Greetings! This is Robo from Thomas Alva Edison’s lab the Independent Squid Research Lab in New Jersey cooking up a guide series for all squids and kids. I’m an S player that has been gaining interest in the S+ and competitive life after stumbling my way into the Splatoon Showdown Series hosted with Leagues Under the Ink. I realize … I don’t understand any weapon nearly as much as I think do. A large part of getting better competitively is understanding the main behaviors of each weapon, its subweapons, and how those change each players’ approach to a map and game type. As you can tell, there’s a lot behind getting good, so my first step is making this series of guides to understanding the weapons.
For absolutely no reason, I’ve decided to start with the Slosher. From here, I have been trying out a new weapon each week with recordings available on my YouTube channel. I will make more guides for each weapon (hopefully covering all of them) when I find the time to!
Overview – We all start somewhere
The Slosher is one of those weapons that aren’t found in any other shooter. You walk into Splatoon thinking “hey, this has a bunch of guns, why don’t I try that out and see how this relates to GunZ: The Duel?” The thing is, even for pretty out-there games like Overwatch and Team Fortress 2, there is no direct comparison.
This guide will cover the little things about the Slosher I’ve learned while in the practice room, and what I’ve learned from playing in ranked A+/S battles. I’ll probably update this for different battle modes/maps that I encounter as my Slosher gets inkier. So far, this guide includes:
Ink Path of the Slosher
You can think of the Slosher as a sort of rocket, but it has weight. The shot doesn’t propel anywhere, but instead sinks into the ground (and pretty quickly, at that). Think of the Slosher as a rocket whose steam-trail does damage, too. All of the ink in the image below does damage, but different amounts of damage, and that’s a very important part of understanding how to approach different situations with the Slosher:
The reach is about three lines away with two different sections to the trail: the narrow path and the circular end. The entire ink path doesn’t really change unless you’re facing basically straight up (50* and higher):
As above, the height barely changes when you change your angle up 45*. As you can imagine, though the range shortens beyond any of that. Within battle, though, I wouldn’t think you have any practical reason to analyze the distance of aiming 60* high beyond one or two specific map situations. I suggest going out and testing different heights on different maps, as well.
Also important about this angle is that the trail does around half of the damage that the end circle does. If you aim upward while inking a brave squid willing to stand up to your bucket of liquid wisdom, that unfortunate squid actually turns out to be pretty fortunate: They will only take 40 damage instead of 70 if the ink trail happens to hit them.
And, of course, the ink trail doesn’t do exactly half of the damage, that would be too easy. The ink trail deals about ~55-57% of damage. Considering what we know about the different damages of the ink trail and the way the angle changes the horizontal movement, the layout of your ink is actually:
On all of the above situations, I stood exactly on the fourth line of the first test squid. So another interesting point to note is that the ink path doesn’t start at your feet, but instead a little behind you. This goes to show that the Slosher’s path has a blast radius throughout the path. There’s no guarantee that any of this surrounding ink does any damage – I’d have to look more into that later.
The only other situation I can cover that isn’t map-specific is shooting straight down:
We can take four things from this image:
So, yeah, that’s what I got from the training room. This covers points 1 and 2 outlined earlier. Next, we see how this applies to battle.
Slosher Play
So, there are three different Sloshers with different sub-weapons:
(All of these are from Syl’s YouTube series: Weapon Demonstration (Splatoon))
For version 1 of the guide, I’ve only experimented with vanilla Slosher so far, so I’ll only focus on the combination of Slosher and Burst Bomb/Inkstrike. The main weapon spread, pathing, and attributes are exactly the same between the three. They only differ between their sub-weapons. I don’t know if brand has any effect on these weapons, and I hope someone could shine some light into this knowledge.
Slosher + Burst Bomb + Ink Strike
To hit the goal of 100 damage, you have to keep track of how much damage you have at your disposal. Without any damage boosts on you or defense boosts on your opponents, I’ve found the following in the training room:
Slosher – Direct hit = 70 dmg @ ~7.5% ink tank usage
Slosher – Trail hit = 40 dmg @ ~7.5% ink tank usage
Burst Bomb – Direct hit = 60 dmg @ 40% ink tank usage
Burst Bomb – Splash hit = 35 dmg @ 40% ink tank usage
Burst Bomb - Indirect hit = 25 dmg @ 40% ink tank usage
If you’re unlucky, an indirect hit from either the slosher or the bomb puts you just short of 100 (splat). The slosher on its own is pretty much matched on damage as the Burst Bomb, but the Burst Bomb asks for waaaaay more ink. When considering the burst bomb, damage is the same, ink usage is higher … so we need to consider the last component: speed. Let’s look at their frames:
Slosh + Slosh – 1.04s w/ ~15% ink used
http://i.imgur.com/YXNNJaQ.gifv
Slosh + Direct bomb – 0.22s w/ ~47.5% ink used
http://i.imgur.com/AEKFKZ3.gifv
Indirect bomb + Slosh + Indirect bomb – Kill @ 1.01s, last bomb lands @ 1.22s
http://i.imgur.com/va74fcX.gifv
Indirect bomb + Slosh + Slosh – 1.09s w/ ~55% ink used
http://i.imgur.com/FLyOWiP.gifv
Direct bomb + Slosh – 0.18s w/ ~47.5% ink used
http://i.imgur.com/duJ0yVG.gifv
Organized, in order from fastest:
1) Direct Bomb + Slosh (0.18s)
2) Slosh + Direct Bomb (0.22s)
3) Slosh + Slosh (1.04s)
4) Indirect Bomb + Slosh + Indirect bomb (1.01s, 1.22s if miss bomb)
5) Indirect Bomb + Slosh + Slosh (1.09s)
The quickest combination of attacks is the direct bomb + slosh. This uses about 47.5% of your ink tank, so you have plenty of ink left to spare. Enough to splat a few squids around you via Slosh + Slosh + Slosh many times over, actually. Then you’ll be running on empty … helplessly.
The way I see it, this combination is perfect for a close-quarters situation when you’re caught off guard. Hitting a direct bomb is unlikely in sudden encounters, but if you can land one, you’re halfway to a splat.
If you’re approaching an enemy from afar, you can use the bomb strategically instead of offensively:
Throwing the bomb left or right of the enemy you’re approaching gives you the opportunity of landing at least one indirect hit while closing off one avenue of escape for them. Throwing a bomb to their right means you can follow up with a bucket to the middle or their left. From there, you’ll have 57.5% ink (100% - 40% - 2.5%) remaining to fight with. Perfect!
Strange quirk:
When considering ink recovery, the slosher doesn’t recover any ink when you’re firing on empty. You’re flailing around an empty bucket and it stays that way. I bring this up because with a roller or a brush, every attack after being on empty results in a tiny ink splotch that can do minimum 20 damage.
FIN
That’s about all. I will update this guide when I explore the variants of Sloshers and how they work with each map. Until then, this is all I have.
I will also be doing the new weapons in the Splatoon 2 Testfire if they allow me to. If you're playing in the Testfire, as well, let me know. Maybe we can play together! If not, I hope to make a guide for the new weapons in the future, whether they change or not. Swim forward to it!
Thanks for reading!
Changes after the 2.7.0 Update
(Information from Sgo-J’s post at https://squidboards.com/threads/slosher-2-7-0-update-stronger-weaker-or-the-same.23868/)
Main: Vanilla Slosher changes
Reduced time of firing by 20%
Special gauge loss: 50% -> 40%
Increased movement impairment by 26% on squids that get hit
Sub: Burst Bomb changes
Burst bombs
▼Ink consumption changed from 25% to 40%.
▼Weakened the knockback effect.
▼Radius for dealing minimum damage reduced by 20%.
△Minimum damage increased from 20.0 to 25.0.
△Radius for dealing medium damage (35.0) increased by about 14%.
△Painting radius increased by about 43%.
For absolutely no reason, I’ve decided to start with the Slosher. From here, I have been trying out a new weapon each week with recordings available on my YouTube channel. I will make more guides for each weapon (hopefully covering all of them) when I find the time to!
Overview – We all start somewhere
The Slosher is one of those weapons that aren’t found in any other shooter. You walk into Splatoon thinking “hey, this has a bunch of guns, why don’t I try that out and see how this relates to GunZ: The Duel?” The thing is, even for pretty out-there games like Overwatch and Team Fortress 2, there is no direct comparison.
This guide will cover the little things about the Slosher I’ve learned while in the practice room, and what I’ve learned from playing in ranked A+/S battles. I’ll probably update this for different battle modes/maps that I encounter as my Slosher gets inkier. So far, this guide includes:
1) Ink path of the Slosher
2) How the damage for the Slosher differs by distance and height
3) How the Splash Bomb changes the approach on the standard Slosher play
1) The variants of Slosher
2) Specific statistics on stat attributes
3) How to win
2) How the damage for the Slosher differs by distance and height
3) How the Splash Bomb changes the approach on the standard Slosher play
a. Analysis on THE COMBO
b. Ink usage between Slosher and Splash Bomb
What I won’t cover (and I’ll leave up to people to help me out):b. Ink usage between Slosher and Splash Bomb
1) The variants of Slosher
2) Specific statistics on stat attributes
3) How to win
Ink Path of the Slosher
You can think of the Slosher as a sort of rocket, but it has weight. The shot doesn’t propel anywhere, but instead sinks into the ground (and pretty quickly, at that). Think of the Slosher as a rocket whose steam-trail does damage, too. All of the ink in the image below does damage, but different amounts of damage, and that’s a very important part of understanding how to approach different situations with the Slosher:
Figure 1 – Slosher Reach
The reach is about three lines away with two different sections to the trail: the narrow path and the circular end. The entire ink path doesn’t really change unless you’re facing basically straight up (50* and higher):
Figure 2 – 45* Up vs Straight
As above, the height barely changes when you change your angle up 45*. As you can imagine, though the range shortens beyond any of that. Within battle, though, I wouldn’t think you have any practical reason to analyze the distance of aiming 60* high beyond one or two specific map situations. I suggest going out and testing different heights on different maps, as well.
Also important about this angle is that the trail does around half of the damage that the end circle does. If you aim upward while inking a brave squid willing to stand up to your bucket of liquid wisdom, that unfortunate squid actually turns out to be pretty fortunate: They will only take 40 damage instead of 70 if the ink trail happens to hit them.
Figure 3 – One Fortunate Squid
And, of course, the ink trail doesn’t do exactly half of the damage, that would be too easy. The ink trail deals about ~55-57% of damage. Considering what we know about the different damages of the ink trail and the way the angle changes the horizontal movement, the layout of your ink is actually:
Figure 4 – Reach, Angles, and Damage
On all of the above situations, I stood exactly on the fourth line of the first test squid. So another interesting point to note is that the ink path doesn’t start at your feet, but instead a little behind you. This goes to show that the Slosher’s path has a blast radius throughout the path. There’s no guarantee that any of this surrounding ink does any damage – I’d have to look more into that later.
The only other situation I can cover that isn’t map-specific is shooting straight down:
Figure 5 – Straight Down
We can take four things from this image:
1) Microsoft Paint makes very crude circles and I’m probably never using it again.
2) The blast diameter is about one line-to-line distance, as shown by the blue circles in Figure 5.
3) Your cursor cannot be directly under you, so the shot goes a little ahead.
4) This is an inconvenient spread if you’re jumping and spreading ink ahead of yourself. If you intend to ink backward, your best bet is to turn around completely.
2) The blast diameter is about one line-to-line distance, as shown by the blue circles in Figure 5.
3) Your cursor cannot be directly under you, so the shot goes a little ahead.
4) This is an inconvenient spread if you’re jumping and spreading ink ahead of yourself. If you intend to ink backward, your best bet is to turn around completely.
So, yeah, that’s what I got from the training room. This covers points 1 and 2 outlined earlier. Next, we see how this applies to battle.
Slosher Play
So, there are three different Sloshers with different sub-weapons:
(All of these are from Syl’s YouTube series: Weapon Demonstration (Splatoon))
For version 1 of the guide, I’ve only experimented with vanilla Slosher so far, so I’ll only focus on the combination of Slosher and Burst Bomb/Inkstrike. The main weapon spread, pathing, and attributes are exactly the same between the three. They only differ between their sub-weapons. I don’t know if brand has any effect on these weapons, and I hope someone could shine some light into this knowledge.
Slosher + Burst Bomb + Ink Strike
To hit the goal of 100 damage, you have to keep track of how much damage you have at your disposal. Without any damage boosts on you or defense boosts on your opponents, I’ve found the following in the training room:
Slosher – Direct hit = 70 dmg @ ~7.5% ink tank usage
Slosher – Trail hit = 40 dmg @ ~7.5% ink tank usage
Burst Bomb – Direct hit = 60 dmg @ 40% ink tank usage
Burst Bomb – Splash hit = 35 dmg @ 40% ink tank usage
Burst Bomb - Indirect hit = 25 dmg @ 40% ink tank usage
If you’re unlucky, an indirect hit from either the slosher or the bomb puts you just short of 100 (splat). The slosher on its own is pretty much matched on damage as the Burst Bomb, but the Burst Bomb asks for waaaaay more ink. When considering the burst bomb, damage is the same, ink usage is higher … so we need to consider the last component: speed. Let’s look at their frames:
Slosh + Slosh – 1.04s w/ ~15% ink used
http://i.imgur.com/YXNNJaQ.gifv
Slosh + Direct bomb – 0.22s w/ ~47.5% ink used
http://i.imgur.com/AEKFKZ3.gifv
Indirect bomb + Slosh + Indirect bomb – Kill @ 1.01s, last bomb lands @ 1.22s
http://i.imgur.com/va74fcX.gifv
Indirect bomb + Slosh + Slosh – 1.09s w/ ~55% ink used
http://i.imgur.com/FLyOWiP.gifv
Direct bomb + Slosh – 0.18s w/ ~47.5% ink used
http://i.imgur.com/duJ0yVG.gifv
Organized, in order from fastest:
1) Direct Bomb + Slosh (0.18s)
2) Slosh + Direct Bomb (0.22s)
3) Slosh + Slosh (1.04s)
4) Indirect Bomb + Slosh + Indirect bomb (1.01s, 1.22s if miss bomb)
5) Indirect Bomb + Slosh + Slosh (1.09s)
The quickest combination of attacks is the direct bomb + slosh. This uses about 47.5% of your ink tank, so you have plenty of ink left to spare. Enough to splat a few squids around you via Slosh + Slosh + Slosh many times over, actually. Then you’ll be running on empty … helplessly.
The way I see it, this combination is perfect for a close-quarters situation when you’re caught off guard. Hitting a direct bomb is unlikely in sudden encounters, but if you can land one, you’re halfway to a splat.
If you’re approaching an enemy from afar, you can use the bomb strategically instead of offensively:
Throwing the bomb left or right of the enemy you’re approaching gives you the opportunity of landing at least one indirect hit while closing off one avenue of escape for them. Throwing a bomb to their right means you can follow up with a bucket to the middle or their left. From there, you’ll have 57.5% ink (100% - 40% - 2.5%) remaining to fight with. Perfect!
Strange quirk:
When considering ink recovery, the slosher doesn’t recover any ink when you’re firing on empty. You’re flailing around an empty bucket and it stays that way. I bring this up because with a roller or a brush, every attack after being on empty results in a tiny ink splotch that can do minimum 20 damage.
FIN
That’s about all. I will update this guide when I explore the variants of Sloshers and how they work with each map. Until then, this is all I have.
I will also be doing the new weapons in the Splatoon 2 Testfire if they allow me to. If you're playing in the Testfire, as well, let me know. Maybe we can play together! If not, I hope to make a guide for the new weapons in the future, whether they change or not. Swim forward to it!
Thanks for reading!
Changes after the 2.7.0 Update
(Information from Sgo-J’s post at https://squidboards.com/threads/slosher-2-7-0-update-stronger-weaker-or-the-same.23868/)
Main: Vanilla Slosher changes
Reduced time of firing by 20%
Special gauge loss: 50% -> 40%
Increased movement impairment by 26% on squids that get hit
Sub: Burst Bomb changes
Burst bombs
▼Ink consumption changed from 25% to 40%.
▼Weakened the knockback effect.
▼Radius for dealing minimum damage reduced by 20%.
△Minimum damage increased from 20.0 to 25.0.
△Radius for dealing medium damage (35.0) increased by about 14%.
△Painting radius increased by about 43%.
