Does anyone else think the meta at the very top level still has a long way to go?

[McSquid82]

Because as I watched some of Nintendo's competitive events from last month that's what I thought. It might not be all Splash teams like it used to be but I still notice a lot of teams running at least two of them or two Ballpoints. Not to mention, from what I saw it's the lack of class diversity among the teams. Rollers, brushes, brellas, and chargers and stringers weren't used at all from what I could tell. It's really dampened my enthusiasm as a Wide Roller main to even try to enter competitive events. What do you think?

 

[starry_echo]

There's still a decent amount of variety in top level, in my opinion. Yeah ballpoint and tacticooler are seeing a lot more usage right now, but splash isn't required on any teams at this point. Much better than launch with almost every team being 1-2 sloshing machines and 2-3 splashes.

Brellas are a weaker class right now, as a person who played brella competitively for years. Tenta Sorella Brella is the main one, which I've still seen some of (the JP region has some players who have gotten tourney results with Tent!). Chargers and stringers I still see a good chunk of in most levels of play, I think it's just hard to fit on a team when inkjet is so powerful with ballpoint. You can definitely make them work in a comp though, especially in mid-level!

As far as rollers: here is probably the best roller in the NA/EU regions right now: https://twitter.com/Volty_carbone. Volty is a player for Alliance Rogue, and has gotten tons of wins against top teams in North America, such as Starburst.

To find more competitive gameplay of weapons you're interested in, try this website. You can filter based on which weapon you want to see, and there's a ton of tournament matches covered with most weapons in the game! The official tourney streams only catch one team out of the dozens that play in them, so these individual perspectives may be more of what you're looking for.

Don't give up in comp splatoon, there's a lot of downers with what's considered ""meta"" but if you approach it from a mindset of progressively improving, you'll go places!!

 

[Dessgeega]

Echo makes excellent points. Another factor to consider is, well, the meta has always been like this.

In Splatoon 1, the 96 was king for a while, then came the "zombie" QR builds. Early in Splatoon 2, the tri-slosher dominated. You'd see teams running two or more of both of those in their heyday.

People will keep running two or three of a strong weapon because that *works*, it's dominant strategy in action (google that if you're not familiar). This affects all kinds of games too, the reason why the old meme "no items, Fox only, final destination" came into being is because that kind of thing CAN happen in any competitive game. Until a future Splatoon game really shakes up how teams are built, this is going to continue.

 

[McSquid82]

I understand that, it's just I'm worried if I want to get into competitive play as a team. I'm afraid I'm going to be told or strongly suggested what weapon to use. I main the Wide Roller (Big Swig) and my concern is I'm going to get rejected by teams solely because of my main, and all because it's considered trash by the competitive community.

 

[Shayreep]

I understand that, it's just I'm worried if I want to get into competitive play as a team. I'm afraid I'm going to be told or strongly suggested what weapon to use. I main the Wide Roller (Big Swig) and my concern is I'm going to get rejected by teams solely because of my main, and all because it's considered trash by the competitive community.

This will probably happen unfortunately. The attitude of "meta is king" in splatoon is strongly prevelant and ingrained in the community, but there are teams like Sub Power Up and Cherry Limeade who take pride in playing off meta styles. Especially in lower ranks, if youre creative enough imo you can get away with a lot of off meta strats. But the road to find acceptance and like minded teammates will be harder and thats just the truth

 

[Dessgeega]

I understand that, it's just I'm worried if I want to get into competitive play as a team. I'm afraid I'm going to be told or strongly suggested what weapon to use. I main the Wide Roller (Big Swig) and my concern is I'm going to get rejected by teams solely because of my main, and all because it's considered trash by the competitive community.

Shayreep is correct, sadly. I have a friend who mains the e-liter, and they are incredibly good with it... then they joined a team that made them play ballpoint and sloshing machine and cut my friend from the team after a couple months

 

[McSquid82]

Shayreep is correct, sadly. I have a friend who mains the e-liter, and they are incredibly good with it... then they joined a team that made them play ballpoint and sloshing machine and cut my friend from the team after a couple months

That's sounds like a pretty toxic team if you ask me. When the entire team probably plays meta weapons, but the second somebody dares to play something different, they cut them? Wouldn't be a team I'd want any part of. Well, then I guess I have another request. How do I go about forming my own team then? It would be open to off meta weapons of all kinds. Want to play Wide Roller like me? Go right ahead. Splattershot Pro, Brellas, brushes are all welcome. I just want to challenge the established meta and I would welcome any like minded squids and octos.

 

[starry_echo]

I've been planning to make a post about that, I'll get on that now!

I want to mention one last thing with team comps: You can make a lot of comps that are NOT meta work. However: it's nice for a team comp to have something that can *answer* meta weapons. For instance, when splash was meta, you didn't have to run crabs to succeed! But if your team is filled with weapons that can't deal with crab (with main weapons or specials), you're going to run into problems if the opponent has two of them.
Right now, the meta is ballpoint/inkjet, so having something that can deal with inkjet in some way can be really helpful. Tacticooler is a good special for it, the aggressive sloshers and splatana stamper have positive matchups against inkjet also. Big Bubbler can even be good situationally against inkjet! I hope this helps to illustrate how building team comps against the meta still gives a lot of freedom for each player's weapon pool, without saying "just run 4 splash lmao". Meta works: it's known to work, that's why it's meta. But it's far from the only thing that works.

 

[starry_echo]

That's sounds like a pretty toxic team if you ask me. When the entire team probably plays meta weapons, but the second somebody dares to play something different, they cut them? Wouldn't be a team I'd want any part of. Well, then I guess I have another request. How do I go about forming my own team then? It would be open to off meta weapons of all kinds. Want to play Wide Roller like me? Go right ahead. Splattershot Pro, Brellas, brushes are all welcome. I just want to challenge the established meta and I would welcome any like minded squids and octos.

Here's the post for joining a team! Good luck and have fun if you decide to pursue competitive further, you definitely seem to have the desire/drive!!

Resources for the Competitive Scene: Finding/Making a Team

If you're wanting to go competitive with this game, odds are that you're wanting to find a team, or consistent group of players, to practice and improve or have fun with. These are a couple places to get started looking, and also thinking about things that will help your team not have glaring...

squidboards.com

 

[missingno]

The unfortunate reality is that it's going to be hard to find a team if you can't play any of the most common weapons teams are looking for. There's a supply and demand factor here. It's not just that the meta weapons are strong, but that most of them are flexible enough to slot into a large variety of team compositions. The hardest part of making an off-meta pick work is finding players who are interested in building around it.

In the worst case, it may only really be possible to viably build around on certain mapmodes. Swig is definitely viable on certain Zones maps, but it's hard to make a case for it elsewhere. I don't think it's something you can afford to one-trick.

The best thing you can do if you want to get into competitive is be flexible. Players may see it as a little bit selfish to expect them to play around you all the time if you can't play anything else for them when need be. If you can learn a few meta weapons and diversify your pool, you'll be a much more valuable asset, and you may have a much better time convincing your team to let you try the Swig on Flounder Zones as long as you can swap off it for something tried-and-true on other maps. Be willing to compromise.

You can look to Cherry Limeade as a team famous for playing all sorts of oddball compositions, but the way they make it work is through their versatility. They know how to play a lot of weapons, and they know when to play those weapons. They can invent a gimmick, hit you with the element of surprise, and then switch it up before you have time to figure out the counterplay.

 

[McSquid82]

The unfortunate reality is that it's going to be hard to find a team if you can't play any of the most common weapons teams are looking for. There's a supply and demand factor here. It's not just that the meta weapons are strong, but that most of them are flexible enough to slot into a large variety of team compositions. The hardest part of making an off-meta pick work is finding players who are interested in building around it.

In the worst case, it may only really be possible to viably build around on certain mapmodes. Swig is definitely viable on certain Zones maps, but it's hard to make a case for it elsewhere. I don't think it's something you can afford to one-trick.

The best thing you can do if you want to get into competitive is be flexible. Players may see it as a little bit selfish to expect them to play around you all the time if you can't play anything else for them when need be. If you can learn a few meta weapons and diversify your pool, you'll be a much more valuable asset, and you may have a much better time convincing your team to let you try the Swig on Flounder Zones as long as you can swap off it for something tried-and-true on other maps. Be willing to compromise.

You can look to Cherry Limeade as a team famous for playing all sorts of oddball compositions, but the way they make it work is through their versatility. They know how to play a lot of weapons, and they know when to play those weapons. They can invent a gimmick, hit you with the element of surprise, and then switch it up before you have time to figure out the counterplay.

I get what you're saying, I do. But I'm kind of like Peanut and Little Mac if you know what I'm talking about. I just want to challenge the meta and push it. Plus this game has a long way to go and the meta can change between now and then. There's still a lot of balance patches left.

 

[missingno]

Our understanding of the game is ever-evolving, the game will never be completely solved. But outside of balance patches massively shaking things up (and even then, most patches haven't been that disruptive), meta shifts rarely stray too far from what we know, it's not likely that the tier list is gonna flip upside down all of a sudden. Our knowledge of the game may be incomplete, but it's rarely outright wrong.

 

[Shayreep]

That's sounds like a pretty toxic team if you ask me. When the entire team probably plays meta weapons, but the second somebody dares to play something different, they cut them? Wouldn't be a team I'd want any part of. Well, then I guess I have another request. How do I go about forming my own team then? It would be open to off meta weapons of all kinds. Want to play Wide Roller like me? Go right ahead. Splattershot Pro, Brellas, brushes are all welcome. I just want to challenge the established meta and I would welcome any like minded squids and octos.

I made my own team that ive captained for over a year. I started off as member of another team, but i was dissatisfied with their goals, so me and another member left to form our own. We made a discord server and started posting in several free agent servers advertising our team. You should lay out your main ideas and goals upfront, and stick to them. Be picky about who you let on your team. It took us almost a year of shifting thru many uncommitted and mismatched members to finally locate people who we vibe with and share our goals. Its hard!! But its worth it

 

[Dessgeega]

Our understanding of the game is ever-evolving, the game will never be completely solved. But outside of balance patches massively shaking things up (and even then, most patches haven't been that disruptive), meta shifts rarely stray too far from what we know, it's not likely that the tier list is gonna flip upside down all of a sudden. Our knowledge of the game may be incomplete, but it's rarely outright wrong.

Quick Respawn suddenly becoming the dominant ability over a year into Splatoon 1 despite never receiving buffs or nerfs. The rise of tenta missiles in 2, which got buff after buff but were sat on until the Mini Splatling was used in a tourney and saw success. And now the Snipewriter is on the rise in Splatoon 3, a weapon that people have been complaining about since it's release.

Our knowledge of the game is wrong all the time and meta shifts can be wild and unexpected, as history has shown. And for the most part, such innovation isn't going to come from the NA community. Yeah, a handful of people do experiment in the west, like Starburst and Cherry Limeade, but for the most part high-level play consists of people shouting THIS IS THE META until some Japanese or European player pulls off a cool stunt and changes their mind.

By definition, "Meta" usually just means the easiest thing that gets results. Nearly every weapon is viable but that's different from meta. There's always going to be value in experimentation because that's how meta shifts occur, outside of patch notes hitting the game like an earthquake, but traditionally western players aren't too interested in such experimentation and so here we are.

 

[Shayreep]

^ Agree. meta isnt "The Most Efficient Weapon To Play". Meta is an opinion. An ever changing reaction to an action. Thats good because it gives anyone at any level the ability to shake it up

 

[McSquid82]

I agree with all of the stuff people have been saying here. In addition to the Wide Roller/Big Swig I also like to use the vanilla Splattershot Pro. The Angle Shooter might not be the best sub, but it does mark opponents. It also has the Crab Tank which I enjoy a lot, and I also prefer it over the Splash-o-Matic for a few reasons. It might not be as ink efficient or as accurate, but it does have a massive range and power advantage, splatting in 3 shots as opposed to 4. And a lot of that stuff can be mitigated somewhat with an optimal gear build.