So I'm stuck at A-/A... (w/ specifics)

[Lyka Phoxx]

Aright Squid People, here's the thing...

So I've been stuck going in between ranks A- and A in all modes for a seemingly ridiculous amount of time and it is apparent that I have hit quite a wall. I play solo ranked exclusively and the crap shoot nature of it makes it quite difficult to stick to a solid role in most games. Kind of a forced Jack-of-all-trades kinda thing. I tend to get aggressive when I'm impatient and assume that my teammates are avoiding the objective. I think I'm capable of making S-Rank but there are clearly things that I am not doing. So here are the specs:

Main Weapons: Forge SSP (Rainmaker); Squelcher Dualies.

Abilities:

Head:
Clothes:
Shoes:


Head:
Clothes:
Shoes: All Special Power Up (Your emojis need updating btw.)

So if there are any Mains for these weapons who were able to make it to higher ranks or are just good in general, I would like to know what advice you can give me in relation to these weapons. I would love to know what keys to success I can follow to finally get to at least A+.

 

[Hero of Lime]

So first off, your ability sets for the Splattershot Pro could use some major reworks. For the Splat Pro, Ink saver main is important no doubt, but you don't need that much of it. I recommend using ink recovery as well, since it allows for quicker ink recovery (obviously) and it allows you to use your sub weapons more.

For the remaining abilities, running swim speed is not a bad idea, as it's never a bad idea to move quicker around the map or getting back to the middle should you get splatted. Another possible ability to add is bomb defense, should you be bombarded with subs or specials that get weakened by bomb defense. It would be wise to remove cold blooded from your sets, as it's not remotely as useful as it used to be in Splatoon 1. Quick super jump is also not a necessary ability, something I would advise getting rid of as well.

For some extra advice on the Pro, you will want to use the standard Pro in Splatzones, as the rain cloud is a great zones special. while the bubble blower is not as viable. It is great for Tower Control, so that should not change.

 

[Jon914]

This goes against your request, but I'd look not at your weapons / gear but to evaluate why you're losing games.

I've seen a lot of people get stuck in the A's and it comes down to internalizing a few key ideas.

1) Map Control. If you don't control the map, you aren't going to consistently win games. Map control lets you mount successful pushes and defend against the enemy's.

2) Awareness. You need to be aware of where the enemy is, what they are doing and what you think they will do next. If you just react to everything you see, that won't be enough to succeed at the higher ranks.

3) Know the maps in and out. This builds on awareness. You need to know the maps, cold. Every inkable wall, every shortcut, everything. As you move up, the enemy will ambush you, flank you and otherwise figure out ways to attack you from angles you do not expect. You must predict this and do the same.

4) Don't forget to play the objective, if the coast is clear. When the enemy is down a squid or two and you've established some control, that is when you start your push. If the enemy team is wiped, go for it! Likewise, if all 4 enemies are up, that is usually not a good time to pick up the RM unless you think you can solo it.

Nothing here is new, and it's not specific, but if you have these fundamentals down and solid 1:1 skills, you will make it up to S+. (After that, yeah, you need to git gud to maintain S+ and rank up further.)

 

[MindWanderer]

If you're running that much ink saver, I assume you find yourself running out of ink a lot. That's a problem I have, too, which is that I'm just plain shooting too much. If your reticle isn't on an enemy, shoot when you need to cover enemy ink to get where you're going, to cover the Splat Zone, or need to cut off a path (in Rainmaker mostly). Wild shooting leaves you open. In fact, with the Pro, what you should mainly be doing is looking for people who are shooting, but not at you, and shoot them.

I... don't know what two subs of Quick Super Jump or Cold Blooded are supposed to do for you. You shouldn't be super jumping all that much, and you're not sneaky-sneaky.

 

[Lyka Phoxx]

@Hero's_Shade @MindWanderer The amount of Ink Savers for are actually so that I can continue inking turf for mates and so I don't get f***ed over during the 1:1s. Don't you just hate it when you are in a fire fight that you are winning only to run out of ink just when you needed that one hit to splat him? As for the other abilities, I just got those randomly. Just playing with the hands dealt is all. Otherwise, I did run with a mix of Ink savers and Ink Recoveries in Splatoon 1 so I'll surely do that again.

 

[ϛ(°³°)/`]

So far I've agreed with everyone's contributions so far:

Ink Saver is so important for the Pro, because damn you run out of ink fast, but not 3 main/5 sub important. Mobility perks are essential to ensure your opponent remains in your effective range, where they can't hit you back, I'd add at least one main of swim speed. I doubt you'd find the same use in Run Speed; it works by increasing speed by a percentage, and your base speed is so low with this weapon anyway that you'd see almost no return on that investment. Instead try and only shoot 3-4 bullets before repositioning - don't stand around and shoot, giving away your position. If all else fails, give this a look. A lot has changed from Splatoon 1, but it should at least show you how weapons used to be played and how they fit into the meta. A good amount stays true in Splatoon 2.
An important thing to remember is that the Pro has great precision and a reliable 3 hit kill due to the bullet velocity, but it also isn't fantastic at covering turf due to its efficiency and small puddle diameter of its shots. As @MindWanderer mentioned, you'll want to mostly be concerned with getting kills and pushing objectives rather than aimless turf control.
I can't comment on what @Jon914 said, because I only made it out of A+ in Splatoon 1 so far, but it seems consistent with what has worked in the past. These are general PVP principles that'll stay true.

 

[Elecmaw]

Swap out some of the for . with you can get out of situations faster, dodge bombs faster, get out of spawn faster, chase down opponents faster. You have no idea how helpful it is, esp. in RM.

If you keep running out of Ink, you have to learn how to keep control of your ink gauge (esp. after throwing bombs!). If you have a sliver of ink left and there's someone in front of you, don't engage. You'll soon be unarmed and it'll only get worse when you are currently standing in enemy ink. Once you practice enough with a weapon, you'll get an idea on how much you can fire before you're all out of ink.
Just occasionally you have to stay away and hide and refill. Or during prolonged fights, just keep hiding every now and then to refill just slightly to keep going.

Sometimes it's better to not engage at all. If you are currently in a 2 vs 4, don't fight or seek out confrontation. Play defensively, and don't get yourself killed out there. No matter how good you are, if there are two people directly firing at you you're not gonna live to see the end of it.
This was something that got me hung up in the early days of Splatoon 1, where i kept fighting wherever there was an opportunity. But if you are outnumbered you have to accept that getting the objective/mid back is not going to happen. Wait for your team to come back and push it back with them. It gets tense knowing that the counter keeps decreasing, but you have to be patient.
Remember that kills do one thing, and that is to keep players from hindering with the objective. If you can push people away from the objective constantly, you're doing the same thing.

You can also try using the regular Pro. Despite it's lack of bombs, tagging people with sensor is still very helpful for both you and your team, while Ink Storm allows you to clear out the area from enemies.

Since you have both mid-ranged mains, why not try maining a short-ranged weapon? Splattershot is as effective and easy to learn as any. There are some maps that are more easier to play with as short-ranged weapons, and having a backup weapon for those kind of rotations would help a lot.

 

[ThatOneGuy]

This goes against your request, but I'd look not at your weapons / gear but to evaluate why you're losing games.

I've seen a lot of people get stuck in the A's and it comes down to internalizing a few key ideas.

1) Map Control. If you don't control the map, you aren't going to consistently win games. Map control lets you mount successful pushes and defend against the enemy's.

2) Awareness. You need to be aware of where the enemy is, what they are doing and what you think they will do next. If you just react to everything you see, that won't be enough to succeed at the higher ranks.

3) Know the maps in and out. This builds on awareness. You need to know the maps, cold. Every inkable wall, every shortcut, everything. As you move up, the enemy will ambush you, flank you and otherwise figure out ways to attack you from angles you do not expect. You must predict this and do the same.

4) Don't forget to play the objective, if the coast is clear. When the enemy is down a squid or two and you've established some control, that is when you start your push. If the enemy team is wiped, go for it! Likewise, if all 4 enemies are up, that is usually not a good time to pick up the RM unless you think you can solo it.

Nothing here is new, and it's not specific, but if you have these fundamentals down and solid 1:1 skills, you will make it up to S+. (After that, yeah, you need to git gud to maintain S+ and rank up further.)

^This is really important. Don't automatically assume it's your gear at fault when you're having a losing streak or you hit a block. Just because gear only goes to a certain extent whenever it helps you. Having 3 mains and 9 subs of ink saver main won't make the pro have more ink efficiency than the splattershot jr. And like many others here have said, yes, please ditch the 3 mains and 5 subs of ink saver main. Seriously, you're not playing Splat 1 damage up E-Liter. And those miscellanous slots of quick super jump and cold blooded aren't doing you many favors. I'd suggest ink resistance or something of that nature, because a lot of my SSP friends religiously play this perk. Also if you're feeling that the bubbles take too long to pop, use some object shredder.

As for the dualies build, you don't need special saver at all really. As special saver is for weapons that have specials that can have a spontaneous impact on a game. Like sting ray, splashdown, or a bomb rush. Specials that don't need to be setup and can counter enemy pushes rather easily. Tenta missles just fail to do that unfortunately. They're a bit slow, don't cover too much turf, and they're extremely reliant on the enemies having bad positioning.

Sure, that's not too reassuring, but what are tenta missles good at? Tenta missles are probably the cheapest special you'll come across. As most users only have to charge about 180p of turf to get them, which isn't too bad. Unfortunately, as a dualie squelcher player, you have to charge 190p of turf to get tenta missles up. I see that you put tenacity in your build to help counter that, which is good. And tenacity is pretty good for spamming tenta missles as you can simply stand back, disengage yourself from the enemy very comfortably, abuse your turfing range, and the fact tenta missles don't require any special circumstances to be used. For example, splashdown users want to at least have an enemy around them when they use the special, or else it's pretty much wasted. And bomb rush users typically want to save their special for countering enemy turf control. With tenta missles, you press the special button, aim it towards the enemy's side, and fire them. Without making half of the commitment that stingray users have to face, and being safer to use than specials like baller or splashdown.

 

[BBGrenorange]

I generally find ink recovery to be a much more useful ability that main saver, because you want to be swimming around as much as possible, because it makes you a harder target to hit.

Also the Pro is not the best weapon for covering turf (unless you have the Inkstorm), so ink resist is a good one to have too.

Also in general you shouldn't be 1:1ing people at close range, so that much main saver definitely isn't necessary.

 

[Village Squidiot]

This goes against your request, but I'd look not at your weapons / gear but to evaluate why you're losing games.

2) Awareness.
3) Know the maps in and out.
4) Don't forget to play the objective

Nothing here is new, and it's not specific, but if you have these fundamentals down and solid 1:1 skills, you will make it up to S+. (After that, yeah, you need to git gud to maintain S+ and rank up further.)

Just wanted to follow up on some of the great points @Jon914 made.

Knowing the maps is very important for ranked matches. You can recon the current maps by pressing ‘Y’ in the lobby. I found this really important for ranked matches because the maps have slight changes in the ranked modes. They could add a new little ramp or make a wall climbable that wasn’t previously accessible before and that can completely change the outlook of the match if you know how to navigate the map. Not only can you identify the fastest and most effective route to take but you can also identify the less known routes to take when the enemies are all charging down the main lane. You can also identify new vantage points to take to provide cover fire for your team since you have more range with your weapon choices and also it will help you identify the areas that your enemies might try to flank you from or use as a vantage point for a charger.

The Objective is the main point in the match and sometimes if your team doesn’t want to get on the tower or pick up the rain maker than you might need to take the initiative and do it BUT in the higher level matches the first objective in all modes (based on what ive noticed) is wiping out the other team. If you get to the rain maker first then better to take defense to splat your opponents so they don’t get it or worse, splat you immediately after you pick it up. Trying to work with a group of randoms in ranked can be incredibly frustrating so try to keep an eye on your team so you can identify when the best time is to push the objective (layer your special with theirs or provide them protection when they have the rain maker etc)

For Awareness I would say to be aware of what the enemy is doing, especially in those matches where you get destroyed. You can learn a lot from losing and you can pick up on a lot of winning strategies from your opponents (ex: using a splat bomb or suction bomb to clear the enemies off the tower or if they have a blaster type weapon then be ready to leap for your life off the tower). More important than being aware of your opponents is being aware of yourself. I played some paired leagued matches with some friends and I noticed that they were constantly changing weapons and gear in between matches but not because they were trying out different tactics or strategies (also really important) but because they never assessed themselves to even develop their strategy. You need to know your role, strengths, and play style. If youre better at getting up close to splat some squids then get the right gun and gear to do that. Also if you hit a losing streak and just aren’t at your best that day then maybe figure out where your heads at and get it in the game or just take a break and try again later.

If you want to test out different tactics or work on your gear then I’d suggest doing some leagued matches with a friend since it won’t harm your rank score. Or even better find a higher level player to shadow you in a leagued match to help evaluate your gameplay and give you pointers ^-^ hope this helps

 

[Vitezen]

I was a bit confused when I came to this thread. It said specifics, but all I saw of specifics in the OP were gear...
I don't think it's necessary to focus much on gear until you're getting into very high-level play. I'm S+, albeit low, and most of my gear is unoptimized. I haven't used a single snail yet and I haven't done anything to my gear besides scrubbing it and hoping I would get a better roll. I don't play that often, and I don't consider myself that great, but it's weapon choice and raw skill that got me this far.
Pay more attention to your behavior in matches is the best advice I can give. I'd love to give more, but you haven't really told me yet what goes on in your matches, so I can't say how to improve in that area.

 

[Squidilicious]

I can relate as I'm stuck in the As. You've gotten a lot of good advice but here are a few other things.

I agree with everyone who says the way to break through and rank up is to analyze the mistakes you make in match and strive to fix them, not worry about gear (gear helps on the margins but it wont make you rank up if you keep making the mistakes that are keeping you in A). To put a slightly different spin on it, if you always do what you always did, you'll always get what you've always got....that is if you keep doing exactly what you're doing now and you dont analyze your mistakes and try to fix them, you wont rank up.

Of course this is harder said than done but i have a few recommendations...first watch vids of good players...i often, right before jumping into a ranked match, tune into twitch and watch a really good player streaming a solo queue match (so I'm watching them on the exact map and mode I'm about to play)....you can learn so much from this. This has the added benefit of helping you learn shortcuts and new inkable walls and stuff. Then I start playing ranked and incorporate what I've seen on the vids (as applicable). It doesn't always work but over time the stuff I've learned from vids have helped me improve as a player tremendously.

Also read this guide....it is an overview that includes lots of good tips that will help you. https://squidboards.com/guides/game-sense-develop-yourself-further-as-a-splatoon-player.102/

Ther's also a guide called ranking up.... you could check that out.

Good luck

 

[Squidilicious]

Forgot to add one thing....if you dont already do this, check the map frequently to see where the enemy is AND where your team is. I wish there was a small map in the corner of the screen as well.

 

[CreeperFishStix]

I understand where you are coming from. I had the same problems in both games, and have found several ways to deal with it.

First off, I practiced in squads (Splatoon 1), league battles (Splatoon 2), turf wars, and even private battles. Basically, get as much practice as you possibly can, especially if you're trying out a new weapon.

Second, continuing off my original point, try new weapons. As a former Octobrush main, I have learned that maining one, or even two weapons is not going to help your case at all. You said that you main Forge Splattershot Pro and Duallie Squelchers. I would only recommend running those weapons during a Splat Zones match, as they can paint the zone without being in the zone. Instead of running the same weapons regardless of change in rotations, switch it up a bit! For example, try running Octobrush or mid-ranged shooters, such as the Tentatek or L3 Nosselnose in Rainmaker. They are fast moving, can burst the Rainmaker's shield at a quicker rate using a bomb/shoot combo, and excel on their own in a one-on-one situation. Also, try running blasters in Tower Control, due to their ability to kill people anywhere on the tower.

Third, make gear adjustments to your current main weapons. For the Forge Pro, try replacing two of the mains of Ink Saver main with Ink Recovery Up and Swim Speed Up. The increased ink recovery will allow you to get your ink back quicker, which can save your butt when you need to get your ink back quickly. Swim Speed Up will allow you to swim away from dangers or into the zone faster, which is always useful.
As for the Duallie Squelchers, scrap your entire gear set. Instead, opt for Run Speed Up, Swim Speed Up, and Ink Resistance. Run Speed, mainly for increased mobility while running and shooting, especially after a dodge-roll. Swim Speed, for the previously mentioned reasons. Ink Resistance for briefly touching enemy ink and not losing as much momentum and health.

This is all I can help you with. All you need to do now is to develop some skill with any new weapons you might pick up and develop strategies for different modes and maps.

 

[Lyka Phoxx]

I'm getting quite the the responses to this thread and I greatly appreciate it. However, there are some misunderstandings that I am going to need to clear up. My apologies if I was not as "specific" as the title implies. So I'm gonna try again by saying these.

This goes against your request, but I'd look not at your weapons / gear but to evaluate why you're losing games.

I've seen a lot of people get stuck in the A's and it comes down to internalizing a few key ideas.

1) Map Control. If you don't control the map, you aren't going to consistently win games. Map control lets you mount successful pushes and defend against the enemy's.

2) Awareness. You need to be aware of where the enemy is, what they are doing and what you think they will do next. If you just react to everything you see, that won't be enough to succeed at the higher ranks.

3) Know the maps in and out. This builds on awareness. You need to know the maps, cold. Every inkable wall, every shortcut, everything. As you move up, the enemy will ambush you, flank you and otherwise figure out ways to attack you from angles you do not expect. You must predict this and do the same.

4) Don't forget to play the objective, if the coast is clear. When the enemy is down a squid or two and you've established some control, that is when you start your push. If the enemy team is wiped, go for it! Likewise, if all 4 enemies are up, that is usually not a good time to pick up the RM unless you think you can solo it.

Nothing here is new, and it's not specific, but if you have these fundamentals down and solid 1:1 skills, you will make it up to S+. (After that, yeah, you need to git gud to maintain S+ and rank up further.)

^This is really important. Don't automatically assume it's your gear at fault when you're having a losing streak or you hit a block. Just because gear only goes to a certain extent whenever it helps you. Having 3 mains and 9 subs of ink saver main won't make the pro have more ink efficiency than the splattershot jr. And like many others here have said, yes, please ditch the 3 mains and 5 subs of ink saver main. Seriously, you're not playing Splat 1 damage up E-Liter. And those miscellanous slots of quick super jump and cold blooded aren't doing you many favors. I'd suggest ink resistance or something of that nature, because a lot of my SSP friends religiously play this perk. Also if you're feeling that the bubbles take too long to pop, use some object shredder.

As for the dualies build, you don't need special saver at all really. As special saver is for weapons that have specials that can have a spontaneous impact on a game. Like sting ray, splashdown, or a bomb rush. Specials that don't need to be setup and can counter enemy pushes rather easily. Tenta missles just fail to do that unfortunately. They're a bit slow, don't cover too much turf, and they're extremely reliant on the enemies having bad positioning.

Sure, that's not too reassuring, but what are tenta missles good at? Tenta missles are probably the cheapest special you'll come across. As most users only have to charge about 180p of turf to get them, which isn't too bad. Unfortunately, as a dualie squelcher player, you have to charge 190p of turf to get tenta missles up. I see that you put tenacity in your build to help counter that, which is good. And tenacity is pretty good for spamming tenta missles as you can simply stand back, disengage yourself from the enemy very comfortably, abuse your turfing range, and the fact tenta missles don't require any special circumstances to be used. For example, splashdown users want to at least have an enemy around them when they use the special, or else it's pretty much wasted. And bomb rush users typically want to save their special for countering enemy turf control. With tenta missles, you press the special button, aim it towards the enemy's side, and fire them. Without making half of the commitment that stingray users have to face, and being safer to use than specials like baller or splashdown.

1. @Jon914 & those who responded to his post, I have been playing since the release of Splatoon 1 and I am very aware of the fundamentals that you speak of; Having read at least a few articles on other sites saying the same thing. I'm confident that my issues don't involve those at the slightest although I can always use a reminder. I'm trying to figure out what other things I am not doing that is preventing me from getting to higher ranks.

2. I play the Forge SSP on Rainmaker exclusively and the Squelchers in all other modes. So essentially, I main the
dualies primarily. But I have noticed that I have a really horrible habit of running up close to opposing squids almost in spite of my range, basically assuring that I lose most firefights to even Aerosprays. So I am really trying to curb that.

3. The Cold-Blooded and Quick Jump abilities in both builds I got at random because the drinks for the abilities I wanted were not that effective.

4. @that one guy First, it's about time someone said something about my Dualies build. Second, I have learned over time that the Tentas are not as effective in, well anything, as I have hoped, thus the Special Power Ups. The main reason I've used it to this point is because when is not being fired right away, its tracking feature serves as almost a surprisingly effective replacement for Splatoon 1's Echolocator (since you can see your opponents tracking rings.), which I hope doesn't gets nerfed somehow.

5. The main problems that I seem to have are:

• I get impatient rather easily fearing a quick push from aggressive opponents.
• I can never figure out if my rando teammates intend to play the objective or not, making it hard to stick to my intended role
• The aforementioned aggression in spite of range.
• I overextend assuming a teammate will back me up, realizing otherwise.
• A seeming overall lack of trust in random teammates while being stuck in 1400-1500 level matches.

Hope this gives you a somewhat clearer picture of the situation.

 

[Jon914]

Thanks for clarifying.

If you're stuck in 1400-1500 hell, you will have to carry matches. Assume your teammates will die or otherwise do stupid things and adjust your play to accommodate that.

To win a match with poor teammates, you have to firmly control the map, get one very good push in and play defensively the rest of the match if you can't KO the opponent. Play defensively, don't die, be the goalie for your team. If a push fails, back off to safe territory and regroup. They will superjump to your safe point rather than to the enemy base and die.

You are the team captain, and rather than being the hero at the frontlines all the time, be the one in the back holding the effort together.

 

[MindWanderer]

I again have a lot of the same problems, but my choice of weapons--Rapid Blaster mostly, with dips into various sloshers--has helped me to refine my style. Here's how I cope with the same problems:

1. Don't be the first to grab the Rainmaker or the Tower. Chances are good your opponents will indeed rush it. Assume they will and be on hand to kill them immediately, or circle around and flank them as they focus on the center. That's a riskier strategy in Splat Zones, but I still prefer to kill first, ink second. As Jon said, play defensively and try to not die.
2. I almost never play the objective in Rainmaker or Tower Control. At least one of my allies is happy to do so 99% of the time. I circle around and kill the opponents trying to kill them. Only if I notice one of my allies is a killing machine, or two of them are generally very effective slayers, will I play the objective. I might take the tower briefly if both teams wipe and I want to keep it from backsliding, but I'll give it up right away once someone joins me on it. In Splat Zones, I'll ink the zone with my special and will take shots into it in passing, and I'll ink it if at least two opponents are dead, but otherwise I focus on the perimeter and getting splats.
3. The Rapid Blaster is great training to not rush in, since it's ineffective up close. Or you can switch to a shorter-range weapon and embrace that strategy.
4. Yeah, don't assume allies are where you need them. Use your eyes, ears, and the map. Pulling up the map and parsing it in a fraction of a second is a valuable skill that I haven't mastered yet, but the pros do. Unless you can confirm an ally is near, your #1 priority is to not die.
5. Here I'm not clear--do you trust them or not? Your other comments suggest you trust them too much. Now you say you don't. You do have to have a general awareness of what they're doing, and if they're sticking to a role, try to fill in elsewhere. At A-/A, most of them don't understand the concept of roles, though--they'll mostly just play the objective, aside from the occasional dedicated slayer (which will run off on his or her own, ignore the objective completely, and then, presumably, complain bitterly when they lose despite having 25 kills) or the rare but maddening dedicated turfer.

 

[Village Squidiot]

Ok well first off id like to say sorry for misunderstanding your original msg especially since im not a splatoon 1 veteran you probably know more about the fundamentals then me ^-^

I do think that my fresh perspective coming into the game has actually benefitted me in some way though as I had no prior notion as to how the game was in splatoon 1 and I have heard a lot of things from the veterans on how the weapons, abilities, and game play have changed. As such I have been able to make it to S+ in all my ranks and I feel that my input could possibly be beneficial (no guarantee on that though lol)

Since I am a close range offensive player (alternating between sploosh, splattershot, and nzap depending on map and mode) I can tell you that your dualie squelchers are my worst enemy >.> . I think I have been effective in being able to get up close to enemies that out range me but with the dualies (and their recent OP upgrade to the dodge) I am on the losing end of that now like 70% of the time. What gets me is that dodge. Even if I can get close enough to them if they use that dodge and do a double roll then theyre shooting me before I can even get my sights locked on them again. Id say get really effective at using the dodge when youre in those 1v1 situations. Also what I picked up from watching the high level championship matches is that with the SSP for SZ they were almost never in the SZ. They always would hang back and use their range to shoot into the SZ and take control while splatting peeps like me.

I also don’t think the tenta missiles are that bad, in fact they annoy me quite a bit in matches. For instance in SZ if their team has control of the zone and their all lingering in it then you can use the missiles to make a push back into the zone to get them out. when i got missiles coming at me I have to stop what im doing and get out of the way so I don’t die and if my whole team is dodging about to avoid them then we gotta avoid crossing paths and bringing the missiles down on our team mates and while were doing that its hard to pay attention to the onslaught of enemies pushing in to take over.

I was able to climb up to S fairly quickly in SZ (my fav mode) just on skill alone but when I got there I had to stop because I realized that I was not as consistent as all the people in that level with my game play and I noticed that they all had proper full gear builds. So I made up my own little chart for all the abilities and I broke it down to determine what I found most useful and what would be most useful for each mode and for my weapon line up. After I had my plan laid out I spent 3 weeks doing gear chunking. And after constantly scrubbing gear and using up all my drink tickets and spending over 1,000,000 of my hard earned money it paid off. Not sure if that will help but having the right abilities does make a difference as I noticed during the chunking process I lost a lot more when I didn’t have full gear equipped. I have attached my chart if it helps ^-^ theres a space to draw in the other ability icons lol

 

[ThatOneGuy]

4. @that one guy First, it's about time someone said something about my Dualies build. Second, I have learned over time that the Tentas are not as effective in, well anything, as I have hoped, thus the Special Power Ups. The main reason I've used it to this point is because when is not being fired right away, its tracking feature serves as almost a surprisingly effective replacement for Splatoon 1's Echolocator (since you can see your opponents tracking rings.), which I hope doesn't gets nerfed somehow.

You pinged the wrong person. oops.
I would not worry about tenta missles being nerfed anytime soon. Because they're honestly the worst special in the game at this point. Sure, they can be annoying to players who don't pay attention and group up too much, but they're just not effective at eliminating targets. The only thing they're really good for is for making people move out of the way (which is what pretty much every other special in this game does. Think stingray and baller). Also tenta missles are attached to most ranged weapons (which are already suffering in this meta), and it doesn't give them much of an option against people who want to hide, or try and flank the long range weapon user.

Now, since you said earlier that you want to be "well rounded", or "balanced" to pick off some of your team's weaknesses in solo queue, I'd suggest dropping the dualie squelchers. Completely. (now don't do this if it's your best weapon, or you have another purpose to play them), I merely say this because you want to fill an "all rounder" role for your team. And the dualie squelchers fail to do that. They are purely support weapons, they're not good for slaying if your team has paint support established, and they cannot carry teams easily. Their kit of point sensor and tenta missles also detail to this. The kit doesn't let the weapon take charge, and instead it's forced to the back of the team, most likely performing as the paint support or even anchor player in some cases.

Now if you want to fill a well rounded role, the forge pro is a great place to start. It's got decent turf coverage, along with suction bombs and bubble blower to help pressure opponents with paint support. And not to mention, it's got a respectable 3 shot kill if your team has the paint down, and you want to go slaying. Only real problems are is that it's strafing speed is slow, and that it's pretty ink hungry. So it's not the best for 1 on 1 firefights.

Other weapons that can fill a balanced role are both of the splattershots, as they have great turf coverage, respectable ttk, kits that help them pressure foes away, and good mobility for 1v1s. Some others include the N-Zap, which is more geared towards support, but it still has the mobility and ttk to engage in 1v1s, just be careful of the 4 shot. And the .52 which is the other side of the coin, geared towards combat, but still isn't the worst at covering turf with baller to help capture the zone, and the fire rate isn't terrible.