isaac4
Inkling Fleet Admiral
- Joined
- Jan 31, 2024
- Messages
- 792
- Pronouns
- He/Him
As much as I talk about Machine in weapon balance discussions, I’ve never properly gone into detail about my thoughts on how the weapon currently is.
The 5-frame nerf from patch 4.0 is something I commonly mention either through venting my frustrations or as a joke but my issues with how the weapon was balanced are a lot deeper than that.
It’s a topic that I’ve considered making a thread on before but never ended up doing until now.
Just to clarify though, this is how I currently feel about Machine and while my thoughts have stayed pretty consistent since I first joined Squidboards, they could potentially change later on.
It’s important for me to be clear and acknowledge that despite the harsh nerfs, the weapon isn’t terrible.
Machine is still able to pose a serious threat with its aoe, good chip damage, and okay fire rate. That’s especially true when both of the kits the weapon has are either good or decent at worst.
My average performance with Machine has always been enough to confirm to me that it can still play towards that midline slayer role it was designed for but it’s always been difficult to ignore the moments where I could have had an easier time killing an enemy player or taken control of mid faster had the devs not significantly nerfed every aspect about the weapon.
Higher ink consumption, mediocre fire-rate, and an expensive 220p Booyah are all weaknesses I’ve had to learn to work around through my gear builds and general game plan but it makes playing Machine feel like I’m having to put in more work than it’s worth.
Despite all that, Machine does have one important thing over other aoe midlines and that’s the kits which have played a big factor in my continued enjoyment of the weapon.
Slosher might be one of the best weapons in the game but Splat Bomb/Strikes doesn’t feel anywhere near as good as Fizzy/Booyah. Even Machine Neo has a pretty synergistic kit with Sensor/Zooka that feels a lot less awkward than using Strikes on Bucket.
That difference between kits as well as other traits specific to Machine such as the better strafing speed, much more forgiving hitbox, and unique slosh angles were enough to keep me dedicated to the weapon even with my frustrations but my recent transition into playing comp has only further pushed its weaknesses into the spotlight.
While the nerfs did end up affecting my enjoyment and gameplay, I was still only playing SoloQ so a lot of those difficulties could be dealt with as long as I improved my mentality, mechanics, awareness, and other general skills that would help improve my performance as an individual player.
Unfortunately, I can’t say the same for comp.
All the previous skills I mentioned before are still an important factor in helping you secure wins regardless of how you play Splatoon but being in a coordinated team means you have a specific role to play and if you want to make sure you do your absolute best in that role then your weapon pick will be dependent on which option can help you best at succeeding towards that goal.
This has had me reevaluating whether the few benefits of playing Machine could be enough to justify picking for a team comp but almost every time I end with the same conclusion that it’s just not worth the trouble.
Even if it wasn’t competing with one of the best weapons in the game for the same role (Slosher), you still have a 220p Booyah so your team will have a harder time getting back in on retake and the weapon doesn’t have any extreme strengths to compensate for the amount of downtime it has.
Compare that to Range Blaster which has worse kits, worse ink efficiency, and an even harder time getting rushed down but when a good RB player gets to push in they become a serious threat that needs to be taken care of and even if the weapon does find itself getting pushed by the enemy team it still has the one-shot direct that can help turn around a losing battle.
This isn’t to say that I would enjoy playing Slosher or Range Blaster more but I don’t want to hold my teammates back and pick something that is clearly worse, even if it’s not outright bad.
Even the argument of picking something that I’m more comfortable with wouldn’t apply here because I already have plenty of experience playing Bucket.
Ultimately, I don’t want to use Machine if it’ll only feel like a detriment to my team’s performance but there is another argument to be made towards potentially keeping it around in my weapon pool.
I’m still in low level comp after all so I’m in a position where I can continue to win matches by being the better player while having my team support the areas I need help in, even if I’ll have to be more selective about which map/mode combinations I’ll use it in.
It’s not as if I have to spend too much time playing Machine to stay consistent with it but perhaps it’d be better to cut it out entirely so I can focus on improving the rest of my weapon pool?
Honestly, I’m not sure what I’ll do moving forward.
I don’t believe that the devs will go back on their nerfs (look at Brella and Dualie Squelchers) so if I stick with the weapon I need to accept the state it’s in now and that it’s going to stay that way for the entirety of S3.
There is at least one more thing I want to do before I fully decide on anything and that’s getting top 500 with Machine in X Rank.
After I get that done then I’ll probably feel more confident in whatever I decide next.
Maybe I’ll even pull a @Grushi and drop the weapon but then decide it’s actually my true love and return to it (only to make the smart decision to stick to something more reliable).
There’s more I could say but it would feel unnecessary to add anything else.
Regardless, good job to anyone who managed to read through this entire thing.
I started working on this thread last week and I planned to have it done by the time my account hit the one-year mark but I ended up having a lot more to say than I thought I would and I also had a hard time putting everything into words.
Good to finally have this out though.
The 5-frame nerf from patch 4.0 is something I commonly mention either through venting my frustrations or as a joke but my issues with how the weapon was balanced are a lot deeper than that.
It’s a topic that I’ve considered making a thread on before but never ended up doing until now.
Just to clarify though, this is how I currently feel about Machine and while my thoughts have stayed pretty consistent since I first joined Squidboards, they could potentially change later on.
It’s important for me to be clear and acknowledge that despite the harsh nerfs, the weapon isn’t terrible.
Machine is still able to pose a serious threat with its aoe, good chip damage, and okay fire rate. That’s especially true when both of the kits the weapon has are either good or decent at worst.
My average performance with Machine has always been enough to confirm to me that it can still play towards that midline slayer role it was designed for but it’s always been difficult to ignore the moments where I could have had an easier time killing an enemy player or taken control of mid faster had the devs not significantly nerfed every aspect about the weapon.
Higher ink consumption, mediocre fire-rate, and an expensive 220p Booyah are all weaknesses I’ve had to learn to work around through my gear builds and general game plan but it makes playing Machine feel like I’m having to put in more work than it’s worth.
Despite all that, Machine does have one important thing over other aoe midlines and that’s the kits which have played a big factor in my continued enjoyment of the weapon.
Slosher might be one of the best weapons in the game but Splat Bomb/Strikes doesn’t feel anywhere near as good as Fizzy/Booyah. Even Machine Neo has a pretty synergistic kit with Sensor/Zooka that feels a lot less awkward than using Strikes on Bucket.
That difference between kits as well as other traits specific to Machine such as the better strafing speed, much more forgiving hitbox, and unique slosh angles were enough to keep me dedicated to the weapon even with my frustrations but my recent transition into playing comp has only further pushed its weaknesses into the spotlight.
While the nerfs did end up affecting my enjoyment and gameplay, I was still only playing SoloQ so a lot of those difficulties could be dealt with as long as I improved my mentality, mechanics, awareness, and other general skills that would help improve my performance as an individual player.
Unfortunately, I can’t say the same for comp.
All the previous skills I mentioned before are still an important factor in helping you secure wins regardless of how you play Splatoon but being in a coordinated team means you have a specific role to play and if you want to make sure you do your absolute best in that role then your weapon pick will be dependent on which option can help you best at succeeding towards that goal.
This has had me reevaluating whether the few benefits of playing Machine could be enough to justify picking for a team comp but almost every time I end with the same conclusion that it’s just not worth the trouble.
Even if it wasn’t competing with one of the best weapons in the game for the same role (Slosher), you still have a 220p Booyah so your team will have a harder time getting back in on retake and the weapon doesn’t have any extreme strengths to compensate for the amount of downtime it has.
Compare that to Range Blaster which has worse kits, worse ink efficiency, and an even harder time getting rushed down but when a good RB player gets to push in they become a serious threat that needs to be taken care of and even if the weapon does find itself getting pushed by the enemy team it still has the one-shot direct that can help turn around a losing battle.
This isn’t to say that I would enjoy playing Slosher or Range Blaster more but I don’t want to hold my teammates back and pick something that is clearly worse, even if it’s not outright bad.
Even the argument of picking something that I’m more comfortable with wouldn’t apply here because I already have plenty of experience playing Bucket.
Ultimately, I don’t want to use Machine if it’ll only feel like a detriment to my team’s performance but there is another argument to be made towards potentially keeping it around in my weapon pool.
I’m still in low level comp after all so I’m in a position where I can continue to win matches by being the better player while having my team support the areas I need help in, even if I’ll have to be more selective about which map/mode combinations I’ll use it in.
It’s not as if I have to spend too much time playing Machine to stay consistent with it but perhaps it’d be better to cut it out entirely so I can focus on improving the rest of my weapon pool?
Honestly, I’m not sure what I’ll do moving forward.
I don’t believe that the devs will go back on their nerfs (look at Brella and Dualie Squelchers) so if I stick with the weapon I need to accept the state it’s in now and that it’s going to stay that way for the entirety of S3.
There is at least one more thing I want to do before I fully decide on anything and that’s getting top 500 with Machine in X Rank.
After I get that done then I’ll probably feel more confident in whatever I decide next.
Maybe I’ll even pull a @Grushi and drop the weapon but then decide it’s actually my true love and return to it (only to make the smart decision to stick to something more reliable).
There’s more I could say but it would feel unnecessary to add anything else.
Regardless, good job to anyone who managed to read through this entire thing.
I started working on this thread last week and I planned to have it done by the time my account hit the one-year mark but I ended up having a lot more to say than I thought I would and I also had a hard time putting everything into words.
Good to finally have this out though.
