One of the most hated, infamous, yet popular Splatoon weapons: .52 gal.
According to stat.ink, it's been the most used X rank weapon for 4 seasons in a row, though funnily enough, it used to be the 5th most popular weapon in drizzle season 2023, so this thing's usage rate has skyrocketed since chill season 2023, where a certain fruit named japanese individual reached 5000 XP on it.
It's dominating solo queue lobbies, noob stomping innocent cephalopods left and right. So... what's its deal? And most importantly, how do I kill it.
Disclaimer:
This is coming purely from the perspective of solo matches. I'm a solo player myself, so I don't have a lot of experience with coordinated play. I imagine a lot of this carries over though, so this could still be a relevant guide for comp players.
As for my experience, I'm arecycled brella tenta brella main that's been essentially grinding X rank since last year. I'm in tentatek division, and my peak X power is 3304.1. At this point, the 52 gal matchup has been engraved into my brain, for better or worse, so since its counterplay is pretty unintuitive and mostly based on experience, I wanted to write this guide to help others.
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Strengths:
First, let's go over 52's strengths. Know your enemy, they say...
52's number one strength is kill time. It's one of the fastest slaying weapons in the game: it can delete you in a third of second, and can do so with very little lag, which means it's also fast. It pairs top notch slaying power with shooter mobility, which is a scary combo, not to mention most 52s run pure swim speed/ intensify action builds to lean into their speed advantage.
Now, that's not the entire reason people pick it so much in solo, the main appeal is that the weapon pairs fighting capabilities with 'flexibility' (Oh I'll get back to that).
Most great slayers usually lack paint; weapons like rollers, chargers, blasters... their main weakness comp-wise is that they can't paint very well, so they rely on their team to paint, especially in splat zones.
52 doesn't have that weakness. If it has to paint a zone, it can do it, and it won't take too long. So when your comps as as unreliable as they can be in X rank, that's a really nice strength to have.
It painting well also means it's more self-sufficient than most weapons. It doesn't deal chip damage, it does its thing on its own no matter the comp.
Counterplay:
I'll start with the basics.
At the end of the day, 52 is just a splattershot that can 2 shot. It has an rng and mobility weakness, but if the 52 player is remotely competent, you won't feel those weaknesses. The counterplay is very very similar to how you'd approach a shot, except here you HAVE to respect the kill time.
Range:
52 has deceptively long range but it's nothing that notable. Unlike most other shooters, it doesn't have a bomb to poke, so if your weapon outranges it, it can't affect you. Abuse this, don't let it get close, but most importantly, back up if it's close to being in range.
Line of sight:
52 can't shoot you around cover, and it doesn't have a bomb to displace you. If your weapon can shoot around cover, use that as much as you can, especially since AOE weapons have a pretty hard time fighting it in the open.
Healing.
It's a 2-shot weapon. If you can heal enough to tank one more shot, you're doubling its time to kill. This will be the decisive factor in a lot of fights, so unless you're sure you can kill the 52 without getting shot back, you should take time to heal and reset the fight.
It's especially nice since if the 52 was able to get a hit on you, it was probably winning that fight if you didn't get away; most weapons can't trade out a 52. It also pairs nicely with other aspects of the counterplay that I'll mention later.
The longer your fight takes, the more likely it is for your teammates to help you. In a neutral state, 52 wants to end its fights fast, for numerous reasons, so if you can stall the fight, they might start taking risks and get reckless, in which case they're an easy target.
Movement:
Shooters are inherently aim dependent. Mix up your movement, take note of where they're aiming, and approach them from the sides and back. Keep in mind this won't work all the time, especially against more experienced players, but this can make a difference.
Now, the above mostly applies to actually fighting the 52, but the thing is... you don't want to fight it.
If you're both in range to shoot each other and you both get your aim on, 52 wins the fight the vast majority of the time. And that's not even taking splash walls into account, which literally nullify your damage.
No, the truth is, you don't want to fight 52s on their terms, you have to impose yours. And for that, we have to dig deeper.
The 52 brain.:
This is the most important point of this guide. If you look at 52's stats, it seems like it can do everything. But the thing is, it won't do everything, and that's an important point to get.
If you have enough experience fighting 52 players, you'll notice a pattern. 52s just kill people, that's their gameplan. Their weapons may allow for painting, but when they shoot, they'll shoot at people. I'll be honest, it's a difficult thing to describe, but once you understand the patterns and react preemptively, they become much easier to fight.
Unlike a lot of other weapons, and other shooters really, you won't have enough time to escape once a 52 starts shooting at you, so a lot of the counterplay comes from reading their next move, it's very similar to rollers, in a sense.
It's difficult because its shooter traits let it take any position it wants, really, so you'll have to keep an eye on it, make sure to understand its position, or at least have a general idea of which area it's in, and NOT stand there if you don't know where it is.
If I had to describe it in practice, the 52 brain can be summed up to this:
most of the time, 52 will only shoot at its own feet to move, at an opponent within line of sight and within range, or while being protected by wall to hold an area.
This is a very exaggerated version, but it should give you an idea of when it is safe to approach, and therefore to fight the weapon.
Now, for the real counterplay:
Stalling:
I've mentioned before how stalling the 52 can lead it to its player becoming reckless and making mistakes, that's because the weapon simply doesn't like fighting 1v2s. If another enemy is in play, it can only shoot one at a time. Now, the risk is that it can kill someone very very fast and turn the fight into a 1v1, but that's only if you let yourself get in range. If one of you two has more range than it, this is a bad fight for it, since the 52'll get shot at for free.
Splash Wall also gets worse once multiple opponents are in play. It can get bombed randomly, it gets shredded faster, and it can't cover you from all sides, in most places.
Displacement and Overcommitting:
Alright, we're getting into some complex aspects.
When fighting 52s, you want to force the 52 into your own advantageous fights. If you're playing aoe weapons, you want it to get stuck, when they're sharking on their plat you want to force them to drop before their team can help. A lot of this is standard against all weapons, but I do want to elaborate on the drops.
On some maps, one-way drops tend to be evil. I think we all know this by now. You only get one chance to drop, no backing up. If you can make a 52 drop into the middle of the map, not a side angle, somewhere wall won't let them survive, this is a bad situation for them, especially if their team is still regrouping. Hell, it's even better if they do that on their own, just pure recklessness, no fear, diving in, before salt posting online lol-
If you do that, and if your team is even mildly aware, that 52 will just fold, simple as that. A lot of the better ones I've seen just jump out when they dropped in an unfavourable situation, because they can get rushed and won't be fast enough to stabilize with wall. You have to take note of when they overcommit and punish them for that, playing 52 requires a lot more diligence than it might seem.
Baiting:
Now, when you understand what a 52 wants to do, you can abuse that. A lot of the time, they'll just shark a little bit > wait for someone to come near > shoot feet > shoot feet > shoot player > throw wall to stabilize if no one else is in range.
The important thing to note is 52s will tend to stay behind cover or on their plat while sharking, so once again, if you can recognize what situations are bad for it, you can bait them into overcommiting.
Remember the 52 brain? Target acquired, go kill. Let them chase after you, bait them into the open and either let them eat their words or keep your distance if they don't take the bait.
PREFIRING:
Another really important one here. So now that you (hopefully) get how important it is to read and react to the 52's poitioning, you have to punish it. If you can force the 52 to drop somewhere, get out of cover, follow you... Prefire it!
Just in case, prefiring is when you shoot at a place or an angle you suspect an oppenent will go through very soon. You want them to run into your fire.
52's a relatively short range line of sight weapon, it has to swim somewhere in order to start shooting, so if you can kill it before it even gets to do that, bingo.
It's a simple concept, but VERY important to use.
Here's an example:
You know the 52 is somewhere on the enemy plat that you can't reach, on a side angle. You're playing any short range weapon really. Get closer to the 52 and start innocently painting, 52 brain activates: it drops, but you saw it coming. It'll start shooting at you immediately as it drops, but you only get hit once, back up, heal, and get behind cover. The 52 doesn't want you to heal, and it doesn't want your team to get involved, so it'll chase after you and round the corner, so... prefire it. Boom, 52 dead.
It sounds very basic, and frankly, it kind of is. It relies on mindgames and reading your opponent.
Angles:
I'll keep this short.
I compared 52 to roller earlier, but 52 has one key limitation: it still requires precise aim. If you can target a 52 from the side, they'll have to pull off a difficult flick and they'll get hit with stronger shot RNG.
So it's valuable to know where a 52 is aiming. If you see a 52 shooting at an opposite angle from you, they don't see you, so shoot it. It has pretty low strafe speed as well, so it's a relatively easy kill.
Wall also doesn't affect the sides, so that won't help them either.
I'll add that if you don't know where the 52 is aiming at, that's dangerous, they're most likely looking around or getting their aim on someone, and that someone could be you, so be careful.
Sharking:
52 doesn't like painting around, that reveals its position and takes time away from it fighting. Its kits don't have any tools to deal with sharkers outside of the specials, so it's kind of vulnerable to sharking. I've also noticed that, same as rollers, 52s don't expect to get sharked, they don't paint over areas that well, so they're likely to be taken off guard. It's scary, you don't have much room to mess up, but it's really effective once you get it down.
Sharking also lets you get on an... angle! Hooray we're going full circle.
Now, while speaking of sharking, 52s tend to shark a lot on holds and on retake, so be very ready for this. If the 52 isn't shooting anywhere, it's hiding, so be careful. There's ways to counter this, but that could frankly be another guide entirely.
Respect it, but only so much:
A lot of the counterplay I've mentioned so far has been very focused on respecting 52's kill time and positioning very carefully, but frankly, sometimes you shouldn't be scared.
Wall 52s have a pretty flowcharty gameplan:
- Get the jump on someone > End the fight fast, so shoot
- They see you > Stabilize, use wall, hold space.
It's pretty simple really. So if you get the jump on a 52 from an angle they're not looking at, their first reflex will most likely be to throw wall because it's a 1v1. Wall has a deployment time, it won't be active for a bit, so play at their own game: end the fight fast, and rush it down.
If you see a teammate fighting 52, help them! 52 is a short range shooter, it's not invincible, and it's not without flaws.
Addendums:
Opening gambit:
A lot of 52s run opening gambit, it's good on it! The counterplay is pretty simple, it's 52 brain, except they have a time limit this time, so expect it to rush you down and keep an eye on it.
Wall spam:
Wall is a complicated sub to counterplay, but think of it as an unwinnable 1v1 to avoid. If 52 walls somewhere, I'd say only poke it at a distance if a teammate is looking at it, it's kind of a waste of time to do it by yourself. CERTAINLY don't go within its range. Going to the side works sometimes but in my experience it's too unreliable, I wouldn't recommend it.
I'd say it's more effective to wait for the 52 to grow bored and think you gave up on the fight. They'll swim towards you or someone else and you'll get to prefire them.
If they're spamming wall to live, look at the state of the game. If you're in a numbers advantage, wait for your teammates to rush it, if the enemies are in a numbers advantage, back up. If it's even, either pretend to ignore it or hold your ground at a safe distance.
Slow weapons:
As a tent main, it's very tricky to fight 52, since even at a distance, it's fast enough to swim up to you in your endlag and kill you before you can shoot again (very fun). So if they're looking at you try to avoid shooting too much, especially if you're in range, again with the range.
Most slow weapons have ways of shooting at it while it can't shoot back though, so make sure to not shoot willy-nilly in the open
Killer Wail/ Splattercolor Screen:
Those are its wild cards. If its team doesn't give it any opening or if its opponents stay dilligent and respect it, that's what it'll use to make something happen.
Once those are popped, be certain that the 52 is running in, so prefire like your life depends on it, because it does.
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There we go, that's my advice on how to fight 52s, this weapon feels very broken but frankly once you get used to it, it's not that scary anymore. Hell, the scary part is that your teammates might all die from 52 the moment you have your back turned, so the game's win condition becomes "kill 52" lol, which is why I also gave advice for that, it's stuff I've picked up from going out of my way to spawncamp 52s to mitigate the damage.
Now, an important piece of nuance to this guide. As you can see, the counterplay relies a LOT on mindgames, which means that the best 52 players know how to exploit their opponents just as well, and are used to some of these techniques, they get very disciplined about not overcomitting.
Though frankly, if they see through your baits and prefires and whatnot, I wouldn't keep that in mind too much, this game moves too fast to yomi layer 7 your way through fights, if you get what I mean. In that case, it's adaptation and thinking on the fly, you'll be on your own for those fights. I mess up against those myself, that's always gonna happen.
And finally, I wouldn't recommend picking 52 if you're looking for a carry weapon specifically, I don't think it works that well. A lot of X rank players got used to exploiting it over the past year, and it doesn't have any X factor like a lot of other weapons, it's just a shooter at the end of the day. I think a good Slosher or Range Blaster is scarier than a good 52 honestly.
It's also more team dependent than it seems, it can't displace the enemies much, it's not great on retake, and it really wants its team to both cause chaos and paint for it so it can get as many kills as possible.
It's done, I did it. I singlehandedly fixed Splatoon
According to stat.ink, it's been the most used X rank weapon for 4 seasons in a row, though funnily enough, it used to be the 5th most popular weapon in drizzle season 2023, so this thing's usage rate has skyrocketed since chill season 2023, where a certain fruit named japanese individual reached 5000 XP on it.
It's dominating solo queue lobbies, noob stomping innocent cephalopods left and right. So... what's its deal? And most importantly, how do I kill it.
Disclaimer:
This is coming purely from the perspective of solo matches. I'm a solo player myself, so I don't have a lot of experience with coordinated play. I imagine a lot of this carries over though, so this could still be a relevant guide for comp players.
As for my experience, I'm a
______________________________________________
Strengths:
First, let's go over 52's strengths. Know your enemy, they say...
52's number one strength is kill time. It's one of the fastest slaying weapons in the game: it can delete you in a third of second, and can do so with very little lag, which means it's also fast. It pairs top notch slaying power with shooter mobility, which is a scary combo, not to mention most 52s run pure swim speed/ intensify action builds to lean into their speed advantage.
Now, that's not the entire reason people pick it so much in solo, the main appeal is that the weapon pairs fighting capabilities with 'flexibility' (Oh I'll get back to that).
Most great slayers usually lack paint; weapons like rollers, chargers, blasters... their main weakness comp-wise is that they can't paint very well, so they rely on their team to paint, especially in splat zones.
52 doesn't have that weakness. If it has to paint a zone, it can do it, and it won't take too long. So when your comps as as unreliable as they can be in X rank, that's a really nice strength to have.
It painting well also means it's more self-sufficient than most weapons. It doesn't deal chip damage, it does its thing on its own no matter the comp.
Counterplay:
I'll start with the basics.
At the end of the day, 52 is just a splattershot that can 2 shot. It has an rng and mobility weakness, but if the 52 player is remotely competent, you won't feel those weaknesses. The counterplay is very very similar to how you'd approach a shot, except here you HAVE to respect the kill time.
Range:
52 has deceptively long range but it's nothing that notable. Unlike most other shooters, it doesn't have a bomb to poke, so if your weapon outranges it, it can't affect you. Abuse this, don't let it get close, but most importantly, back up if it's close to being in range.
Line of sight:
52 can't shoot you around cover, and it doesn't have a bomb to displace you. If your weapon can shoot around cover, use that as much as you can, especially since AOE weapons have a pretty hard time fighting it in the open.
Healing.
It's a 2-shot weapon. If you can heal enough to tank one more shot, you're doubling its time to kill. This will be the decisive factor in a lot of fights, so unless you're sure you can kill the 52 without getting shot back, you should take time to heal and reset the fight.
It's especially nice since if the 52 was able to get a hit on you, it was probably winning that fight if you didn't get away; most weapons can't trade out a 52. It also pairs nicely with other aspects of the counterplay that I'll mention later.
The longer your fight takes, the more likely it is for your teammates to help you. In a neutral state, 52 wants to end its fights fast, for numerous reasons, so if you can stall the fight, they might start taking risks and get reckless, in which case they're an easy target.
Movement:
Shooters are inherently aim dependent. Mix up your movement, take note of where they're aiming, and approach them from the sides and back. Keep in mind this won't work all the time, especially against more experienced players, but this can make a difference.
Now, the above mostly applies to actually fighting the 52, but the thing is... you don't want to fight it.
If you're both in range to shoot each other and you both get your aim on, 52 wins the fight the vast majority of the time. And that's not even taking splash walls into account, which literally nullify your damage.
No, the truth is, you don't want to fight 52s on their terms, you have to impose yours. And for that, we have to dig deeper.
The 52 brain.:
This is the most important point of this guide. If you look at 52's stats, it seems like it can do everything. But the thing is, it won't do everything, and that's an important point to get.
If you have enough experience fighting 52 players, you'll notice a pattern. 52s just kill people, that's their gameplan. Their weapons may allow for painting, but when they shoot, they'll shoot at people. I'll be honest, it's a difficult thing to describe, but once you understand the patterns and react preemptively, they become much easier to fight.
Unlike a lot of other weapons, and other shooters really, you won't have enough time to escape once a 52 starts shooting at you, so a lot of the counterplay comes from reading their next move, it's very similar to rollers, in a sense.
It's difficult because its shooter traits let it take any position it wants, really, so you'll have to keep an eye on it, make sure to understand its position, or at least have a general idea of which area it's in, and NOT stand there if you don't know where it is.
If I had to describe it in practice, the 52 brain can be summed up to this:
most of the time, 52 will only shoot at its own feet to move, at an opponent within line of sight and within range, or while being protected by wall to hold an area.
This is a very exaggerated version, but it should give you an idea of when it is safe to approach, and therefore to fight the weapon.
Now, for the real counterplay:
Stalling:
I've mentioned before how stalling the 52 can lead it to its player becoming reckless and making mistakes, that's because the weapon simply doesn't like fighting 1v2s. If another enemy is in play, it can only shoot one at a time. Now, the risk is that it can kill someone very very fast and turn the fight into a 1v1, but that's only if you let yourself get in range. If one of you two has more range than it, this is a bad fight for it, since the 52'll get shot at for free.
Splash Wall also gets worse once multiple opponents are in play. It can get bombed randomly, it gets shredded faster, and it can't cover you from all sides, in most places.
Displacement and Overcommitting:
Alright, we're getting into some complex aspects.
When fighting 52s, you want to force the 52 into your own advantageous fights. If you're playing aoe weapons, you want it to get stuck, when they're sharking on their plat you want to force them to drop before their team can help. A lot of this is standard against all weapons, but I do want to elaborate on the drops.
On some maps, one-way drops tend to be evil. I think we all know this by now. You only get one chance to drop, no backing up. If you can make a 52 drop into the middle of the map, not a side angle, somewhere wall won't let them survive, this is a bad situation for them, especially if their team is still regrouping. Hell, it's even better if they do that on their own, just pure recklessness, no fear, diving in, before salt posting online lol-
If you do that, and if your team is even mildly aware, that 52 will just fold, simple as that. A lot of the better ones I've seen just jump out when they dropped in an unfavourable situation, because they can get rushed and won't be fast enough to stabilize with wall. You have to take note of when they overcommit and punish them for that, playing 52 requires a lot more diligence than it might seem.
Baiting:
Now, when you understand what a 52 wants to do, you can abuse that. A lot of the time, they'll just shark a little bit > wait for someone to come near > shoot feet > shoot feet > shoot player > throw wall to stabilize if no one else is in range.
The important thing to note is 52s will tend to stay behind cover or on their plat while sharking, so once again, if you can recognize what situations are bad for it, you can bait them into overcommiting.
Remember the 52 brain? Target acquired, go kill. Let them chase after you, bait them into the open and either let them eat their words or keep your distance if they don't take the bait.
PREFIRING:
Another really important one here. So now that you (hopefully) get how important it is to read and react to the 52's poitioning, you have to punish it. If you can force the 52 to drop somewhere, get out of cover, follow you... Prefire it!
Just in case, prefiring is when you shoot at a place or an angle you suspect an oppenent will go through very soon. You want them to run into your fire.
52's a relatively short range line of sight weapon, it has to swim somewhere in order to start shooting, so if you can kill it before it even gets to do that, bingo.
It's a simple concept, but VERY important to use.
Here's an example:
You know the 52 is somewhere on the enemy plat that you can't reach, on a side angle. You're playing any short range weapon really. Get closer to the 52 and start innocently painting, 52 brain activates: it drops, but you saw it coming. It'll start shooting at you immediately as it drops, but you only get hit once, back up, heal, and get behind cover. The 52 doesn't want you to heal, and it doesn't want your team to get involved, so it'll chase after you and round the corner, so... prefire it. Boom, 52 dead.
It sounds very basic, and frankly, it kind of is. It relies on mindgames and reading your opponent.
Angles:
I'll keep this short.
I compared 52 to roller earlier, but 52 has one key limitation: it still requires precise aim. If you can target a 52 from the side, they'll have to pull off a difficult flick and they'll get hit with stronger shot RNG.
So it's valuable to know where a 52 is aiming. If you see a 52 shooting at an opposite angle from you, they don't see you, so shoot it. It has pretty low strafe speed as well, so it's a relatively easy kill.
Wall also doesn't affect the sides, so that won't help them either.
I'll add that if you don't know where the 52 is aiming at, that's dangerous, they're most likely looking around or getting their aim on someone, and that someone could be you, so be careful.
Sharking:
52 doesn't like painting around, that reveals its position and takes time away from it fighting. Its kits don't have any tools to deal with sharkers outside of the specials, so it's kind of vulnerable to sharking. I've also noticed that, same as rollers, 52s don't expect to get sharked, they don't paint over areas that well, so they're likely to be taken off guard. It's scary, you don't have much room to mess up, but it's really effective once you get it down.
Sharking also lets you get on an... angle! Hooray we're going full circle.
Now, while speaking of sharking, 52s tend to shark a lot on holds and on retake, so be very ready for this. If the 52 isn't shooting anywhere, it's hiding, so be careful. There's ways to counter this, but that could frankly be another guide entirely.
Respect it, but only so much:
A lot of the counterplay I've mentioned so far has been very focused on respecting 52's kill time and positioning very carefully, but frankly, sometimes you shouldn't be scared.
Wall 52s have a pretty flowcharty gameplan:
- Get the jump on someone > End the fight fast, so shoot
- They see you > Stabilize, use wall, hold space.
It's pretty simple really. So if you get the jump on a 52 from an angle they're not looking at, their first reflex will most likely be to throw wall because it's a 1v1. Wall has a deployment time, it won't be active for a bit, so play at their own game: end the fight fast, and rush it down.
If you see a teammate fighting 52, help them! 52 is a short range shooter, it's not invincible, and it's not without flaws.
Addendums:
Opening gambit:
A lot of 52s run opening gambit, it's good on it! The counterplay is pretty simple, it's 52 brain, except they have a time limit this time, so expect it to rush you down and keep an eye on it.
Wall spam:
Wall is a complicated sub to counterplay, but think of it as an unwinnable 1v1 to avoid. If 52 walls somewhere, I'd say only poke it at a distance if a teammate is looking at it, it's kind of a waste of time to do it by yourself. CERTAINLY don't go within its range. Going to the side works sometimes but in my experience it's too unreliable, I wouldn't recommend it.
I'd say it's more effective to wait for the 52 to grow bored and think you gave up on the fight. They'll swim towards you or someone else and you'll get to prefire them.
If they're spamming wall to live, look at the state of the game. If you're in a numbers advantage, wait for your teammates to rush it, if the enemies are in a numbers advantage, back up. If it's even, either pretend to ignore it or hold your ground at a safe distance.
Slow weapons:
As a tent main, it's very tricky to fight 52, since even at a distance, it's fast enough to swim up to you in your endlag and kill you before you can shoot again (very fun). So if they're looking at you try to avoid shooting too much, especially if you're in range, again with the range.
Most slow weapons have ways of shooting at it while it can't shoot back though, so make sure to not shoot willy-nilly in the open
Killer Wail/ Splattercolor Screen:
Those are its wild cards. If its team doesn't give it any opening or if its opponents stay dilligent and respect it, that's what it'll use to make something happen.
Once those are popped, be certain that the 52 is running in, so prefire like your life depends on it, because it does.
______________________________________________
There we go, that's my advice on how to fight 52s, this weapon feels very broken but frankly once you get used to it, it's not that scary anymore. Hell, the scary part is that your teammates might all die from 52 the moment you have your back turned, so the game's win condition becomes "kill 52" lol, which is why I also gave advice for that, it's stuff I've picked up from going out of my way to spawncamp 52s to mitigate the damage.
Now, an important piece of nuance to this guide. As you can see, the counterplay relies a LOT on mindgames, which means that the best 52 players know how to exploit their opponents just as well, and are used to some of these techniques, they get very disciplined about not overcomitting.
Though frankly, if they see through your baits and prefires and whatnot, I wouldn't keep that in mind too much, this game moves too fast to yomi layer 7 your way through fights, if you get what I mean. In that case, it's adaptation and thinking on the fly, you'll be on your own for those fights. I mess up against those myself, that's always gonna happen.
And finally, I wouldn't recommend picking 52 if you're looking for a carry weapon specifically, I don't think it works that well. A lot of X rank players got used to exploiting it over the past year, and it doesn't have any X factor like a lot of other weapons, it's just a shooter at the end of the day. I think a good Slosher or Range Blaster is scarier than a good 52 honestly.
It's also more team dependent than it seems, it can't displace the enemies much, it's not great on retake, and it really wants its team to both cause chaos and paint for it so it can get as many kills as possible.
It's done, I did it. I singlehandedly fixed Splatoon
