To add a bit to this, i think this would fit best for rm specifically, bc unless you get to a checkpoint/goal, every rm push *will* result in a downed teammate
im not a fan of firefin, ill run vcharger for rm and some clams maps but im more consistent with liter. idk if its a placebo thing but im way more consistent with liter, i swear it has better shot velocity or something. its a skill issue it takes too much thinking to use a wall, i'd rather just be out of their range than to worry about placing a good wall, or have bombs for displacing/forcing people into my line of sight
Fully charged liter shots move at 9.6 units per frame, fully charged splat charger shots only move at 4.8 units per frame. 4.8 is still super fast, like, second only to liter.
thats probably why, i used to play through a capture card until recently, delay and all, so i was probably carried by liter's shot velocity when i had to predict movement more xD
To put it quite simply
my personal playstyle leans a lot more towards how coolerless would play, but i still find success with cooler. i think the biggest issue rn with cooler is people constantly running it to cover up bad habits, and therefore not improving in the places they need to be (which also kinda leads into people not knowing when to differentiate between experimenting/improving and playing to win but thats a whole other discussion i could start). that's one reason why i was really interested when i heard from bear you guys were going coolerless, i knew for a fact your team would improve a lot more quickly because of it (and grats on that btw!).
cooler being "required" has been a huge scam for a while now, and like i said i think it gets in the way of people actually improving because of how cooler obscures bad habits by making them less punishing and leading people to think theyre smaller issues. but i do agree that at/near top level, when youre maximally effecient with your time and space, cooler is most likely required. I just wish people understood more that if youre not at/near that top level, youd get more out of playing without cooler, especially if your weapon doesnt benefit much from it.
i mean i don't fully agree with that either lol, I think cooler is strong for a reason and i think it's unfair to call it just a crutch/claim that you should intentionally avoid running it to "get better faster"
sorry if my language was vague, cus thats not exactly what i was getting at /gen. what i more meant was people are using cooler as a crutch, not that it inherently is one. but still because of that, its harder for people to understand where they need to improve at because of how cooler works. as a midlevel player, its something i see a lot of people stuck with, because they constantly play with cooler and only in pickups, and dont really see how some of their faults are affecting their games because of cooler's effect on teamplay. theres a bigger discussion to be had about effectively playing to improve over playing to purely win, but a lot of what i see in midlevel would be fixed if people played less to win with cooler constantly and more to improve their awareness, teamplay, or coordination. we can agree to disagree on this, because like i said, this is mostly based on my observations of midlevel players lacking everything but mechanics, as a midlevel player who is the inverse of that.
i never claimed those top teams wouldnt beat me, and im more talking about improvement here (this point just feels out of left field to me in general?). my point is there are tools (ie map awareness, teammate awareness, playstyle synergy, fight coordination, etc) that you use in this game regardless of specific strategy, regardless of having cooler or not, that you will have to get as good at as you possibly can to be at the top, and cooler often obscures those tools to many players. said players put less focus on those tools, and think cooler will fill in for their shortcomings in those tools, when in reality what wins most often is cooler in tandem with said tools. therefore, if these players want to improve more, they should use cooler less to make them less reliant on how they use it as a crutch. again, this is mostly based off my observations of other midlevel players, as a midlevel player, but it seems to be a thought process people bring from low level and dont think twice about.
sorry, the second part of my comment was directed at the general "you" of people that focus (imo too much) on making "good" comps, I think you and I are on the same page about that