Did Pokemon Legends: Arceus "Fix" Freeze? 

Imaging frostbite's special attack drop alongside snow's defense boost and aurora veil.

​@@jeremysmith7176nasty

Maybe it'll return in the next arceus legends game

Frostbite was an amazing idea cooked up by Game Freak. So naturally they didn't do anything with it outside of Legends. So insulting how so many Pokemon moves that inflicts Frostbite had to be neutered in SV.

@Rashyboy05 A lot of amazing ideas added in P:LA were reverted in S/V for some reason. The changes to Hyper Beam/Giga Impact/Roar of Time having the next move essentially be negative priority/have decreased Speed instead of needing a whole recharge turn, the changes to Shadow Force giving it a similar effect to how Hyper Beam and co are like in the game instead of taking two turns to use, the Frostbite status replacing Freeze, the Drowsy status replacing Sleep (while this one isn't quite as good as Frostbite, it's still better than literally not being able to move at all), double super-effective attacks dealing 2.5x damage instead of 4x damage - saving the viability of some mons with crippling 4x weaknesses, and (Cherrim getting a stat boost in its Sunshine form - I know it's a stand-in for Flower Gift not being in the game, but they seriously need to have mons like Castform and Cherrim get additional stat buffs when they go into their alternate forms because their usefulness currently is just not it) are all changes that should be brought back come Gen 10 or whatever over the return to default that S/V had. And they should also have the Origin trio's gems be Reveal Glass esque Key Items again while they're at it.

Yeah AT LEAST you can burn Zacian and going back as far as Mega Rayquaza and Mega-Kang. .

Yeah, notice how it’s all special attackers. There’s just so little counterplay for special attackers while physical attackers have infinite attacks and abilities that punish them.

​@@NguyenLe-sb5xwnot only that, but physical attackers also almost exclusively use moves that either miss frequently, or have other massive drawbacks like recoil. Meanwhile special attackers have the literal gamut of 80-90 power moves with 100% accuracy and a chance for a secondary effect in nearly every type, on top of having nothing to really stop them. Weird imbalance

I think they should change ice type to something more like a "cold" type this could keep the theme and style but change the type match ups cold resists fighting because fighting in the cold is hard. Immune to water as it just freezes and becomes more ice. Super effective against steel because cold makes steel metal brittle. It's easy to justify almost any type matchups and it would give ice type a chance to be rebalanced. I personally that resisting fighting could be a buff that could drastically change the ice type

@@Thomas-ev4gmthough cold sounds more like a tatus than an element

Not really. Scald 2.0 would be a fire type (so the only thing immune to frost wouldn’t be able to switch in)

​@@sharkronical ong 😭

@@sharkronical Honestly, Chilling Water being Water type and only 50bp seems like they were gearing up for it to be a balanced Frostbite Scald but pulled back at the last minute when deciding to keep freeze around.

Frostburn

​@@QuartingsAnd it's weirder because technically Scald distribution widened after the DLCs, even if its most infamous user, Toxapex, never got it back.

Bro got neutered

Jim’s ferocity is ceaseless

Samurott the eunuch

He was so frostbitten it fell off 😩

It just creates a whole lot of work for them. Physical is intentionally designed to be stronger but also have things that specifically hamper them. Abilities like huge power have no special counterpart for a reason same as special priority distribution has been largely nonexistent and the same reason as why special attacks are stuck with low accuracy as a downside for decent power options and some have that and a second downside like overheat and Draco meteor where as physical downsides are more verried so you can in many cases pick the downside that matters to you the least. Close combat is the ideal option for fast frail attackers for example where as emboar’s massive hp pool makes recoil negligible and super power is often used on hydreigon as a way to handle blissey in earlier gens since it only cares about the attack stat for handling blissey since blissey normally handles its special attacks fairly well and focus blast has a very real risk of doing nothing. This asymmetrical nature sets physical and special apart and makes them both have more noticeable identity. One offense isn’t necessarily obviously better then the other they just have their pros and cons. Starting to add things to specifically counter special means either a special is just now obviously worse then physical since you just have worse abilities worse moves and are still countered just as much anyway or you have to start actively taking steps to make things symmetrical. Now you have to retroactively buff special mons give some priority options make special huge power give some mons both new and old that and that’s just a lot of hassle just to even begin trying to explore the possibility of what if we did burn but special or what if we did intimidate but special. Trying to make everything perfectly symmetrical would be a nightmare to balance right from what we already have so it’s best to keep that asymmetrical nature ( and it honestly arguably would be either way) and design around both offenses having distinct weaknesses

⁠​​⁠​⁠ adding more counterplay to special attackers won’t necessitate having to make the damage types “symmetrical?” 😭 we have incredibly powerful special attackers in large part due to a lack of any way to mitigate special damage compared to physical damage. Even the best physical attackers in recent times are strong bc they have ways to circumvent physical counterplay, like urshifu with crits “A lot of work” is such a terrible argument too lol. Yes it takes work to design a game and its systems, especially when they’ve been neglected for multiple generations 😂

​@@JustMeSavyto be fair, dynamax and tera helped a LOT. tera lets you fix the low bp of most special moves with double stab, and dynamax just gives everything 150+ power. without those, a lot of the busted special attackers would run into more issues. ~~also they gave chi-yu a special damage-increasing ability which ruins the asymmetry~~

I guess it would be considered a bit hit on the rest-talk sets

I could see both Sleep and the Drowsy status working independently in the same generation. And Yawn would induce both, one after the other, so it would be taken a lot more seriously. The first turn, the opponent would become Drowsy and risk increased damage, and then on the second turn if they stay in, they fall asleep. On the other hand, that might add some more unhealthy power creep... Maybe Drowsiness can be treated like Confusion where it clears when you switch out?

@@reddragonair3147 oh a bit like how poison and toxic are different potencies of the same status effect?

Personally not sure if I’m love with this one. It would be devastating for defensive mons and make the game more offensive focused. Sleep spam could end up being a thing and with shit like Chi Yu being able to break past Pokemon who resist it, not sure if we need a status that neuters defense.

@@jai249 You putting it this way makes a lot of sense actually. It's kind of making me think how this could be done for others. For example, freeze and frostbite could both exist, meanwhile you could have a weaker version of para that maybe only included the speed drop, where only the stronger version can cause failed moves, or something to that extent. Maybe along that same level, making it where Pokemon of the types of the status are better at getting those better versions, like how poison types can't miss toxic, could help with that as well. I'd be curious to see other ideas for that kind of thing.

Finally

I mean has been saved not saying it's good but usable now

If it's not called chill-o-wisp now I'll be upset.

It definitely would help defensive ice types not be a total meme assuming they'd be immune to the status themselves. I'd love to see my boy Regice get something.

That wouldn't be single-handed by definition if it's compounded with something else. But I agree, it would probably be the final and most significant step in making Ice genuinely good along with Snow mechanics. Still, it would be better with resistances so that it would be good outside of Snow, like how Fire doesn't need sun or burn to do well. They're just icing on the cake.

​​@@AnEveryManJackmax spdef avalugg would go crazy 👹

Raids in scarlet and violet are the worst

Turns out that was just a showcase of how buggy raids are

Raids aren’t even that bad. The problem is the narrative and quest design give them as much weight as gym battles and Arceus-esque boss fights. And they are just mechanically way slighter. As a sidequest, minigame, tappa tappa experience? Pretty fun! I honestly love the idea of having just a little Rumble in your mainline game, as a treat. But they feel underwhelming when the game forces you to compare them to gym and boss battles. It’s good to force players to actually use auto-battling since it can really elevate the standard roaming gameplay, but this version of the idea ultimately fell flat. Not awful, but an instructive failure.

What would they be like exactly? If you ask me the power halving of Burn/Frostbite and the speed drop and turn skip of Paralysis are quite severe to me (Don't get me started on Sleep and Freeze). The reason why Poison has two levels is because it's the most in character, but also game design. Normal poison is a great way to introduce the status mechanic for beginners but it'll also have to be the weakest, which is where Toxic comes in, standing out from the rest as a death clock.

@yungmuney5903 I haven't spent much time seriously thinking about what the serious version of other statuses would be, but so far. Bad paralysis: 50% chance to not do anything (same as confusion), further speed decrease. Bad burn: Contact moves self inflict damage equal to 1/2 damage done (gigadrain but backwards). The damage would be calculated with the decreased attack, but not be less than 1/8th hp per turn. Freeze/frost bite: I'm thinking "snow packed" or "snowed in" it would be exactly like Freeze, but would cost the opposing pokemon exactly 1 turn. Sort of like flinch, but would apply to the faster pokemon next turn. It could either be a milder version of Freeze or worse version of frost bite. Drowsy could just be implemented as the milder version of sleep.

When I think of how I would rework the status effects, I like to put sleep as a two tier status. First you have Drowsy, which doesn't do anything and can be removed by switching out your Pokemon, and then you have sleep which will always last for 2 turns. Rest still goes straight to sleep. I'd probably pair this with removing the move sleep talk (i don't particularly love the premise of "click a move at random"). I think this would make sleep a lot weaker, which may screw with Pokemon like breloom and amoongus, who no longer would have the niche of being able to use a 100% accurate sleep move, but if it weakens sleep to the point of not needing sleep clause, I think it could be a really healthy options to do stuff like threaten out set-up sweepers or walls that like to spam healing moves. Another change I'd make is to the flinch mechanic. First of all, these changes would pretty much affect every version of flinch except fake-out, which would probably just be changed to "prevents target from acting this turn" instead of "100% chance to flinch." But, I'd make it so that flinch effectively functions like the move Quash. I don't think flinch is a fun mechanic, but it's a little more interesting in doubles. I think screwing with turn priority works really well for doubles since it can be almost as bad as an actual flinch. And I don't think losing the mechanic in singles is a big deal since flinch tends to be associated with a paraflinch shenanigans. Personally, I'd also alter freeze to make the target's atk, spa, and spe x0.75 while maybe disabling healing? It shouldn't halve special attack since special attack is mainly notable for there being less mechanics that interact with it than physical attack. With paralysis, I'd remove the 50% chance to not move, instead paralysis would quarter your speed and disable priority moves. I think this version would be a very good way to threaten Pokemon that function as late-game cleaners as well as punishing players for positioning certain threats too carelessly. This would not fix the raging bolt thing (dunno if that's still a problem, haven't been paying attention), but I imagine it would be a helpful option to deal with threats like Kingambit since it's not like it can tera fire & electric/ground. But yeah, those are the status effects I'd primarily change. Like, I'd want to overhaul attract too for completion's sake, since it's not a very satisfying mechanic even accounting for the fact that it's pretty useless for multiplayer. There could probably be some redirection shenanigans going on? As a side note, I think redirection mechanics really should be more widely distributed in Pokemon. Like, it's a shame there are so few rage powder or follow me users in the game. And I thing it would be interesting to see it implemented with abilities. Like, I was thinking it would be cool if snorlax had an ability where it redirects attacks towards the user when switching in.That's all an aside. Main thing is that having rng that prevents you from playing the game isn't fun. Rng should be used to change how you approach the game, not your ability to play it in the first place. And that applies both to a pvp experience and a singleplayer experience. Like, I don't think freeze is a particularly fun mechanic even in the context of single player, much less pvp, so it should be changed.

Normal poisoned Pokémon should become badly poisoned if it gets poisoned again maybe?

What if current paralysis and burn are the severe version and we could get weaker ones

And it’s easy to see why. Unlike every other status element, freeze cannot be directly applied by a status move

Freeze is exclusive to the secondary effect of attacks.

And its easy to see why

Unlike every other status ailment

@@Kenny-Blankenship And the chance to apply freeze on moves like Ice Beam is only 10%

Only if they are an extreme sleeper or in a coma.

They actually had many electric moves in legends arceus bypass sleep immediately

Ong if moves were guaranteed to crit it would actually give shell armor and battle armor more usage instead of the occasional bulk/mind/defense mon becoming unkillable (checks notes theres literally 0 in Ubers Ou and Uu rn 😭)

@@enderluckjarmg985 Right?? It feels like fair and fun design space, like coup de grace in DnD. Plus, could you imagine the sauce for using Rest into Anger Point? Or using spore, followed by Sniper? Plus, it *removes* uncertainty from random crit and turns it into a strategic element.

Call it "Patronize"

As someone has pointed out before, Physical Attackers are checked by mechanics while Special Attackers are checked by a single evolutionary line

I think resisting ground and flying is good enough.

​@cadetjones9205 poor grass type cant catch a break from the hate theres like 6 types that resist it 😭😭😭

Yeah, lets make the grass type even worse than it already is!

Ice-type is one of the best offensively. Some Ice-types have Freeze Dry to by pass Water's resistance to it. They type does need more resists but it should still be limited. I always thought Ice should resists Normal and Dragon.

I would have ice resistant ground, electric and water

Yeah but with freeze it doesn't matter if freeze-dry, ice beam or blizzard hit they all have the same chance to freeze

Sleep: “I thought they were talking about me”

I would be okay with both sleep and drowsy in the game since they do two different things. Sleep is freeze but on a timer, and drowsy is like a better confusion.

I really like that idea of institutionalizing 2 stages of status. Perhaps Freeze can only proc in Snowstorm, or maybe when it triggers against a poke who already is Frostbitten. Splitting up Paralysis like that sounds exciting as well. Giving Grass types a more wide-ranging immunity to non-Electric-inflicted Paralysis could be a counterpart to allowed Electric types to suffer Paralysis at the hands of powder moves. I really did not find Drowsy in PLA to be all that interesting as a wholesale Sleep replacement, but I could imagine it working as an additional mechanic, rather than as a replacement for Sleep. While I agree with mainstream player opinion that Sleep CAN be problematic in the main series, I'd much rather see a change such as the Sleep counter counting down while the pokemon is switched out, which wouldn't feel wildly different in-game, but would be a massive change to it in competitive, rather than its wholesale aggressive redesign, a la Drowsy in PLA. I wouldn't at all mind institutionalizing Drowsy as specifically a PRE-SLEEP mechanic, such as is found with Yawn already in the main series.

What if they made a weaker version of freeze, burn and paralysis similar to poison and toxic and is the effect those moves have

@jimothycool does that earn me a pin?

​@@SubIfYouFounMyCommentno

@@blackdot105 :(

Arceus no. You'd just nerf Electric. Electric-types have a perfect balance. High speed, high special attack , one weakness balanced by small movepool, fragile defenses, and few resistances.

​@scooter-wy3qs wait, electric types are balanced? Maybe, if you dont look at any of the physical electrics with signatures

@@kyogrecrown5869are you calling them good or bad? Physical signature electric types span the entire tier list. You have zekrom in ubers, zeraora in high tiers, morpeko in lower tiers, and pikachu at the bottom. All of them have a role in their metas except pikachu but don’t choke the rest of it out. Individual mons can’t be judged in the first place if you are talking about the type as a whole. Magnezone shouldn’t be paying miraidon’s crimes. Iron hands shouldn’t get dragged down by a more gimmicky mon like eelektross. I agree with the balanced analysis because electric types are designed to do one thing well and suffer a crippling problem to a top 3 type in the game, and even if you don’t call it that, it’s probably the most commonly seen type as someone carries the torch of meta ruler with it every gen.

Basically the two good physical electric moves are volt tackle and aura wheel.

@@FishFan6038 if you are calling volt tackle good (its a recoil move so thats always debatable at best) plasma fists and bolt strike sit between it and aura wheel. bolt beak is also good.

Oh gosh, I didn't realize how setup moves work in PLA. In Competitive Play those mechanics would enhance Stall to a power level never seen before. The only decent setup options would be Victory Dance, Quiver Dance, Dragon Dance, Tidy Up, Calm Mind, Cosmic Power, Bulk Up, Coil, Curse and Omniboost moves like Clangorous Soul, as you cannot go to +2. No Belly Drum, Swords Dance, Nasty Plot, Agility, Iron Defense, Amnesia, Shell Smash or Shift Gear. Weakness Policy would be obsolete, too. If a boost lasts only a few turns, then it would be easy to stall out setup sweepers with Toxic, Protect and Substitute. You're sacrificing a valuable turn for boosting and if it's not worthwhile, then it won't be used much.

I think the issue with Scald was that it was over distributed. In Gen 9 Scald feels a lot better I don't think all secondary effects are bad either. 10% effects on moves that are already good on power alone are the ones I diskike. By design you're not clicking them FOR the secondary effect, so when the effect happens it feels Terrible

@@jimothycool Admittedly I have mostly been playing gen 4 the last few months, so I haven't played 9 since scald got reintroduced.

and Nidoqueen too

Speaking of balance, I do also feel like they should take a look at older pokemon and give them some love. 2 that come to mind are Mightyena and Ledian, they both are in relatively rough spots. While I do understand the concept of early pokemon being easier to level and evolve, Orbeetle exists to squash that notion (it's both extremely easy to evolve normally and is surprisingly strong). They addressed Zubat by giving it Crobat as an eolution, which I feel like would be a welcome addition for many pokemon GF seems to overlook

I'm pretty sure Flame Wheel unfreezes you if you use it

Or make fire and ice types immune to freeze

They do have a bit of that. There are a few moves that thaw you if used while frozen, like Flare Blitz, Sacred Fire, and Scald. Sun prevents freeze, but does not make frozen Pokemon thaw faster. It's not really enough though.