Gyarados is king

At least as a water type attacker.

If the info provided here can be trusted we can compare gyarados to vaporeon or other water type attackers.


Gyarados suffered badly from lacking a water type primary attack. With gen3 comes Waterfall. The 16 power corresponds with what the game says, and 16 dps implies the attack goes off once per second.

That's quite simply brutal.


To mitigate this the rather monstrous primary comes with an eps that is rather atrocious. You're doing fifteen rather attacks before you get to fire off that Hydro Pump. Fifteen seconds versus vaporeon's ten seconds with Water Gun.


So it boils down to 10 (Water Gun) dps or 16 (Waterfall).


In a hypothetical battle vaporeon fires off three Water Gun every half a minute versus gyarados' two. Well, almost. You have to add the 9.9 seconds to cast those three charge attacks and reduce the 6.6 seconds for the gyardos, which allows your gyarados to squeeze in another three Waterfall attacks and a tiny bit of energy.


It also takes 40 seconds, and if you're fighting anything for 40 seconds with a surviving gyarados you're doing something seriosusly wrong. But anyway, just to compare numbers.


Our hypothetical vaporeon fired off a bonus Hydro Pump for 130 power. Deduct 32 for the two extra Waterfall. Let's call it 100 power in favour of vaporeon.


After that we compare six dps difference for thirty seconds (16 versus 10). That's 180 power in favour of gyarados.


80 extra power for the gyarados. If gyarados and vaporeon shared the same base attack stat. They don't. Vaporeon comes with 205 base attack stat and gyarados with 237. 32 base attack difference is a fifteen percent difference.


As an attacker gyarados wins out both in terms of the attacks available and the base attack stat. The only remaining advantage that vaporeon retains is that it's not a reliant on dodging a big incoming attack as the gyarados. After fourteen tedious Waterfall you really, really, really want to fire off that Hydro Pump.


Eh, blogging guy, didn't you just forget to compare with other water type attackers?

Yeah, I did. Show me one with more than 237 base attack stat and I'll rerun my numbers.


Conclusion: Have fun out there. Fast TM your gyarados and don't forget to Charge TM your old Hydro Pump vaporeon attackers -- they're perfectly good as gym defenders with either of the two other charge attacks.