>>49951588>. It became the 'Ice Beam' of Fire mons at some pointThe difference is Solar Beam is an incredibly situational move since it's outright suicidal to use outside of Sun, and outside of checking water types (which Sun itself already does anyways by nullifying Water's strengths against Fire) it doesn't really have any utility otherwise because Grass is offensively weak. There really isn't any balance issue caused by its wide distribution among Fire types.
Ice Beam on the other hand has no drawbacks or restrictions like Solar Beam, comes from one of the best offensive types, and allows the many Water types that get it to check one of their only two weaknesses (Grass) as well as two of their three resists (Grass and Dragon), the only other resist being Water itself. The fact that nearly every Water type gets it is a big contributor to why Water is so imbalanced as one of the best types in the game.
