Clash blaster: doomed enternal

[Vidknight]

When it comes to splatoon low tiers there are a number of reason why they're like that. It could be the main weapon not really being strong, it being out classed by a different option, it could be getting a bad kit 5 times in a row (Totally not talking about dapples). All of these can easily be fixed with balances changes or a good kit (DAPPLES!!!). But there is one weapon in my opinion that is pretty much forever screwed. I'm not keeping it a secret you saw the title its clash

Clash blaster is this unique specimen of a weapon, on paper it sounds OP, a weapon that shoots large AOE hitboxes with the fastest fire rate of the blasters? Until you look at the downsides of this weapon and OH BOY is the downsides punishing. The weapon has no paint, short range, and a slow freaking kill time.

Would you be surprised that the weapon who has like one upside and dozens of downsides is a bad weapon? "Ok knight" says the random internal monologue inside my head. "We can fix this just give it a good kit". Which might be true for every other weapon in the game except this one. The weapon has splat bomb, zooka. The best kit it could possibly get aside from burst, or fizzy. and it still struggles a lot.

Alright so the weapon already got the best kit it can get, so maybe we should just buff it, right?

wrong

Clash blaster can't be buffed at all. Main reason being how strong it is in lower levels of play and if it was buffed it would be a bigger struggle for lower level players than it already is. I always like to compare this weapon to little mac from smash. against players with less experience it seems impossible to fight. But quite quickly these options fall off harder than a bag of bricks tossed down the stairs. So now clash blaster is just in permanent limbo

Can't buff it or else the weapon would become a bigger problem in lower level of play, and you can't nerf it or else it will become even more useless in high levels of play. Maybe I'm wrong and there is a way to buff the weapon, while keeping its gimmick, and not becoming a problem for some players. But the weapons had only gotten 2 buffs and they are more recent.

The more I think about it, the more I think that this weapon is just unhealthy for the game, and has like no shot of being fixed

 

[OnePotWonder]

The most I could ever be surprised is if they bring back the weapon in the next game. There are a few eternal low-tiers that I could see Nintendo bring back for later games; Bloblobber, Goo Tuber, and Undercover Brella can all be fixed, Nintendo loves shooters and the visual design of Aerospray is legitimately one of the best in its class, and Dapples just need a good kit.
Clash Blaster has no excuse for returning in Splatoon 4; it's a weapon with practically no skill expression, a polarizing power level in casual versus competitive play, and it looks stupid, so not even my Aerospray argument works for it. It can't be saved with a kit, it can't be buffed in a way that makes it better in competitive play, and it frankly doesn't deserve to exist in the first place.
I sincerely hope Nintendo comes to their senses in the next game and starts removing weapons like Clash Blaster.

 

[isaac4]

The most I could ever be surprised is if they bring back the weapon in the next game. There are a few eternal low-tiers that I could see Nintendo bring back for later games; Bloblobber, Goo Tuber, and Undercover Brella can all be fixed, Nintendo loves shooters and the visual design of Aerospray is legitimately one of the best in its class, and Dapples just need a good kit.
Clash Blaster has no excuse for returning in Splatoon 4; it's a weapon with practically no skill expression, a polarizing power level in casual versus competitive play, and it looks stupid, so not even my Aerospray argument works for it. It can't be saved with a kit, it can't be buffed in a way that makes it better in competitive play, and it frankly doesn't deserve to exist in the first place.
I sincerely hope Nintendo comes to their senses in the next game and starts removing weapons like Clash Blaster.

I think there has to be a way to rework all these low tier weapons like Clash and Blob in a way that would make them healthier for the game.
Though it would probably be something so far off what the main weapon currently is you could argue that it would make them an entirely different weapon at that point.

Regardless, Clash is still trapped in this low tier prison because of the way it was designed so if the devs aren't willing to completely rework it then I rather have the weapon not come back in S4.

 

[Vidknight]

The most I could ever be surprised is if they bring back the weapon in the next game. There are a few eternal low-tiers that I could see Nintendo bring back for later games; Bloblobber, Goo Tuber, and Undercover Brella can all be fixed, Nintendo loves shooters and the visual design of Aerospray is legitimately one of the best in its class, and Dapples just need a good kit.
Clash Blaster has no excuse for returning in Splatoon 4; it's a weapon with practically no skill expression, a polarizing power level in casual versus competitive play, and it looks stupid, so not even my Aerospray argument works for it. It can't be saved with a kit, it can't be buffed in a way that makes it better in competitive play, and it frankly doesn't deserve to exist in the first place.
I sincerely hope Nintendo comes to their senses in the next game and starts removing weapons like Clash Blaster.

While a little harsh I do have to STRONGLY agree. The only real argument I can think of keeping clash is that it has it fans. But I got to be honest that argument also has some holes in it. One of my biggest reason being, not really.

For example let take some weapon you listed Goo and Dapples has a cult like following of loyal players from what I seen

Undercover and Blob while not on the level of goo and dapples do have their fair share of fans and lovers

Even Aerospray while not really liked by more competitive players do have a lot of casual players as their fans

Clash is the weapon that I have seen very, VERY little love for. The rare cases I do see someone mention something about liking clash it is always followed by them admitting that they like Luna, S-blast, blaster, or tri more.

I never really like doing discussions about what weapons to cut from splatoon since I can see an argument for why every one should be kept. But clash is the one weapon, next to missiles that I would most likely toss out if I ever have to do so.

 

[OnePotWonder]

I think there has to be a way to rework all these low tier weapons like Clash and Blob in a way that would make them healthier for the game.
Though it would probably be something so far off what the main weapon currently is you could argue that it would make them an entirely different weapon at that point.

Regardless, Clash is still trapped in this low tier prison because of the way it was designed so if the devs aren't willing to completely rework it then I rather have the weapon not come back in S4.

I've figured out how to fix most of the low tiers.

Nova needs much better, if not perfect grounded accuracy. Its shots always have a 10% chance to miss; cut that down to <3%.
Big Swig is actually decent, funny enough it's seen some tournament use. It needs better damage scaling for its two-shots.
Goo Tuber is easy, it just needs a simple charge speed buff. A significant one, maybe 10 frames, but a simple one.

Bloblobber needs better projectile speed; I was thinking this could be combined with making the first blob stronger to justify preventing the others from bouncing across floors.
Mini and Dapples both need new kits. I was thinking Curling Bomb + Super Chump for Mini and Autobomb + Inkjet for Dapples.
Undercover Brella needs a better kill time, so I was thinking it should be able to two-shot if it doesn't use its shield.

The closest I've come to fixing Clash is giving it a bunch of nerfs, including its blast damage falling off such that it's a five-shot splat at the edges of its radius, and then justifying it all with 75 direct damage for a direct-indirect combo. They might be able to make it a good painter, but that would have to come with more nerfs to counteract its special usage.

 

[vitellary]

i definitely think the best solution is to just completely scrap the clash blaster for splatoon 4. however i think there's almost no chance nintendo actually does that, i think they care a lot about preserving content from previous games for the most part. so, i instead started thinking about how you could theoretically completely rework its mechanics for splatoon 4: a brand new blaster concept that replaces the current concept for the clash, because its current concept is unsalvageable

the conclusion i came to was something i think could be pretty fun: what if we made the clash a burst-fire blaster, like an L-3? you could increase its firerate slightly, increase its paint output greatly, but at the cost of making it so that you only get burst of 3 projectiles, with traditional blaster endlag between them. you'd probably want to increase its travel range and reduce its blast radius to be more standard too, but you wouldn't even have to change its damage; getting 90 damage off of 3 indirects is valuable but punishable, and can be improved by landing at least one direct
i also think it suits the visual design of the clash pretty well, with the belt of crayons kinda resembling a revolver, to me at least. you could make it so the belt does a full rotation during a full round of shots

it also opens the door to make an H-3 equivalent of it, which i think would be very cool too, though i'm unsure how you'd balance it... it feels like such a thing should have the capability to deal lethal damage if it hits all of its AoE, but that sounds potentially too strong. idk, not the purpose of this post

 

[briank913]

This makes me wanna 5 star Clash

 

[missingno]

Honestly, I think Nintendo knows that certain things should stay low tier. It's stayed in the trash for so long, long enough that it has to be a conscious decision. And I think that decision is correct. I would argue it's a higher priority to just make sure the meta is healthy, that the top tiers are fun to play as and against, than to try to make 100+ weapons all perfectly equal. I honestly don't want to play a game in which Clash is meta.

Assuming S4 doesn't radically overhaul the kit system, which I still wish it would, I think they should start trimming the fat and cutting main weapons until they can all have three kits again. Clash would be first on the chopping block if so.

If they replace it with a totally different Blaster that has more room for skill expression, well then that's a different weapon.

 

[youre_a_squib_now]

what if the damage was like range blaster where instead of indirects doing a consistent amount of damage, they do different amounts depending on how close to the center the shot is.

My idea for how this would work is the minimum damage would be 20, the maximum damage would be 40, and the direct damage would be 65. This makes directs even more rewarding than they already are because it still guarantees two indirects will kill, but now it also opens up the possibility of only needing one of its close enough. Without directs, fairly close indirects can three shot. It'll still four shot a lot of the time, and at the edge it can even five shot. Realistically the only situation where the five shot will actually happen is when it's being used to hit around cover and trap opponents, which is the most annoying part about that, so making it less strong is good. Also, now that it can kill with 1 less indirect, it's fair to reduce the fire rate by 1 frame, which increases that time but more importantly increases the time it takes to 5 shot, which is again the most annoying part. Plus it gives more time between shots, giving opponents slightly more control when being shot at because their feet are being painted slower.
Although this gives it more ways to kill reliant on close indirects, it is also nerfed by a frame and still doesn't have good ways to get in. and for that I have no idea.

 

[McSquid82]

Honestly, I think it's best they just leave the weapon alone. Being annoying and being broken are two completely different things. If the Clash was really that much of a problem then it would be dominating the meta. But it's not, and because people conflate being annoying with nerf it into the sun or remove it is how we get threads like this. I personally think it's just fine where it's at and more buffs can only help it. Did the recent mobility buff break the game in any way? No, it didn't. It's called accessibility, and that's the reason why weapons like the Clash and Aerospray exist. If people play it and want to move on to more technically demanding weapons, that's fine. But to call for harsh nerfs or even removal of weapons is taking it a step too far.

 

[isaac4]

Honestly, I think it's best they just leave the weapon alone. Being annoying and being broken are two completely different things. If the Clash was really that much of a problem then it would be dominating the meta. But it's not, and because people conflate being annoying with nerf it into the sun or remove it is how we get threads like this. I personally think it's just fine where it's at and more buffs can only help it. Did the recent mobility buff break the game in any way? No, it didn't. It's called accessibility, and that's the reason why weapons like the Clash and Aerospray exist. If people play it and want to move on to more technically demanding weapons, that's fine. But to call for harsh nerfs or even removal of weapons is taking it a step too far.

I don't think anyone is calling for nerfs but I don't see why removing weapons would be going too far.
Clash isn't really that interesting or well liked so why not have the devs rework the concept of the weapon into something that players will enjoy playing with and fighting against a lot more?
This isn't the best example but the closest comparison I can think of right now is Little Mac in Smash.
A character that makes it so a match is both unfun for the player playing Little Mac and the player fighting him because of the way he was designed.
Of course it wouldn't ruin the next entry if Clash came back exactly how it is now but I think the devs could do something better with the concept of a short range, rapid fire blaster.

 

[youre_a_squib_now]

Honestly, I think it's best they just leave the weapon alone. Being annoying and being broken are two completely different things. If the Clash was really that much of a problem then it would be dominating the meta. But it's not, and because people conflate being annoying with nerf it into the sun or remove it is how we get threads like this. I personally think it's just fine where it's at and more buffs can only help it. Did the recent mobility buff break the game in any way? No, it didn't. It's called accessibility, and that's the reason why weapons like the Clash and Aerospray exist. If people play it and want to move on to more technically demanding weapons, that's fine. But to call for harsh nerfs or even removal of weapons is taking it a step too far.

I don't think anyone is saying clash blaster is broken. Quite the opposite, in fact; just look at the title if this thread.

The reason some people are suggesting nerfs are because they are also suggesting buffs to go along with them, in the hope that the buffs and nerfs together will make the weapon more fun, less annoying, and maybe slightly more viable competitively. It's mostly pointless but it's fun to try anyway.

 

[McSquid82]

I don't think anyone is calling for nerfs but I don't see why removing weapons would be going too far.
Clash isn't really that interesting or well liked so why not have the devs rework the concept of the weapon into something that players will enjoy playing with and fighting against a lot more?
This isn't the best example but the closest comparison I can think of right now is Little Mac in Smash.
A character that makes it so a match is both unfun for the player playing Little Mac and the player fighting him because of the way he was designed.
Of course it wouldn't ruin the next entry if Clash came back exactly how it is now but I think the devs could do something better with the concept of a short range, rapid fire blaster.

I don't know, maybe because clash is the short range, rapid fire blaster? Would it be fair to players like Peanut or Tarakotori who just won a tournament with the aforementioned Little Mac in a Smash tournament in Japan? My whole point is, removing it isn't fair to people who put the work in with these weapons and characters to remove them.

 

[isaac4]

I don't know, maybe because clash is the short range, rapid fire blaster? Would it be fair to players like Peanut or Tarakotori who just won a tournament with the aforementioned Little Mac in a Smash tournament in Japan? My whole point is, removing it isn't fair to people who put the work in with these weapons and characters to remove them.

Plenty of players put work into their characters from previous entries that were then taken out of the next game or changed enough to the point that those players chose to play someone else instead.
Smash Ultimate was an exception that I doubt will be repeated in the next game so your main being taken out will be something the playerbase will just have to deal with, you can't make everyone happy.
Talking about the unhealthy design of Little Mac would also be getting off topic but I was a competitor before so I know this from experience.

Getting back on point, I already said it earlier but you can't make everyone in the playerbase happy.
Clash players would obviously be disappointed but right now Clash is the only weapon that fills in that short range, rapid fire blaster role and it's not doing anything interesting with that idea.
I'm not saying to get rid of the weapon just because of that but to rework the concept of what it is into something that the larger Splatoon playerbase can enjoy better.
It's an idea for how the main weapon could change that wouldn't require it stay as a low tier. It doesn't need to be a strong weapon either but I don't believe that there should be any low tier weapons in the game with the same problem Clash currently has.

 

[missingno]

Would it be fair to players like Peanut or Tarakotori who just won a tournament with the aforementioned Little Mac in a Smash tournament in Japan? My whole point is, removing it isn't fair to people who put the work in with these weapons and characters to remove them.

I actually have some pretty strong opinions on Smash's quantity-over-quality approach. It's unsustainable and something's gonna have to give in Smash 6. But once Smash did "Everyone is here!" once, fans will be upset if they don't do it again, I expect a riot to break out.

Look at every other fighting game where it's totally normal that not every character is in every game. Is it 'unfair' to Robo-Ky players that he's not in Guilty Gear Strive? (Yes it is, bring him back ArcSys)

Perhaps the real problem here is how we condition player expectations. In many other games, players are already used to having to find new mains in the next title, no one complains because they've known that this is what moving to a new game is like. If you've played these games for long enough, you've had to do it several times over already.

Splatoon is a game where many players are used to playing multiple weapons already, changing mains as the meta keeps shifting. Even just having different kits between games means you have to get used to some change no matter what. And learning a new weapon in this game is arguably a lot easier than learning a new character in a fighting game, fewer moving parts.

But Splatoon has remained fully iterative up until this point, only one main weapon (Dual Squelcher) has ever been cut. Even though changing mains is common for many players, it's never been mandatory. So there are still some players who have gotten attached to one main weapon and never switched because they haven't been outright forced to. And the longer they stay attached, the harder they're gonna take it if they suddenly have to find a new main next time.

So, does that mean cuts should never ever happen? If we keep trying to carry every weapon forward forever, that might seem okay for now in Splatoon 3, but the cracks will show in S4, and there's no way it will still work by the time we get to S6 or S7. If we look long-term, it's obvious that we have to rip the band-aid off at some point, but waiting too long to do so makes it harder and harder when the inevitable has to happen.

Actually, I think the cracks are already showing, having too many main weapons is why we only got two kits each in S3. I would rather have a focused pool of fewer main weapons with more kits, especially if those fewer weapons can be better balanced and better designed.

 

[isaac4]

I actually have some pretty strong opinions on Smash's quantity-over-quality approach. It's unsustainable and something's gonna have to give in Smash 6. But once Smash did "Everyone is here!" once, fans will be upset if they don't do it again, I expect a riot to break out.

Look at every other fighting game where it's totally normal that not every character is in every game. Is it 'unfair' to Robo-Ky players that he's not in Guilty Gear Strive? (Yes it is, bring him back ArcSys)

Perhaps the real problem here is how we condition player expectations. In many other games, players are already used to having to find new mains in the next title, no one complains because they've known that this is what moving to a new game is like. If you've played these games for long enough, you've had to do it several times over already.

Splatoon is a game where many players are used to playing multiple weapons already, changing mains as the meta keeps shifting. Even just having different kits between games means you have to get used to some change no matter what. And learning a new weapon in this game is arguably a lot easier than learning a new character in a fighting game, fewer moving parts.

But Splatoon has remained fully iterative up until this point, only one main weapon (Dual Squelcher) has ever been cut. Even though changing mains is common for many players, it's never been mandatory. So there are still some players who have gotten attached to one main weapon and never switched because they haven't been outright forced to. And the longer they stay attached, the harder they're gonna take it if they suddenly have to find a new main next time.

So, does that mean cuts should never ever happen? If we keep trying to carry every weapon forward forever, that might seem okay for now in Splatoon 3, but the cracks will show in S4, and there's no way it will still work by the time we get to S6 or S7. If we look long-term, it's obvious that we have to rip the band-aid off at some point, but waiting too long to do so makes it harder and harder when the inevitable has to happen.

Actually, I think the cracks are already showing, having too many main weapons is why we only got two kits each in S3. I would rather have a focused pool of fewer main weapons with more kits, especially if those fewer weapons can be better balanced and better designed.

They probably could have still done 3rd kits for every weapon in S3 anyway but I do agree that it most likely played a factor.
It makes sense that weapons will have to be cut eventually though, I just didn't think that the effects of that have already started in S3.

 

[McSquid82]

Once again, this is why I'm glad the developers and not random people on message boards are in charge of Splatoon. Cutting weapons just for the sake of salt over losing to them and kits is the worst take I've ever heard on Squidboards.

 

[isaac4]

Once again, this is why I'm glad the developers and not random people on message boards are in charge of Splatoon. Cutting weapons just for the sake of salt over losing to them and kits is the worst take I've ever heard on Squidboards.

No one is saying that though?? The discussion has been a lot more complex than just "Clash is annoying".

 

[sevenleaf]

splatoon 4 should have only clash blaster

 

[McSquid82]

No one is saying that though?? The discussion has been a lot more complex than just "Clash is annoying".

Really, because that's primarily what I'm hearing. "Clash is annoying and unhealthy, so might as well cut it". "My main didn't get the kit I wanted, so might as well cut other people's weapons". Really, you could say that about almost any weapon in the game. Like I just said, I'm glad the people making these suggestions aren't anywhere near the actual development team.