really weird idea for nerfing flyfish

[vitellary]

i think it's pretty universally accepted that flyfish are kinda stupidly annoying in salmon run. i think it's also universally understood that the reason they're annoying is that they have precisely One way to kill them, excluding limited resources like specials or a very small selection of weapons. you have to sink two whole splat bombs into killing it, which is a huge amount of ink and time. every other boss in salmon run has the main way to kill them, but that can be subverted by just dealing enough damage to it too, and even aside from that, no other boss has nearly as annoying conditions for killing them. contrasting flyfish to maws is night and day, the fact that maws take only one bomb AND can just be killed directly if you deal enough damage to it is so nice compared to how strict flyfish are.

now, to an extent, i think this is probably on purpose. flyfish have created a legacy of infamy in salmon run, and i think that's important to the bond we share as salmon run players. would it really be salmon run if we didn't all collectively groan when 3 flyfish spawn back to back?

with that said, i had recently thought of (what i think is) an interesting way to nerf them that would maintain their status as the most annoying enemy to kill, while making it a lot more fair to do so. the game has already laid out the blueprint for the nerf idea: the explosher. for some reason this is the Only (non-grizzco) weapon in the entire game to be allowed to kill flyfish baskets directly. and that's absurd! why does explosher get such special treatment! it does make explosher a joy to get when it shows up in a rotation, but the fact that that's the case specifically because it's the only thing that counters a poorly designed boss is kinda dumb to me.

so, my weird idea is this: i think all blasters should be allowed to deal this special explosive damage as well. realistically i don't know why explosher projectiles get treated as being so different from blaster shots anyway, that's always been strange to me. making them consistent would be both logical, and make it so you'll have a way to counter flyfish more often than not. it would also give blasters more that they can deal with, since my impression is that they can struggle a bit in salmon run when dealing with crowds.
with this i think we would need to change the way the baskets function. instead of just being a binary "if it's hit then it goes down", they should probably have HP, just like how the steelhead's bomb remembers how much damage it has taken. the HP amount would have to be a maximum of 180 if we don't want to rework splat bomb (and i've never heard anyone complain about splat bomb being weak, even if i personally think it should be a bit more powerful given how much ink it takes), so i think it being exactly 180 would make most sense. this would make all 1-shot blasters (from PVP) able to 1-shot the basket, which is fair given their slow fire rate; the rapid blasters would 2-shot it; clash blaster would barely be a 3-shot; and grizzco blaster would be a 4-shot. additionally, if we allow both direct and indirect damage to damage the basket (which i think would be fair, given that the very edge of a splat bomb can damage a basket just the same way), then the combination of the explo direct + indirect would mean that it stays as a 1-shot as well, so explosher can stay as powerful as it is, being the longest-range option for dealing with flyfish.

now, despite all that rambling, i'm not actually that active of a salmon run player. so for all the actual people that play salmon run a lot: is this too much? do you think flyfish need to be nerfed at all? i'm curious about people's thoughts on them, and whether this would make them too easy to deal with.

some other notes:
- maybe the tri-stringer and grizzco stringer should get to deal damage as well? i think that's the only other weapon that's "explosive". with those i think only the explosion should count and not the direct damage, so tri-stringer could land two full-charges to knock out a basket, and grizzco stringer would need to land 5 shots if it wants to get a basket in a single charge... not sure how feasible that is, but it might be possible
- if this were implemented in-game then it's likely that all blasters could end up being effective against mudmouths too. that might make the wave a bit too easy, but i'm not sure since maybe blasters feel weak in mudmouths normally? not something i'm familiar enough with to comment on, but maybe they can just keep explo as a special unique weapon for mudmouths in particular if it's too much

 

[missingno]

I think that's just too much of a nerf. Explo trivializes Flyfish, at the expense of being a weapon that's too slow and ink-hungry for the rest of Salmon Run. It kind of needs that trait to be unique to it so that it has something special, letting more well-rounded weapons also trivialize Flyfish would be too easy for them.

IMO, the biggest problem with Flyfish is having three of them active at once. One isn't that bad by itself, but they become significantly stronger in numbers, and it's a lot harder to take multiple out. My proposed nerf is a very indirect one: a content update adding 2-3 new miniboss types, diversifying the pool so that you're less likely to see three-of-a-kind spawn. Really I feel that's something that's been long overdue anyway, Salmon Run needs new content.

 

[Linneus]

Honestly, I grinded to 800 EVP for the first time last night and even beat HLM, and I gotta say... I think Flyfish are perfect. I don't need Salmon Run to be easier, and I think I really appreciate having a chance for the most impossibly awful creature of all time to spawn into your game and you just have to deal with that.

Especially when you've got a high value special like Inkjet or Killer Wail and you HAVE to use those in certain situations.

I'm not gonna lie, I think some Salmon Run players don't rise to the occasion and use the full extent of their capabilities, and so often there's this idea of "well if only i had better teammates and stingers and flyfish weren't so bad"

long story short; I WANT 'EM BAD
MAKE ME HATE THEM

 

[Pineapple Death Match]

My idea for a possible nerf would be to have a second way of dealing damage besides throwing splatbombs into the basket, like maybe while the basket is open you can just shoot the tiny salmonid directly, kinda making it a vertical missiles-spamming Maws with a smaller hitbox. Still annoying but you're not SOL if there's two of you aiming at the basket and one of you whiffs a bomb. For context, I'm profresh +2 and I play solo-queue like 99% of the time as my salmon run buddy has a very different schedule than me.

The problem overall though is when you get 2+ Flyfish spawning either multiples at once or shortly after one another, so adding more salmonid bosses to the pool as mentioned earlier in the thread would also work pretty well as a "nerf" by reducing that chance overall. I'm assuming it's intentional game design, but having them spawn in out-of-the-way locations on the map (say there's a scrim in the center, they're off on the far left or right just out of obvious sight) is also annoying because not only do you have seconds to chuck perfectly placed bombs for a kill before the missiles fly, but you're also leaving your team mates down one or two cephalopods while you do it.

I will say my mortal salmonid enemy atp is probably steelheads over flyfish but that's probably because I have complete dogwater aim.

 

[nday]

the problem especially in freelance is that things snowball. Most people can handle "just" one stinger, just one drizzler, just one steelhead bomb. But when you add more and more chaos people start wiping. the problem is keeping up with the spawns more than just a flyfish or two imo. That said, there are some pretty ridiculous waves where the rng just loves to spawn approximately 3 million flyfish.

the only boss I think is a consistent problem across all maps, and I play at EVP 400+ are big shots since they attract camping for the badge, which is a weird side effect to have, but it exists....

 

[Linneus]

the only boss I think is a consistent problem across all maps, and I play at EVP 400+ are big shots since they attract camping for the badge, which is a weird side effect to have, but it exists....

Oh, I'm SO with you on that-- when you get that flash on screen that one of your teammates got splatted and you just PRAY it wasn't the guy who's 80 miles away at the Big Shot cannon, but you already know what you're gonna see when you pan your camera over...