Are these still the "worst weapons in the game"?

[Eclipsc70]

Since Splatoons release, people have always tried to rank weapons on how good they are. Whether the mode be turf war or ranked. The Rapid blaster, Inkbrush, AeroSpray, and H3 are 4 weapons tat always seemed to get the short end of the stick and where always looked down upon when it cam e to some players.
Id like to know, especially with the multiple buffs/nerfs and the release of the Permanent Inkbrush, Aerospray PG, and the Cherry H3: do some of you still consider these weapon types the 'worst in the game' or 'auto lose weapons if they are on your team'? (granted the last 2 arent out yet but predictions are fine.)

 

[binx]

Well, I'd say you need to distinguish sets. Like, .96 and .96 deco are not the same, aero MG and aero PG are not the same, and so on.

First thing I want to say is, some weapons are underestimated just because they're not meant to be a killer. If you want to play in solo, it's kinda true that having an easy-killing weapon is better than a more support or turf oriented one (it's not 100% true, but well I'll still put it this way). And some players don't take it into account. Like, the weapon is not good to kill, then it's a bad weapon. Which I feel is not true.

For example, I played twice against an inkstrike brush. He won twice. He was very dedicated to paint the whole map in his color, and he was winning this way. His ratio had very low numbers, like 1-4 in a 5 min game, but his plan was working. We were on kelp dome, and I swear by the middle of the game, both trees and center were all his color. Sure we took the lead in the first part, but in both games his teams could win in the latter part. He truly found a way to play his weapon.

So I would say if you're going to talk about bad weapons, you need to understand what the weapons is meant to do and say why it's not good at it (why others are better for instance).

Personnally, I feel the sloshing machine is not good. From what I can see it's not meant to turf, but it doesn't kill well either. It's not that good at supporting either. I'd say it's meant to make weird kills, but these are not common enough. So in most situations, you would do better as a support with more range, with burst bombs, or you'd be better with a blaster. I think a longer range would be quite interesting.

I would say the brush with mine/shield is not good either. It has absolutely no range, the shield can be pushed because of that, and even when in range it's kinda long to kill. So it's not a killing type. As a support, no range at all won't make it, only the shield. As a turfing one, you have better options.

The rapid blasters are said to be bad because they are not easy to learn, and you need to be good at finding and keeping the right distance. Sometimes you come across a good player on them and you understand they're annoying. I'm playing the two rapid ones, and the rapid pro deco myself, and I would say they're from ok to good. The pro vanilla should be ok, tthough I believe hit has one of the weakest seekers as the weapon won't charge in anyway.

About H-3, I would say the sensor-zooka one is not great, when compared to forge pro. It *has* some good points (turf coverage or ink consumption I guess), but overall I feel you can do most of the job with the forge, while you can't move the same way with the H-3. The other one is questionable as the subs are unique I believe. A little more range or a faster firerate would be better I believe. Though I would recommend using these weapons as a learning tool.

So that's my feeling about these weapons. As they are now, I would say the sloshing machine and the H3 need too much accuracy. I think squiffers are questionnable, but it might be my weakest weapons, so I can't really talk. I'm not great with chargers, so not having the range to survive is too much for me.

Edit: but there is no weapon bad enough that you can't go S+ with from my point of view.

 

[Elecmaw]

The biggest issue with Inkbrush isn't the weapon itself per-se, it's weak but far from the worst. The real problem were both it's sub/special combinations which didn't help the weapon at all, but now Permanent actually gives it a ranged option with bombs and it's inking capacity is put to good use to get Kraken real fast. Still limits Inkbrush to one decent kit, but it's something i suppose.

Rapids aren't nearly as bad as the H-3, they are allright i suppose.

Aero MG is meh, most people think of the more oft-used RG which is far from good for reasons a lot of people already know.

That being said, i still cannot think of a single competitive reason why somebody would pick a H-3? The concept would be that it can threaten foes with it's potential ohko with it's single volley but the odds of doing that with a single burst are so low unless you spend ages learning this weapon. Even then, other aspects of this weapon range from lackluster to completely terrible, it really says miles about the weapon itself that it has great sub/specials but they go horribly misused because of the weapon itself.
The Cherry looks interesting, but i still don't think it'd salvage the weapon at all.

That being said, i don't consider these weapons to be auto-losses, i've seen a few games where they end up carrying the entire match.

 

[Bleeze]

From a competitive standpoint, these weapons are pretty bad. They take way too much effort to do the same job the another weapon can do with ease. The H-3, rapid blaster, and inkbrush are all very quirky weapons, and the unique abilities that they have don't make up for their shortcomings at all. However, there is no such thing as an "auto-lose weapon", especially in solo queue. I get good KDs with the inkbrush nouveau all the time in ranked modes. Solo queue is so chaotic that any weapon can carry a team. In fact, a lot of the weapons that have a presence in solo queue are actually pretty bad against a cordinated team. So even if a weapon is bad, it's not un-playable. Bad weapons should only be avoided in competitive games.

But yah, these weapons are not the best.
The permabrush does have some potential in the competitive scene because it has a ranged option and an insane kraken charging speed. The cherry H-3 is the best H-3, but why nor just use the 96? The H-3 alo relies too much on accuracy. Rapid blasters have weird spacing and rely too much on accuracy as well. The aerospray is just a meme.

Sorry for any weird spelling mistakes, my auto-correct is turned off.

 

[birdiebee]

In summary, yes. As others have said, other weapons accomplish what these can do with less trouble and fewer drawbacks.

Although I believe Inkbrushes, Rapid Blasters and even Nozzlenoses can be pretty deadly in the right hands. I recall several encounters against Rapid Blasters in particular where I had major trouble protecting myself from their harassment.

I really wanna second @binx 's statement about Sloshing Machines, as well. I haven't touched one in ages because it has a major lack of any noticeable strengths. It doesn't complement any particular playstyle particularly well... the vanilla's kit is kinda good, but then the custom/neo/whatever is atrocious.

Also wanna throw out the unpopular opinion that Bamboozlers suffer from similar problems as some of these. Way too hard to learn to see a real benefit from using. I'd rather just use a longer range shooter or a Squiffer for the sort of gameplay Bamboozling attempts to offer. Bamboozler pros will probably attack me for this, and probably make valid points considering I'm admittedly inexperienced in using them, but I just think they're pretty awful.

 

[Eclipsc70]

Completely forgot I made this topic. I didnt get any notifications for it.
I do agree that there are some draw backs but I feel every weapon has drawbacks and strengths aswell.
One thing Ive never quite understood is why people tend to make the argument that there are other weapons that accomplish the same thing in relevance to these weak weapons but most of the people that say this also say that weapons like the .52 gal, NZap, splattershot and the likes are very good weapons or more respected. Taking the spattershot as an example: why do people not bring up the argument of 'there are weapons that do it better' when thinking of that? The splattershot pro exists and does the splattershots job better by having much more range and cant be taken down to a 4 hit at the cost of ink economy. The forge also even has Inkzooka like the Tentatek. pre nerf .52 vs .96 also; I never understood why people used the .52 when the .96 deco was a thing and had MUCH more power and range while also getting an invincible special and even had the same sub as the .52. Even the Splattershot vs Nzap/splasho argument reflects this. These arguments can actually line up perfectly with the ink brush vs octo brush argument. Im not sure if Im wording this properly or making it easy to understand but Id like to know peoples opinion on this.
This is honestly the one argument ive never understood.

 

[WiseSquid]

In summary, yes. As others have said, other weapons accomplish what these can do with less trouble and fewer drawbacks.

Although I believe Inkbrushes, Rapid Blasters and even Nozzlenoses can be pretty deadly in the right hands. I recall several encounters against Rapid Blasters in particular where I had major trouble protecting myself from their harassment.

I really wanna second @binx 's statement about Sloshing Machines, as well. I haven't touched one in ages because it has a major lack of any noticeable strengths. It doesn't complement any particular playstyle particularly well... the vanilla's kit is kinda good, but then the custom/neo/whatever is atrocious.

Also wanna throw out the unpopular opinion that Bamboozlers suffer from similar problems as some of these. Way too hard to learn to see a real benefit from using. I'd rather just use a longer range shooter or a Squiffer for the sort of gameplay Bamboozling attempts to offer. Bamboozler pros will probably attack me for this, and probably make valid points considering I'm admittedly inexperienced in using them, but I just think they're pretty awful.

http://squidboards.com/guides/bamboozler-mk-iii.222/

 

[LOrbSheddy]

I definitely believe that this group of weapons is not the "worst" in the game, simply because there is no "worst". It all really depends on the player, and even though, admittedly, these weapons have a fairly steep learning curve, they can all be deadly in the right hands.

I, for one, love using these weapons because they are so niche and unconventional, and I find them really fun to play with. The Brushes are great to sneak with and the Rapid Blaster can get a lot of snappy kills when used correctly. I main the Sloshing Machine and Bamboozler, plus their variants, and with enough practice, I've gotten pretty good results, and seen others do really well with them too. And I've even gotten into using the H-3 with the advent of the Cherry being released, with great success!

Another fun point of success with these weapons as well is the psychology of the opponent when you play with them. Because they're so unconventional, or deemed "weak" or "instant-lose", a lot of squids might underestimate your strength with the weapon and let their guard down. It can also affect them negatively when you kill them multiple times with the weapon, simply because they might be thinking, "Darn, I got killed by that H-3! That's the worst weapon in the game!", or something to that effect.

Overall, if you look at the weapons as how easy they are to use, of course the more unconventional weapons are going to stick out as bad. However, there is no "worst" weapon, it all depends on the squid who wields it, and so these weapons definitely are not the worst.

 

[Cuttleshock]

Big text, so I'm covering it up.

Spoiler: Sloshing Machine propaganda

A couple of people have mentioned the Sloshing Machine. With about 360kp on SM variants and 470kp on classic Slosher variants, I think I'm reasonably well-placed to make a comparison, and I do find that the SM does loads of things that Sloshers can't. It's a lot worse at making pushes on its own, but if supported by a couple of aggressive teammates, it can subsequently make an iron wall of defence around a dual Splat Zone or to prevent a Tower from coming to its side; less so in RM and single-zone maps, but it's still really capable of stemming the flow of attacking opponents.

I've recently been doing well with it and convincing myself that I've been playing on advantageous maps or having fortunate team compositions, but I'm starting to realise that, for the SM, almost every map is advantageous, as are a good majority of 1v1 weapon match-ups. It's also a lovely weapon for preventing flanks due to its ability to zone out short-ranged Shooters and Carbons and its ability to either take an enemy out before you even see one another, or at least scare them away from that path. If Splatoon is Pokémon, the SM has generally bad stats but has Stealth Rock and a super-effective move against most other Pokémon.

I also would make the case that both of this weapon's sets are really nice. Splat Bombs further extend its reach over ledges and give it a ranged option to keep longer-ranged opponents from getting comfortable, and the Rush is great for turf control, which it does need, as it struggles to function if enemies can come from almost any direction (as long as it's a finite number of paths from the enemy base, it does well). Alternately, Point Sensors complement its supportive role and both those and the 'zooka are lovely for Rainmaker on a number of maps.

The SM is agile. That's very counter-intuitive, but I've come to the conclusion that that's something that differentiates it from blasters - for, after all, it's virtually more of a blaster than a bucket. A trait it shares with the other buckets and less so with blasters is that it can pretty much decide exactly when to make every attack, as they come after a button press, not at intervals on holding. So it's able to move around between shots. Because of its wide, tubular shots, it has a lot more leeway than Shooters or blasters when aiming in a skirmish, meaning that it can be as jumpy as it wants to confound enemy fire while still hitting them (preferably from outside their range, still, but this allows it to face off against longer-ranged Shooters as well).

I wouldn't be making this argument so long if I didn't find almost as much success playing the SM as I did with classic Sloshers (which is partly a matter of my aiming skills and partly one of their greater ability to recover ground in a turbulent solo queue environment).

 

[Elecmaw]

Completely forgot I made this topic. I didnt get any notifications for it.
I do agree that there are some draw backs but I feel every weapon has drawbacks and strengths aswell.
One thing Ive never quite understood is why people tend to make the argument that there are other weapons that accomplish the same thing in relevance to these weak weapons but most of the people that say this also say that weapons like the .52 gal, NZap, splattershot and the likes are very good weapons or more respected. Taking the spattershot as an example: why do people not bring up the argument of 'there are weapons that do it better' when thinking of that? The splattershot pro exists and does the splattershots job better by having much more range and cant be taken down to a 4 hit at the cost of ink economy. The forge also even has Inkzooka like the Tentatek. pre nerf .52 vs .96 also; I never understood why people used the .52 when the .96 deco was a thing and had MUCH more power and range while also getting an invincible special and even had the same sub as the .52. Even the Splattershot vs Nzap/splasho argument reflects this. These arguments can actually line up perfectly with the ink brush vs octo brush argument. Im not sure if Im wording this properly or making it easy to understand but Id like to know peoples opinion on this.
This is honestly the one argument ive never understood.

Because the regular splattershot(i'm talking about the weapon itself) sacrifices range and killing power for inking and mobility. I know i've overstated the importance of splatting opponents but gaining turf is also crucial, and that's something you can't do with just a bunch of splattershot pros and .96 gals alone. Yet the Splattershot has decent enough ttk to deal with threats up close, which the Aero and Inkbrush does not have. While these meta weapons are specialized at one thing(inking, splatting), they are still useable in other aspects of the team.
Not to mention, ttek has a very powerful special it can nab after turfing which gives it a method of dealing with ranged threats, so that's good. I think that a majority of the weapons commonly called out as the worst aren't because of the weapon itself, but more because of the sets they have.

H-3 tries to be a Splattershot Pro(mid-range killer), but it isn't very good at it. Nailing that one-shot consistently is unreliable and extremely difficult, and if you can't get those than you're better off with the Pro because the H-3's ttk skyrockets if you can't oneshot them with the volley. It also has a number of weaknesses the Pro doesn't(Your inkling is practically frozen in place when shooting slowing your mobility to a crawl, generally lackluster inking capacities, the aforementioned atrocious fire-rate), which puts it in a pretty bad place.
The Cherry is the best set the H-3 has, but i still don't think it can match with .96 deco. Still, it's a step-up from what it had before.

I know it's easy to deduce that i'm hampering that i want to make people stop using these weapons, but i'm not(except Aero RG, maybe). In general Skill>Tiers, but that doesn't make bad weapons any better.

 

[Sea_coffin]

Well, I'd say you need to distinguish sets. Like, .96 and .96 deco are not the same, aero MG and aero PG are not the same, and so on.

First thing I want to say is, some weapons are underestimated just because they're not meant to be a killer. If you want to play in solo, it's kinda true that having an easy-killing weapon is better than a more support or turf oriented one (it's not 100% true, but well I'll still put it this way). And some players don't take it into account. Like, the weapon is not good to kill, then it's a bad weapon. Which I feel is not true.

For example, I played twice against an inkstrike brush. He won twice. He was very dedicated to paint the whole map in his color, and he was winning this way. His ratio had very low numbers, like 1-4 in a 5 min game, but his plan was working. We were on kelp dome, and I swear by the middle of the game, both trees and center were all his color. Sure we took the lead in the first part, but in both games his teams could win in the latter part. He truly found a way to play his weapon.

So I would say if you're going to talk about bad weapons, you need to understand what the weapons is meant to do and say why it's not good at it (why others are better for instance).

Personnally, I feel the sloshing machine is not good. From what I can see it's not meant to turf, but it doesn't kill well either. It's not that good at supporting either. I'd say it's meant to make weird kills, but these are not common enough. So in most situations, you would do better as a support with more range, with burst bombs, or you'd be better with a blaster. I think a longer range would be quite interesting.

I would say the brush with mine/shield is not good either. It has absolutely no range, the shield can be pushed because of that, and even when in range it's kinda long to kill. So it's not a killing type. As a support, no range at all won't make it, only the shield. As a turfing one, you have better options.

The rapid blasters are said to be bad because they are not easy to learn, and you need to be good at finding and keeping the right distance. Sometimes you come across a good player on them and you understand they're annoying. I'm playing the two rapid ones, and the rapid pro deco myself, and I would say they're from ok to good. The pro vanilla should be ok, tthough I believe hit has one of the weakest seekers as the weapon won't charge in anyway.

About H-3, I would say the sensor-zooka one is not great, when compared to forge pro. It *has* some good points (turf coverage or ink consumption I guess), but overall I feel you can do most of the job with the forge, while you can't move the same way with the H-3. The other one is questionable as the subs are unique I believe. A little more range or a faster firerate would be better I believe. Though I would recommend using these weapons as a learning tool.

So that's my feeling about these weapons. As they are now, I would say the sloshing machine and the H3 need too much accuracy. I think squiffers are questionnable, but it might be my weakest weapons, so I can't really talk. I'm not great with chargers, so not having the range to survive is too much for me.

Edit: but there is no weapon bad enough that you can't go S+ with from my point of view.

I guess the sloshing machine is for people who want to use the bucket, but with aoe damage??

 

[Sea_coffin]

Because the regular splattershot(i'm talking about the weapon itself) sacrifices range and killing power for inking and mobility. I know i've overstated the importance of splatting opponents but gaining turf is also crucial, and that's something you can't do with just a bunch of splattershot pros and .96 gals alone. Yet the Splattershot has decent enough ttk to deal with threats up close, which the Aero and Inkbrush does not have. While these meta weapons are specialized at one thing(inking, splatting), they are still useable in other aspects of the team.
Not to mention, ttek has a very powerful special it can nab after turfing which gives it a method of dealing with ranged threats, so that's good. I think that a majority of the weapons commonly called out as the worst aren't because of the weapon itself, but more because of the sets they have.

H-3 tries to be a Splattershot Pro(mid-range killer), but it isn't very good at it. Nailing that one-shot consistently is unreliable and extremely difficult, and if you can't get those than you're better off with the Pro because the H-3's ttk skyrockets if you can't oneshot them with the volley. It also has a number of weaknesses the Pro doesn't(Your inkling is practically frozen in place when shooting slowing your mobility to a crawl, generally lackluster inking capacities, the aforementioned atrocious fire-rate), which puts it in a pretty bad place.
The Cherry is the best set the H-3 has, but i still don't think it can match with .96 deco. Still, it's a step-up from what it had before.

I know it's easy to deduce that i'm hampering that i want to make people stop using these weapons, but i'm not(except Aero RG, maybe). In general Skill>Tiers, but that doesn't make bad weapons any better.

Meh, the H3 is a high risk high reward weapon, I think of it as the awp from cs:go, as if you hit all your shots, they are dead, but if you miss yours, you are dead. Just check out this dude who seems to have mastered it

 

[KayB]

Meh, the H3 is a high risk high reward weapon, I think of it as the awp from cs:go, as if you hit all your shots, they are dead, but if you miss yours, you are dead. Just check out this dude who seems to have mastered it

well the video is cool, but it doesn't really showcase much. Ignoring the fact that he just got straight up lucky in a few exchanges, he also greatly benefited from the linear nature of Port Mackerel, which is a feature that meshes well with the single burst h-3. I think for example he'd have a much harder time in Kelp Dome or Blackbelly.


To make a note though, it's not necessarily that these weapons are "bad" per se, it's just that there are other weapons that pretty much do the same job but better, so there's no reason to choose them.