Game Sense: Develop yourself further as a Splatoon player

Game Sense: Develop yourself further as a Splatoon player

'Game Sense' in Splatoon
How to tailor your thinking to dominate the battlefield
v 1.06

Updates
1.0: guide is finished and posted
1.02: more proofreading
1.04: a few small additions to some sections
1.05: additions to a couple of areas in the 1v1 area due to results from testing
1.05b: Added Icon and EX section
1.06: Made the usefulness of super jumping a bit more clear

Table of Contents (control f the roman numeral to jump to a section)​

i. Introduction
ii. The Golden Rule of Splatoon
iii. Overextension
iv. Paranoia
v. Defensive Game Sense
vi. Offensive Game Sense
vii. Pressuring
viii. 1v1s
ix. Conclusion
EX. Extra section with links to groups I manage and other guides I make. Will be updated as new stuff comes up.

i. Introduction

It’s a cool friday afternoon. You’ve just finished your finals over at college, and wanting to take the rest of the day off, you pop splatoon into your wii U and warm up to splat some scrubs all over the wall. Wanting to take it easy and avoid the stress of a ranked battle, you jump into a turf war game to **** around and show off your superiority to all the poor others that get matched with you. You’re quickly thrown into a game in walleye warehouse, and everything is going to plan. That is, until the other team flanks you through that side path you’d neglected to watch, and you're shot in the back while your entire team is quickly pushed back to spawn. There’s not enough time left in the match for a comeback, and you sulk about it for a few seconds before the next match starts.

But it happens again, and again, and again, and you just can’t seem to win a game. You throw down your gamepad in anger, scaring a cat you didn’t even realize was there.

“Why do my teammates keep letting this happen!” you think to yourself, before shutting off the game in a rage to go do something else. You were wiping up the guys in front of you over and over at mid, SURELY the least your team could do was watch the flanks and keep you from getting shot in the back. And to an extent, you’re right: better teammates would have secured the flanks and allowed you to win the game with your superior 1v1 skills. But let’s be real here: You’re not going to always have good teammates. In fact, unless you’re playing in an organized game, you’re much more likely to have lackluster teammates, no matter what mode you play on or what rank you're at.

But, you also could have played that better yourself. If you’d known they were coming, couldn’t you have made an effort to secure the flank before they made their move? Couldn’t you have at least made a good effort to run away to the side to your left if you’d known they had gone up that ramp and were coming for you, distracting enough of them to keep your team from being spawn camped if not outright killing their momentum? Hell, if you had another teammate still alive, you could easily have jumped to him and secured his position, if you’d only been aware they were coming.

But how can you possibly be aware of something you can’t even see or hear coming? And, can you use this same knowledge to bolster your attempts at ambush and flanking to make sure they go down and, even more importantly, that you survive both your offensive and defensive efforts? The answer is a stalwart yes, and with some simple reading and a little gametime, you can push your splatoon gameplay to the next level.



[Don't Let this be YOUR Gamepad]

ii. The Golden Rule of Splatoon

If you’re at all familiar with the facebook Splatoon groups or any sort of gameplay discussion areas (such as here, on the forums), you will have encountered several different philosophies regarding the most efficient way of playing Splatoon in the different game modes. Some people say it’s correct to disregard everything else and go for turf or the objective, while others value kills extremely highly; still others favor a pressure oriented game or a more supportive way of playing where they let their teammates do most of the dirty work while they make sure disaster doesn’t fall from the flanks or other areas. However, regardless of your playstyle, there is one extremely important thing you can do in Splatoon in almost every situation, and that is to take opportunities that do not cause you to die. When you die, not only can you not do anything for the team like covering turf, killing people, serving as a jump point, or others, you also increase the chance that your teammates will die and decrease the amount of pressure that can be put on the other team until you’ve respawned and moved back up. the area you were watching goes unwatched; you can't ambush anyone or engage in a last second push to try to win the game. You can only sit there, respawn, swim or jump back up, and sob gently.

Seems simple, doesn't it? Well, what this entails is that you try and avoid actions that have a medium or high chance of you dying, even if the success or trade seems fairly grand. Unless it's something you have to do, it is normally best to try and keep the area you're in, serve as a jump point, and look for another, better opportunity. staying alive also keeps you from losing special and allows gear abilities like tenacity to really shine, which is very important to making a good counterattack.


So, we move on to the golden rule of Splatoon. No matter what your playstyle is, playing by this simple rule of thumb will help you survive much longer than you would otherwise:

When considering any action in Splatoon, if you believe the possibility of dying is higher than surviving, you should very seriously consider if the success you can get is worth taking such a big gamble.

So there it is. Unless what you’re doing is important enough to warrant taking a high chance of dying, like a last second attempt at taking the splat zone or a situation in which you believe you will likely die anyway, you should lean on the side of avoiding it. Take a second or two to think if there’s a better way to approach the situation, or try and focus on something else until a good opportunity to tilt the balance of power further in your favor appears. Following this rule will not only keep you from dying as much, but it will allow you to really scan your gameplay situations in game to look for better opportunities you may not have seen had you jumped on the first one that showed itself. The best solution to a situation is oftentimes not the most obvious one, and about half the time it's simply not confronting that situation at all, even if that means giving up the splat zone or tower for a little while while you regroup.

iii. Overextension: the most common mistake in Splatoon


If there’s one thing that separates a decent player from an amazing one, it’s understanding when one is overextending. For those who don’t know, overextending is essentially pushing far enough that it puts you in a weaker position with very little long term gain for doing so. A common example of this in Splatoon are those aerospray bros you constantly play with in turf war that just push and push and push and push as far as they can, before bragging about their uber high score after the fact and blaming their team for a loss. Yes, he wracked up a lot of points. But those points were meaningless, because he was easily disposed of on his huge open flank and all his work was quickly turned back over to the other team. He put himself in a very open and vulnerable position for a virtual number that, ultimately, won’t affect the results of the match, unless his overextending escapades happened at the tail end of the timer. In splat zones this would tend to be the person that throws himself at the point or head on at an enemy team member, and is then disassembled from behind or his flanks, with everything around him in the enemy color.

Generally, once you’ve thought about it for a few matches, it becomes pretty easy to make an educated guess as to what would be overextending. If you’d be standing in a place where your sides are the enemy color, for example, or if your back or side is turned to a flank you don't have good control over, you’re probably overextending. If an enemy team member has easy access to your side and you don’t have anyone on your team to cover that side of you, you’re probably overextending. If you’re unsure, it’s usually best to err on the side of safety and back up a little to make sure you’re secure. In the example in the intro, the player was most clearly overextending while he was fighting near mid. But how could he tell if the opponent snuck through the side pass and then looped back around to him? well, the area leading up to that pass would have had to visibly be in the enemy’s color in at least some areas at some point, so if he’d noticed those he could have easily taken a glance behind him when he had a breather and made sure his flanks were secure. If he’d been overextending, he would have moved to an area where he could more easily defend from the flank the enemies were using as well as from the middle area, keeping him alive for at least a little while. He could have also super jumped to a teammate who was less overextended if there were any, or moved back into the pass to try and flank the guys that he knew were going to flank him, at least distracting them and scaring them with the knowledge that he was aware of them. jumping into vulnerable areas is also a form of overextending. And no, it doesn’t matter if you have stealth jump, but stealth jump does allow you to get away with it more often.

So, in summary, overextension is any amount of pushing that leaves you noticeably vulnerable and is not critical to the team’s success, and you should err on the side of safety if you’re unsure if you’re overextending.


iv. Paranoia is your friend

In splatoon and virtually any shooter, there are three ‘zones’ that can be discerned around the player. The first is their line of fire. This is all of the area the gun will hit when fired. for shooters in splatoon this tends to be either a decent range in a more or less straight line, or a short, fat cone like area with more concentration on the cursor. For rollers this is the area they’d hit from jumping and splashing, and for chargers this is wherever their gun is currently aimed. Straight up one versus one revolves around lining up your firing line onto the enemy you’re fighting while keeping him from lining up his. an enemy’s firing line is also the most dangerous area to be in for obvious reasons, and the one you'll be trying to avoid if the opponent is watching you.

the second zone is their Field of View. This is everything they can see. Any assault coming from outside of it is attacking from the flank, and you generally want to try and avoid enemy FoV when moving towards someone else, especially if they have a range advantage over you. Coordinated teams will be able to set up their lines of sight to cover the most area, and communication means everyone shares eyes, so it’s best if you can avoid being seen at all, not just by the person you’re attacking. If you’ve ever played Spy in Tf2, especially in highlander, you probably know what I’m talking about. For those that don’t: in competitive Tf2, if you were seen as a spy by any enemy, you could basically kiss your chances of getting a confirmed kill goodbye, because everyone would almost immediately be aware of you. This will likely be the case as well in competitive splatoon or in coordinated Splatoon PUGs, but it will also be less of a problem due to teams being smaller (less eyes to avoid), and you will be able to confirm a kill and escape much more easily than the poor highlander spy.

The third zone is the enemy’s area of awareness. This is everywhere the opponent is likely to move their field of vision to look at at any time, and any area they have a 'gist' of what's going on in. When an enemy is fighting another person, this will likely be almost nonexistant unless he’s looking to flee, because he’s concentrated on fighting that person. People guarding flanks or other areas will likely try and be aware of a large area, making cold flank attacks (ones where they aren’t distracted) very difficult to pull off. Generally, when approaching you want to stay outside of their line of sight and attack when they are more or less distracted as quickly as possible, and the faster you approach and get a confirmed kill, especially when inside of the enemy's area of awareness, the less likely you are to be spotted or killed in retribution as well.

The area of awareness can also be the areas they’d peer at on their map. experienced opponents will look at their map when they feel relatively safe like it’s the speedometer on their car, making cold approaches extremely unfeasible because they’ll be able to easily tell where you’re coming from by the ink you’re slinging on the ground.

Your goal in splatoon should be to at least have a decent enough area of awareness to minimize how often you get flanked without knowing about the flanker beforehand, and preferably to still be able to sustain enough of one to know when this is happening when you’re in a firefight without losing focus on the person you're fighting. being somewhat paranoid of everything you can't see around you is a good way to make sure you're always on your toes.


V. A sixth sense: how the hell did he know I was there? Defensive game sense

Defensive game sense can be summed up very simply: knowing when you need to get the hell out of whatever situation you’re in before you’re scrunched up between enemies like an inkling sandwich, and how to do it. Having another enemy come up beside you, even if you are aware of him, is typically a death sentence. If you’re keeping a good zone of awareness up, you will likely be aware when you’re being flanked. but what can you do about it? How do you get out of that situation when you’re fighting someone else? To solve this you need to learn to mentally track enemies, or basically to turn the things you are aware of into precise knowledge of when the enemy is going to act, how they’re going to act, and where they’re going to act from, so you can understand how to fight or flee yourself out of that situation.

Here’s an in game example of this I managed to pull off a month or two ago: I was stuck on the right far corner of that huge area on oil rig with all the boxes, from my view my left and the area behind me was where the edges for the rig were. I had been pressured there by an enemy splattershot junior user, and, while help clearly wasn’t on the way, I notice an enemy roller had come into the area too, and he moves to the right outside of my field of view. Unfortunately, I can’t take my eyes off the Jr. user or else I’ll get splatted against the ground, and Callie and Marie will laugh at me. So what could I do? Through mental tracking, I was able to know exactly how the roller was going to approach me, where he was going to do it (my right side, the only side open to attack other than the front), and most importantly, when he would get there. The moment I knew he had come within splash range I quickly bounded back to the edge of the rig, putting them both in my field of vision and unleashing my inkzooka on both of them just as they lined up, to score a quick and dirty double kill. If I hadn’t been able to mentally track how long it would take the roller to roll over to my side, I would have likely been a dead man or have had to settle for a trade or a desperation jump. By taking my awareness of him and combining it with my knowledge of the game and how other players would most likely act, I was able to 'see' him without actually looking, and counter his movement while still focusing on the battle I was already fighting, eventually awarding me with a double kill.

now it’s important to note that most situations like that won’t be turned into glorious life saving and game winning double kills. Most of the time, it just gives you the timeframe you have to run or super jump away, and the knowledge of where is safe to run away. Even a small retreat will usually be enough to put both of them back into your line of sight, allowing you to relax a bit and handle the situation much more easily than if someone came up behind or beside you unannounced. Basically, just having an idea of where they’re coming from, and when they’ll be getting in range is often more than enough to survive, which as has been noted, is the most important thing you can do in the game.

And, as an afterthought, it should be pretty obvious, but try to get people to chase you, especially around corners. It makes them really easy to kill since they usually have to overextend to do it. If you’re the chaser... well don’t chase them, but if you HAVE to, then go at the corner wide and jump past it to minimize the chances he gets the first hit in. Be unpredictable.

Another quick afterthought: I would like to stress that super jumping is often a very good means of escape or repositioning yourself. How effective it is depends on two things: if you have enough time to do it and if you have a good place to jump to. The former is rather obvious: if you don't have enough time you'll get shot to death; the latter values it against other escape options: jumping is a better option when the position it would put you in is better than the one you would escape to, with the spawn typically being the last place you'd want to jump to.

vi. Offensive Game Sense: Let's get down to the Killing


Defense isn’t enough to win every game. It’s also not very flashy or fun to watch someone pressure a choke point for several minutes. Sometimes you just need to-or want to-go on the offensive. But if you haphazardly throw yourself at the enemy time and time again, no matter how good you are at squid-to-squid combat, you’re just going to end up splatted against the wall with nothing to show for it, minus a little rage and eventually a broken gamepad. Offensive gameplay in most games is much harder to do successfully than defense because it is a lot easier to pressure chokes and keep up decent awareness than to outplay and outmaneuver someone for a kill.

So this is where we get right into the meat of fighting someone one on one: squid on squid. It’s time to learn some bushido for inklings now, right?

Well, no.

Beating someone in a one versus one, fair square off feels amazing. But it’s usually the riskiest and longest way to kill anyone. So we’re going to have to hold off on becoming an honorable samurai for now in favor of being the sneaky ninja we all hate to go up against.

Offensive game sense requires a firm grasp on defensive game sense, because everything you do to defeat someone in a way that doesn’t put you at risk (IE: in a 1v1 or worse) involves defeating their defensive mind set. You don’t want someone to know you’re coming if you can help it. You don’t want to put yourself in a position where you’re easy to kill, and you want to target precisely those players who do put themselves in that sort of situation. Even a small overextension will spell their doom if you notice it and exploit it correctly. This is also where your teammates come in handy. It doesn’t matter if they’re useless sacks of calimari that couldn’t kill another inkling to save their mother from cancer, they are shootable, distracting sacks of useless calimari that can’t kill another inkling. And what happens when someone is shooting at someone else? they can’t be shooting or looking at you. So while they’re outplaying your poor miserable little teammate, you stroll up on their side or, if you’re feeling really mean, their backs, and blast the ever living **** out of them, hopefully saving your poor scrub in the process. Just imagine the look on their face when they realize the hunter has become the hunted. Pretend that backstabbing them will make them throw their gamepad at their TV in disgust, and laugh a little evil laugh as they disintegrate in front of you. Don’t feel safe going behind them because they're moving around a bunch? Paint the area around them and behind them, and watch them scramble when they try and move around again, marred in enemy ink and rich for your, or other’s, pickings. Just make sure they don’t see you, or the ink you’re spraying, and that they aren’t aware of you, and that you aren’t being flanked by someone else, or else you may not be able to confirm the kill or, worse, your squid-guts will paint the ground. Remember, everything that tips you off to another squid's prescence can be used just as well by your opponents if you give yourself away, so make sure you're staying as invisible as this guy:


[I don't see anyone]

Hiding in the ink awaiting an enemy is another decent tactic. Prudent opponents, however, won’t get very close to enemy ink before they give it a spraying, but it still can give you an advantage even if they're looking at you. try jumping out of the ink and firing at them once they're in range, and you'll likely be able to confirm the kill before they can shed their panic to lock on to your airborne inkling. you can use hiding in the ink like this or just from the sides a lot against those gung ho overextend aerospray guys.

But you can do even better than that. You’re a master of escape and defensive measures now, so why don’t you put that to work and predict how the opponent is going to run away from you, and push him into the friendly hanging around wherever it is you want him to go? The greatness of this tactic is that it works when he knows you're there and doesn’t put you into an annoying 1v1. it’s kind of like you become the dummy distraction, except you’re a smart dummy that can guide the opponent the way you want him to go. This can be very hard in a game like splatoon where everyone is incredibly mobile, but you can make it work for you, especially in areas where the opponent has to go left or right and can’t back up. Just shoot at the side you don’t want them to go, then when they start trying to move into range, pressure them back and watch them swim left into the nice krak-on roller friendly painting just where you want him to be painting.

You can also use defensive knowledge to force opponents into 1v1s with you. While 1v1s are never really optimal, it’s better to do that than starting a you versus the entire enemy team you ended up aggroing due to jumping around like the protagonist in Sunset Overdrive. A little smart aggro here and there can get enemies to engage with you, and even if they do it only a little bit, that may be enough to draw them into a 1v1 or an ambush that tilts things in your favor.

But why not aggro the entire enemy team? You can easily kite them around and annoy them until your friendlies come in to wreck them on their flanks or distract them so you can do the dirty work. By knowing how people will move in response to you and others, you can pull off tactics like these to win games.

You can even use this knowledge to counter mental tracking. Think your opponent is tracking you and expects you to come through a choke? Well, why not go over the wall next to the choke and take him by surprise. Most opponents will not expect you to climb things to assault them, and standing on top of something makes it harder to shoot you and makes it really easy to fall back behind cover. There are other ways to trick your opponent into tracking you wrong, but a lot of them are map specific. Put your knowledge to the test and see if you can identify a few fun ways to assault someone next time you're playing.

In summary, when making use of offensive game sense, you’re really just trying to counter defensive game sense. Think: “how would I react in this situation if this happened to me”, and be ready for that to happen when you make your move, if you decide to make your move.

vii. Pressure, zoning, and you: How to blow your enemies away without even touching them

Something newer players in most shooters neglect to consider when playing is pressure: or basically using you and your team's control and presence to force people to move away from you or in certain directions. I have mentioned it a few times in this guide already, and I believe that it is important enough to give its own section. Why? Because pressure heavily impacts every decision you make. If you’re being attacked from the front and your opponent is pressuring your right side, you’re always going to retreat left. Attackers that realize that will take steps to exploit you.

the most common application of pressure is death zones. If you’ve ever played Total War Shogun Two, Fall of the Samurai and experimented with the killzone ability on the gatling guns, you probably understand what that entails. For those that don’t, the ability allows you to set your guns to pip pip pip in a certain line creating a sort of death zone that your opponent is going to want to stay the hell out of. That’s what pressure does. You set up an area your opponent would be a fool (or extension crazy point *****, but what’s the difference?) to invade unless he has no other choice, allowing you to control the flow of the battle in a way that favors you. The best way to do this is just shooting down chokepoints. No one can get through a choke if you’re constantly firing into it, and you don’t have to kill a single enemy to win if they can’t get through there. This is why defending teams have such a large advantage, especially in maps with a few necessary chokes. There’s no reason to go after an enemy if you can make him go through a place he’s going to almost certainly die trying to get through. You’re also able to stay more aware when you’re just pressuring: there’s no immediate threat of death and you have much more leniency to check the flanks. You also have a ton of area to escape to in most cases.


[Now Just fill it with ink and it'll be ready for the next update!]



Subs like sticky bombs and splatterbombs are also good for putting on more immediate pressure. chuck them over an obstacle or in the middle of a choke and your opponent, unless he’s blind, will have to jump out from cover, or either haphazardly advance towards you or back up from the bomb in the choke. I’d go so far as to say this is the main application for these subs, and that though they won’t wrack up many kills directly, they will lead you or others on your team to quite a few kills due to smart pressuring.


Zoning is applying this to a large area under your control. This can be a choke, a point, or an entire side of a map. The goal of zoning is to keep people out from the area you're zoning as much as possible, though because it's such a large area, you usually will not be able to put it on lockdown as hard as you would a small area with a shooter. This is something you will commonly do when using chargers, where the fear your presence makes creates a massive flow shift in the battle. However, you’re usually more vulnerable when trying to zone a large area than when locking down a choke with a shooter, so don’t be afraid to give up your position to survive. You will likely have to do it pretty often, especially if your team isn’t assisting you.

viii. The honorable Squid: facing your opponents down one on one


[Is... Is Power Armor allowed in honorable combat?]

One versus ones are not optimal. You should almost always avoid a straight up, fair, one versus one situation if possible, only favoring them over situations where you’re outnumbered. That being said, you’d be a fool to think you can consistently avoid 1v1s. In almost every round you’ll end up having to deal with several of them, and it’s important you be able to handle them with efficiency.

First things first: you will not win every 1v1. Your goal is to win more than half of them, preferably around 60-70% of fair 1v1s, depending heavily on your weapon of course (sorry chargers, you guys should normally just try to run :( ). A lot of the time you’ll just run up against someone you can’t beat because you’re in a bad situation, or their weapon beat yours, or they came at you in a way you couldn’t adjust your firing line to.

The fairest one versus one matchup is far from the typical one, but it gives a good base for how the situation will play out without any extra moves made by the players. If two enemies walk towards each other shooting their guns, then the person who has more range will win every time. if they have the same range, the person with the lower time to kill will win. In splatoon this is also somewhat different because even if you kill them first, their remaining shots will still often kill you, meaning even situations where you have a lower time to kill will result in a trade if you aren’t careful.

So by looking at this, you can ascertain that there are two main tactics to dealing with 1v1s. the first is to play the range game and try to avoid the opponent’s gun entirely. this puts you at a decent advantage if you can maintain the range by smart movement and pressuring. There’s nothing a player with less range can do in a head on fight in a choke against someone with higher range other than back up. Of course, if that’s the case then how can other players compete? That’s where the movement game comes in. The object of the game is to constantly move around in a way that causes them to have to adjust their firing line the most, while simultaneously lining up your own firing line to get the kill. The closer you are to the opponent the more he’ll have to adjust his line for the same amount of movement, with guns with a better firing cone having a distinct advantage to dealing with that sort of movement as well as doing it themselves: because the player that has to adjust less will usually be the victor. The larger cone will also cover a wider berth of area, restricting the opponent’s movement who has a smaller cone more than the one with a larger one. Any movement that puts you outside of someone's FoV is even more effective than regular movement because the opponent will have a harder time making a good adjustment to you, meaning he will often overcompensate or undercompensate for your movement, which is very easy to punish.

A million things can go wrong when engaging in honorable combat. someone else can come to help your opponent, you can find yourself in an area with less maneuverability than the opponent, you can be outranged, you can end up having to take a trade, and many, many, many other things. When you’re deciding to go into 1v1, be aware of these risks and consider if there’s another way to go about it. If not, and you feel you need to go for the kill, then by all means go for it.

If someone swims towards and around you at a very sharp angle, don’t even bother swimming. Just adjust while they’re moving and you’ll be able to adjust to them before they can adjust to you after they get past you and come up. if you swim too they'll be able to adjust to wherever you swim to before you come up, and it will be hard to get outside of their FoV. If they don’t come up and turn to keep swimming, swim yourself to counter it. As an obvious point to go along with this, swimming at too sharp an angle around your opponent will force you to adjust too. Your goal when coming out of the ink should be to have yourself already lined up, and to do that you normally have to come at a bit of a wider angle, at least at some point when you’re swimming. If you swim straight past him, in the most extreme example, you both have to do a 180, and if he’s already above ink, he’ll probably manage to do it first unless he's caught by surprise or tries to swim himself. However, I will say people are taken surprise by this very often, especially if you have ninja squid. Most people will not read you swimming towards them in a 1v1 if you have ninja squid, meaning when you pop out you will virtually always surprise them. Just remember that ninja squid isn't 'totally' invisible and that some opponents may be able to read it. It's at the very least a good desperation play, and oftentimes I have found it to be a very effective strategy. WIthout ninja squid they'll see where you're going 100% of the time, so you're a lot more likely to be tracked.

Try not to overanalyze what you can do during a 1v1. It’s best if it happens naturally. Overthinking it may cause you to panic and miss your shots or move poorly, or to take too long to commit to something. Be quick, especially if you’re at an advantage: the longer you 1v1, the more likely something will go wrong. And, most importantly, don’t be afraid to run before you commit. There’s no shame in a retreat when fighting someone head on when you think you’re going to lose, and it’s a much better option to attempt an escape in most circumstances than to try and fight out a losing battle.

And a side note on jumping: how effective jumping is really depends on your weapon. The way that movement while shooting works in splatoon means some weapons benefit more from jumping than others. Jumping, however, makes you unable to swim until you land, and with most weapons you generally will want to be in a position where you're always able to swim. Obviously if you have less room to maneuver jumping becomes more valuable. I feel this needed to be brought up because a lot of players have carried over their jumping habit from other shooters (like TF2, because most people can't hit you in pubs while you jump around) into Splatoon, when it's not always as applicable. It's much easier to track people who jump in this game, you don't typically go far enough to get out of someone's FoV, and it makes your movement really predictable until you land. The only upside is that it can take someone by surprise for a few 1/10s of a second, which can be enough to kill them if they're already panicking some (IE: you've just jumped out of the ink in front of them). Rollers will also tend to jump alot because it carries their movement and gives them more range, which is very important for their weapon class, so expect that. It is best to jump, however, in most cases when you commit, just to make sure you drive home the commit. It is also pretty effective to randomly jump if you've moved outside of their FoV, as it makes it more likely they'll mess up the adjustment.

ix. Conclusion


Hopefully going through this you’ve picked up a thing or two and analyzed your splatoon play to find areas in which you can improve. If you’re already familiar with all of this, I hope it at least served as a nice refresher. I hope next time that you’re like the guy in the intro: just trying to relax with some splatoon and enjoy yourself, you avoid breaking controllers or scaring your cats and serve the would be flankers their ***** on a platter. Most importantly, I hope that if anyone came to this guide feeling frustrated that they weren’t improving or that they were having a hard time, that it instills in them the will to continue to improve and grace the community with their skills.

Feel free to leave any comments you have, or shoot me a PM with whatever it is you want. If you feel like something was left out, poorly explained, or just plain wrong, let me know and I’ll include or change it if I see the need to. If you know someone else you think would like this guide, feel free to post or link this guide wherever you want, so long as you give me credit if it's a straight copy paste.

EX. Other things I am working on: Other guides I make or groups I manage will go here.

Join SCL and compete with other teams in Splatoon's first true community ranking system!
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Author
Fightersword
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Latest reviews

haha, this made me laugh a few times. :) but it's also a good reminder of what and what not to do as a charger and squelcher. So thank you! I gotta remember to have more movement game as both.
This guide was really good! This guide seems good for every weapon.. I'm going to reread this.. wow! This guide could make an unaware level 43 like me good XD
rip highlander shpee
Well thought-out guide that also encompasses real-life examples and application of theory. Wonderful to read, well-written. Excellent excellent excellent! Can't wait to put this into practice!
this is a really good guide no matter what weapon you're using. these are really great tips to up your game
An excellent and informative guide, I can honestly say that this is the best Splatoon guide I've ever read. I especially liked the 'over-extending' part as I found that even at my level of gameplay I still often made that mistake. I have to admit though, I've never really thought about the defensive sence thing, I think maybe it's always been at the back of my mind as a kind of instinct thing.

Like I said though, definitely an amazing guide and would definitely reccomend it to anyone, thanks a lot for putting in the time and effort to make it!
Fightersword
Fightersword
yeah most of this stuff was 'back of the mind' stuff to me when I played, so I had to take apart my gameplay and distinguish and name the things I did so I could explain it in this guide. Glad you liked it!
Totally detailed and talks about things people most likely don't really tend to think about!
Great tips for both everyday players and those who are new to the game.
Very useful for any player, even outside of Splatoon. I especially enjoyed the overextending part of the guide, quite often that is the most exploited mistake on the battlefield.
Excellent.
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