News roundup: Hydro Cannon stats, disappointing 0.109.1 APK tear down, network leaks

July 4, 2018

It’s the post-Dortmund, post-Safari Zone week, and news are (as expected) slow, as Niantic ramps up and prepares for GO Fest. Today, we got only three items in our news roundup, and to be honest, if it wasn’t for Chrales discovering some new texts in the network traffic, it would probably be only two items. A slow week it is – for a change.

Let’s see what’s new, shall we.

Hydro Cannon stats

Hydro Cannon (HC) stats have appeared in the Game Master, revealing that it is a two bar charge move, despite the official images showing three bars. HC is an amazingly fast move (actually it’s probably the fastest charge move currently in game) and it deals 90 damage in just 1.9 seconds. Woah!

item_templates {
  template_id: "V0299_MOVE_HYDRO_CANNON"
  move_settings {
    movement_id: HYDRO_CANNON
    animation_id: 5
    pokemon_type: POKEMON_TYPE_WATER
    power: 90
    accuracy_chance: 1
    critical_chance: 0.05
    stamina_loss_scalar: 0.065
    trainer_level_min: 1
    trainer_level_max: 100
    vfx_name: "hydro_cannon"
    duration_ms: 1900
    damage_window_start_ms: 500
    damage_window_end_ms: 1600
    energy_delta: -50
  }
}

However, Blastoise is so bad in Pokemon GO, that even this amazing move doesn’t make it good. Unfortunately, a Hydro Cannon Blastoise performs terribly when compared to other Water-Typed Pokemon (Kyogre, Vaporeon, Feraligatr, Swampert).

We can look forward to seeing this move on other starters in the future, but for now it’s just a novelty. In order to appreciate how good the move actually is, check this table below, which displays various Blastoise move sets:

Blastoise Move sets compared with Cycle DPS

Yes, Water Gun + Hydro Cannon has almost 20% better Cycle DPS than Water Gun Hydro Pump, making it the (arguably) best all around Water typed move. It’s fast, it’s two bar and it deals a ton of damage.

We prepared a handy chart for Hydro Cannon (we actually didn’t, we just took a screenshot of our new database site, but it’s so pretty we decided to call it a day):

0.109.1 APK tear down

Well… there’s nothing really exciting or new in this APK, it is only bug fixes. One curios we noticed is that Special Research encounters are no longer using the “Mew encounter” network object, but rather questPokemonEncounterProto.

No significant changes in the assets, code base or anywhere else locally were found, but we did notice a lot of optimizations for the friends list. We’re testing it on our device, and it does seem less buggy, but it’s far from perfect.

We forgot to share this image in our 0.107.1 APK tear down, so we are sharing it now:

Network leaks, network leaks everywhere

Chrales saved the day with his discovery (Github link) of new Avatar items and the upcoming “Nickname a friend” feature:

“set_friend_nickname” “Set Nickname” “表示名の変更” “Set Nickname” “Elegir apodo” “Spitznamen eingeben” “Dai soprannome” “Set Nickname” “設定暱稱” “Set Nickname”

New avatar items were also discovered in the network traffic:

Pikachu Fan Headband
Pikachu Fan Shirt
Pikachu Fan Shorts
Pikachu Fan Shoes

We’re not sure how this will look like, but it will undoubtedly be yellow.