Fact remains, though, that there is some serious discrepancy between what the Ice type can do, and what its Pokémon are designed to do.
Ice is a brilliant typing offensively, hitting the ubiquitous Flying types for super-effective damage, and in-game neither Grass nor Ground Pokémon are that uncommon either. If you ever happen to chance upon a Dragon, Ice will bring that one down too. As for resists, neither Fire, Ice nor Steel is that common in-game, and Water types are easily dealt with by the rest of your team. All in all, firing off an Ice attack is rarely a bad decision. You're likely to hit for a lot of damage, barring a rare exception.
However, defensively, the Ice type is pretty crap, resisting nothing but itself, and weak to Fire, Steel, Rock and Fighting, most of which are pretty common attacks.
It seems the typing is tailored for glass cannons, hitting hard but taking hits really poorly.
So what does GameFreak do with this type? What do the Ice Pokémon look like? Well, defensive, slow beasts, invoking the image of a glacier. Slow, but tireless and unstoppable. That would have been a fine choice, hadn't the type chart been so ludicrously opposite of that image. Most Ice types are too slow to strike first, to weak to hit hard, and their good defenses are rendered useless because almost every opponent carries a move that hits for super-effective damage. "Good defenses" isn't really covering it either, because the total lack of resistances means Ice won't ever get that benefit.
As it stands, the only really succesful Ice Pokémon are those designed to be exceptions to the formula. Weavile, Mamoswine and Kyurem. The latter is helped by an ungodly BST, which would make nearly every type successful. The only really decent defensive Ice type is Cloyster, which is given an amazing ability, the moves to utilize it - and of course, a boosting move that turns those useless defensive stats into the Speed and Attack it needs to actually do anything. That's right, what makes Cloyster a successful Ice type is its ability to get rid of the typical traits associated with the typing.
