Fixing Shooters 102

[OnePotWonder]

Shooters are a mixed bag when it comes to weapon class balance. Highly overpowered and pathetically weak weapons stand side by side in the shooter weapon roster. The class is so unapologetically simple that it's able to have the most diverse array of weapons in the game, however in doing so it has the highest margin for error, and error it indeed has.

This thread will cover some ideas I have for fixing the shooter class, from toning down the overpowered aspects of dominant meta shooters to raising up the bottom-tier shooters by realizing their untapped potential. Without further ado, sit back and enjoy!

Shooters will be covered in the order they are unlocked.

Splattershot Jr.
Ink tank capacity decreased from 110% → 100%
Now has a consistent 12% chance to shoot toward the outer reticle
Damage per shot increased from 28 → 30

Splattershot Jr. is the perfect starter weapon, with a heavy focus on inking turf and being mechanically unchallenging. It larger ink tank gimmick only really helps the weapon spam more bombs, and for the most part makes it more annoying. Splattershot Nova's gimmick of having no accuracy falloff would suit it much better, and 30 damage compensates for its significant nerf.

Splattershot
Ink consumption increased from 0.92% → 1.2% per shot

Splattershot is a generalist weapon that's good at virtually everything, and could use a tone-back. Ink efficiency is the best target, not only reducing the weapon's uptime slightly, but also making it harder for the weapon to take advantage of its bombs. The lesser ink efficiency nerfs I would give to other meta shooters would be healthy for the same reason.

Aerospray
Accuracy falloff now scales exponentially, starting at a 3% → 1% accuracy decrease per shot, and adding 0.5% with each shot
Initial chance to shoot wide decreased from 6% → 1%

Aerospray is one of the weakest shooters, outclassed by several other support shooters, with its main competition being Splattershot Jr.. The cleverest way to set it apart from Jr., if you ask me, is to give it the opposite of its gimmick; high initial accuracy with fast falloff scaling. This buff would make Aerospray much more capable at fighting and (with the right kit) give it reason to be used over Jr..

N-ZAP
Damage per shot decreased from 30 → 26
Ink consumption increased from 0.8% → 0.9% per shot

N-ZAP received many buffs during peak Snipewriter meta in an attempt to make it a contender with the pencil. Now that it can produce more of its special than Snipewriter, it feels a bit overtuned. The main is supposed to be a support/skirmisher hybrid with its high paint output and strafe speed, so damage is a good target for nerfs; making it slightly worse at fighting than other support shooters.

Splattershot Nova
Accuracy while grounded is now unerring

Splattershot Nova is the weakest shooter in terms of main weapons. Its slow time to splat is compounded by its accuracy issues. As such, I simply removed its accuracy issues. With unerring accuracy, Nova would be encouraged to take more fights and not have to rely on its special weapon to get splats; a huge and necessary improvement.

Sploosh-o-matic and Splattershot Pro
No changes

Not only are these two shooters the only ones unlocked at the same level, they're also the only ones that need no main weapon changes. Splattershot Pro's main issue comes from it being outclassed by Squeezer, which will be addressed later, while Sploosh-o-matic's best kit is mediocre. These two weapons are both in unpleasant spots, but main weapon buffs aren't the solutions to fixing them.

.52 Gal
Fire rate decreased from 6.66 → 6 shots per second
Ink consumption increased from 1.3% → 1.9% per shot

Of all the shooters on this list, .52 Gal is the biggest target for nerfs thanks to its complete lack of vulnerabilities and its obscene time to splat. A one frame nerf to its fire rate puts it more in line with the other shooters, and the particularly harsh ink efficiency nerf takes the edge off of its overbearing map presence by reducing its uptime.

L-3 Nozzlenose
Accuracy while mid-air is now unerring

The first of the semi-automatics, L-3 Nozzlenose was robbed of nearly everything it was worth in the transition from Splatoon 2 to Splatoon 3; its lost its one-burst splat with Main Power Up, and its Burst Bomb + Inkjet kit. While it will never fully return to its former glory, perfect mid-air accuracy is as close as it's going to get to fair compensation.

Jet Squelcher
End lag increased by 1 frame
Ink consumption increased from 1.6% → 1.7% per shot

The only "weak" shooter on the list to receive nerfs, Jet Squelcher is a terror appropriately handicapped by its kits. Its time to splat is ridiculous for how much range it has, but it doesn't hold a candle to its mobility, which is what I'm targeting with its nerf. With it being a bit slower, Jet should be a bit easier to pin down with flank attacks, or if it pushes too far forward.

Splash-o-matic
Ink consumption increased from 0.8% → 0.9% per shot

Splash-o-matic is very close to needing zero nerfs, but its Neo kit spams a few too many bombs, and its main competitor N-ZAP was nerfed in the exact same way. Splash is for the most part a very well-designed shooter, but it isn't completely without its issues; a slight tone back to its ink efficiency would be all it needs to be practically perfect.

.96 Gal
Damage per shot increased from 62 → 68

Almost every weapon that ran Main Power Up in Splatoon 2 has received some form of compensation buff in Splatoon 3, save for the .96 Gal. This is its compensation buff; a bit more damage on its shots to let it combo with weapons that deal 35 damage.

Squeezer
Maximum tap fire rate decreased from 7.5 → 6.66 shots per second
Tap fire damage increased from 38 → 42

The changes to Squeezer remain my favorite; it gets a marginally longer time to splat at a distance such that it no longer hard outclasses Splattershot Pro, its mashing requirement is made a bit softer, and to compensate it gains the ability to combo its first shot with two shots of its painting mode fire. Squeezer trades overbearing long-range kill power for more flexibility. Pretty perfect, if I say so myself.

H-3 Nozzlenose
Burst cooldown decreased from 20 → 18 frames
Ink consumption decreased from 6.75% → 5.7% per burst

H-3 Nozzlenose, the final and most difficult of all the shooters, and for whatever reason, also one of the weakest. Well, not anymore. Its ink efficiency nerf from the end of Splatoon 2 would be mostly reverted, and its burst fire rate would be increased along with its end lag being decreased. We need more good Tacticooler options? There you go.


If you made it all the way to the end of this post (again), thank you for taking the time to read it!
Feel free to discuss these changes. By which I mean please do; I wholeheartedly encourage it, and I spent a lot of time on this.
And, as always, have a wonderful day.

 

[Masked_Katz]

One thing that I will never understand is how many people think annoying weapon = overpowered/meta weapon. Why take away Jr.'s ink tank capacity? Players who use it to only spam bombs are annoying but even those who know how to use its main weapon and special often are still encouraged not to play the weapon in competitive because it's a solid B tier even at its fullest potential.

This feels like you're punishing it for being a shooter with a unique gimmick that's being taken advantage of rather than preventing it from being a threat to the health of the meta.

 

[OnePotWonder]

Why take away Jr.'s ink tank capacity?

Because it makes the weapon more annoying? That should be reason enough to remove it in favour of some other strength. I would have done more for the weapon, but it’s not easy to buff. If you have any ideas, I’m all ears.

 

[Masked_Katz]

That should be reason enough to remove it in favour of some other strength.

What is its new strength? The gimmick you chose is already taken and its from one of the worst weapons in the game that I've never heard of being praised for having that. Again, the Jr. is already mid and isn't a threat to the weapons in the game that are actually hard to counter properly. This is like the people who argue that Clash Blaster needs to be removed from the game because they don't know how to properly fight it, even though it's considered to be even worse than the Jr. in the grand scheme of things.

I don't think the weapon doesn't need to be changed, and I'd argue most of the shooters don't need to be grouped up in this either.

 

[neonscreenlight]

Because it makes the weapon more annoying?

a weapon being annoying to fight isn't a bad thing, that's ideally what a skirmisher would do- annoy an enemy to keep them engaged in the fight

 

[Mp3]

The ink tank capacity is for new players- so they don’t get frustrated and stop playing too early. I notice that in splatoon 3 it’s not visual enlargement on the tank, unlike splatoon 2.

 

[isaac4]

One thing that I will never understand is how many people think annoying weapon = overpowered/meta weapon. Why take away Jr.'s ink tank capacity? Players who use it to only spam bombs are annoying but even those who know how to use its main weapon and special often are still encouraged not to play the weapon in competitive because it's a solid B tier even at its fullest potential.

This feels like you're punishing it for being a shooter with a unique gimmick that's being taken advantage of rather than preventing it from being a threat to the health of the meta.

The ink tank isn't being nerfed for being overpowered, it's being nerfed to prevent bomb spam which is a playstyle that the devs themselves have tried to tone back throughout Splatoon 3.
A weapon doesn't need to be at the top of the meta to warrant any nerfs.

This is like the people who argue that Clash Blaster needs to be removed from the game because they don't know how to properly fight it, even though it's considered to be even worse than the Jr. in the grand scheme of things.

Most of the arguments I've seen about removing Clash don't come from complaints about fighting it but rather because the design of the main weapon isn't healthy for the game, similar to something like Bloblobber.
The weapon is stuck in a place where it completely dominates more casuals players but can't do anything in higher levels and it's impossible to buff it in a way that would actually help with that without making it a problem in lower levels.
Maybe there are some solutions I'm not seeing but that's generally the argument being made for removing it.

 

[isaac4]

I should clarify that I don't actually believe that nerfing Jr.'s ink tank is a good thing.
As much as I hate how Jr. plays, it's designed to be the first weapon a new player has access to and the better ink efficiency is just part of the weapons identity.

 

[Masked_Katz]

The ink tank isn't being nerfed for being overpowered, it's being nerfed to prevent bomb spam which is a playstyle that the devs themselves have tried to tone back throughout Splatoon 3.

Maybe I'm looking into it too deep, but I feel like gutting a subpar weapon of its main strength just because its annoying to fight goes against the idea of "toning down the overpowered aspects of dominant meta shooters". I get the intention though, and I apologize if I have been harsh, I just am frustrated with finding so many people grouping these two things together.

Most of the arguments I've seen about removing Clash don't come from complaints about fighting it but rather because the design of the main weapon isn't healthy for the game, similar to something like Bloblobber.

What I'm trying to say is how can you even nerf or change a weapon that's core design is annoying to play against without robbing its mains' of its identity in the first place? Whether it be Jr., Clash Blaster, Bloblobber, etc. It's fair if you would want a future game to totally overhaul or even remove these weapons - I'm not even a fan of fighting those last two myself - but I feel like this approach is hard to take without being biased or taking away from players who don't even have much to go off of in the first place.

 

[isaac4]

Maybe I'm looking into it too deep, but I feel like gutting a subpar weapon of its main strength just because its annoying to fight goes against the idea of "toning down the overpowered aspects of dominant meta shooters".



What I'm trying to say is how can you even nerf or change a weapon that's core design is annoying to play against without robbing its mains' of its identity in the first place? Whether it be Jr., Clash Blaster, Bloblobber, etc. It's fair if you would want a future game to totally overhaul or even remove these weapons - I'm not even a fan of fighting those last two myself - but I feel like this approach is hard to take without being biased or taking away from players who don't even have much to go off of in the first place.

All of this is totally fair and I agree with the problem that comes with nerfing the main strength of a weapon.

 

[missingno]

Jr.'s ink tank is a totally unique gimmick that I'd like to see preserved.

But at the same time, a weapon whose gimmick is the ability to use more subs, well yeah of course it ended up devolving into bomb spam. I fear the weapon even just teaches players bad habits, encouraging a very passive playstyle.

I don't know what the solution is.

 

[isaac4]

Jr.'s ink tank is a totally unique gimmick that I'd like to see preserved.

But at the same time, a weapon whose gimmick is the ability to use more subs, well yeah of course it ended up devolving into bomb spam. I fear the weapon even just teaches players bad habits, encouraging a very passive playstyle.

I don't know what the solution is.

Reading your reply gave me an idea for a potential way to remove bomb spam without changing the ink cost by making it so that you can only have one bomb out a time.
I'm not sure if that's too drastic of a change though but it's the only possible solution I could think of so that weapons like Jr. could keep their current ink efficiency.
I would only want this to apply to Splat Bomb, Suction, and Fizzy.

 

[OnePotWonder]

What I'm trying to say is how can you even nerf or change a weapon that's core design is annoying to play against without robbing its mains' of its identity in the first place? Whether it be Jr., Clash Blaster, Bloblobber, etc. It's fair if you would want a future game to totally overhaul or even remove these weapons - I'm not even a fan of fighting those last two myself - but I feel like this approach is hard to take without being biased or taking away from players who don't even have much to go off of in the first place.

To be fair, some weapons' identities are better off scrapped; Clash Blaster and Bloblobber being unrecognizable after their reworks isn't what I would personally consider a bad thing. That's the issue with Jr. though; it's identity isn't supposed to be bomb spam, it's supposed to be extreme ink efficiency and uptime. Messing with its ink tank capacity only led to a unique set of issues for the main.

I don't know what the solution is.

Neither do I, but I lean toward removing the gimmick since Jr. already has incredible ink efficiency; especially so after almost every other shooter that would fill its role would get theirs nerfed.

I've looked through it's stats and it's better than most other shooters in every stat related to ink efficiency or mobility.
The only way I can think of to effectively counter-buff it is to increase its damage to 30. Might as well implement it.

 

[youre_a_squib_now]

Different things are annoying to different players, but in general, a strategy is annoying to a player when said player can't figure out a way to counter it (especially when it's not how the game is "supposed to be played"). For example, a lot of people find e-liter annoying because they die to it seemingly out of nowhere, no matter what they try. Or spawn camping, which annoys players who consider it a dishonest tactic (because they don't know what to do about it and don't understand that the other team doesn't have anything else to do). So, what makes a weapon annoying enough to remove? Everyone is going to have a different opinion on this, and every weapon annoys someone. So that's not a good reason to change things. If there's a different reason to change it, then that's fine, but just annoyance isn't enough.

I do think jr should be changed. But to know what changes to do, we have to start from the reason it needs changed and go from there.

I was going to talk about all of your changes here, but I typed a lot already, so I'll just post that separately.

 

[missingno]

That's the issue with Jr. though; it's identity isn't supposed to be bomb spam, it's supposed to be extreme ink efficiency and uptime.

Isn't it though? If they just wanted the main weapon to be more ink efficient, they could've reduced its ink consumption and had nearly the exact same effect. The only difference is that a larger ink tank also affects the sub weapon. So I do think that had to be intentional, that's why they did it this way.

And at least on paper, I don't think a weapon that specializes in sub usage is necessarily a bad thing.

So, what makes a weapon annoying enough to remove? Everyone is going to have a different opinion on this, and every weapon annoys someone. So that's not a good reason to change things. If there's a different reason to change it, then that's fine, but just annoyance isn't enough.

This is also very true. To a certain degree, being able to annoy your opponents is a crucial part of competitive games, and maybe a little bit of sadism sometimes is part of the fun. I play zoners in fighting games, so I'm all about frustrating my opponent and then capitalizing on their impatience. Hell, I could even say any opponent that isn't able to annoy you isn't doing their job.

It's just a fine line for game designers to walk between a healthy amount of annoying and when it might sometimes be too much. Where do we draw that line?

 

[SAMICOM]

This is also very true. To a certain degree, being able to annoy your opponents is a crucial part of competitive games, and maybe a little bit of sadism sometimes is part of the fun.

I got called out

 

[OnePotWonder]

Different things are annoying to different players, but in general, a strategy is annoying to a player when said player can't figure out a way to counter it (especially when it's not how the game is "supposed to be played"). For example, a lot of people find e-liter annoying because they die to it seemingly out of nowhere, no matter what they try. Or spawn camping, which annoys players who consider it a dishonest tactic (because they don't know what to do about it and don't understand that the other team doesn't have anything else to do). So, what makes a weapon annoying enough to remove? Everyone is going to have a different opinion on this, and every weapon annoys someone. So that's not a good reason to change things. If there's a different reason to change it, then that's fine, but just annoyance isn't enough.

Well, there is an argument to be made specifically against Jr.'s ink tank in the fact that it's a superfluous gimmick. In fact, it's one of the only cases where a weapon is annoying due to a gimmick rather than base stats; the only other example I can think of is Tetra Dualies, and they're a skirmisher that has to play annoying-elusive to function as a weapon. Meanwhile Jr.'s annoying-area-denial is neither key to its function as a support, nor hard-coded into the weapon's design like a Tri-Slosher's AoE or an E-liter's range.

Basically, the reason I think it's something that can be removed is because it's one of few annoying traits that physically can be removed without crippling or shattering the identity of the weapon it's on. Not that Jr. wouldn't be worse off and need the damage buff, or have a simplified identity, but it would live, and be much less of a nuisance weapon.

I'll put it to a vote; react to this comment with like if you think Jr. should keep the rebalance I gave it, or react with sad if you'd prefer it only get the consistent accuracy change and keep its ink tank. I am willing to go back on this because, frankly, I want to discuss the other changes here as well.

 

[SAMICOM]

Well, there is an argument to be made specifically against Jr.'s ink tank in the fact that it's a superfluous gimmick. In fact, it's one of the only cases where a weapon is annoying due to a gimmick rather than base stats; the only other example I can think of is Tetra Dualies, and they're a skirmisher that has to play annoying-elusive to function as a weapon. Meanwhile Jr.'s annoying-area-denial is neither key to its function as a support, nor hard-coded into the weapon's design like a Tri-Slosher's AoE or an E-liter's range.

Basically, the reason I think it's something that can be removed is because it's one of few annoying traits that physically can be removed without crippling or shattering the identity of the weapon it's on. Not that Jr. wouldn't be worse off and need the damage buff, or have a simplified identity, but it would live, and be much less of a nuisance weapon.

I'll put it to a vote; react to this comment with like if you think Jr. should keep the rebalance I gave it, or react with sad if you'd prefer it only get the consistent accuracy change and keep its ink tank. I am willing to go back on this because, frankly, I want to discuss the other changes here as well.

it would KILL the Jr. It would have no other use case than being a worse shot.

its like goo tuber being weak already and getting killed in splat 3 once squiffer got it's gimmick. you are KILLING a weapon because you get pissed off at shooters. While I think these new nerfs are good, the Jr cant take another hit. SPARE MY BABY

 

[OnePotWonder]

it would KILL the Jr. It would have no other use case than being a worse shot.

its like goo tuber being weak already and getting killed in splat 3 once squiffer got it's gimmick. you are KILLING a weapon because you get pissed off at shooters. While I think these new nerfs are good, the Jr cant take another hit. SPARE MY BABY

A bit unnecessarily dramatic. Splattershot Jr. would be absolutely fine, especially with the 30 damage I gave it as compensation. It's not like I'm removing its bombs. And it's definitely not like it's as bad as Goo Tuber.

 

[SAMICOM]

A bit unnecessarily dramatic. Splattershot Jr. would be absolutely fine, especially with the 30 damage I gave it as compensation. It's not like I'm removing its bombs. And it's definitely not like it's as bad as Goo Tuber.

the weapon is too inconsistent with its shots to make the +4 damage worth it.