Making an ability only balance patch (updated, read comments to see changes)

[RubberCF]

I'm a big gear nerd and have spent too many hours making this update, so I appreciate anyone who would like to read it. I am happy to explain anything, feedback is welcome.
The purpose of this patch is primarily to give players more effective options in how they want to design their gear, but some changes are just QOL or to partially address larger balance related issues.

Quick note about ability stacking for nerds. By default, every ability will use the most common (and most gradual) curve. Its about 9.5% effective at 3 ap (one sub) and 50% effective at 18 ap. I will specify if any new effect uses a steeper curve, and you can check https://leanny.github.io/splat3/ability.html if you want to see exactly what I'm referencing (look at effect% column)

PATCH START

LDE, CBK, OG and DR all have visual indicators to show when the abilities are active. OG indicates how much longer you have left until the effect goes away.

Comeback (CBK)

• AP of each ability reduced from 10->9
• Removed special charge up, added ink resistance and intensify action

Last Ditch Effort (LDE)

• Effect is fully active when opponents push to 30->25 points

Ability Doubler (AD)

• Can be added to shirts via murch with 3 of every ability chunk

Thermal Ink (TI)

• Works within 15->10 distance units
• Indirect hits activate it for 3 seconds

Respawn Punisher (RP)

• No longer affects respawn time
• Reduces enemy special charge 15->20% upon death
• Reduces own special charge 22.5->30% upon death
• If an RP user splats another RP user, they lose 37.5->50% special charge

Haunt

• Works within 15->10 distance units
• Can only be active for 1 enemy at a time, each time you are killed it switches to that enemy
• Effect does not end if enemy is killed by teammate
• Killing the haunted enemy fills your ink tank

Ninja squid

• While submerged, all tracking effects (from wave breaker, angle shooter, point sensor, and ink mine) will deplete 30% faster.

Drop Roller (DR)

• Duration of ability boost 3->7 seconds

Stealth Jump (SJ)

• Marker is visible to teammates and player with a dotted outline if they are outside its visible radius.

Object Shredder (OS)

• Rainmaker shield: 110%->115%
• Big bubbler, Booyah bomb, Splashdown fists: 110%->120%
• Splash wall: 150%->140%
• Sprinkler, Beakon: 1000%->200%

Ink Resistance Up (IR/Ink Res)

• 5 buffer frames are default for all players
  • You can still gain up to 39 additional buffer frames by stacking ink resistance
• Dmg limit at max ap 20->10
• DPS of enemy ink scales as intended (unlike before)

Quick Super Jump (QSJ)

• Base vulnerability frames for all players 80->70
  • Vulnerability frames from stacking QSJ remains the same at all amounts (1 sub still only reduces to 58)

Special Saver (SS)

• No longer activates when using special

Intensify Action (IA)

• New curve created in between blaster curve and normal curve (same curve as SSU for heavy weapons)
  • New curve applied to all blasters and shooters, excluding luna and s-blast
• Increases midair charge speed for chargers bows and splatlings by up to 2x. Excluding squiffer (same curve as IA effect on squid surge)

Sub Resistance (SR/Sub Res)

• Removed
  • Ideally, this would be replaced with something like cold-blooded from splatoon 2, but designing a whole new ability is a bit too much for the intended scope of this patch.

Run Speed Up (RSU)

• Improved stacking on run speed while shooting by 20% to all non shooter/splatling weapons

Ink Saver Main (ISM)

• Improved stacking in small amounts for douser dualies, tri-stringer, painbrush, and dualie squelchers

Quick Respawn (QR)

• Slightly more effective in small amounts (same curve as SPU effect on ultra stamp duration)
• Reduced max effect 3.5->3.85

Sub Power Up (BPU)

• Point sensor and angle shooter
  • No longer affects range/velocity
  • Increases aoe/trail duration by up to 1 second
• Toxic mist
  • Increases aoe duration by up to 3 seconds
• Splash wall
  • No longer increases hp
  • Increases duration by up to 3 seconds
• Sprinkler
  • Increases high power phase by up to 5->8 seconds
  • Increases mid power phase by up to 2->15 seconds (this way you can hypothetically double both phases duration)
  • Increases radius by up to 20%

Special Power Up (SPU)

• Big bubbler
  • Acts as sub power up for the beakon
    • The game will now prioritize jumps to the beakon over players when the cursor is on both at once. This is to ensure the player is not cheated out of a faster jump because teammates are in the bubble.
  • No longer increases hp.
  • Increases duration by up to 4 seconds (does not increase cooldown)
• Tacticooler
  • Increases duration by up to 8->5 seconds
• Ink storm
  • Increases duration by up to 2->4 seconds
  • Slows down ink storm proportionally to its duration increase
• Wave breaker
  • Increases tracking duration from placement by up to 1 second
• Triple splashdown
  • No longer Increases paint radius
  • Increases distance fists land from player by up to 20% (the fists remain the same distance from each other regardless of how much SPU the player uses)
• Reefslider
  • Increases distance the rails extend (and therefore how far reefslider travels) by up to 40%
  • No longer increases paint radius

Big thanks to An_ei and Plantknowsyourlocation for giving me valuable feedback for this.

 

[Terret]

I'm a big gear nerd and have spent too many hours making this update, so I appreciate anyone who would like to read it. I am happy to explain anything, feedback is welcome.
The purpose of this patch is primarily to give players more effective options in how they want to design their gear, but some changes are just QOL or to partially address larger balance related issues.

Quick note about ability stacking for nerds. By default, every ability will use the most common (and most gradual) curve. Its about 9.5% effective at 3 ap (one sub) and 50% effective at 18 ap. I will specify if any new effect uses a steeper curve, and you can check https://leanny.github.io/splat3/ability.html if you want to see exactly what I'm referencing (look at effect% column)

PATCH START

LDE, CBK, OG and DR all have visual indicators to show when the abilities are active. OG indicates how much longer you have left until the effect goes away.

Comeback (CBK)

• AP of each ability reduced from 10->9
• Removed special charge up, added ink resistance

Last Ditch Effort (LDE)

• Effect is fully active when opponents push to 30->25 points

Ability Doubler (AD)

• Can be added to shirts with 3 of every ability chunk

Thermal Ink (TI)

• Now works within 15->10 distance units
• Indirect hits activate it for 3 seconds

Respawn Punisher (RP)

• No longer affects respawn time
• Now reduces enemy special charge 15->20% upon splat
• Now reduces own special charge 22.5->30% upon death
• If an RP user splats another RP user, they lose 37.5->50% special charge

Haunt

• Now works within 15->10 distance units
• Can only be active for 1 enemy at a time, each time you are killed it switches to that enemy
• Effect does not end if enemy is killed by teammate
• Killing the haunted enemy fills your ink tank

Drop Roller (DR)

• Duration of ability boost 3->7 seconds

Stealth Jump (SJ)

• Marker is visible to teammates and player with a dotted outline if they are outside its visible radius.

Object Shredder (OS)

• Rainmaker shield: 110%->115%
• Big bubbler, Booyah bomb, Splashdown fists: 110%->120%
• Splash wall: 150%->140%
• Sprinkler, Beakon: 1000%->200%

Ink Resistance Up (IR/Ink Res)

• 5 buffer frames are default for all players
• Max additional buffer frames 39->34, stacking curve adjusted accordingly, all numbers rounded down (now 1 sub adds 8 frames)
• Dmg limit max ap 20->15
• DPS of enemy ink scales as intended

Quick Super Jump (QSJ)

• Base vulnerability frames for all players 80->70
  • Vulnerability frames from stacking QSJ remains the same at all amounts (1 sub still only reduces to 58)

Special Saver (SS)

• No longer activates when using special

Intensify Action (IA)

• New curve created in between blaster curve and normal curve (same curve as SSU for heavy weapons)
  • New curve applied to all blasters and shooters, excluding luna and s-blast
• Increases midair charge speed for chargers bows and splatlings by up to 2x. Excluding squiffer (same curve as IA effect on squid surge)

Sub Resistance (SR/Sub Res)

• Removed
  • Ideally, this would be replaced with something like cold-blooded from splatoon 2, but designing a whole new ability is a bit too much for the intended scope of this patch.

Run Speed Up (RSU)

• Improved stacking on run speed while shooting by 20% to all non shooter/splatling weapons

Ink Saver Sub (ISM)

• Reduced the effect for splat and suction bomb (max effect 65->70%)

Ink Saver Main (ISM)

• Improved stacking in small amounts for douser dualies, tri-stringer, painbrush, and dualie squelchers

Quick Respawn (QR)

• Slightly more effective in small amounts (same curve as SPU effect on ultra stamp duration)
• Reduced max effect 3.5->3.85

Sub Power Up (BPU)

• Point sensor and angle shooter
  • No longer affects range/velocity
  • Increases aoe duration by up to 1 second.
• Toxic mist
  • Increases aoe duration by up to 3 seconds
• Splash wall
  • No longer increases hp
  • Increases duration by up to 3 seconds
• Sprinkler
  • Increases high power phase by up to 5->8 seconds
  • Increases mid power phase by up to 2->15 seconds (this way you can hypothetically double both phases duration)
  • Increases radius by up to 20%

Special Power Up (SPU)

• Big bubbler
  • Acts as sub power up for the beakon
  • No longer increases hp.
  • Increases duration by up to 4 seconds (does not increase cooldown)
• Tacticooler
  • Increases duration by up to 8->5 seconds
• Ink storm
  • Increases duration by up to 2->4 seconds
  • Slows down ink storm proportionally to its duration increase
• Wave breaker
  • Increases tracking duration from placement by up to 1 second
• Triple splashdown
  • No longer Increases paint radius
  • Increases distance fists land from player by up to 20% (the fists remain the same distance from each other regardless of how much SPU the player uses)

Big thanks to An_ei and Plantknowsyourlocation for giving me valuable feedback for this.

I like the changes overall. Only major objection is about the removal of sub resistance. Though I do see where you’re coming from with it.

 

[RubberCF]

I like the changes overall. Only major objection is about the removal of sub resistance. Though I do see where you’re coming from with it.

Alternatively, you could just stop it from affecting damage entirely, but of course then it would be pretty bad, which is why i said id switch it with cold blooded, which also affected stuff like thermal ink and locating effects from specials. This would also make more sense bc i improved thermal ink, haunt, and sub/special power ups effect on location subs and specials.
Ultimately, affecting dmg (outside damage over time effects) with abilities is bad design bc it messes with something players otherwise depend on being a certain way. You can read this thread and my reply to it to get a more in depth look at my reasoning https://squidboards.com/threads/should-sub-resistance-even-exist.43982/

 

[reelrollsweat]

i wish the thermal buff was real :-( not activating on indirects makes it really nothingburger and i think that change would be perfect for it

ia giving midair charge speed to chargers/bows/splatlings would be really interesting too, esp bc i already run 1-2 subs on most splatlings LOL

 

[evanstar]

damage up - added to the game

 

[RubberCF]

i wish the thermal buff was real :-( not activating on indirects makes it really nothingburger and i think that change would be perfect for it

ia giving midair charge speed to chargers/bows/splatlings would be really interesting too, esp bc i already run 1-2 subs on most splatlings LOL

Oh yeah id love for the thermal buff to be real, such a cool effect, so hard to activate.

I was hesitent to give splatlings as much benefit from ia as i did since they already run some, but given im boosting the rsu stacking on everything else and splatlings are pretty gear dependant i think its fine (also some splatlings have suuper slow midair charging). 2 subs will increase midair charge speed by about 26%

 

[rulesofxem]

I need that bubbler change, people never really use the beakon part of bubbler. Cool patch!

 

[RubberCF]

I need that bubbler change, people never really use the beakon part of bubbler. Cool patch!

Yeah unfortunately the game will prioritize jumping to other players over jumping to the bubbler beakon, i might change that as a way to further encourage using spu,its kind of a weird thing anyways.

 

[RubberCF]

damage up - added to the game

:notlikethis:

 

[Picle]

I feel that cbk having special charge is kind of a necessary evil. When you die, being able to charge your special faster is amazing when you're a defender and you're trying to retake, especially with how bad half the maps are designed and how snowbally some of the modes can be (tower control for instance). If retaking wasn't so special dependent because of these problems, I would be fine with no special charge on cbk

 

[RubberCF]

I feel that cbk having special charge is kind of a necessary evil. When you die, being able to charge your special faster is amazing when you're a defender and you're trying to retake, especially with how bad half the maps are designed and how snowbally some of the modes can be (tower control for instance). If retaking wasn't so special dependent because of these problems, I would be fine with no special charge on cbk

I think that scu on cbk is definitely very valuable, but i dont think its necessary to the game, and probably too powerful when combined with the other effects. There are also other ways to help you get special back from death quicker, namely special saver. With a main youll only lose 30% of your gauge on death. If you need faster specials from death use that
Something ive considered is adding intensify action to cbk as well since im taking so much away from it and not every weapons benefits from the ink res a lot.

 

[RubberCF]

Here are the changes I made with my explanations
1. I added intensify action to comeback, as I feel I overnerfed it and that much ink resistance is not useful on many weapons, so intensify action should help it stay relevant on more weapons.
2. I gave ninja squid the effect with tracking duration to make up for the removal of sub resistance. I did not want to indirectly nerf sharking weapons
3. I slightly improved ink resistance as i felt it was too weak with my changes. it has more emphasis on reducing the maximum damage one can take from enemy ink.
4. I removed my nerf to iss stacking for splat and suction bomb. While bomb spam is annoying this change would do very little to reduce how often one could spam bombs, and really it just makes getting double bomb much harder than it was already, which in my eyes is just taking away an fun strategy that some players enjoy
5. I changed special power up's effect for reefslider, hopefully to reduce the effectiveness of zones cheese and emphasize more interesting strategies with reefslider

 

[snipewriter_defender]

Big bubbler

• ...
• No longer increases hp.
• Increases duration by up to 4 seconds (does not increase cooldown)

Big bubbler doesn't have a preset duration. Instead, it take damage over time, and destroys itself when it hits 0 hp. This is why Damaging it appears to reduce the remaining duration. The existing durability buff already causes the bubble to last ~3.3 seconds longer, so overall this seems like a nerf.

 

[OnePotWonder]

I would pair the removal of Sub Resistance Up with damage nerfs to the subs it's typically used to counter.

Fizzy Bomb gets its damage reduced to 45/30, making it much weaker at splatting opponents.
Burst Bomb's indirect damage gets reduced to 30/20, making it much less overbearing as a combo tool.
Lethal Bombs' direct damage gets reduced to 150, with their object damage unchanged. Salmon Run Splat Bombs are exempt from this nerf for obvious reasons. Bombs don't need to do 80 carryover damage when parried with a Squid Roll.

I feel like some version of Cold Blooded should return in the next game for the sake of sharking weapons, but they would either have to add a slew of new location options or give it some other form of utility for it to really be worth using.

I also feel like they could replace Respawn Punisher with Splat Ink Recovery from Side Order and that would be more of an improvement, since a lot of ink-hungry weapons would actually want to run it.

I also think that enemy ink needs more nerfs than just a 5 frame buffer by default. Maybe 15 frames. There's no reason for it to be so effective at trapping, especially when so many short range weapons paint past where their shots land.

 

[RubberCF]

Big bubbler doesn't have a preset duration. Instead, it take damage over time, and destroys itself when it hits 0 hp. This is why Damaging it appears to reduce the remaining duration. The existing durability buff already causes the bubble to last ~3.3 seconds longer, so overall this seems like a nerf.

I see what your saying and youre right, this is a sort of nerf. Ill remove thst aspect from the change, do you think maybe it should get more hp out of spu?

 

[RubberCF]

I would pair the removal of Sub Resistance Up with damage nerfs to the subs it's typically used to counter.

Fizzy Bomb gets its damage reduced to 45/30, making it much weaker at splatting opponents.
Burst Bomb's indirect damage gets reduced to 30/20, making it much less overbearing as a combo tool.
Lethal Bombs' direct damage gets reduced to 150, with their object damage unchanged. Salmon Run Splat Bombs are exempt from this nerf for obvious reasons. Bombs don't need to do 80 carryover damage when parried with a Squid Roll.

I feel like some version of Cold Blooded should return in the next game for the sake of sharking weapons, but they would either have to add a slew of new location options or give it some other form of utility for it to really be worth using.

I also feel like they could replace Respawn Punisher with Splat Ink Recovery from Side Order and that would be more of an improvement, since a lot of ink-hungry weapons would actually want to run it.

I also think that enemy ink needs more nerfs than just a 5 frame buffer by default. Maybe 15 frames. There's no reason for it to be so effective at trapping, especially when so many short range weapons paint past where their shots land.

Firstly, any changes in this patch that arent changes to abilities directly are trying to indirectly affect how abilities are used and balanced, im not interested in significantly changing how effective enemy ink is. This point also applies to changing the lethal dmg of bombs. Also keep in mind the buffer frames are only for dmg, they do nothing for slowing down the player. I also want to keep base stats low for this bc i want ink resistance to still be useful for most weapons
Splat ink recovery to me seems both not very useful and less interesting. Splatting opponents isnt frequent enough on any weapon for it to have much of a consistent effect on ink efficiency. Also as said in my notes on sub resistance, im not interested in adding new abilities. The haunt and rp rework is about as far as im willing to go when it comes to changes.
Reducing the dmg of fizzy and burst like that would hurt them way more than the current existence of sub resistance, which itself is not good enough to be used on most weapons, so it makes more sense to me to just let them stay as they are.

 

[McSquid82]

This is a thought I've had for a while now, but sometimes I wish more weapons were like the Inkbrush. It has built-in ink resistance while sliding, so it doesn't need to really run it. What I mean is, I wish more weapons had inherent, built-in traits. It's already happened to some degree with the removal of MPU. While some weapons lost the Damage Up benefits, a lot of gained meaningful, better buffs in the areas that really mattered or got toned back versions of the non-Damage Up effects.

I also think problematic abilities like Special Charge Up or Respawn Punisher need to be severely toned back or cut completely from the next game. It's never fun when you lose to an Aerospray spamming specials every 10 seconds or so or an E-Liter or other weapon basically spawn locking you because of their gear set. I'm not saying all abilities are bad, but certain ones like those just have too much influence in determining the outcome of a battle. In my opinion, they've become problematic the same way Damage/Defense Up or MPU were. Weapon skill should be the deciding factor, and if a player is really that good with a certain weapon, they shouldn't need an ability to prop it up.

 

[OnePotWonder]

Firstly, any changes in this patch that arent changes to abilities directly are trying to indirectly affect how abilities are used and balanced, im not interested in significantly changing how effective enemy ink is. This point also applies to changing the lethal dmg of bombs. Also keep in mind the buffer frames are only for dmg, they do nothing for slowing down the player. I also want to keep base stats low for this bc i want ink resistance to still be useful for most weapons
Splat ink recovery to me seems both not very useful and less interesting. Splatting opponents isnt frequent enough on any weapon for it to have much of a consistent effect on ink efficiency. Also as said in my notes on sub resistance, im not interested in adding new abilities. The haunt and rp rework is about as far as im willing to go when it comes to changes.
Reducing the dmg of fizzy and burst like that would hurt them way more than the current existence of sub resistance, which itself is not good enough to be used on most weapons, so it makes more sense to me to just let them stay as they are.

Understandable. I wasn’t suggesting adding any of these changes to your post, though, it’s definitely fine as it is and much more reasonable than my ideas. This was more my personal take on the situation.

 

[RubberCF]

Understandable. I wasn’t suggesting adding any of these changes to your post, though, it’s definitely fine as it is and much more reasonable than my ideas. This was more my personal take on the situation.

Fair enough

 

[snipewriter_defender]

I see what your saying and youre right, this is a sort of nerf. Ill remove thst aspect from the change, do you think maybe it should get more hp out of spu?

Maybe just copy the scaling for SCU(ie 57 AP grants a 30% more HP).