Board Thread:The Heroes of Olympus/@comment-27084939-20151219015402/@comment-27041193-20160116135826

But then there's also that stuff that happened down in Tartarus. Cuz...posion? Not going to lie, but that'll beat Percy's water trick ''easily. ''Another thing that happened back in House of Hades was the insane manipulation Percy had (when he tricked Bob into killing Hyperion) but then he's had that since he was twelve (that Waterbed Emporium thing) so idk if that's a pausible argument.

Maybe since we didn't get as much Percy POV's in Heroes of Olympus we couldn't actually gauge how much power he's actually gained, since it's mostly from an outsider's opinion [and reminder most of those outsiders have only known Percy for like a few months (excluding Annabeth and Nico)] and since said outsider's opinion has had no previous facts of Percy before then you're bound to think that he's actually less powerful than before

Percy most certainly didn't get less powerful, he's gained much more experience than he had in the previous series, but it's just most likely the way he was presented to others (like Hazel and Piper) that made him seem less powerful