can just outperform Ice-teams, two prime examples being Steel ( The defensive core of Steel paired with Protect spam makes it very difficult to overcome the matchup) and Psychic ( Jirachi threathens everything, and Weavile is checked by Slowbro.), so it is difficult to expect a great success out of ice types.(Especially when these two types are literally everywhere.) It still is great type to fish matchups with, as it also has strong matchups against Dragon and Flying. Overall, using Ice teams has more downsides than its benefits, so it doesnt see a lot of usage. It still sees tournament play sometimes, here are 2 examples of Ice being used in Monotype Winter Premier League.
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen8monotype-1263598072-wplzu30mv4fnllypazf0de2yq2gs1dmpw
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen8monotype-1263607616

Source

Hope this helps.

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Great, thanks!
No problem!