Nerfing Shooters 101

[missingno]

Which weapons are you comparing these nerfed shooters to? Dualies? Or each other?

I'm comparing them to the Shooters that already aren't good.

Your ".52" is actually a .96 with much less range. .96 is already bad, so how does this make sense?
Splattershot is now Pro with worse range. Again, Pro already isn't good, so how is this your idea of balance?
I would call Pro a 3-shot .52, but you made the fire rate even worse than .52. How can that be a 3-shot?

I actually quite like Pro, .96, and Nova, not to mention the semi-autos.

Then why are you nerfing these weapons even further, and making other weapons that are substantially worse than where they're currently at?

You started this thread by saying you want Shooters, and I quote, "out of the meta". You're arguing against @Cephalobro by insisting you don't want Shooters to be allowed to be good at all, that is what you are saying here. It is abundantly clear that you have a chip on your shoulder and that you're just motivated by spite here. This isn't balance, this is just you being mad at Shooters.

Splattershot Jr. is the beginner-friendly shooter. It's literally the first weapon a player is given, and for good reason; it's built for inking as much turf as possible, with the mobility (and bombs) to escape from unwanted fights. It's perfect for beginners. We don't also need a powerful beginner slayer shooter.

But the one thing Jr. doesn't do is fight. In fact, I'd even argue it teaches players bad habits by encouraging them to play very passively, avoiding fights to just paint and throw bombs instead.

Shot exists as an onramp for beginners to learn to take a more active role and actually go for fights. And I'll add that playing this role will never be as easy or braindead as you seem to make it out to be, fighting is hard and scary for a lot of players.

I think it's very important that the game should have that kind of onramp, and it truly seems like your only real opposition to this is you just not liking Shooters. Saying Shot should be nerfed into oblivion because Jr. exists sounds like you're so fixated on your bias against the class that you're missing that these are completely different roles anyway.

 

[isaac4]

You started this thread by saying you want Shooters, and I quote, "out of the meta".

I think you're focusing too much on that line while forgetting that @OnePotWonder did give two actual reasons for why that was his goal and also that taking weapons out of the meta doesn't equal killing them.
His two points were that "shooters are the easiest class in the game by design" and "shooters are the most prominent special spammers among all the weapon classes".
While I could see the first point not being a strong enough reason to warrant these nerfs, it's an undeniable fact that the best weapon class at special spam are shooters which we know is a playstyle that the devs themselves do not like.
My point here isn't to say that these nerfs are the solution to that problem though. I'm just trying to explain that the idea of nerfing the shooter weapon class isn't just coming from Onepot having a biased hatred towards them.
There was clearly a lot of thought and effort put into this thread that wouldn't have happened if the goal was to kill the weapons entirely.

Also, "out of the meta" does not equal killing the weapons as I've already said.
There are plenty of weapons that aren't in the meta currently and are fine such as Blaster, Nautilus, and even 96. Gal.

You're arguing against @Cephalobro by insisting you don't want Shooters to be allowed to be good at all, that is what you are saying here.

That is not the point that was being argued between Onepot and Cephalobro.
The topic was about whether or not Splattershot needs to be a strong weapon to carry casuals against more experienced players, a point that I disagree with for multiple reasons.
How often will a beginner even get matched up with someone good enough to justify this mentality of needing a weapon to carry them? If it happens often then that's a matchmaking issue, not something that needs to be answered through strong beginner weapons.
What about when that casual player gets matched up against someone more experienced using Shot as well?
I could also mention how Turf War is the casual mode that was specifically designed to give players the option to avoid fighting.

I still believe Splattershot should be good at fighting as it's one of the first weapons a beginner player is exposed to but it doesn't need to be as good as it right now. The weapon itself wasn't even being picked in comp for fighting but instead for farming for special.
Shot would be fine as a mid tier as what's strong and important for casual players is very different from what works in more experienced levels.

 

[OnePotWonder]

@missingno I feel as though you're focusing too much on the changes and not enough on the results.

But before I go over that, a quick metric, Splattershot vs. Slosher, two meta options from different classes which both fill a slayer role.
All data stolen borrowed from Inkipedia:
Splattershot's effective range is roughly 10.94 units, and Slosher's effective range is roughly 13.27 units
Obviously, Splattershot is a three-shot while Slosher is a two-shot, and Splattershot is the better painter of the two.
Splattershot has 4 frames of end lag, and Slosher has 16.
Splattershot's ink consumption is less than 1% per shot, Slosher's ink consumption is 7.6%.
Splattershot's time to splat from swim form is 23 frames, not counting shot travel time.
Slosher's time to splat from swim form is 47 frames. More than double Splattershot's.

Splattershot's revised time to splat with my nerfs is 27 frames.

My nerfs are completely reasonable. Stop only comparing shooters to other shooters; the whole class is strong and can stand to lose some of its power; the only times shooters are bad is when they have mediocre kits, except in the case of Forge Splattershot Pro, which is outclassed by the literal best shooter, Squeezer.

Now, I am once again asking you, envision how a Splattershot, how any meta shooter would play after these nerfs; how strong it would be compared to the slew of meta-adjacent weapons like Flingza Roller, Bamboozler, Rapid Blaster Deco? Still better? Or the same?
The class will be fine. I'm not one to make drastic changes without doing my research, as clearly evidenced above.

 

[Grushi]

It's time forrrr... giving my thoughts. Everyone clap your hands for the splatoon balance discussions!

Before I go full critique here, I do want to give your post some credit. There's some merit to not wanting the most accessible class to be too viable at top level, and that goes for any competitive game. For fighting games, as the devs, and players invested in the scene, you want your flashier, more interesting characters to be better. Not by too much, but you want the more unique, complex options to see use, so that your game's variety gets to shine.

But I'll be honest, there's a part of me that doesn't hate easier weapons being viable in Splatoon. It's a team game, you'll have 4 people on your team, not all of them need to be some kind of insane one trick monster. I've played the game with weaker players on my teams numerous times, and I like that they can play at a high level while still feeling like they're meaningfully contributing to the team by playing simpler weapons. It's cool having them on and having them be able to take on better teams than they normally could!

So typically, they'll play as paint supports. Playing weapons that get a lot of passive value for the team but without insane play making power. Stuff like neo splash, zap or junior... And those are specifically weapons that theoretically should be toned back for the sexy, skillfull supports to see use, lol (with all respect to the dirty shooter players ily still).
So I got mixed feelings on this, I don't want these weapons to be nerfed into unviability, I don't want to ask my S rank friend to switch to vsplash actchually because we don't want to run a junior for example.


But then again (this post will be long, strap in kids) there's also the argument of which weapon is hard actually. Because I do NOT think the shooter class is of equal skill requirment.
H3 is one of the most difficult weapons in the game, yet it's a shooter! Should it be nerfed on that basis? Hell no!
And then there's the kits argument. Neo splash is considered one of the most braindead weapons in the game but I'd argue vanilla splash is not an easy weapon to come to grips with.
Some shooters work alright if you just play passively and spam, but they thrive if you learn to be aggressive in the right circumstances. Vanilla splash (hi bestie), nzap, and I'd argue even junior have depth like this, but you can also play them like a scaredy cat and get solid value, so how do we balance those?



Shooters are also, at the end of the day, kind of necessary for comp building right now. I get that in an ideal world, all supports would be playing these super hype, deep, intense weapons, but with the weapon kits we have in the game right now, that's just not possible.
There's a great video on Gus's channel with Chara that kind of summarizes my thoughts on your post. Paint supports (in this game, the majority of which being shooters) are the glue of your comps. They're almost a necessity to have for your fighting focused weapons to go do their thing without worrying about entry tools and most importantly, having paint to work with. If you remove the glue, the pieces fall apart.

If you nerf paint supports this badly, how do roller comps even work? I guess... heavy edit, vroller, sorella tent... and what? Dread? Would you run Bucket RB without a splash??
Right now, the most viable short range shooters in that role are vshot, ttek, vsplash, neo splash, n-zap 85, and both 52s

Vshot and ttek: simple paint support that get a very strong trizooka or tristrike to either have high slaying potential or reliable entry, with good bombs. What would replace these? The best options I can genuinely think of are a supportive focused dualie squelchers, that won't get as many bombs, and has wave breaker or a beakon, or the vanilla mini splatling, with ULTRA STAMP.

Vanilla splash: Great combo tools, enables aoe weapons with its paint and chip damage. What's the repla- Dualie. It's only dualie.

Neo Splash: Pure paint gun that spams cheese on the objective. What replaces that??? I can't think of anything, and don't go dragging poor vbrella into this.

52s. Good painting weapons, with decent kits, but very fast and very good at slaying for their class. The closest replacement I can think of is decavitator (and it does very different things) or recycled brella, lol.

N-zap: The only viable backless cooler weapon. Good luck getting your 210p cooler on a trislosher bestie!


You get my point. Nerf all shooters, you nerf every comp in this game. Everything would feel terrible because all comps would have massive holes they can't fill. Or they would just run vdualies, you would see vdualies everywhere, which, for the record, I am fully in favor of, but that's not great for weapon diversity, is it? I think vdualies are a very healthy weapon, but they can't be the ONLY viable paint support weapon.


Now, I have so, so much I want to add on this topic, so I'll try keeping this short.
It seems like you want to make shooters worse at fighting by lowering their firerates, and by extension, their killtime but, that also nerfs their paint. I think it's important to mention.

Now what are the consequences of making shooters worse at both painting and fighting? You may ask, well the answer is sorella brella. Great kit, painfully mediocre short range weapon that used to be good at fighting and even painting back in s2.

Its playstyle doesn't differ much from shooters, in a lot of ways, but there's one thing I've noticed from maining it and even hearing of top level users back when people still had faith in the weapon.
What happens when you have a weapon that's both mediocre at fighting and at painting? Well, from my own experience, I can tell you that I had better results while I was playing passively, not rushing in to fight unless absolutely necessary, farming my special, poking with bombs, and only taking the fights I was sure to win, which weren't many. You just don't take risks anymore, and you don't even support your team that well since you don't even paint that well. Is this fun? No. No it isn't, and I don't think that's the direction the devs should take. It's not fun to play, it's not fun to fight, it's not fun to watch.
I understand that it's annoying that a splattershot sharked and killed you in half a second, but think of the alternative, what else would it do if it didn't have that fast kill time to work with?

You need to think about what your nerfs will lead to, playstyle wise, and here? It would only make shooters rely more on special spam and their absurd mobility, since they can't fight as well. Is that really a good direction to take this?

So you have to think about what playstyles, and associated weapons, you want to help with your patches. Shooters would still be played, they're still necessary, and I think the ones with truly insane kits would probably be okay, but you could do better than that.


Wow, great segway into my perfect, unquestionable version of shooter nerfs! I am a talented game developer, so you should not give me any feedback whatsoever./j

_________________________________


I'm doing my best not to ramble too much everyone, we're almost there

Splattershoshoshot:
Splattershot just doesn't have many overtuned aspects, I get that zooka spam vshot is annoying, but you can't fix it without nerfing the paint or ink efficiency and making it worse for casuals in turf war, or making it 220p which is just overkill. Zooka needs to be nerfed, splattershot is fine.
Ttek 190 > 200p though, it gets strikes too easily, which is too strong for tower control.

Splash:
Neo splash 200 > 210p maybe, the vanilla kit is much more interesting comps wise and playstyle wise. But frankly, neo splash is just kind of inoffensive now that it's not enabling a champagne bottle on steroids.

.52 gal oh how I missed you:
I said this was the last time I talked about 52, dammit.
I agree that it's too good at fighting, easiest slayer in the game relative to the value it gets, wall invalidates too many options, wail is annoying, and it's not that interesting comps wise... on the vanilla kit!
This may surprise you, but I kind of like 52 deco. I think its playstyle is cool, I like the sharking focused nature of the kit, and it's great at enabling fast, short range comps. So I thought of how to nerf the main weapon in a way that would hurt the deco kit less.

.52 gal: range reduced by 10%, but accuracy improved by 15%
Wall 52 becomes much worse if it has less range to paint and threaten the enemy team, but sharking 52 doesn't care too much about having less range, it moves around a lot more. To compensate I'd improve the accuracy, I don't know how shooter rng works, but I think it needs a compensation buff, I'd argue the weapon would have much clearer counterplay with this, and would actually feel better to play! Win-win. You can make the vanilla kit 210p too, just in case, but that's not too important.

Aerospray more like aerosPRAY-
Paint droplets reduced by 10% and endlag before swimming in ink increased by two frames
This weapon ruins turf war for so many players, especially casuals. That's reason enough to nerf it HARD, the gold aersopray kit was a bad idea, but here it is, so we gotta work around it. I think it should be worse at painting and getting away so easily, make it more punishable.

Splattershot Jr.:
Junior: 180 > 190p, I think it should keep the ink efficiency for ease of use, keep the bombs for the fighting capabilities, as annoying as it frankly is, but it should not get bubble this fast, that's all.

Jet oh you poor thing:
Vanilla Jet Squelcher: 180 > 190p because that's dumb in rainmaker. I think its paint is totally fine as long as it gets an healthy special, that's a pretty nice strength for comp building, and I don't find ink storm spam to be offensive for the custom kit.

Sploosh:
-o-matic: 180 > 190p, cheese.

I think that's it? There may be stuff I'm forgetting, but these are the only nerfs I'd make. I think squeezer was handled very well.


To conclude, and to put you out of your misery, @isaac4 did make a good point that most shooters could receive slaps on the wrists and be totally fine, a lot of other weapons are. You could reduce some of their overtuned aspects to make them less extreme and they'd still be fine.
Yes, I'm specifically looking at 52 and aerospray, I think these are the main culprits.
I think general fire rate nerfs are pretty harsh but I'm mostly worried about the consequences that would have, I don't know if the game would be healthier with those.





What's that? What do you mean I still have that fighting 52s guide to write? Ohhhhhh
Oh.

Well I guess I'm STILL not done with this thing, am I?

 

[OnePotWonder]

Very comprehensive. Almost worryingly so.

I am aware that removing shooters from the meta currently would be a bad idea, to say the least, but pretty much all of my ideas now that content is over will relate to Splatoon 4; especially because the game transition would be the only thing to make these nerfs even remotely possible whatsoever.

Assuming these changes were to happen for this game, some buffs/new kits for weaker supports would definitely be needed.
Mini Splatling would get Suction Bomb and Tri-Zooka.
Dread Wringer would get Burst Bomb and Tacticooler.
Big Swig Roller would get 45 minimum damage plus Fizzy Bomb and Triple Inkstrike.
REEF-LUX 450 would get Torpedo and Crab Tank.
Undercover Brella would get a two-shot while it's not using its shield plus Splat Bomb and Tacticooler.
Etc..

 

[sevenleaf]

You get my point. Nerf all shooters, you nerf every comp in this game. Everything would feel terrible because all comps would have massive holes they can't fill. Or they would just run vdualies, you would see vdualies everywhere, which, for the record, I am fully in favor of, but that's not great for weapon diversity, is it? I think vdualies are a very healthy weapon, but they can't be the ONLY viable paint support weapon.

DUALIE META DUALIE META LET'S GOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

 

[OnePotWonder]

I should note that I intend to also change dualies such that they don't outclass shooters too much, but that's a topic for later.

 

[SAMICOM]

I should note that I intend to also change dualies such that they don't outclass shooters too much, but that's a topic for later.

what about sloshers? some need nerfs, some need buffs. same with rollers.

 

[missingno]

But before I go over that, a quick metric, Splattershot vs. Slosher, two meta options from different classes which both fill a slayer role.

Slosher has a large hitbox that reduces the need for precise aiming, no RNG, and the ability to hit around cover. You cannot directly compare them in terms of TTK only, not when TTK is supposed to be Slosher's weakness and supposed to be Shot's strength. Trying to compare Slosher's worst attribute to Shot's best attribute is an extremely misleading comparison. If you tried to bring Shot down to that level, then what would be left as a redeeming quality for it?

Comparing cross-class like this doesn't work, because there are too many other variables you're overlooking. The reason I compare Shooters to other Shooters is to control for all those variables. I can show that your nerfed Shot is a strictly worse Pro, like that's literally what it is, there are no other variables that your version of Shot has over the current Pro. And so if Pro is already weak, then a weapon strictly worse than that cannot possibly be good either.

 

[OnePotWonder]

Slosher has a large hitbox that reduces the need for precise aiming, no RNG, and the ability to hit around cover. You cannot directly compare them in terms of TTK only, not when TTK is supposed to be Slosher's weakness and supposed to be Shot's strength. Trying to compare Slosher's worst attribute to Shot's best attribute is an extremely misleading comparison. If you tried to bring Shot down to that level, then what would be left as a redeeming quality for it?

If you had bothered to quote the whole of my post, you'd notice that Slosher is still twenty frames slower to splat than post-nerf Splattershot. I am not trying to bring Shot's TTK down to Slosher's level. I literally used Slosher as an example to prove that Shot will still have an edge over meta weapons after the nerf. It would not be dead, despite whatever you want to tell yourself to feel better.

Comparing cross-class like this doesn't work, because there are too many other variables you're overlooking. The reason I compare Shooters to other Shooters is to control for all those variables. I can show that your nerfed Shot is a strictly worse Pro, like that's literally what it is, there are no other variables that your version of Shot has over the current Pro. And so if Pro is already weak, then a weapon strictly worse than that cannot possibly be good either.

Shot has better paint and strafe speed than Pro, and Pro was never bad in the first place. It's outclassed by Squeezer, that's why it isn't used in competitive play. The reason you don't use Forge Pro is the same reason you don't use Stamper Nouveau, another weapon does the exact same thing as it, but better. When you see a Forge Pro in your solo queue X rank, do you see it struggle? No, because it's just a slightly worse version of Squeezer with better paint.
Shooter main weapons are never bad, it's always its kit or other meta options that keep them from working in comp. Except in the case of Nova, which you'll notice I only gave buffs.

 

[missingno]

My point is that trying to compare Shot to Slosher proves nothing when the two weapons are apples and oranges. They're far too different to be able to make any kind of meaningful conclusion. A comparison can only work if you control for as many variables as possible.

Pro isn't unplayably bad, but it definitely isn't good. It isn't good enough that the same exact thing with substantially worse range can be justified. Pro is mid-tier at best, and if you make a weapon that is significantly worse than a mid-tier, that would be...?

As for "Shooter main weapons are never bad"? Aerospray, Sploosh, Nova, arguably both Nozzlenoses.

 

[OnePotWonder]

For the second time, Splattershot has more strengths over Pro than better fire rate. It strafes faster and consumes far less ink.
For the umpteenth time, instead of focusing on the changes, try to use your imagination (if you have one) to envision the results.

As for "Shooter main weapons are never bad"? Aerospray, Sploosh, Nova, arguably both Nozzlenoses.

All of which were buffed more than nerfed in my post, with the exception of Sploosh, which isn't a bad main weapon. It needs a bomb it can poke with in order to be good, not unlike many other short-range weapons.

 

[missingno]

A marginally better strafe speed is not enough to justify substantially worse range. That's not even close to making a difference here.

 

[OnePotWonder]

A marginally better strafe speed is not enough to justify substantially worse range. That's not even close to making a difference here.

It's not a marginal difference. Splattershot strafes roughly 50% faster than current Splattershot Pro. And that's not considering it has less than half of Pro's ink consumption; Shot can use its bombs much more freely.
Just accept it, you simply have no argument at this point.

Splattershot's fire rate being decreased to Pro's is not unreasonable, it would not kill the weapon. There are dozens of factors that go into why a weapon is or isn't used in the meta, the idea that Splattershot Pro's main weapon is what's holding back its kits is unsubstantiable. The fact of the matter is that Splattershot would get a 4 frame nerf to its time to splat, which means next to nothing in the context of comparing shooters to shooters, because every other one also has its time to splat nerfed by at least two frames.

You're not convincing anyone of anything here.

 

[missingno]

Strafe speed doesn't compensate for this when, in the time it takes for Pro-with-significantly-worse-range to get into range, actual Pro has already just splatted the target.

+4f is not next to nothing, that's a MASSIVE nerf. And saying that you also nerfed weapons that already aren't good really doesn't help your case here, that doesn't make this better.

You're not going to convince me that Pro-with-significantly-worse-range makes any sense.

 

[OnePotWonder]

You're not going to convince me that Pro-with-significantly-worse-range makes any sense.

Then why are you still here? The point of the thread is for me to convince people that shooters could and should be made significantly worse and the game would be better for it. Your selective reading, assumptions, and self-validating statements aren't doing you any favors in this argument. Your time is probably better spent elsewhere.