Freeze

Freeze

Hello everyone, it’s foo here. I think we can all agree that freeze is one of the most debilitating and powerful statuses in Pokemon. Seeing the icy animation sends a ~chill~ down my spine. Today we’ll be looking into what are the highest chances you can get to freeze your opponent’s Pokemon with one move.

If you’re interested in this content consider leaving a like because it will really help me know if you want to see more of this kind of video!

First, a bit about why freeze is so ~cool~ and why we might want to weaponise it…
When a Pokemon is frozen, it is unable to move until it thaws. It can attempt to do this by going for a move, but you only have a 20% chance to thaw (1/5). Unlike sleep, freeze does not end after a certain number of turns. Your Pokemon may be out of action indefinitely! Alternatively, you can use a healing item/move OR the Pokemon thaws when hit by a damaging fire type move.

So keeping your opponent frozen indefinitely, that sounds ~nICE~!

So which moves can freeze – well a number of ice type moves! But they all have a low 2ndary effect chance of 10%. Not reliable at all. Let’s look at the ways to increase this!

First off – Mega Kangaskhan and its Parental Bond ability. Kang has a number of ice type moves, the most viable being Ice Punch. Parental Bond allows Kang to hit twice giving it an extra chance at freezing the opponent. So 2 10% chances. 20% right? Not quite. A quick probability tree shows that it’s actually slightly less at 19% (10% + (90% x 10%)). Still pretty low…

Next up, we have Serene Grace, a more obvious choice to increase freeze chance. Jirachi’s Ice Punch does a marginally better job of a 20% freeze chance. Still pretty rubbish though.

A way to achieve the same effect is to combine Fire and Water Pledge to create a rainbow on the opposing side of the field. This increases the 2ndary effect chance of moves targeted at the opponent, giving 20%. Unfortunately this cannot be combined with Serene Grace (no 40% chance).
BUT it can be combined with Parental Bond. Let’s check the probability tree for the chance again…
(20% + (80% x 20%)) = 36%! That’s actually not awful for such a powerful status… (despite the annoying set up). To my estimation, this is the highest free chance you can get in wifi battles, so if you’re looking for an awful gimmick, look no further. ~It’snow~ joke!

BUT that’s not all! In game you can actually increase these odds even further because of the move Secret Power – 70bp normal type move with a 30% effect chance depending on the location – in snow or ice you can freeze your opponent! And without requiring all that set up! Not only that, but you can increase these odds even further by rainbow pledge or serene grace (not Parental Bond though…) therefore giving you a 60% freeze chance! Pretty crazy! The main issues here are that it’s only on certain tiles in the game and in the same areas, you mainly encounter ice type Pokemon that can’t be frozen anyway!

So that concludes this little ~ice-capade~. I hope you learned something, or were at least sufficiently entertained. If you did enjoy the vid, consider leaving a like. But all that’s left to be said is I’ve been foo, you’ve been ~thawesome~ and hopefully see you next time!