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Splatoon 2 How Booyah Bomb Breaks Splatoon, and the Tragedy of Stingray

The Salamander King

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Let me tell you how Booyah Bomb is game-breaking.

The complaint against Ray was that it allowed you to remain 100% safe and basically get free kills. After many nerfs (and some Armor buffs) Ray was actually manageable and had a hard-counter in Ink Armor, and a soft-counter in Tentamissiles. People still complained though, despite the fact that avoiding/killing Ray users wasn't all that difficult anymore, and that weapons like Kensa Undercover and Nzap had an insta-counter every 10-20 seconds. Everyone whined about it, but very few people actually had the idea, "hey how about I just kill the Stingray?" for whatever reason.

Anyway, when Ray was fine and balanced, Nintendo hit it with a huge double-whammy of a nerf. Now Ray did less damage if it went through any part of the map, and its damage against Armor was again nerfed. Killing armored people was already difficult enough, but now they were near-impossible.

Here's some math:

Against a normal opponent, Ray takes 56 frames to kill, nearly a second.

If you are shooting an armored foe, it takes 56% longer to kill.

With Splatoon's map design, you are more than likely going to shooting through the stage, and thus receiving the 17% damage debuff.

That's a 73% damage debuff in total. This bumps Ray's TTK from 56 frames to 96.88 (97), or closer to 1.6 seconds.

And if that wasn't slow enough, I didn't even factor in the 17 frame startup before the laser shoots, or the 31 frames before it expands.

Stingray is now weaker than a wet pool noodle.

Here's my source for the frame data: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1WnSDbSja9lar_VHZ89r_ix2mFk1KYsony2k71xtZDBc/edit#gid=0

Now onto Booyah Bomb.

Like I said, the reason people hated Ray was because it allowed you to get kills while remaining completely safe.
Booyah Bomb is the new Stingray, but it's better than Ray ever was, and nobody is talking about it.

Popping Booyah Bomb allows you to do a number of things. Here's a list:

1. Adds 300 HP to your Inkling
2. Is a long-range projectile
3. Easily paints a Zone
4. Gives you a hight, and thus visibility, advantage over everyone on the field
5. Kills 2+ times faster than Ray

Notice a problem here? Booyah Bomb does exactly the same thing as Ray, but is also a panic button. It makes you pseudo-invincible, kills much faster, and paints a large area very quickly.

To make a long story short, Booyah has the pros of both Splashdown and Stingray with little-none of the cons.
 

Forma

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I agree in theory with the team's decision to nerf the Sting Ray, but I think they should have based it off distance instead. The real issue with it was that it's possible to kill from across the map in places where the enemy team cannot reach you at all (many spawn points in particular but Starfish and Musselforge in particular come to mind for me). A distance-based debuff would have incentivized staying close to the fight where you can still be targeted without inhibiting the Sting Ray's appeal as a piercing weapon.

I've had problems with how the Booyah Bomb was designed from the beginning. Always felt the armor was ridiculous. It's fair enough that they should have some protection while charging, but 300 HP is WAY too much and even the buffs to damage against the armor haven't made it so that most weapons can consistently break the armor AND kill the player before they get the opportunity to throw it.
To fix the problem, I have a few ideas:
1. Either reduce the armor or further buff damage against the armor so that most weapons will be able to punish poor positioning on their own.
2. Reduce the possible throw distance to force you to be closer to your target
3. Further enhance Splashdown's new role as a "special deleter" by allowing it to either resist or be immune to the bomb while in the startup animation - this should help against a single Booyah Bomb claiming a zone for essentially no effort.
Might not be a perfect solution, but it's a start at least. Thoughts?
 

Starry Day

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I agree in theory with the team's decision to nerf the Sting Ray, but I think they should have based it off distance instead. The real issue with it was that it's possible to kill from across the map in places where the enemy team cannot reach you at all (many spawn points in particular but Starfish and Musselforge in particular come to mind for me). A distance-based debuff would have incentivized staying close to the fight where you can still be targeted without inhibiting the Sting Ray's appeal as a piercing weapon.

I've had problems with how the Booyah Bomb was designed from the beginning. Always felt the armor was ridiculous. It's fair enough that they should have some protection while charging, but 300 HP is WAY too much and even the buffs to damage against the armor haven't made it so that most weapons can consistently break the armor AND kill the player before they get the opportunity to throw it.
To fix the problem, I have a few ideas:
1. Either reduce the armor or further buff damage against the armor so that most weapons will be able to punish poor positioning on their own.
2. Reduce the possible throw distance to force you to be closer to your target
3. Further enhance Splashdown's new role as a "special deleter" by allowing it to either resist or be immune to the bomb while in the startup animation - this should help against a single Booyah Bomb claiming a zone for essentially no effort.
Might not be a perfect solution, but it's a start at least. Thoughts?
I completely agree that the Booyah Bomb armor should be either collectively nerfed (in terms of total HP) or at least depleted more quickly. The armor is currently only ineffective when you're surrounded by several opposing teammates, all firing at you, in which case it can be difficult to charge it fully before getting splatted. I really like your last point, too, regarding the enhancement of the Splashdown's new role in the meta; I feel like that would help revive a weakened special. Personally, though, I think that the elongated distance of the Booyah Bomb is fine - if it was too shortened, the Booyah Bomb would resemble a Splashdown with just a bit more range and a lagged startup, and would be detrimental to the "surprise!" factor of such a long-ranged attack.
 

The Salamander King

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I agree in theory with the team's decision to nerf the Sting Ray, but I think they should have based it off distance instead. The real issue with it was that it's possible to kill from across the map in places where the enemy team cannot reach you at all (many spawn points in particular but Starfish and Musselforge in particular come to mind for me). A distance-based debuff would have incentivized staying close to the fight where you can still be targeted without inhibiting the Sting Ray's appeal as a piercing weapon.

I've had problems with how the Booyah Bomb was designed from the beginning. Always felt the armor was ridiculous. It's fair enough that they should have some protection while charging, but 300 HP is WAY too much and even the buffs to damage against the armor haven't made it so that most weapons can consistently break the armor AND kill the player before they get the opportunity to throw it.
To fix the problem, I have a few ideas:
1. Either reduce the armor or further buff damage against the armor so that most weapons will be able to punish poor positioning on their own.
2. Reduce the possible throw distance to force you to be closer to your target
3. Further enhance Splashdown's new role as a "special deleter" by allowing it to either resist or be immune to the bomb while in the startup animation - this should help against a single Booyah Bomb claiming a zone for essentially no effort.
Might not be a perfect solution, but it's a start at least. Thoughts?
The fact that Booyah has armor at all is bad design. The single most important aspect in any competitive game is range, as you can't do anything to the enemy if you're too far from them. Because of this, weapons with longer range will inherently be much safer most of the time. The reason Booyah is a problem is because the user is already safe with the range it gives you. Adding armor turns a mostly safe special into an unbeatable one unless you drop everything your team is doing to go kill it, destroying your momentum and usually completely halting your push.
 

Forma

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Well, I did some testing to try and rebutt that... but I can't, so here's some data. If you're the only one mashing and you do so from the beginning of the animation to full charge, that's 140 frames give or take a frame and it only gets lower if others on your team press the button even once. Every weapon in the game has a TTK lower than that and every weapon CAN reach a Booyah Bomb user without jumping, assuming they're at the same starting altitude - it's really a matter of positioning and reaction time. As such, it's probably fair to remove the armor, but it's unlikely it will be removed completely. Therefore, my suggestion still stands that the armor be reduced, say to 100, instead of the ludicrous 470 (!) it's actually at.
 

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