Preparing for TS: Ways We Can Improve Our Game

[SwimShady]

Good morning Whiprays!

This is sort of a supplementary newsletter because I've thought of a few things that I want to share with you guys that we might be able to work on tonight during practice so we'll be better prepared for Friday.

Yesterday I was feeling kind of down about myself as a splatoon player. I felt like I wasn't a good player at all and that I wasn't even a very good captain to you guys. Tony helped me feel a lot better and reminded me to be very analytical of my play style and work on the nuts and bolts of my gameplay. I tried out a few different weapons (I might start working on the Nozzlenose, but that won't come anywhere near competitive play for a long time, I just sort of accidentally liked it and want to work with it in off time) and I revisited some of the other sloshers aside from vanilla sloshing machine. I also reacquainted myself with my sloshing machine's range (way farther than most people assume, btw). I did some 1v1's with my fiance working primarily on staying alive and putting my range to work. Then I popped into Turf and the first match I played, I came out with a positive KDR, something I haven't done in a long time and that only happens once in a great while for me.

Here's what I've learned that I'm working on and that I think we can all work on and become much better players:

"Well you can tell by the way I use my walk I'm a woman's man. No time to talk."
Thoughts on Staying Alive
(a stream-of-consciousness tangent by Sam)

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1) Knowing Your Range (and using it to your advantage)

No matter what weapon you use, it's important to know what your range is, and where your "bullets" begin their falloff. Speaking in terms of the testing area, my sloshing machine can direct hit from about 3 lines away. That's pretty good, but that still puts me in range of most shooters, some blasters, and any roller flicks. I also have to wait almost a full second before I can fire a second time (the kill shot; SM is a 2HTK blaster essentially). That's a lot of time for my opponent to react. How do I combat this so that I can still engage opponents without ensuring my own demise?

Like this: I know from experience that if I engage an opponent, they are almost always going to try to fight back and move forward rather than retreat because everyone assumes they outrange a slosher and can get the kill first. And most of the time, they're right. But, if I'm willing to give up the 2HTK on my slosher, I can back up almost another full "line" and still kill in 3 to 4 hits by utilizing my falloff damage. Spacing myself that far back puts me out of range of a LOT of weapons and makes it easier for me to take away the ink at the opponent's feet, trapping them in range of my weapon. They're still going to try to fight back because they simply don't think I have the range to kill them. But I do. I just have to be patient. Ask Tony. Any time I get a kill on him, it's by minimizing the amount of ink on the ground for him to work with, and then patiently chipping away his health by rotating around him (more on this in a bit) and letting falloff damage do its thing.

I think it would help us all if we reacquainted ourselves with the range of our main weapons and see how far back we can stand while still getting falloff kills. This is especially helpful against 1HTK weapons like the Luna where if you happen to be in range of them, it's an instant death.

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2) Overextending (and how to not to no more)

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Overextending is simply pushing farther than is safe. The number one way to tell if you're overextending is to see if you're surrounded by enemy ink. You should always be sure you're surrounded by your own ink. This ensures you have a safe retreat, and making sure you're always in your own ink helps with map control. Ink up the area in front of you really well before you move forward. And if an opponent is taking ink from you, don't be afraid to back up and regroup. If you retreat, one of two things will happen: 1. Enemy will pursue, but likely on foot so they can take ink as they go. You swim faster than you walk, so retreat until you're out of their range, then turn around and pull the same trick on them. If they are pursuing you, they are likely overextending themselves, giving you the automatic advantage. 2. Enemy will give up on you. Rad! You have a minute to calm down, regroup, and re-ink, and they didn't get the kill on you. It's like having the cool-down time after a death without having to die!​

For certain players, depending on the weapon they run, it's easier for them to accidentally overextend. It happens to me a lot when I play sloshing machine because there's not a lot of spread on it and it takes a while to fire multiple shots. I've also noticed in our videos that this happens a lot with you, Tony. And it's simply due to the nature of the brush. It has minimal coverage and it's difficult to get anything accomplished if you don't work your way into enemy territory. And when Tony has to overextend for the sake of recovering turf, he runs on literally NO ink because of how much he has to throw down for the sake of being able move around. When we have players like him on our team, it can be immensely helpful to everyone if we help keep plenty of ink on the ground so that it's less likely those tight-quarters players have to worry about overextending. Because let's face it: Tony is most helpful when he's alive. ;)​

3) Utilizing the Gamepad and Jumping Away

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I read a really good analogy for the gamepad yesterday. Look at your gamepad the way you would look at your speedometer on your car: often, but only when not in danger or not in the middle of something that could put you in danger. On a clear straightaway? Gamepad. Have a lull in the action? Gamepad. Respawn? Gamepad. Call out anything you see: flanks, beacons, anything. The exception to the speedometer rule: if you're in danger but can retreat long enough to do so, look at the gamepad and see who you can jump to. If you can't jump to anyone, jump to spawn. Here's an example:​

Yesterday, I was practicing staying alive and keeping my distance. I was on turf wars on Bluefin and it was a pretty even match, until I started jumping out of the way of any situation that I knew would end in my death. Each time, I was able to back up long enough to find a teammate to jump to and got myself out of danger. And there was a bonus side effect: I was able to help my teammates secure areas they were struggling to keep. I jumped probably 4 or 5 times in that match and each time I helped my team take areas from the opponent. We ended up losing that match because of a last second push (Turf Wars, amirite?) but I had an even KDR (and I think a couple of my deaths were from me being a goof and falling in the water) and my teammates had fewer deaths than they had in matches before. So my jumping to and securing areas helped keep some of my teammates alive as well. If we can utilize jumping in this way regularly, we can improve our KDRs, have better control over the map, and it confuses the hell out of people too! Just remember to announce your jumps.​

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Conclusion:
Staying alive means you're helping. You can back up and allow falloff damage and patience to get a few kills, you can regroup and focus on not overextending, or you can jump away from a fight and focus on a different area, but preferably, you do all of these things throughout your gameplay. And the longer you stay alive, the longer you're there to catch flanks, be a safe jump location, cover turf, hold the zone, protect the rainmaker, defend the tower, or do whatever it is you need to do.

This is all really difficult stuff to focus on when you're in the middle of a battle. It's tough. But we really need to work on it, me especially. And if we can get that down, we'll be an even more ballin' team than we already are.

Here's a really rad video about strafing around opponents to have the advantage to kill:

"Every battle is won before it is fought."
Strategy And How We Need One
(a continuation of a stream-of-consciousness tangent by Sam)
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Tony brought up a really good point of concern yesterday. Right now, our biggest weakness is strategy and execution thereof.

At the start of every match, call out the direction you're going, even if you always go the same direction on that map. Also, to better keep track of what weapons the opposing team has, I think we should start implementing the idea Alex had. When the match starts, note your position on spawn. When it shows the opposing team, call out the weapon standing in your position on their spawn. This way we only have to focus on recognizing one weapon, but we know what all of them have at the start of the match.

Strategy is largely a case-by-case deal, so I don't really have any numbered thoughts here. Just that we need to decide the strategy at the start of each map and EXECUTE. But we also need to be okay with changing strategies halfway through the match. We can't be afraid of adjusting plans if the opposing team has the upper hand. It's also useful to call out which way you're going once you respawn.

We also need to be okay with the idea that we will not always have control of the objective, and that's okay. We're a defensive team. We'll always take it back. But if our strategy isn't working, we need to be comfortable with the idea of regrouping and letting go of the objective long enough to reassess what we need to do to win. An example is that Kelp Dome match against the Raiders. They came on strong and got an early lead and consistently thwarted our plans throughout the match. What did we do? We backed off some, recovered a lot of ground, re-entered from different positions and re-took the zone all at once, claiming every inch of turf with us, putting us in a defending position over the zone, which is where we really shine.

We need to be okay with doing that more often and earlier on in matches that are really tough.​

There are a few extra things I want to work on in practice. I'm going to be implementing other sloshers into different game modes. One of which being slosher deco with wall and kraken for TC. I think we could really benefit from practicing putting walls on the tower. And if more than one of us runs wall, we can stack them on alternate sides when we need to really make a big push.

Things I want to practice more often when we're all together:

* Splash Walls on Tower Control
* Rainmaker pathing on difficult maps like Hammerhead Bridge
* Flanking effectively
* Plan B strats for tough games
* Strategies for staying live and striving for those 0 death games​

Okay, guys. Thanks for powering through this crazy long thing. I'm super excited for practice tonight. I hope everyone has a great day! See you tonight!​

 

[Aristeia]

The strafing video was great stuff, unfortunately it is useless to me unless I pick up a Shooter again. Run Speed Up doesn't affect Rollers :/

One thing I know I need to work on is overextending, and out of the first three mentioned it's the thing I want to spend the most time on.

In addition to strategy, we also need to start coordinating respawns and combats so that nobody is ever left alone. I know that I am a huge repeat offender with this, as anyone watching the Kelp game will discern. Arguably part of the reason why that game was so close is because I was never trying to break into the Zone with someone else...I kept trying to do it myself. Which ended up very badly for most of the game.

Every bullet point you mentioned I think we should do soon, with the exception of Hammerhead. Hopefully that combo isn't coming up again soon in tournament matches, so it's not as much of a priority. Something to consider for you all...in case we don't have any push-heavy specials...how effective would it be for me to occasionally swap to vanilla Octobrush for some Tower games? Squid Beakons and Kraken with the set...may be more useful for that mode. Something to think about.

 

[SwimShady]

The strafing video was great stuff, unfortunately it is useless to me unless I pick up a Shooter again. Run Speed Up doesn't affect Rollers :/

It may not be super helpful to you offensively, but a lot of high-level players know to do this and you might be able to recognize it and combat it before they manage to splat you. I found that even just being aware that this was a thing, it happened to me less often because I knew to look for it. :)

 

[Lord Lago]

I could tell on Mondays practice that you were not feeling it Sam. Especially on those first few maps. But, we didn't want to sandbag just to make you feel better, so we still went hard. And don't worry too much about the wall you've hit; everyone gets to that wall, often many times as they get better at any game. And sometimes going back to the basics like you did is the best thing you can do. Work back up your fundamentals and it will improve your core game. Or have a crisis moment and go super saiyan after watching your best friend get exploded. It also helps if you pick up a new weapon; that's why I changed to the heavy splatling. I was unsatisfied by my bucket skills.

As for the newsletters, they are super helpful but as we get more and more they are starting to feel cluttered. Perhaps if we utilized the forum's organizational tools better so we can clearly see newsletters in order and maybe having them sorted somehow, probably by date.

As for the other things you mentioned for practice, that all sounds good to me. I am on my phone so I will have to keep this brief. Keep up the good work squiddos. And Sam, don't ever feel the need to be the best and worry that we won't respect you if you don't have great KD's. The captain is the mental core, the heart of the team. If you push us on when we're feeling down or lead by example in putting in hard work, that will do wonders. So often teams think the captain is the strongest player, but that often leads to resentment issues. And to you other squids, do not forget that Sam is the captain and so lets help her help us as best as we can.

 

[SwimShady]

Also, something we could do to make sure people respawning don't return alone:

Let's say for example Tony gets splatted. We'll know right away because obviously he'll tell us. If one of us isn't in the middle of direct combat, like if I'm recovering turf somewhere, I could jump back to spawn and move with him back into the fight. Combine jumping back to buddy up with a respawning team mate with jumping away from dangerous situations, and we've got a pretty rad system where we die less, but when we do, we return with backup.