If we get anything from Sheldon it'll probably be that the Splash Wall vaguely lets you "cover for the weapon firing slowly" and Triple Splashdown is a way to punish people for getting too close. I admittedly don't have much to back this up, but something gives me the feeling that before this special came out and while the developers were still working on it they severely underestimated how many trades would happen with it. Like people would prioritize themselves not dying over killing the opponent when Splashdown is used or something. Either way it's definitely a panic button. The positions you'd need to take to use it for anything else are either too hard to ask any Explosher to get to or are already covered by it hitting over cover well.
For kit design in general, I think the point of extra kits is to give weapons access to multiple unique playstyles in one game or to let people play to the strengths of a main weapon in different ways. The vanilla Explosher is probably meant to directly take out other people easier and support teammates a bit better by hunting people down after marking them or sometimes chipping them with Ink Storm. The Custom Explosher would probably meant to sacrifice some of that to keep itself alive for longer. It's still a backline so the differences between the two kits won't be too crazy, and the execution is horrible beyond words in this case, but the thought is still there.
In general I think people kind of exaggerate on and are a little harsh towards Nintendo for being as out-of-touch as they are, although I totally understand being upset over this. Explosher is one of several weapons that kinda needs boosts and has been given nothing outside of an empty promise that "maybe its next kit will be better" where Explo players ultimately got screwed out of even that. Some ideas are going to work and some just aren't. Competitive Splatoon has a lot of nuance to it and I can't expect the developers to see eye-to-eye with both casual and competitive players on every single thing across several languages and five different game modes. The issues with Triple Splashdown may have seemed fairly obvious to us but when it sees so little direct use at top level I could totally see it being difficult to have much takeaway for why. Like they definitely know "people die when they use it" judging from Splatoon 2 patch notes even if there was no saving it at that point, and I can't imagine why they'd want to revert some of the buffs they gave it unless they genuinely think they fixed whatever its problem with dying was.
I'm no apologist, like I'll always agree that we're getting kits WAY too slowly and there's no world where I can justify TTek and Neo Splash both existing even when trying to imagine their point of view. I just think this train of thought much better than getting confused and pissed off every time something I don't like happens here. The problems will still remain, Explosher still only has one real kit, but it's not as bad as thinking it's from lack of care.
