So, after an hour or so of (usually my teammates) making it rain, I've got some thoughts on Rainmaker.
Firstly, on the Rainmaker itself. It's like a slightly different (and maybe slightly shorter-ranged?) Inkzooka, with wider inknados a the cost of a charge time (you
can fire an uncharged shot, but it sucks, please don't do that) and not being able to use your weapon's sub or special (which makes sense, imagine popping Kraken with the Rainmaker and sailing to victory while invincible and you'll see why). While holding it, you can run and swim, though you're a bit slower than normal and you glow while submerged: this is really good, since being able to swim with the Rainmaker lets you swim up walls wih it, opening up the ability to take different paths with it, as opposed to the Tower Control tower, which just follows a set path with no ability to deviate (it's the closest comparison I can come up with at the moment). Additionally, the shield around the Rainmaker when it's dropped makes it so a total-party-splat doesn't immediately result in the other team running it into your goal while you're respawning (at least, usually; if you lose it right on top of your goal and this happens, you've probably lost), which I feel is a good thing. Finally, you cannot pass Bubbler to someone who's carrying the Rainmaker; this is probably a good thing, for balance purposes (invincible Rainmaker probably wouldn't be a good thing), but I was still kinda disappointed when I first tried it out and it didn't pass Bubbler to our Rainmaker carrier. And when I popped Bubbler, picked up the Rainmaker myself while Bubbler was still on (thinking it would keep the Bubbler until the Bubbler timer ran out) and my Bubbler immediately disappeared.
Secondly, on stages. The stages seem to have been redesigned a tiny bit, having a few things added to make getting around a bit easier while making certain paths inaccessible (most noticeably, at least to me, there are pillars leading up to the rope-walks on Triggerfish). This is good, since it lets the Rainmaker more easily get around and gives some flexibility in moving toward the goal.
Thirdly, on the teammates not carrying the Rainmaker. I think anyone not holding the Rainmaker has three important things to do. The first is to prevent enemies from shooting at the Rainmaker carrier. This is very important, since the Rainmaker carrier's survival is the only way you can win, thus making enemies near them priority number one. The second task is to ink turf to create a path toward the goal. This is also very important, as while the Rainmaker can ink their own path pretty well, that thing's on a timer, and every second it spends creating a path is a second not spent swimming toward the goal with the Rainmaker. The third, and possibly least important, task is to scout ahead and intercept enemies headed toward the Rainmaker. This is important because being able to splat enemies before they approach Rainmaker-shooting range lets teammates near the Rainmaker ink a path for the carrier more easily; additionally, this is probably the best way to deal with enemy Chargers while pushing, since they probably won't come to you and will back off when they see a huge Rainmaker inknado coming their way before returning to their perch to snipe again, so going after them will up your Rainmaker carrier's survivability considerably. And yes, the Rainmaker
can deal with enemies and ink its own path (though probably shouldn't scout on its own), but it can't deal with ambushes and its timer makes every second spent inking its own path time wasted, so the value of non-Rainmaker-carrying teammates is still high.
Overall, I rather love this mode. It helps that I'm actually fairly good at it, or at least I feel like I am. I finally breached S rank with the Splattershot Jr. during the first half hour it was out, so there's that. Which I think is pretty okay.
Rainmaker sucks. Intense optimization problems regarding frame rates, numerous scumstrats regarding stalling, how fast the game can be over, etc.
Sorry if this is rather obvious stuff, but how can you stall with the Rainmaker (I'm assuming you or a teammate have the Rainmaker while stalling, please let me know if I've got it wrong)? And what problems are there with the frame rates? I haven't encountered any of this, so I'm rather curious.
