LOL, yeah, the teleportations don't seem as common as S1, but I've certainly seen them (I love seeing the same squid jump from the same cliff 3 times still....or the ones that jump down, vanish, and are somewhere else.) Have you seen the "player vanishes in a puff of smoke, but didn't dc?" I've been seeing that pretty often. Best I can figure out is the auto-predict lost updates from them, tried to guess where they were, got it totally wrong and/or they got killed somewhere else, and that's how it "resets" their position. I couldn't figure it out until one game I splatted someone and the kill tag never appeared at all. They physically splatted, but nobody was credited. Later I saw the same player vanish in a smoke puff (but they hadn't DC'd). I figured out that the predictive system is actually moving them in full-AI mode at times....and where they are isn't where they are, and that's a reset when it finally realizes where they are. (Which is an interesting scary thought....how often are we playing AI's or at least player ghosts at times? I'm sure it doesn't happen for too long a time before it DC's them, but that it happens at all is a little disturbing. Maybe it prevents them from attacking, and just shows them running/evading, but still.)
BUT aero has seemed to be the official weapon of choice for laggers. It's definitely been the most dominant killer in most lobbies I've seen second only to splattershot (it's own lag machine, of course...). It could be that aero is just such an amazing killer, but we both know that's not true. Lag is the remaining denominator. I think the aero thing is a lot like the luna and dynamo appeal: With lag you don't really have to be aiming at the right place to get the kills. And because of it's broad spray pattern there's more chance of "accidentally" getting the kill particularly if lagging compared to more accurate shooters. (96 probably as the same "perk" but not as fast.) Playing tuber primarily I'm probably more keenly aware of ranges. In a 1:1 fair fight, I shouldn't be getting ripped by aeros. But if I'm at the edge of my range, an aero shouldn't be able to get be before I can even aim squarely.....but they often do. Maybe it happens with other weps similarly, but the range in play is a little more believable with most shooters than anything outside sploosh range with an aerospray.
The trouble is with its ink efficiency (it's still efficient), and it's ability to special spam (fixed for baller, but possibly not for launcher since they REDUCED the required points!...maybe even made worse) that "spray everywhere non-stop, get kills" appeal for laggers will remain unchanged. They can't fix the sloppy netcode, but they can fix the parameters that makes certain weapons obviously bad interactions with lag. In this case I think the inaccuracy is the issue. Range/droplet spread would have been parameters to adjust to change that. They missed the mark on this one.
It will "fix" it only in that now everyone is going to hear how "bad" aero is again and it will become a meme and people will stop playing it because "they hear on the internet they shouldn't play it." I don't want to see aero vanish, I actually loved it in S1. Hated that it wasn't viable in ranked. But it was also controlling the meta in S2, and making splatfests miserable.
That said I still feel bad for baller players. It was bad, then it was good, it wasn't OP except for aero that could ridiculously spam them. Chargers and blasters (and rollers) DID need a better way to handle them but the "free object shredder to most weapons against baller" fix seems pretty overkill coupled with the baller radius nerf. Baller might be the new old stingray going forward :p I haven't been playing it after shifting my roller play to flingza, but I'm glad I'm not....that's an unpleasant change.
Everything else in the patch is awesome though! I didn't get to try everything. I'm still worried about the dodge rolls from the little bit I played with them. That's a really annoying ability and it's present on a lot of weapons. But the tuber buffs are everything I could have hoped for, flingza IMO feels really good now. The vert speed improvement isn't as much as some hoped but it's decent, it handles a lot better now, and forward flicks are great. Bambi doesn't feel too different to me with the run speed. Inkbrush....nobody has commented on inkbrush...the range increase is quite noticible....not getting caught on enemy ink while rolling is what it desperately needed in S1 and never got. Inkbrush is really interesting now. The splat brella definitely is improved.....Personally I still can't get a meaningful rhythm from playing it....I want to love it but I just can't manage to figure out how to use it in a given situation better than something else. Tentabrella still feels pretty meh to me. It's better, but still doesn't really give me an interest in it.
I do fear tuber will become meta still. Played a TW lobby on a team of 3 tubers and a Jr. We won. :p When was the last time you saw a team of 3 tubers?!
<3
