Is there a reason why brushes as a class have always been buffed for multiplayer and never nerfed?

[McSquid82]

Its kind of funny to me how the only time I can remember inkbrush being a good meta pick
was when it was a 160p baller in baller meta
Like I can't even imagine a good staple-of-the-meta inkbrush existing with out being a special spammer I hope nintendo makes it good just so we can know what its like cause who knows maybe a well balanced inkbrush might be really good for the game

I feel the same way, at least with the vanilla inkbrush. It has all the tools it needs that cover its weaknesses. It has Splat Bomb to poke with, and Killer Wail 5.1 to target long range threats. I feel the only remaining buffs it would need right now are to increase its minimum damage and widen its ink trail by a little. Not by quite as much as it got with MPU but somewhere in the middle. It's pretty well set on ink consumption, mobility and damage. And it needs all the mobility it can get because it's just a little brush that every other weapon in the game outranges, even the Sploosh.

 

[Babab]

Short answer: because they’re absolute dogsh1t

 

[Squidilicious]

Honestly, the brushes get it off easier than the shooters in my opinion. I have played recent games and the one game-breaking thing is buffing a weapon to the point where it can get to the other team's base in the first few seconds of the round. And brushes tend to do just that from what I have gathered. It wouldn't be as much of a problem if the game's stages were more open.

This buffing without nerfing created a huge imbalance, I know players don't like when their weapons are nerfed, but sometimes nerfing a weapon directly is necessary, especially when the stage design makes it impossible to avoid confrontation with said weapon.

Admittedly, both Splatoon 1 and Splatoon 2 had their fair share of unbalanced, but at least most of the time, the problem wasn't as bad because both games' stage designs were mostly a lot more open. But Splatoon 3 did away with open-stage design, which is the primary reason for certain weapons being able to easily exploit said design.

Overall, I agree that brushes need to be nerfed, and the way to nerf them is to increase ink consumption so they can't get to the other team's base that easily.

Even with all those buffs, an inkbrush or octobrush can be doing what it's designed to do and get the jump on you and it's still pretty easy to kill if you just get out of range and target it.... even if they've gotten 2 or 3 hits on you already

 

[McSquid82]

Considering the most recent patch, it looks like the trend of brushes only getting buffs is continuing. At least this time it's just more of a detection fix for the Inkbrush and Octobrush. Similar to what the Carbon just got and the Sploosh has had for a while now. Neither of them need any more ink consumption or mobility buffs.

 

[Lisku]

“here we go again”

 

[Grushi]

I'm necroing this thread (look last time this thread was used this site literally EXPLODED, I'm toying with fire here) but I do have one idea as to why people don't like fighting inkbrushes that much.

I think a big issue to me is that inkbrushes have always been 180p, even lower in some cases (vanilla brush is literally 150p in s2 lmao), but inkbrush is not a bad painting weapon by any means. Yeah it can't paint very far, but that's not a problem on the maps where it's easy to get behind enemy lines. So every time brushes get behind you, most players I see at all skill levels just farm for special, and pop stamp behind you.
I'm mostly referring to brush nouveau here, killer wail spam isn't as threatening though that kit spams bombs from behind which isn't very fun either. Ultra stamp is one of those specials that gets the user killed most of the time, but when it works, that stamp gets like, a triple, so you have to constantly watch out for the stamps coming from behind. If brush gets behind you, it's basically guaranteed to get its special on retake.
Not to mention brush has pretty good gear freedom, so most brushes I see run some kind of spam build. Seriously, that thing can get 160p hammers without much gear investment, this is insane. Or splat bomb spam builds, hooray.

I'm rambling a bit here but my point is that I don't think brushes are inherently a problem main weapon wise (outside of clam blitz arguably), but they tend to play for spam more than any interesting distraction game, and if they just got less specials, or less snowbally ones (inkjet maybe?), they could be a lot more fun to fight.
I kind of wish they got 190/200p specials but dealt better damage to compensate, reward them for engaging with the main weapon a bit more.

 

[DzNutsKong]

Kind of. I think the issue isn't as much special spam or else you'd hear people say that just as you do for Snipewriter, Splattershot, or even REEF-LUX in Turf War specifically.

I think for a lot of people, fighting a Brush is like trying to swat a fly out of the air. There is absolutely nothing stopping you from taking down an Inkbrush user. Their kill times are all very bad for the amount of range they have, even if they ambush you some weapons can guarantee a trade if they react quickly enough, and they don't get any invincibility or anything crazy from rolling.

However, because their movement is so much more flexible and just better than everything else in the game, actually hitting a Brush player can often be where the problems lie. Doing this often requires that you read their movement which is not a skill that most other weapons will make you learn. It's way more cutthroat here than against a Dualie might be for example because there are only so many ways a Dualie can dodge roll towards you and still threaten to kill you. Even in that example though, they'll still be stuck in their endlag at some point.

If you fail to kill a Brush, then chances are they'll kill you or distract you long enough for a teammate to get in and they'll quickly get behind you. Now you have the constant looming threat of a Brush that can run up from behind you and kill you while you aren't looking. What's worse than a fly buzzing around your head than a fly buzzing around your head that you can't even try to swat because you can't see them?

A lot of people who are currently in the community had their first impressions with the series during Splatoon 2 or especially 3, and in both of these games they're very strong at a lower level. They don't have to aim, can move in seemingly random directions, have good paint and feel impossible to hit. It's very easy to jump to the conclusion that using them takes no skill if you don't know any better. This can leave a bad taste in your mouth even if you learn otherwise later on.

I think Clam Blitz is just icing on the cake really. I've said before in this thread that I love playing the base Inkbrush, by the way, so take all of this with that in mind. This weapon is sick at higher levels but I don't think the hate for it is entirely unfounded. Just a kind of unfortunate byproduct of the way they wanted to design this weapon back in Splatoon 1.

 

[McSquid82]

I think a good question to ask now as opposed to the title of this thread is if the brushes that are in the game now have been buffed enough to fulfill the niche they were designed for. I would say that in the case of the Inkbrush and Octobrush that would definitely be the case. They're both ink efficient and mobile now along with getting their hitboxes on their ink fixed in the last patch. I believe any more buffs to either one of them would probably make them OP. I still can't decide on the Painbrush though.

 

[isaac4]

I would still say that all brushes should have ink immunity (I think that's what it's called) while moving through enemy ink.
Outside of that, I guess Painbrush should have a bit faster startup but I think that's it.

 

[OnePotWonder]

I would still say that all brushes should have ink immunity (I think that's what it's called) while moving through enemy ink.
Outside of that, I guess Painbrush should have a bit faster startup but I think that's it.

Frankly I wouldn't mind if they gave this sort of ink immunity to every weapon while charging/firing. The fact that the other brushes still don't have it is quite odd.

 

[slopsuit]

Painbrush’s problem in higher tiers is definitely a side effect of it being a dynamo-esque weapon for its class but not having some of the advantages that dynamo does (like a wide range one-shot for example.) The startup lag is harder for lower level players to react to, but top tier gameplay is so fast it just gets outpaced, especially for a brush. I think thats just fine though. Its hard for it to take advantage of ambushing people because of its startup, kill time, and range, but i think wave and missiles do well to force people to pay attention to something else, allowing for painbrush to get an opening to catch them off guard while it gets through its startup swing. Overall i like its design and think its just fine where it is. If they buffed it i think itd feel pretty bad to fight, and if they nerfed it i think itd feel pretty bad to play