Hydrocannon Event Timing
The odd thing about this event is that its on the 8th, I remeber all of the other events were after the 10th, (15th-18th if I recall correctly) but this is significantly earlier, only about 3 weeks after the larvitar event.
we know the water festival is ending tomorrow, and it is highly likely that Groudon's return will be soon, it seems like the event was put earlier to give players who may not have gotten a kyogre a powerful water type (before you all laugh, yes, I know theres a lot better water types that blastoise, but just hear me out) and given we dont know the specs on hydrocannon, this could be an attempt to prepare us for a ground event, not necessarily just Groudon, but other ground raid bosses.
and given the prevalence of Squirtle during this event, they may be trying to stock us up on Squirtle and candy to get as many as we can get, or this could just be me trying to give them more credit that they deserve
Answers
I'm gonna say it's your last point about the credit. Totodile and Mudkip have been equally as common during this event. Also what devshaw said, Go Fest is the weekend after. There's no way they'd have another event running alongside it.
Unless they buff the absolute shit out of Hydro Cannon Blastoise won't be making any waves (lol). For reference, Krabby has a higher attack stat.
We dont know how hydro cannon will be, and that is the main thing, we've seen time and time again pokemon with lower stats outclass other pokemon simply because of moves, and this could be the case, it seems unlikely, but is still a possibility, they nerfed the hell out of blastburn when they saw all the projections about hwo it was going to preform, and if a similar thing happens, where hydro cannon is put into calculators after the specs are released and it underperforms, they could buff it, people shouldn't scoff at soemthing they dont know the preformance of just because a precursor didnt do well.
Blastoise has a base attack stat of 171. Gyarados has 237 and Kyogre has 270.
Yes, we've seen pokemon with lower attack stats take the lead due to movesets, FP Venusaur wins over Exeggutor despite being 35 attack lower and BB Charizard wins Flareon despite being 23 attack lower. Blastoise is a whopping 66 base attack lower than the current best non-legendary and that's a pretty tough difference to overcome.
GP's speculative article on the subject predicts Blastoise getting Vaporeon-level DPS with a Hydro Cannon that is roughly as broken as FP and BB are. They would have to make the move immensely broken for Blastoise to get near Gary's DPS and if they're thinking ahead, they won't do that because it would make Feraligatr and Swampert too good.
Blastoise could very well become a decent water type, which would help players with more limited lineups, but it's pretty unlikely they make it good enough for players whose water teams are made of Kyogres and Garys.
PS. They didn't nerf "the hell out of" Blast Burn, it's still a stupidly good charge move. Flareon has +23 base attack and FS/OH is a great moveset, yet BB Charizard outclasses it. They sweetspotted it exactly to where Charizard doesn't out-DPS Moltres but was still extremely desirable as the best non-legendary.
So glad somebody else said the same thing about Blast Burn. It still hits like a truck, they just dropped it from broken to sensible. If it truly was "nerfed to hell" it wouldn't make people reconsider spending resources on Moltres and Entei if they managed to bag some high-level Charizards during community day.
Im well aware they are going to still outclass blastoise, im just saying it adds USE to it, not "blastoise best water type, kyogre's useless" blastoise will be a better water attacker and can be used in situations where youre low on potions, soemthign I have a problem with, so the better raid attackers done take damage before raids and cant be healed off without wasting potions
During a Ho-Oh raid this last wave, one of the people in our group commented "I finally have a use for my Vaporeons again!" That's *best* case scenario for Blastoise, being as good as something most people have shelved already.
From the point of bulk it's strictly worse than Milotic, who thanks to Waterfall and Surf performs about as well offensively as Vaporeon. Granted Milotic is way harder to obtain than Blastoise will be for Community Day. Outside of that Vaporeon is much more accessible and has more bulk to boot.
Am I the only one who thinks the Blast Burn nerf wasn't /that/ bad? Sure, it doesn't out-DPS any legendaries but to say they nerfed "the hell" out of it seems a bit much as it still destroys anything weak to fire.
As for Hydro Cannon, you gotta think ahead if they do Community Days for the other starters since all starters can learn these moves. Buffing up Hydro Cannon to make Blastoise rival Vaporeon or Gyarados could make it straight broken on other starters. This is before factoring in that some starters get megas.
