This is such a Niantic thing to do. After receiving backlash for their controversial “minor text fixes” patch (which seemed to do nothing), they’ve taken their lack-of-transparency to a whole new level by sneakily making the biggest update to the game, EVER, without even telling us.

Players began to notice, around 5 hours ago, that the power of certain moves on their Pokémon had changed. Some went up, some went down, and some stayed the same. This is both good news and bad news, depending entirely on which Pokémon you like to use. So who got hit the worst?

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Well, first of all, Vaporeon got nerfed. Hard. Really hard. I’m not quite sure where VapeNation will be ranking in terms of “The Best Pokémon” now, but there’s a very good chance it won’t be in the top 3 anymore.

Vaporeon got hit with two pretty big downgrades to its power. The biggest nerf was to Water Gun, which is Vaporeons fast attack. Water Gun was reduced from a power of 10 to a power of 6, and while Power alone is meaningless, when we look at the damage per second (DPS), Water Gun has almost halved, going from 20 DPS to 12 DPS.

And then there’s Vaporeons strongest Charge Attack, Aqua Tail. Aqua Tail used to have a power of 50, and it’s now been reduced to 45. DPS wise, this is a decent hit to Vaporeon. The DPS for Aqua tail was 21.8, and now, it’s 19.6. Not a huge drop, but still noticeable.

So if Vaporeon is no longer the king of the meta-game, who is? Honestly, it’s hard to tell at this point, since so many moves were affected. Another top Pokémon that was hit hard was Snorlax. He had his Fast Attack, Lick, reduced from 20 DPS to 10DPS. His Charge Attack, Body Slam, was reduced from 33 DPS to 26 DPS.

Dragonite, on the other hand, seems to be the only top-tier Pokémon that wasn’t hit hard by this update. His best Fast Attack, Dragon Breath, was untouched. It’s still sitting at a healthy 12 DPS. Dragon Claw, his highest DPS Charge Attack, was only reduced from 28 DPS to 24.6 DPS.

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But with Dragonite and Snorlax both being so hard to obtain, will we continue to see Vaporeons infesting the gyms? Will another Pokémon rise up and claim the top-spot that Vaporeon used to hold? I’m not sure, but I hope so, because I’m sick of seeing a sea of Vapeoreons.

What do you think about this silent update? Are you happy that the game has become more balanced, or are you pissed that Niantic nerfed Vaporeon so hard? Let me know in the comments below!

Featured image courtesy of The Pokémon Company.