An umbrella with Pro range...that sounds pretty cool. Though I will never play it because I can not for the life of me handle the whole shield aspect in this game. I've seen some players manage it....I doubt I'll ever be one of them!
It frustrates me that in Moray they put up so many barriers and blockades, ranged weapons, especially chargers almost feel useless now in a map that used to be all about range. Any trick shot, clever map use, flick shot jump shot skill can't be used because no matter where you go with a charger they've intentionally put barricates up to obstruct your sight lines unless you stand in the three designated locations that have a view, and of course those are blocked by most angles that actually use the range of the longer chargers. It's almost the WORST map for chargers now. I always feel useless with a charger on that map. From almost no angle can I actually get a shot at an enemy other than a split second they're zipping diagonally by (which is almost impossible to hit with a charger if you can't find an angle they're going in a straight line.) So I end up inking mostly to set things up for teammates. I fire 50 shots and end up with one kill to their 10. :p Pushing the ramps can work with chargers, and squiffer/tuber is fine, but charger/eliter...yuck....you can do nothing in mid anymore. (And that assumes you don't get flanked while you try thanks to the zip lines.)
But there's already a one shot brella:
The first game's ranking wasn't strict, it was broken and infuriating. I can understand people not being happy with challenge in this one (I kind of stopped ranked at B....so I don't know...it seemed plenty frustrating still....) if it's as easy as some are saying, but lets not pretend the first one was anything short of miserable :p
I suspect the ranked isn't as easy as the SB crowd which seems to lean largely toward competitive/top tier play to begin with (which is probably 5-10% of the entire player base if that.) Maybe easy for the folks here, but just from the misery I saw when I was playing ranked I wouldn't call that easy (maybe it gets easier at higher ranks when your teammates aren't fodder?) But what you say here does ring true, that it's very one sided with one team dominating. That's the frustration I was seeing for sure, except last time I was playing ranked it was a one sided mess for 20 games or so (I'd win one periodically to hold my ok line before finally going up again.) It wasn't "challenging" so much as, when it was good, my team could handle it without me, I should have stayed on spawn and partied, while when it was bad, it didn't really matter that I was the ONLY squid with more than one kill, and the ONLY squid that moved the objective the 3-5 points it actually moved (or possibly moving it 4 points away from victory), it would never move again and the enemy would win by KO anyway (and we'd be stuck in our base.)
The ranked modes are kind of fun, but in a lot of ways TW still seems more fun aside from all the disconnects. There's actual weapon variety there and more unique gameplay strategies used. It feels like TW and SZ have been locked down to "one strategy to win" with the same weapon meta since Splatoon 1. I was hoping for all NEW ranked modes this time, not the same 3 tired ones. Leagues is still a blast, but I feel it plays more like TW because people are willing to experiment with weapons and strategies there, while solo ranked is "same 5 weapons every round." I keep debating whether I want to do solo queue again if it's as easy as everyone says, but honestly, I think solo ranked is probably the worst part of Splatoon as a package, well below even lowly TW. It's like Ryu vs. Fox every single battle.
