A+ Rank tips, the How to.

[DivineSpirit]

Hello people, i have not been here very long but in-game i'm a force to be reckoned with. I'v achieved A+ rank 3 times now.( If you want to know about "De-ranking" use F3 and Find the De-ranking section.) One with the Roller, my 1st ever attempt, one with a splattershot Jr, and the carbon roller; and Currently working on the Luna blaster. Now let me be frank, i never change weapons when i'm rushing to A+ and i'm a good player threw and threw, but i'm not the best, i have flaws and i make mistakes from time to time. there are better players out there and i congrats them for that. With that out of the way, lets begin

The Basics.

1. NEVER TRUST YOUR TEAMMATES.(unless your playing in Squads)​

Ugh i cant Stress this enough. don't ever super jump to your teammates, don't ever think your teammate will "get your back" cause more than likely they will "get you IN the back". just support your team by defeating the enemy's before you teammate decided to either watch you die, or lend a bomb. Go your own way and if you have to, run away from someone super jumping to your location.

2. To live or to Die?​

I'v read on these forums about a tip topic about how its better to die and attempt to save your turf than to run. in some cases that correct but how can u counter the kraken or the inkzooka? In some cases its better to super jump to spawn if you cant aim at the kraken to slow it down or dodge a inkzooka. if they splat you with these things it benefits them more than just using them. of course you have to run from these things before u can super jump so make sure you either have some super jump abilities on or can evade good enough to preform the jump back.

3. This is REAL war.​

this is for all you lower levels that think you can jump into ranked without a 2nd thought. go back home your not ready. ranked battles is superior in risks. If your team loses, you lose Pts based on rank, and no Gold. and this includes disconnects and the splatoon server lag. ( you may of seen it, "the connection is unstable" warning that pops up when your playing) Ranked Battles is about pushing your team back as far as possible and keeping them where you want them. Change your set up , change your gear and use the "recon" button at the lobby before even attempting ranked battles.
The greatest Strategy is knowing what your getting yourself into before the battle.

Things to avoid

1. Hate a Stage? Don't play.​

this little guild-line is so simple. If you preform badly on a stage, don't play it. don't risk relying on your teammates to help you on a stage you cant stand. it will end up with you going on the biggest losing streak ever. Keep your cool and just go back to turf wars or go to recon to improve on your strategy at that stage. its not worth getting stuck on the B's. this and the next guild-line are the biggest reasons why people tend to get pushed back in ranks.

2. Go your own way!​

This is by FAR the biggest problem i'v notice. every time i have lost in a match is because my teammates do not change there battle plan if it fails the 1st around, if you continue to do the same thing over and over, dont you think the enemy is gonna notice? go another path, do something different. you would not believe how many kills iv gotten by simply going a different path than my teammates. You have got to stay on top of your game. if your teammate dose something you like ( it happens.. rarely.. but it happens) give a booyah and go about your way.

Pro tips

1. Abilities​

Abilities are one of the most important tip right? Not really. there are some noteworthy abilities that null this out but even then; someone with recon, haunt and bomb sniffer can kill you with your "perfect" ability set up. the silver line to this, no ability is really effective. the only one that seems to be somewhat useful is ninja jump and that's pushing it. cause you dont wanna super jump into a frying pan where your entire team died at. Even the guild book says to pick your weapon 1st. then worry about your abilities because they serve a meaningless role. ninja squid can be preformed without ninja squid ability equipped. don't believe me? i knows impossible to see but just take my word for it, this is a picture of me preforming the same action that ninja squid dose

and this is a picture of me going full speed in the ink.

as you can see, there are ripples in the 2nd picture and there isn't any in the 1st picture, the key to this is to slightly push on the stick, you can go pretty fast if your good at controlling the part where the ripples and ink lines don't appear. but go to fast and the will appear and reveal your location, ninja squid is simply made for lazy people that don't want to take the time to sneak up on an enemy. When i 1st got to A+ rank i though Defense up was good, but its not. heavy weapons such as all blasters and chargers will make you wish you never had defense up. and it takes 2 stacks to make a difference in it, the 1st def stack is meaning less and gives you no defense what so ever. all weapons still take the normal amount to kill you. the 3rd stack of def dose nothing either. it similar to the 2nd stack so your just wasting a spot if u do go for 3 def's. strength up? nope useless. all weapons including sub can not pass there "max number of hits to splat" takes 2 hits to splat someone with a .52 gal, and no matter how many strength up's you have it will not change. best to just pick the abilities that make a difference in the game, ink save up, ( sub or main dose not matter) ink recovery isn't needed unless you really want it, and tbh iv noticed that the best skill that suits me, running speed up. (inkling) it boost your running when not fighting, and while firiing meaning you can quickly get away from someones range.

2. Walls are your new found friends!​

Yep, people this is true. in turf wars they was useless. This isn't Turf War. Using walls will help you greatly in preventing someone from going past your choke-point. Hide on a wall next to a choke-point like this:

the instant you see someone inking the turf or see/hear any movement at all, jump out and surprise them with a blast of ink on there face. be careful those, wait for time to pass before jumping to another wall, the kill cam will be let your enemy know where you are hiding. recon the stages as they rotate to find good walls to prevent the enemy from advancing, my favorite wall is in walleye warehouse the platform that's alone ( not the middle one) has a face wall that can be climbed, stay on that wall and wait for people to get on the platform and splat them before they know what happened! That's not all either! You can super-jump off walls! use this to get away from specials you cant get rid of or are in a bad spot and want to get out.

( more tips will be added as i find out about them)

De-Ranking.​

before i tell you about this, this is bad. i hated doing this and its not very helpful to your teammates at all. its degrading yourself and your team.

in ranked and turf, if u wait at spawn doing nothing ( no aiming down, no moving, nothing) for 1 min, you will automatically be booted from the lobby. thus considering as a loss and ur rank will go down, do this constantly till your back down to C- this takes a long time, and u may never get back to A+ again, but hey, you have done it once, you can do it again... right?

hope these help!

This Thread will be updated soon, got to sleepy to finish it.

 

[Njok]

De-Ranking.​

before i tell you about this, this is bad. i hated doing this and its not very helpful to your teammates at all. its degrading yourself and your team.

in ranked and turf, if u wait at spawn doing nothing ( no aiming down, no moving, nothing) for 1 min, you will automatically be booted from the lobby. thus considering as a loss and ur rank will go down, do this constantly till your back down to C- this takes a long time, and u may never get back to A+ again, but hey, you have done it once, you can do it again... right?

What the hell? Please, this is a joke right? Just make a new account if you want to start from the beginning for some reason.

 

[Phobos]

i though Defense up was good, but its not. heavy weapons such as all blasters and chargers will make you wish you never had defense up. and it takes 2 stacks to make a difference in it, the 1st def stack is meaning less and gives you no defense what so ever. all weapons still take the normal amount to kill you.

This is false - there are a few weapons for which a single defence up will raise their shots-to-splat, e.g., 52 Gal, and Splash-o-matic.

 

[Njok]

This is false - there are a few weapons for which a single defence up will raise their shots-to-splat, e.g., 52 Gal, and Splash-o-matic.

Also those are the exact weapons where it does matter (plus rollers). Blasters when they don't directly hit and chargers when you get close to them.

 

[Bottlecapn]

You're missing alot of key details, spreading false information, and promoting terrible habits with this thread.

About the walls, a clever player will use their 3rd person camera powers to peek over the wall before passing it, or throw a splat bomb.

About trusting your teammates, instead of discouraging trust, how about encouraging them to do what their teammates can't? Otherwise, they'll end up just the same.

"Abilities are meaningless"
STOP.

I could rant ON AND ON about the false info in this thread but I wont bother because its 5:00 AM and I need sleep. Please remove this thread, or at least fix it.

 

[Power]

You're missing alot of key details, spreading false information, and promoting terrible habits with this thread.

About the walls, a clever player will use their 3rd person camera powers to peek over the wall before passing it, or throw a splat bomb.

About trusting your teammates, instead of discouraging trust, how about encouraging them to do what their teammates can't? Otherwise, they'll end up just the same.

"Abilities are meaningless"
STOP.

I could rant ON AND ON about the false info in this thread but I wont bother because its 5:00 AM and I need sleep. Please remove this thread, or at least fix it.

Yeah, I have played with so many players in A+ that instead of trusting their teammates, they try to be the superstar of the team. The rest of us get left having to clean up his or her mess.

 

[mario123007]

Very useful thread.

 

[Boolerex]

A few error IMO:

The abilities session kinda seem like more of a rant then actual tip,for exemple sure ninja squid is not as good as most people make it think,but you can't really call it useless as while the tactic of swimming slower to not show ink work ; this is still slower then to going in max speed with ninja squid...Afterward I dunnos if taking swim speed+ Instead and doing your tactic work,I'm gonna try it afterward.

"don't ever super jump to your teammates" In Splat zone while it rare to have a good slot to super jump,flat out never super jumping is dumb,there time where it completely safe to super jump somewhere (mostly then you just respawned and that there a teammate in the way toward mid) so you might as well do that,also in Tower control,super jumping in the tower is a very,very good way to get some more point in your count,sure,you probably have a high chance to die from that,but the enemy team is not gonna make a comeback from that due to how far the tower would be in the enemy base.

Also "run away from someone super jumping to your location." Huh that isn't clear for me,kinda seem contraditory for me.

Super jumping toward your spawn point if you're stuck somewhere or if you are in some very bad placement is a good idea,however,super jumping to avoid a inkzooka/kraken isn't gonna work ; you're better off just finding some cover in case of the inkzooka or RUNNING OF UR LIFE if a kraken pursuit you.

"Hate a Stage? Don't play." Depend,not playing in a stage you hate isn't gonna make you better in said stage,but if you just want to boost your rank,that acceptable strategy.

I don't even know what is that De-ranking tip is doing here but I assume it a joke.

Overall there seem to be a bit too much "wrong" in this guide,but overall it could be something that can be improved.

 

[ZeroParadox]

I think the first problem with this thread is that it doesn't even do what it implies it's going to do. I'm pretty sure most of the "basics" are something one ought to know before getting anywhere close to A+. I suppose this is less about reaching A+ and more about ranked itself, but even then there are so many 'no' situations in the original post that I'm still not seeing what one is gonna learn from this.

Not trusting your teammates is one thing, but actively going out of your way not to help them unless they are close by? That's the kind of thing my stupid teammates tend to do - they walk off towards some completely unrelated location away from the objective, trying to pull off some dumb flanking maneuver or build special or whatever they think works, only for us to lose because they weren't assisting. Your goal in rank matches, even with potential brain dead players, is to figure out WHAT you need to be doing and why - then you can go run off on your own, if it benefits the team (flanking, getting rid of enemy lines, building special for when you actually need it.) Oh, and do things within your ability, I'm sick and tired of people trying to be heroes and dying over and over again.

The second tip, I'd like to see these posts you're talking about, because even the people that like to rushdown here will usually agree that it's better to stay alive than to die a meaningless firefight. "A dead squid paints no floors." The only real tip in the basics here is "Don't play ranked if you're not up to it." Cool.

Encouraging people not to learn their bad matchups is silly. Sure I hate some maps, but you shouldn't encourage people to avoid them like the plague. At least tell them to practice or something in Turf War or the upcoming Private Battles.

"No ability is really effective-" Yeah I'm just gonna move along and let someone else handle this one.

Walls... aren't that much of a game changer... I mean sure you can use them, but I don't see why any decent player wouldn't eventually notice your use of them and take you down accordingly...

Also, are you telling me that you purposely screw over a team by standing there in a goddamn ranked match by putting them into a 3v4 because you're too lazy to make a second account? What?

This thread oughta be blasted for that "tip" alone.

 

[Chewi]

Not sure what beating up on C and B level players to rank up again proves, other than avoiding playing consistently in the A+ rank, where things are much more competitive.

 

[[EJ]_Locke]

Not sure what beating up on C and B level players to rank up again proves, other than avoiding playing consistently in the A+ rank, where things are much more competitive.

I like making new accounts to splat the underlings. Most times you get hilarious results and lots of rage directed at you.

 

[Bottlecapn]

I like making new accounts to splat the underlings. Most times you get hilarious results and lots of rage directed at you.

Please don't. Like, I understand a sub account, but multiple is just kinda uncalled for lmao. Although I'll say it's pretty funny to go in Turf war and wreck shop against < level 20s.

 

[[EJ]_Locke]

Please don't. Like, I understand a sub account, but multiple is just kinda uncalled for lmao. Although I'll say it's pretty funny to go in Turf war and wreck shop against < level 20s.

Uncalled for? If I was a C player I would enjoy seeing and learning from somebody better than me. Besides, I don't feel morally moved to not mess with them, this is still a video game after all.

 

[Phobos]

^Man, you have a peculiar attitude...

 

[Citrus]

This thread is not good for tips tbh. Always blame your team? No. Always quit if you don't like the map? No. Always go on your own? No.

Blaming your team for everything you do wrong is anything but good. In order to improve you need to realize what you do wrong and learn from it. As for stages, its OK to not play if you don't like it, but if you've barely played, its better to at least be good at the stage first before you quit because of it.

 

[Kay]

This thread should be called "How to derank from A+"

 

[Samura1man]

how to play splatoon tips

 

[Ryuji]

Ok honestly these tips are so bad that this seems like a joke thread. As an A+ player I wouldn't recommend following any of these tips. They tell you to do exactly what you shouldn't - much more harmful than helpful, which ironically this thread aims to help you with. Please learn some actual tips instead of misguiding others.

 

[Sean]

You're not helping people who are subpar to you by a considerable margin. The way people improve is by slowly facing people who are superior by a small margin. Getting thwarted does nothing but make people salty

 

[Egregore]

the silver line to this, no ability is really effective. the only one that seems to be somewhat useful is ninja jump and that's pushing it.

What am I reading? @_@