Competitive Pokemon History - Arceus-Ice Quiz

Answer: Latios/Latias

Arceus-Ice's super effective Judgments gave it the upper hand against the Eon twins. The only other Calm Mind forme of Arceus that could make that claim was Arceus-Dark, and Ice was a far more potent offensive typing than Dark, giving Arceus-Ice a niche.

Answer: One

Ice only resists itself, which isn't terribly useful. The only time this might be helpful is when Arceus-Ice is attempting to switch in on another Arceus-Ice in the fourth generation. It might also try to pivot in to Kyurem-White's Ice Beams or maybe an Abomasnow Blizzard in the fifth generation.

Unfortunately, any attempt to switch Arceus-Ice in on an Ice type move poses a risk. Switching it in on another Arceus-Ice runs the risk of accidentally catching a Thunder or, worse yet, super effective Fire Blast on the way in. Kyurem-W could hammer Arceus-Ice with Draco Meteor or destroy it with a Fusion Flare. Sure, Arceus-Ice could more comfortably switch in on, say, Lugia or some support form of Arceus' Ice Beams, but these attacks deal little damage anyway, so the resistance to them is not too useful.

Answer: Four

Arceus-Ice is weak to Fire, Rock, Fighting and Steel. This is bad news, as all four of these typings have had a rich history throughout the history of the Uber tier, and have thus been pretty common. Being weak to Stealth Rock is the nail in the coffin here, removing any potential defensive utility Arceus-Ice may have had. Arceus formes in general are valued based on their defensive utility, due to Arceus' naturally pretty great bulk. Thus, lacking a defensive presence meant Arceus-Ice was just about never a player's first choice for a competitive team, causing its usage to suffer across its competitive history.

Answer: Both White and Black formes of Kyurem

Kyurem-White was a brutally strong specially offensive Ice type, whose Ice Beam or even Blizzards ripped holes in just about any team build conceivable thanks to humungous Base 170 Special Attack. Kyurem-B's movepool didn't actually give it a usable physically offensive Ice type attack, but its usable Base 120 Special Attack allowed it to effectively use Ice Beam as a mixed attacker, alongside its 170 in Attack that gave it extremely strong Outrages, and notably Fusion Bolt to destroy Water types that resisted Ice.

Their bulk was very similar to Arceus-Ice, and they obtained useful resistances to Water and Electric courtesy of their Dragon typing, while only inheriting a weakness to Dragon and losing their resistance to Ice in return. They even had access to Roost with which to keep themselves healthy, leaving Arceus-Ice's only notable advantage over them in its much higher Speed stat. Thus, Arceus-Ice became rather undesirable apart from extremely rare, dedicated Hail teams, or incredibly precise Rain teams that specifically wanted Arceus-Ice's access to Thunder and higher Speed over the two fusion Dragons. Thus, Arceus-Ice's usage declined in this generation.

Answer: Stallbreaker

The Kyurems totally outclassed Arceus-Ice as a wallbreaker and even as a sweeper with their far superior immediate power and better typings. Lacking the resistances to become a Wall, Arceus-Ice instead took up the mantle of being a stallbreaker much like other formes of Arceus. To be clear, the Kyurems happened to have a pretty good matchup against stall teams, so this role wasn't necessarily uncontested, but Arceus-Ice was generally better against stall than the Kyurems were. Kyurem-W, for as strong as it is, gets totally stuffed by Blissey and Chansey like most other special attackers in the game. On the other hand, the pink blobs can do little to deter Arceus-Ice from switching straight into them, endlessly boosting with Calm Mind, and then sweeping with +6 Judgments. Kyurem-B is harder to stop defensively, but it is stopped pretty effectively by most variants of Jirachi, Heatran and faster Dragon types in general. Arceus-Ice couldn't really deal with Heatran or Jirachi, but faster Dragons weren't much of an issue for it. Thus, Arceus-Ice could plausibly attempt to be a stallbreaker.

Answer: Arceus formes were now chosen more for their defensive utility

All formes of Arceus have the same exact ability and stats, rendering those options incorrect. With numerous heavily offensive threats appearing in the sixth generation, such as Primal Groudon, Xerneas, Yveltal and Mega Salamence, having an Arceus forme who could do its job while also patching up weaknesses to these threats was immensely important. Specially offensive Arceus formes saw a decline in usage because of their inferior immediate power juxtaposed to these new threats.

This did not mean they were worthless, but it meant that their overall value declined. That sentiment could also be used to describe Acrus-Ice pretty perfectly; a mediocre overall pick, but not a totally hopeless one.

It could naturally deal with Yveltal and Mega Salamence due to having a typing advantage, but the matchups were generally too volatile for comfort; Yveltal could slam Arceus-Ice with Dark Pulse or super effective Heat Wave/Focus Blast, while Mega Salamence could use Double Edge or Fire Blast to maim the Creator as He came in. Thus, Arceus formes with better defensive typings were preferred.

The introduction of Arceus-Fairy in particular hindered Arceus-Ice, because it could deal with these two threats, a wider variety of things in general, while also not having as many exploitable weaknesses and having useful resistances and an immunty to fall back on. Thus, Arceus-Ice's viability declined, and while it was still viable to a degree, it was best described as being an overall low tier Pokemon.

Answer: Ho-Oh

Switching Primal Groudon or Arceus-Fire in was highly inadvisable and pretty risky, as Arceus-Ice had the tools to hit either very hard. Neither had the means to heal themselves either, so they were ill equipped to try and counter Arceus-Ice. Mega Scizor failed as a counter completely; Arceus-Ice could potentially be running Fire Blast, a move which easily OHKOes Mega Scizor, and Arceus-Ice has the bulk to survive a single super effective Bullet Punch if need be. Meanwhile, Ho-Oh was insurmountable for Arceus-Ice, and could melt it like a summertime ice cream cone with Sacred Fire.

Its massive Special bulk meant even super effective Thunders weren't adequately deterrents. Even if Stealth Rock caused Ho-Oh to lose half its health switching in, Arceus-Ice would be unable to 2HKO it with Thunder unless it first boosted with a single Calm Mind, something it would generally not have time to do before Ho-Oh came into play. Thus, the popular golden phoenix was a major threat to Arceus-Ice, and had to be dealt with before it could try to stallbreak.

Answer: Numerous new counters were introduced to the game

Stallbreaking was now impossible. Arceus-Ice only had room for Judgment on its stallbreaking set, which was good enough until Magearna and Toxapex were introduced and totally stuffed Arceus-Ice's efforts at stallbreaking. The bulky water type Toxapex could just sit there and soak Judgment up all day, using Haze to prevent Arceus-Ice from gathering any Calm Mind boosts. Magearna was far more dangerous, tanking Judgments with ease but using Heart Swap to steal away any Calm Mind boosts accrued, potentially using them to threaten a counter-sweep. If Arceus-Ice attempted to drop Refresh for Thunder to better hit Toxapex or Fire Blast for Magearna, it would now have zero chance of breaking through Chansey and Blissey, which still put it at a loss for breaking stall teams like it needed to. Lacking any conceivable niche, Arceus-Ice was now fully unviable for the Uber tier.

Answer: The ability to OHKO Zygarde-C with no prior boosts

Zygarde-C exploded onto the Uber scene and slid in as competing with Lugia and Giratina-A for the bulkiest Pokemon in the entire game. Its Dragon/Ground typing left it highly susceptible to Ice. Pokemon without STAB on Ice moves still generally could not OHKO it from full health due to its immense bulk, but Arceus-Ice could certainly threaten to do so.

Unfortunately, so could Kyurem-White and, even though it wasn't an Ice type, the brutally strong Primal Kyogre's Ice Beams could also achieve this. Thus, Arceus-Ice simply didn't stand out quite enough for this to make it viable, though it was technically somewhat unique to itself, which is worth something.

Answer: Its typing

All Arceus formes have the benefit of a useful ability, great stats and a massive movepool. However, the Ice typing in general is well known for being among the worst types in all of Pokemon. Its offensive profile is decent, but its defensive resistance profile is so bad that it's better to just give an offensive Pokemon an Ice type coverage move and leave the terrible defensive maladies at home. For instance, Primal Kyogre's Ice Beams are strong enough to achieve what you'd want an Ice type attack to do, and Primal Kyogre doesn't come with anywhere near the same level of deficient defensive baggage that an actual Ice type comes with.

It isn't just Arceus-Ice; all Ice types in general have been constantly held back by this typing, and it was enough to render Arceus-Ice a genuinely mediocre form of Arceus across history.