Should Tacticooler be Nerfed?

[OnePotWonder]

I've been thinking more and more about this one particular idea as time has dragged on. The current pace of play in Splatoon 3, especially in higher levels of play, is simply too fast. While some of this comes from the prevalence of shooters, dualies, and splatanas in the meta, the main culprit and the special enabling all of those fast weapons is Tacticooler. A special mandatory for victory in high level play, and a special that cranks up the speed of the game to eleven.

Does Tacticooler need to be nerfed? I certainly think it does, but I can't speak for anyone else.
I have three ideas of varying severity to nerf Tacticooler and lower the speed of play. You might agree with any or none of them. Whatever ends up being the case, I'm curious to hear what you all think.

Tacticooler - Slap on the Wrist

Points of Special Saver granted reduced from 57 to 29​

This reduces points saved on death from 100% to 90%​

This is the least of the changes, and the one I see most people agreeing with. Tacticooler allowing players to maintain 100% of their special charge on death has been a complaint ever since Tacticooler meta began, and it's still a problem today. Tacticooler would still be required for top level comps with this slap on the wrist nerf, but it would take the edge off of its immense power.

Tacticooler - Sizeable Nerf

Points of Special Saver removed completely​

Taking things a step further, Tacticooler could instead not save any special points at all. This would add back consequences to getting splatted with the special's buffs active, and discourage players from making risky plays relying on Tacticooler as a flawless safety net. With this more meaningful nerf I could see Coolerless comps being viable in some cases, but the special would remain in top tier.

Tacticooler - Killer Nerf

Points of Special Saver removed completely​

Points of Quick Respawn reduced from 57 to 29​

This reduces respawn time reduction from 4 to 2.9 seconds​

Taking things another step further, we finally get to what I think would be best; an extreme change, removing Tacticooler's Special Saver effect and reducing the special's Quick Respawn effect. With this, I see Tacticooler finally not being necessary for top level comps, the special finally brought down to the level of the others, and with it the pace of play slowed to a significantly more reasonable speed. Fast comps with multiple Splatanas and Dualies would fall out of favor. More backline options would open up. Outside of that, the meta would likely remain mostly unchanged, with Crab Tank, Trizooka, Big Bubbler, and Triple Inkstrike dictating the flow of play.
Tacticooler would still be pickable even with its limited respawn abilities; top players have mastered making use of its speed, Intensify Action, and Quick Super Jump benefits over the course of its reign, and it would still enable more aggressive comps with weapons like Splat Roller, but it would not support its team so flawlessly like it does now, and not be necessary for slower, midline-focused comps.

Thanks for taking the time to read this thread and (hopefully) share your opinion on it.
Have a wonderful rest of your day!

 

[youre_a_squib_now]

The current pace of play in Splatoon 3, especially in higher levels of play, is simply too fast.

Yes, it's faster than it was in previous games, and much faster than any other shooter. But what makes that a bad thing?

 

[Algae]

Yes, it's faster than it was in previous games, and much faster than any other shooter. But what makes that a bad thing?

Making some weapon classes faster is an advantage that can be pushed far enough that other classes are far weaker, to the point of enforcing fast pace as a type of mechanical difficulty. The earlier small maps may leave less in the way of positioning-based strategy, too.

Given its basic use as a power-up applied to teammates, I doubt it's interesting that this special even exists, and I failed to fit it to any weapons with individualist synergy in mind. What do you think?

 

[youre_a_squib_now]

Making some weapon classes faster is an advantage that can be pushed far enough that other classes are far weaker, to the point of enforcing fast pace as a type of mechanical difficulty.

I don't understand how the game being faster-paced translates to mechanical difficulty.

Given its basic use as a power-up applied to teammates, I doubt it's interesting that this special even exists, and I failed to fit it to any weapons with individualist synergy in mind. What do you think?

I agree. It's not the most interesting special to use. But I like is that it makes the game faster; I don't see how that's bad.

 

[missingno]

Personally, I'd just like Cooler to be in a spot where it is not considered outright mandatory for every team comp. But I also understand that most active competitive players - of which I'm not one, these days I'm too focused on other games and only boot up Open once in a blue moon when my friends drag in me in for a rotation - love Cooler the way it is. So who am I to talk, honestly?

Once a game gets old enough, the playerbase has filtered down to people who really like the current meta. At this point, large disruptive changes, even if positive, risk upsetting and alienating your remaining base. If the hope is to bring back players who have left because they didn't like the meta, that likely won't work, most of them have simply moved on entirely by now.

It's too late to mess with S3 now, but I think I'd like for S4 to simply not have Cooler at all. New game, do something different, make sure it doesn't feel like S3.5 with the same meta.

 

[OnePotWonder]

Yes, it's faster than it was in previous games, and much faster than any other shooter. But what makes that a bad thing?

Players never get any breathing room when they're constantly fighting one another. Splatting an enemy only for them to come back in five seconds with all of their special makes plays feel inconsequential. Mainly, though, fast pacing just isn't fun to deal with for players like myself. I prefer to play long-ranged weapons, and I'm forced to pick options like Flingza and splatlings to have a chance of survival when an enemy rushes me down. If I don't have that I just end up stuck on snipe for practically the whole game, as I learned in picking up E-liter and subsequently growing tired of it immediately.

Enemies not being able to rush blindly ahead at a target backline (me) with no fear of consequences would be a huge improvement. Ensuring they don't immediately have a Reefslider when they come back if I manage to splat them would also be appreciated.

Some people might enjoy a faster pace of play, but when you're already at such an extreme high in pacing with a game like Splatoon, extra speed is unnecessary and just makes the game feel worse in many cases. Every one of the past shifts in the meta has only favored rush-down comps becoming stronger, faster, and more common. The midline nerf patch, Reefslider buffs, the shift from Snipewriter to Edit as the more popular Cooler option. We've reached a breaking point with how fast things are getting and it's no longer fun for players like me who very specifically hate fast, rush-down weapons. The logical thing to do at this point is cut down Tacticooler, singlehandedly reducing the speed of everything as well as weakening Pencil's hold on the backline meta.

Ultimately, you could have just said "I don't think it needs nerfs, I find the pacing of the game fine as-is." and saved me from having to spend 30 minutes writing out this explanation. But if you want my deep-seated motivation for this change, there you have it.

 

[Zonink]

Cooler honestly fixes so many problems with the game on a fundamental level that I think it's kinda a necessary evil. There was definitely a wild west period of splatoon 3 where cooler was bad and it was so insanely over centralized by special spam weapons and over tuned anchors that it hurt actively hurt tournament attendance. Without cooler the needle trends way too much towards passive reactive "turtley" comps. Some people like that. but I played an ungodly amount of 7-8 Shooter 50 missile lobbies in 2 and I can comfortably say that I'll pass on that.

I think a lot of the hatred towards cooler is mostly based around a lack of options in the cooler slot. and Pencil just being overpowered independant of having the special. The mandatory special hurts comp building but there has never been a meta in the history of the series without a mandatory special so idk whatever. Pencil warps a lot of the roles of the game, but also is hard to remove outright due to the natural role compression it provides to a team. They could nerf it repeatedly and people would still load up with it because nothing really does the same thing as it other than maybe edit.

This sounds strange but I actually think splatoon 3 is in a pretty fantastic spot right now. Pencil-less and cooler-less are (in spite of what people say on twt and bsky) playable strategies. Weapon diversity is at an all time high. Shooters have never been worse, weaker classes like bow and brella as seeing more usage. a lot of really bad slider weapons have been revived since their special is good abiet annoying. almost all the top tiers are high skill ceiling weapons. Bubble has retroactively fixed a lot of maps, and even though updates have slowed. that does mean it's a lot less risky to commit to learning a Meta weapon than before. You can pick splattershot pro now without throwing which is just insane to think about.

I don't really even think the game has actually gotten that much "faster", Cooler is very much a defender favored special for the most part. it minimizes mistakes and slows pushes by effectively putting more dudes in front of the enemy team. it's utility for offensive pushes is a lot less impactful as it doesn't make space at all. Cooler does literally give people swim and run but that doesn't actually contribute to matches being faster in any meaningful way. I think the culprit is actually bubble speeding up the game and making it easier to hold advantage for a ridiculously long time. Bubble is a very win more special at its core and is just really snowbally on most modes. a well timed bubble on enemy plat can just put a lot of games out of reach for the opposing team.

I've played splatoon when it was unbearably fast. Full 2 and 1/2 pures of QR + Stealth end game splatoon 1 was extremely intense. Splatoon 3's current state isn't even close to that and is honestly not unlike 5.1.0 Bamboo, CDS, Sorella Meta. which is seen really favorably by a lot of the older players in the scene. It's very easy to channel personal frustration at these types of games, "why am I not improving", "what the hell is my team doing", "that weapon/special is so broken" etc. because frankly for the longest time you'd probably be right. But I don't think that's really fair to the game anymore I guess?

anyway sorry for the long tangent. tldr cooler is good and cool and makes eliter not broken which is generally great lol.

 

[isaac4]

As much as I'm interested in seeing what the meta would look like if Cooler wasn't mandatory, I don't think it should be nerfed or at least not in a way where it stops being at the top.
There's other problems with the game that would be a lot more prevalent if there wasn't a special that was able to decrease the punishment of dying to a random Zooka or bomb with how linear and small most of the maps are.
I do understand that the pace of the game does end up being a problem for slower weapons though.
I personally rarely ever pick Machine in comp because of how slow the weapon is now after the 4.0 fire rate nerf and even if that nerf never happened, Machine still struggled when getting rushed down so it would most likely have a similar problem trying to keep up with the pace of Cooler.
Despite that fact, I don't think kicking Cooler out of being top tier would entirely improve the game.
Some options would become viable but you might end up losing much more as a result.

Tacticooler - Slap on the Wrist

Points of Special Saver granted reduced from 57 to 29​

This reduces points saved on death from 100% to 90%​

I wouldn't mind this change though.
The current difference between having Cooler and not having Cooler in solo is too extreme and this would help balance it out a bit as well as rewarding the player for being able to successfully take out the enemy team while they have the special effects active.
It wouldn't be enough to just jump back in with your special after dying, you would need to take some time to paint first which is very important in a game as fast as Splatoon where it only takes a few seconds for someone to catch up to your position.

 

[OnePotWonder]

This is about what I expected. You do make some valid points, though I do feel like the nerf to its Special Saver points would be a very significant improvement. This does mean that I’m going to have to fix this the problem hard way with no shortcuts; manually nerfing the mobility of shooters, dualies, and splatanas. And Carbon Roller because it’s equally annoying.

One way or another I’m making it harder for those weapons to close the gap against longer-range enemies. I’m beyond sick of them at this point and won’t rest in my quest for vengeance against them. (Which may or may not involve picking back up Nautilus.)