Equally likely outcomes
Outcomes are equally likely when every outcome in the sample space has the same probability, which is what makes favorable over total valid.
Under this assumption only, , so counting is enough to get a probability. On a fair six-sided die each face has probability and . Now load the die so a 6 turns up with probability 0.30 and the other five faces share the remaining 0.70 equally at 0.14 each: counting would still say for a 6, which is wrong by a wide margin. Whenever the outcomes are not symmetric you have to add the actual probabilities instead of counting.
Where this comes up
More probability terms, or browse the full statistics glossary.