>>20713967I'm glad you have no say on Pokemon game balance.
There are some moves that are strictly worse than others (Bubble, Ember, etc), because Pokemon's main game is still an RPG and you have to scale power.
For end-game purposes, you strive to develop meaningful choices by not having one option grossly overpowering or better than others.
The game promotes it through things like Surf (90 base) vs Scald (80 base, 30% burn), Giga Drain (75, 50% drain) vs Energy Ball (90 base), Attack Order (90, only one mon) vs X-Scissor (80), Aqua Tail (90, 90 acc) vs Waterfall (80, 20 flinch), etc. All moves that offer something better than the vanilla damage move have lowered base power in compensation.
Earthquake is an OP relic that they never did again outside legendary exclusives.Ice Beam is your high damage STAB with no drawbacks at 90 base. 70 base power for a move that completely flips a resist into a weakness is fair. It's in the same tier of power for moves like Facade, Retaliate, while remaining stronger than other 'double damage under niche circumstances' like Avalanche, Payback, Revenge, etc. You gain significant boosted damage on a relevant type, while hitting slightly weaker on all other types.
Freeze-Dry could have better distribution, but it currently still is only given to Ice types, the ones who gets STAB and benefit from it most. It's fine as is in power, anon.
Buffing Ice offense will make it better at what Ice already does well, it doesn't fix any of its problems (inability to switch in or take hits due to lack of resist, mismatch of slow defensive stats for defensively weak Ice type mons, etc).
