Splatoon 2 Random Thoughts/The State of the Metagame

[The Salamander King]

I know this site has been pretty dead for a while, but I don't have anywhere else to post this, so here we go.

This post will just be how I feel about the current state of the game.

The Meta
Dualies, Dualies, Dualies, oh my! I don't know why it took so long, but people have finally realized that the Enperries are better than the Tentatek Splattershot, at least most of the time. Better movement, better painting, the ability to easily dodge opponents, and all of TTek's strengths. The Kensa Dualies were already amazing pre-patch, but with the Baller buffs they've become even better. I don't know what their deal with buffing Baller is. It was fine in 1.0 and didn't need any changes, at least in my opinion.

Another really good weapon is the Kensa Rapid Blaster, also with Baller. The main and special would be solid enough, but they gave this thing Torpedo (random thought, but they couldn't come up with a creative name for Torpedo) and it went from good to absolutely ridiculous. It's like the Splat 1 Grim Range Blaster, but it combos even better. Torpedo damage + an indirect is usually enough to kill an enemy. Sometimes the chip damage doesn't fall in your favor and you need another indirect, but it's still an insane combo.

I never thought I'd ever see the day that Undercover Brella of all things became a high tier weapon, but here we are. With the huge Armor buffs, and the fact that it has Torpedo, Kensa Undercover is a big threat in the correct hands. Not mine, but I've had to fight enough of them to know their power.

Kensa Machine is strange. People have decided to drop the version with Stingray, and are instead using the one with Splashdown. Odd. The Fizzy Bomb carries this weapon, with its long range, high chip damage, and movement availability. Throwing a Fizzy into certain zones can neutralize them, and the bomb outputs crazy amounts of pressure. Combine this with Machine's high chip damage potential and you have an excellent weapon capable of exerting tremendous pressure.

You scoffed at and questioned me when I put Ballpoint at the top of my tier list. Look what's happened now. The Ballpoint Nouveau is top tier on most lists and the Vanilla isn't far behind. The Ballpoint itself is probably the best main weapon in the game, with Hydra range, Splattershot killtime, Mini speed, and Nzap painting. A good Ballpoint can play just about any role or position on a team. The kits directly support this, with the Nouveau having Beakons and Inkstorm to support a more backline playstyle, and the Vanilla with Toxic mist and Injet working better for aggression.

There are more meta weapons but I don't feel like making this an essay.

I'm sure you can see a few trends here. Torpedo, Fizzy, Baller, and Armor rein supreme. Armor will probably get countered by something in the future, that's just how competitive works, so I don't think it needs to be nerfed. Here are the things that need changing in my opinion:

Fizzy Bomb: Increase ink used to 65%
Decrease max damage to 93.3

Torpedo: Decrease movement speed by 30%
Decrease painting by 15%

Baller: Increase damage dealt to Baller for these weapons; Rollers, Aerospray, Jr., Sploosh, .52, Jet, Pro, and probably some others.

Inkjet: Despite it starting to slide a little bit from where it was, Inkjet is still very good and will probably need a nerf after the pseudo invincibility meta ends.
Decrease movement speed by 10%

Ballpoint: Decrease movement speed in both modes by 15%
Midweight->Heavyweight
Short range time to kill; 11 frames->13 frames
Long range time to kill; 17 frames->19 frames

Carbon: Increase kill range to what about 1m Main Power Up gives you. Adjust MPU accordingly.

Kensa Rapid Blaster: 200->220 p for special.

So besides Torpedo, Fizzy, and Ballpoint, not much needs to be changed. Getting the balance right in a game like this is very difficult and I applaud whoever handles the patches, they've done a great job.

Recently I've read flc's wonderful paper on team comps and the flow of the game called "Fluid Properties and Roles". It's helped my team improve exponentially over a very short period of time, and I'd post it if I had the link on me. It should be on flc's twitter.

As a whole, I think Splatoon as a game is doing really well right now. We are starting to see more orgs interested in the game here in the west, and since content updates have stopped, dedicated players can fully dedicate themselves to exploring the intricacies of the game without having to worry about new content getting dumped on them and ruining their findings.

That's all I have right now, but you know I'll be back.

Stay Fresh!

 

[Mar$el]

I agree with pretty much everything here and figured I'd chip in with some thoughts of my own, as well as explaining some things already mentioned.

I figure I'll start with the dualies. Yeah they really got popular but the dualies meta already hit it's peak and is dying off. People go ttek more often than enperries, but yeah kensies are super popular. Other than that dualies aren't really used, but yeah kensies are super prominent. Especially because the double inkjet meta is dead and now we're dealing with Baller, Storm and Armor as the strongest/most prominent specials in the meta featuring weapons like ball nouveau, h3d, kensies, kunder, and so on (like kensine but I'll get to that later).

Anyways as you bring up krapid I figure I'll also talk about torpedo, which is an insanely good sub (along with fizzy). The kensa rapid and kunder both have it which is basically entirely what makes these weapons viable (though kunder is more insane because the main weapon sucks but it gets carried by its kit with torpedo armor).

And now for the kensine, which I was confused about at first as well, as I had favored the stingray one as well. That is, until people explained it to me and I started using it. For starters, the kit synergizes with the weapon so well, much more than the other ones and gives it aggro potential. We all know that power of aoe of the machine and fizzy, but I'll talk about splashdown since that's the most questionable trait. Splashdown has its uses. Is it the best special in the world? No. But it does have its uses. Firstly, it deletes bubbles (for people who use them for some reason on like tent or explo even though bubbles suck now). Secondly, and most influentially, splashdown jumps can be insane. Slap on 1 main 4 subs special saver (or 2-3 subs if you just wanna slosh once) to keep your splashdown if you get shot down. You can either cheese this to splashdown when you know you're gonna die so they will shoot it down and you keep your special, or just have it happen naturally. Also worth mentioning, though they get shot down a considerable amount, that's not all the time, so sometimes you still get normal use out of it.

Now, why splashdown works for machine. Machine is a king at spacing. It's sub is broken with spacing. Splashdown has an insane base damage radius. You can space people out of your 1v1 and catch them with splash damage from splashdown, or splashdown and follow with a fizzy. Even without splashdown you can get a direct then follow with a fizzy, or vice versa and confirm kills outside of your range. The kit/weapon is so manipulative and tricky around obstacles and can even excel in 1v1s if you have the aim to never miss any directs. Honestly an all star weapon.

As for ballpoint, they're just annoying and people finally realized it again because they gave it a kit that actually fits the weapon. As a charger I don't really suffer against them unless I miss. Even then I know how to deal with them given the other weapons I play. It does have too much and something has got to go.

I'm not one to make buff/nerf requests in specifics, but I think torpedo needs to only have the 1 explosion, and fizzy should only have 2 explosions max.

 

[The Salamander King]

Commonly in my Discord server I will post long, somewhat essay-like rants on competitive aspects of this game. I have decided to also post them here.

The more and more I play, the more and more I wish Splash Neo had Inkstorm and not Suction Rush. Splash Neo would be one of the fastest-paced weapons in the game, but it has to stop every 10 seconds (paints well enough to get special that fast) and kill it's momentum to use bomb rush. It's more of a nerf than anything. That's the largest reason Dark Tetra is better than Light Tetra. Tetra is easily the fastest-paced weapon in the game, and Splashdown compliments that. Autobomb rush drops your momentum like a 2-ton brick. It's also why Kensa Machine is so much better than Neo, on top of the fact that Neo has to deal with Point Sensors.

H3D is meta right now, and I think most players are using it wrong. I don't even play H3 and I see some problems. The main problem with H3 is that it's very inconsistent, Like, quadruple what the next most inconsistent weapon is. You miss 1/3 shots and you're almost guaranteed dead. Getting 3 shots on moving targets is hard, and with the widespread use of Dualies it's even harder. Most players can't kill anything And that's the problem, the average usefulness of an H3 is really bloody low, Probably the lowest in the game.

Because the learning curve basically looks like this _|, when Almost every other weapon in the game looks more like this _/ .Putting an H3 on your team over other similar weapons is nothing but a detriment until you become a god at H3. There is no reason to run an H3D over something like an Nzap unless your H3 has been maining the thing for years, because they will mess up a lot. H3 is not meant to be played like most think it should.

The thing is super inconsistent with killing, so why kill with it?

The best H3s are not put into teams "for long range support" The team is put into the H3 for "actually playing the game while I farm Armor and occasionally get a kill". H3 is garbage at killing.

If you take anything away from this rant it's that you don't play H3D over other Armor weapons unless you're a god, and you gotta build your comp around and H3 because of how wonky it is.

It reads somewhat strangely because it was originally a Discord message, where every sentence was on it's own line.