Patch 8.1.0 discussion

[Catloafman]

Brella possibly got fixed I do not care about the rest of the patch
BUT if I did I am glad slider cheese is gone I wish they would just reduce the end lag but whatever

The vac buff is nice but I really wish it wasn't just the paint but also the damage because correct me if im wrong vac even tho it looks like it can cant hit around walls making it very hard to fully flush people out of areas

Clash buff is the direction I want nintendo to take the weapon I want the weapon to be faster

Sblast buff is insane gotta try that one out after the patch

DYNAMO PAINT CONSISTANCY BUFF?!??! this might be HUGE

Douser buff is very cool

Recycled buff might make it so you feel like you are decently protected in fights because more shields but we shall see

Also x rank actual rank for players up to top 30000 is really cool I like seeing that number but I am too bad to ever see it this might actually get me to play x rank more lol

 

[Aiko.Octo]

Can we talk about the emotional gut punch it was to read this:

and get your hopes up only for the rest of it to be this:

I died a little, I think.

Anyway cool patch, I like it. I was really surprised by the QoL stuff, like it's just really thoughtful in a way that I feel like I never would have expected the devs to address.

SLIDER BUFF YAAAY it's good overall even though there's that tiny part of me that's hurt over zones cheese getting nerfed (I know I KNOW slider cheese is Bad(tm) but please just allow me five minutes to be sad about this thank you it was just nice to get to be specifically useful sometimes)

I am personally terrified of the carbon and brush buffs even though I can't argue with them. On the other hand carbon's been on my radar as something to pick up sometime so maybe that will go in my favor eventually! And I can't wait to try out dousers again with better ink-efficiency :D

 

[Grushi]

Overall I'm pretty happy with the patch, I think the buffs are a lot more meaningful than say, 7.2.0.
We still have pretty nothing buffs for aerospray and clash but this time it feels like they improved weapons that were already pretty good but that haven't reached their full potential yet.

Think about it: they improved carbon roller (and by a lot), dynamo, s-blast and dousers. Not to mention all of these buffs seem to be fixing the main issues these main weapons have, and they're already in a solid spot as is. Heck I'd argue even recycled brella has always had some potential, so it's great seeing it get better too. Even octobrush's hitbox detection buff is pretty noteworthy for that weapon, and it already wasn't in a bad spot as is.

The special changes I'm a lot more partial to:

• Chumps' buff is a straight win, I'm really happy about it, I think bamboo mk II and gold dynamo could have potential after this, they already get a lot of chumps per game as is, so improving the power of said special is really going to be felt. I think bamboo 2 is already a pretty great main and sub combo, it just really wants to get a powerful special considering you can get like 8 of them if you play for it properly.
• Kraken's nerf is kind of out of left field but honestly I don't hate it. 5 frames might be a bit much but the charge attack always felt ridiculously fast to charge, so I'm not complaining. I just wish it came with a compensation buff really.
• I'm glad slider cheese is getting fixed, it's probably still going to be doable on some maps but it's going to require a lot more effort and gear investment which is good. It capping the entire zone by itself was always bs. But the 70 damage radius increase feels kind of dumb... It's already massive, I don't get what this helps with, this was never the problem with slider.
• Vac's change is nice, like, cool I guess. But it's the second buff in a row that doesn't really help anything. They're clearly aware that the special is weak, but more paint was never the problem.

Basically, I'm just kind of worried that nintendo just doesn't know what to do with vac and slider, which is kind of sad.

The brella lag fix is such a relief, I don't think non-brella mains can even understand how big this is. I've had to deal with this since splatoon 2, and it's the first time nintendo's even acknowledged that this was an issue. Their reasoning is sound too, I agree that making brella shields open faster on the opponents' end is a scary thing to mess with, especially since it technically buffs the weapons for low-latency environments, but I think it had to be done. I was mentally prepared to deal with this forever, I always thought it was understandable, but god it's such a relief. I have to try it out for myself but this is so nice.


Overall: Really great patch, but it's kind of carried by the main 6 main weapon buffs and the brella class change to me, I'm not a fan of no sub weapons changes, and the special changes outside of chumps feel nice... but kind of unecessary.

 

[isaac4]

Overall: Really great patch, but it's kind of carried by the main 6 main weapon buffs and the brella class change to me, I'm not a fan of no sub weapons changes, and the special changes outside of chumps feel nice... but kind of unecessary.

I was so focused on the main and special changes that I completely forgot subs didn't get touched at all.
They're really just done with trying to balance Angle Shooter and Toxic Mist will continue to be too expensive.

 

[DzNutsKong]

I'll just go over everything...

• Aerospray - Unnecessary and not a good change but I can get why they did it. This is consistently the one Shooter that never has seen even fringe use at top level and it's been that way since Splatoon 1 as far as I know. I have to wonder if they're afraid to buff its range or something like that because they think it'll feel much more closely like Jr. or Sploosh or something but this weapon would need so many more things to not completely suck.
• Blaster - Cool. I'm not gonna pretend like I know how much this will change this weapon in particular. I hear the main weapon itself is very strong as is though.
• Clash Blaster - A very cool change and one that I hope Nintendo can expand upon in the future but there's still way too much opportunity cost to running this on a team for how little it provides. Imagine sacrificing paint output on a short-ranged weapon in a meta where most painting weapons are also short-ranged and most teams want to be made mostly of midlines. If you run like Clash + Pencil + Stamper then your comp is going to severely suffer with either paint or midline fighting presence no matter what you do.
• S-BLAST - Something that might have been clarified here, but might not have been because I've been at work is that this might not increase the fire rate for if you shoot, go into ink, and shoot again. If you try those things with Luna Blaster it'll be slower than if you stay out of your ink and hold down the trigger button and this buff might be for that latter case. If it is then that won't be as big of a deal as everyone is saying but it could be huge if it is what everyone thinks it is. Again, not a weapon I'm super familiar with.
• Carbon Roller - Roommate is a Carbon Roller player and he said that horizontals have always felt awful to use. I don't think this will let Carbon do anything too crazy that it couldn't before but I don't think Carbon really needs a huge buff as is. Cool change.
• Dynamo Roller - This is one I want to see in action before I can say anything about it but at the very least I have to imagine they removed that awful blind spot. If its painting is actually good now then that's awesome. Dynamo is a sick weapon and I've always been upset that it in particular has been in as awful of a state as it has been despite its vanilla kit being so good on paper.
• Big Swig Roller - Cool but it's not going to fix the core problems with this weapon. Never going to complain about something like this on its own unless it's like the Aerospray buff they did.
• Inkbrush / Octobrush - I remember there were some weird points when playing Inkbrush where I would just barely be outside of the range of its shots and for some reason only the leftward swings would hit someone and not the rightward ones or vice versa depending on where they're standing. I might be misremembering the specifics to this though. Is this a fix to that? Cool if so.
• Douser Dualies FF - Potentially huge change for this weapon. I imagined ink efficiency to be one of the intended bigger weaknesses of this weapon so seeing them fix that is a bit weird to me, but we'll absolutely take it. Douser meta would be so cool.
• Recycled Brella - idk lmao
• The Brella class change - Why did they not do this at the start? Instead they waited almost two years to make a change that should be glaringly obvious to any game designer. Whatever. I'm just glad we have it now.
  
  
• Reefslider - We did not need another radius increase... I'm very glad they're trying to remove its cheese but making the explosion attack bigger while also making it paint less is just going to make it ever so slightly more awkward to play against rather than addressing this special's problems. It's way too vulnerable both when it starts and ends. Bigger attack does not fix this.
• Ink Vac - Probably just a quality-of-life fix to something that didn't make sense about the special before. Cool. Ink Vac is bad but I'd argue it still has its place in the game as is so I'm not upset that this isn't getting any huge buffs.
• Super Chump - This is definitely still worse than other displacement specials but I'm not complaining about this change.
• Trizooka / Inkjet - Meant to be buffs for Big Bubbler. I think a special like Big Bubbler is fine as a counter to the other top tier specials if everything below that answers it well just for the sake of encouraging comp diversity and I think Trizooka needs more direct counterplay. This shouldn't be all that happens to Zooka but this is a start.
• Kraken Royale - I feel like if they wanted to make people use Kraken's jumping attack just as much as its Squid Surge attack then they shouldn't have approached it from this angle. This change has made a decent amount of people upset and is going to throw off everyone's muscle memory for a bit. The idea for a good change is there but the execution wasn't the best.

Overall, mostly pretty good main weapon changes mixed in with some pretty mediocre special changes. I think the game's in an amazing spot right now as a whole and I don't mind minor improvements because of that, although the buffs to Dynamo, Dousers, and potentially S-BLAST are very much appreciated and could be a serious boost for them. I love the transparency here, I'm looking forward to the next patch, and I'm perfectly happy with the state of the game so I'm fine with them just trying to "enhance" the way things are right now so to speak.

 

[youre_a_squib_now]

• S-BLAST - Something that might have been clarified here, but might not have been because I've been at work is that this might not increase the fire rate for if you shoot, go into ink, and shoot again. If you try those things with Luna Blaster it'll be slower than if you stay out of your ink and hold down the trigger button and this buff might be for that latter case. If it is then that won't be as big of a deal as everyone is saying but it could be huge if it is what everyone thinks it is. Again, not a weapon I'm super familiar with.

It definitely increases the fire rate for both cases. You have to spend less time in the ink to get the faster fire rate, but really the only reason you were swimming for longer in the first place is to keep moving so you aren't stuck in endlag after you land. So this buff means you get to change directions more often and shoot more often. I haven't played games with it yet but I honestly think it's even better than I thought at first.