What is the best way to do animated water with a tileset?

Hi, I'm trying to use the tilemap object to create my map and I want to add animated water

I've thought about:

-animating 9 patches. But this would mean I couldn't make water shaped in anything other than a rectangle

-animating a tilemap. The problem is the tileset is 16x16, so there would be virtually no instances of repeating tiles, which I understand would almost negate the tilemap's efficiency?

-making a giant sprite for the water. I've read that giant sprites are usually no good, but are they ever the best option?

I think you can create sprite base on the water tileID, then you can animate them.