how does squid roll armor work?

[vitellary]

this is something that i've been confused by for a while. the splatoon wiki doesn't seem to have a very specific definition of it (all it says is that damage is reduced akin to Ink Armor), and i feel like i've seen conflicting reports on how it works

my understanding for a while has been that, when taking a hit while having squid roll armor, you will take 50% of the damage you were supposed to receive. so, if something hits you for 70 damage, you'd take 35; if something hits you for 180 damage, you'd take 90, and barely survive; and specials tend to do 220 damage because you'd take 110 if you squid roll through it, thus still taking a lethal amount of damage and dying

a few things have confused me about this though:
how exactly does that interaction work with something like a shooter that lands several consecutive hits on you? for how long will you take 50% damage before the armor breaks?
additionally, does this consistently work with classes like chargers or blasters? i'm not sure i've ever pulled this off myself, but have always assumed it was lag that made it not work properly... but then jared's recent splat dualies guide came out and claimed this:

...which is incongruent with my understanding of how it worked, so i'm wondering whether it just... doesn't work against those classes? is that a special exception the game makes for some reason? if so, what forms of damage are exempt from the damage reduction armor grants you? i'm pretty sure you can successfully parry bombs at least, but it seems odd that you'd be able to do that but not parry a blaster shot, so i'm wondering whether the video is wrong here or if the game just has weird standards for what kinds of damage can be armored through

would appreciate if anyone happens to know more specifics about how this works, since as far as i know there's no good documentation on it and this seems like important information to have available...!

 

[Suchi]

From what I can tell, squid rolling isn't a percentile damage reduction, it tanks a certain amount of damage similar to Ink Armor in Splatoon 2. Unlike Ink Armor, there's no damage cap and more powerful one shot weapons like chargers and trizooka can pierce through your armor and still one shot you.

 

[OnePotWonder]

The way Squid Roll armor works remains a mystery.

The way Ink Armor worked is it tanked up to 100 damage from an attack, but only ever blocked a single shot. Excess damage would carry over, which is why 200+ damage attacks were lethal through armor. This system sucked, buffing the already overbuffed shooters and ruining the game for aim-intensive one-shot weapons like Blasters and Chargers. The only special worse than Sting Ray.

I personally think they just ported the Ink Armor mechanics and let Blasters and Chargers pierce through the armor due to those classes' complaints rather than making it actually last against shooters. Way to make useful new features, Nintendo.

If I may; the way I would have designed it, now that it's a brief parry which requires good timing and has punishable end lag, is allowing the armor to survive multiple hits. It would also make Squid Surge less useless.

 

[missingno]

The way Ink Armor worked is it tanked up to 100 damage from an attack, but only ever blocked a single shot. Excess damage would carry over, which is why 200+ damage attacks were lethal through armor.

Slight correction, Ink Armor blocks multiple hits up to 30 damage, single hits up to 100. However, when pierced by >100 damage, there is a cap so that you can never take more than 80 damage.

I was under the impression that Squid Roll was similar, minus that 80 damage cap. But now I'm wondering if that's actually correct?

 

[vitellary]

i guess it strikes me as odd that my assumption about 50% damage seems to be completely incorrect because of how well the game's damage values work for it. anything that's not a special does a maximum of 180 damage (in fact, i think suction bombs were reduced from 220 in splatoon 2 to 180 in this game, and i always assumed that was so that you could parry a suction bomb properly), and anything that is a special tends to do 220 so that it can't be parried (i can't recall what, but early on a special got a buff that changed its damage from 180 to 220, and again i assumed that was because you could previously parry it with its old damage. i think it was the launched vac shot that got this buff?)

like, why did they put so much care into this strict divide if it has nothing to do with actual game mechanics? it's so consistent that i felt like there had to be a more deliberate reason behind it than "special do bigger number"

 

[DVDo]

(i can't recall what, but early on a special got a buff that changed its damage from 180 to 220, and again i assumed that was because you could previously parry it with its old damage. i think it was the launched vac shot that got this buff?)

Reefslider was the one that got this buff, while Vac had a similar but more dramatic buff up from 120 damage.

 

[missingno]

If it's damage >100 that pierces, 180 means you take 80 and live, 220 means you take 120 and die. That still holds for this formula too.

 

[OnePotWonder]

Slight correction, Ink Armor blocks multiple hits up to 30 damage, single hits up to 100. However, when pierced by >100 damage, there is a cap so that you can never take more than 80 damage.

I was under the impression that Squid Roll was similar, minus that 80 damage cap. But now I'm wondering if that's actually correct?

Ah right, forgot about the Bomb Defense Up DX meta. Still god awful, but hey, at least it'd block two N-ZAP shots.
The damage cap I also remember, but it's pretty clear that was thrown out the window. Even for spawn armor (why).

Yep, though. None of us have a clue as to how it works semantically.

 

[ThestralZ]

As a Range Blaster player, the hit box for an indirect is created from the direct explosion, but it expands out fast enough that if someone squid rolls into my direct, the indirect hit box hits them, breaks their armor, then hits them with the direct shot, killing them. I think, Inkipedia doesn't seem to either agree or disagree with me.

 

[youre_a_squib_now]

As a Range Blaster player, the hit box for an indirect is created from the direct explosion, but it expands out fast enough that if someone squid rolls into my direct, the indirect hit box hits them, breaks their armor, then hits them with the direct shot, killing them. I think, Inkipedia doesn't seem to either agree or disagree with me.

In my 1.5 years of playing and playing against chargers, I have never seen anyone successfully squid roll a charger shot. I think that whatever is going on with the chargers is the same as how it works for blasters, and chargers don't have an indirect.
I can also snipe people through spawn armor for some reason.

Slight correction, Ink Armor blocks multiple hits up to 30 damage, single hits up to 100. However, when pierced by >100 damage, there is a cap so that you can never take more than 80 damage.

I was under the impression that Squid Roll was similar, minus that 80 damage cap. But now I'm wondering if that's actually correct?

As far as I can tell it's this but chargers and blasters are special.

 

[ThestralZ]

In my 1.5 years of playing and playing against chargers, I have never seen anyone successfully squid roll a charger shot. I think that whatever is going on with the chargers is the same as how it works for blasters, and chargers don't have an indirect.
I can also snipe people through spawn armor for some reason.



As far as I can tell it's this but chargers and blasters are special.

1. What charger do you play?
2. Do you think it has something to do with object damage? It might be that an OD multiplier on those weapons compensates enough to let them pierce the armor, like E-Liter does 180 (I believe), which wouldn't pierce naturally, but if OD got involved, it might be enough to kill through armor.

 

[ThestralZ]

Also this entire thread just serves to show that none of us understand or agree how squid rolling works lol

 

[OnePotWonder]

1. What charger do you play?
2. Do you think it has something to do with object damage? It might be that an OD multiplier on those weapons compensates enough to let them pierce the armor, like E-Liter does 180 (I believe), which wouldn't pierce naturally, but if OD got involved, it might be enough to kill through armor.

Interesting theory, but I’m pretty sure each object has its own damage multiplier for each weapon, meaning Squid Roll armor wouldn’t take more damage unless intended. It’s not impossible, though; there’s that Booyah Bomb bug that allows the user to receive object-multiplied damage immediately after the armor disappears.

 

[ThestralZ]

Interesting theory, but I’m pretty sure each object has its own damage multiplier for each weapon, meaning Squid Roll armor wouldn’t take more damage unless intended. It’s not impossible, though; there’s that Booyah Bomb bug that allows the user to receive object-multiplied damage immediately after the armor disappears.

Object Shredder

Object Shredder is a gear primary ability in Splatoon 2 and Splatoon 3. Object Shredder increases damage dealt to objects (non-player targets). It effectively allows...

splatoonwiki.org

This is the Inkipedia article on Object Shredder

sendou.ink

Competitive Splatoon Hub featuring gear planner, event calendar, builds by top players, and more!

sendou.ink

This is the Sendou Object Damage Calculator
Based on what I'm seeing, certain targets like Brella Shields, the Rainmaker Shield, Wave Breakers, etc. all can have multipliers attached to them based on what weapon you are using and if you have Object Shredder or not. RB does 2x damage to Wave Breaker, while Splash does 0.7x to Booyah Armor. This makes me think that Squid Rolling attaches similar hidden multipliers to weapons against it that so far have gone undiscovered due to casual players not caring about the specifics of Squid Rolling and comp players preferring to learn Sub-Strafing then optimize their squid rolling. I think we need to test this though. If anyone on this thread isn't at work or at school, try setting up a Private Room on the Squidboards pool and try this out

 

[Grushi]

From my experience, I think squid roll makes an exception for blasters, where even if you parry one indirect blast from say, a range blaster, and then get hit by a second indirect, the second indirect will kill you even if you have 100 HP on your screen. I've never seen official confirmation of this, but I've had enough examples of this happening to me in game to make me believe it's intentional.

I've heard that the armor has 30 HP and similar properties to ink armor from S2. I'm pretty sure @missingno is right with the fact that damage dealt over the 100 cap pierces. So you can parry bombs and barely live

But I have no idea if you can parry chargers though, I've had a few times where I managed to do it in game but it's very inconsistent, I'm pretty sure that's because of latency

But there's some other weird properties to it. Like tent can actually one shot people through the armor because it shoots in pellets. You need to hit 6 pellets to kill, but since you fire 11 iirc, if you can hit 8 of them, the first two will shred the armor and the six remaining will kill.

Also quick tip, you can parry zooka's outside hit with squid roll! So when someone's about to zook you in an area, you can parry it and live, which saved me a few times now. Actually learned this from watching Jared's streams hehe

 

[ThestralZ]

Do you think Spawn Armor mechanics work the same as the squid roll and surge armors?

 

[youre_a_squib_now]

Considering the similarity of their names ("squid spawn" lol) I think it makes sense. Everything here lines up with what we know about squid roll armor as well.

I have shot players with chargers through spawn armor though, which is kind of funny, but idk if that's just because it was more than 3 seconds (or if lag made it more than 3 seconds)

 

[Seele]

Squid rolling in Splatoon 3 works the exact same as ink armor in Splatoon 2, the only reason it feels like it works better on shooters or dynamo and the likes is because with one shots or area of effect the games inevitable lag makes your armor remove from tanking the hit before you take damage from the hit registering on their screen. So squid rolling charger shots and blaster shots is possible its just almost frame perfect unless you are on a LAN :3

 

[ThestralZ]

Squid rolling in Splatoon 3 works the exact same as ink armor in Splatoon 2, the only reason it feels like it works better on shooters or dynamo and the likes is because with one shots or area of effect the games inevitable lag makes your armor remove from tanking the hit before you take damage from the hit registering on their screen. So squid rolling charger shots and blaster shots is possible its just almost frame perfect unless you are on a LAN :3