"Squidboards Celebrity" DzNutsKong writes his full, honest opinions on every special in Splatoon 3

[DzNutsKong]

Sup gamers. I've been working on this post off-and-on for a few months now mostly as something for me to do when I get bored. Normally I'd write one description one day, then forget about this for a week and then get back to it later. Forgive me if I have any amount of inconsistencies or grammatical issues with this. I hope you understand why that might be the case with how long this post is.

Maybe I make another one of these later for subweapons. Maybe even main weapons even if I'd have a lot less to say about those. Who knows?

This is not ordered within tiers, by the way. For example I do not think Big Bubbler is the best weapon in the Good tier.




Inkjet
I don't know if you guys would know this but I had a pretty serious month-long arc with Sorella Brella not too long after it came out. Didn't really realize it at the time but while I had plenty of good games with the main weapon, a vast, vast majority of my results were because of Inkjet. Ballpoint may have been similar but was a long time ago. Bottom line is that me liking this special is not just because of it being on Decav. In all honesty I probably wouldn't have stuck with the Charcoal kit had it not been for Inkjet since I thought Splash Wall would be horrible for it at first.

In a vacuum, there's no other special in the game as vulnerable as Inkjet. Your hurtbox is bigger so most Splatlings and Chargers completely destroy you and it's not even that difficult for a Squeezer or Range Blaster to get within range and shoot you out of the sky. In practice though you have so many options to defend yourself that it can absolutely make up for it. Just hovering over higher or lower terrain in addition to your boost makes you a lot tougher to get a read on even if for you still are quite vulnerable. You will also have to eventually learn the use cases for going into Squid form or, if all else fails, attempt to hit a one-shot on someone who's going to kill you otherwise. Rarely works but always feels amazing when it does.

There's really a lot to learn with this special in general. It's brutal if you don't know what you're doing but can consistently be incredibly powerful if you're doing what you need to. The hovering over different terrain part is one thing, but that much can also make your shots a lot harder to hit. The shot velocity changes a lot here as well since there really aren't a lot of weapons in the game where you need to kite your shots to the degree that you would here. A lot of people's assumption is that you absolutely need to hit one-shots all the time with this special, but really I've found reasonable success sometimes chipping people to death instead with the outer hits. It's a lot more consistent but there are still plenty of points where you'll need to read someone's movement and get that one-shot.

There's also the whole "off angle recall special" thing that only Inkjet and Zipcaster manage. It's been talked about a lot more when this special was relevant but the fact that you have a jump point for teammates with the tradeoff of it inherently being a little bit slower to utilize because of the recall is great. In general I just love that there are a handful of specials that have a legitimate learning curve to them in a game full of ones that are incredibly straightforward. Stuff like this feels so insanely rewarding to me even if I'd still agree with the choice to make such a vast majority of them easy to use. Guess this line of thinking would make sense for a sword player...

It should be a testament to how well they balanced this special when despite Snipewriter and Big Bubbler being prominent, it's still considered one of the stronger specials in the game. This is while most people also considered it pretty healthy after that initial nerf. I'm not sure how most people would feel about a special returning for three games in a row but if that happens at all then I hope this is the first thing on Nintendo's checklist.


Zipcaster
Can I just start out by saying that in terms of visuals and stuff, this is by far the most fun special in the game to me? Really it's not even close. There's not much for me to elaborate on just go look at it. This is one of the more uniquely-designed specials in the series to me - literally just pick a spot and as long as you can get an arm there in one or a few shots, you get to go there if you want. The skill expression is literally endless and I think everyone agrees that it's an absolute joy to watch someone proficient with this special.

I like this special for a lot of similar reasons as Inkjet. It's easily the single hardest special in the game with a majority of weapons that it's on with not even Inkjet coming close. When using this special, you constantly need to gauge how far you'll end up from your opponents after a zip and will usually immediately need to respond to wherever you end up being with either a perfectly-aimed shot or a perfectly-aimed zip. Even slight differences in where you land can completely mess with how safe your zip ends up being. Precision to a degree greater than most other weapons in the game, let alone specials is an absolute must to use this weapon successfully, but the freedom you get as a result makes it worthwhile.

Really this ends up being the weapon's biggest strength and one of its few weakness. Octobrush makes using the special a lot easier because of its wide aoe hitbox in addition to its decent range. They really needed to give Zipcaster to one or two more weapons like Tri-Slosher or something. Decent at midrange, solid kill time, wide hitbox to make hitting shots easier while still leaving room open for needing precise aim for its longer hitbox. Most of the current ones either force you to get too close to opponents for it to be safe without some crazy finesse or are particularly difficult to aim with, Slosher arguably being the only big exception otherwise.

Also, a special that forces you use your main weapon to get value? I know plenty of specials have allowed you to use your main weapon but none of them have forced you to use your main weapon like this. No other special feels as different to use from weapon to weapon as this one does and it's entirely because of this. If someone were to particularly click with and enjoy Zipcaster then having direct incentive to try out other weapons to see how it differs is cool even if not entirely unique. Imagine someone going from Stamper to Luna Blaster to see how the aoe effects it or even going to Carbon to force themselves to learn to use it up close.

My one other thing is that I wish diving people were more consistent because the one-shot range on the zip arm itself is pathetic. I've been able to avoid dying to it and get the lunging one-shot with Wiper, what do you think I would do with Decav or even a simple Shooter or something? It's incredibly high-risk to get that close to someone in such a telegraphed way as is so you might as well make it high-reward too. Otherwise, and other than the skill floor issue which I don't even mind on a personal note, this special does everything right while standing apart from the rest of the series in just the right way. Absolutely awesome special.


Crab Tank
If I made this tier list a few months ago I wouldn't be saying this but this is pretty distinctly the weakest link of the three specials in this tier. I was tempted to put it a tier down but I think it's closer to Inkjet in quality than something like Ink Vac for example. Goes without saying that this special is fantastic though. I don't think too many people will disagree on this.

Maybe there's a pattern here but this is another one of the tougher specials in the game although part of that is largely just a matter of learning what to do with it. Something as straightforward as "long-range rapid fire plus an Explosher shot" has a lot of possible application and it's not super easy to grasp what it's best to use it for. Really it boils down to one thing - controlling space. If you hold a Crab Tank's fire over a certain area then nobody's sitting in there unless you pull a Kraken or something. Likewise, sitting in more open, raised spaces ends up being better. You do need a pretty decent understanding of how to hold off choke points with it but honestly it's been too long since I've been at that level to remember how long it took for me to get a feel for that lmao. There's still enough room to the point where different players will take different spots with this special.

There is the one-shot combo though. By firing a shot and an immediate bomb afterwards, you can combo them into one another and get a kill with it. This is probably the toughest part of this special execution-wise. It's not something that happens often and in general getting kills with this special isn't common either since it has the windup to warn opponents. The option is nice though and it helps that you have something to do even if you find yourself having popped Crab Tank in a place where you don't like it. This assumes you won't be using its roll to reposition which I love both for that and for having the very light protection if someone gets close to you. You'll usually need a teammate to come save you but that's how it should be when you choose a bad time to use the special.

Playing against this special feels incredibly fair because of the nerfs it got in addition to how it matches up extremely poorly into a vast majority of specials. Kraken, Trizooka, Wave Breaker, Reefslider, Zipcaster, Tenta Missiles, so on and so forth. The displacement Crab Tank provides is definitely strong, but this game's maps feel just wide enough and the turning is just slow enough to the point where you never feel without a place to be when playing against it. Very strong, but feels manageable when you play against it. This is something that all specials should strive to be.

Crab Tank would be a suitable special for 90% of all weapons in this game and really the game needs more stuff like that. Really the only weapons I could see maybe not liking Crab Tank are ones like Tetras that consistently play in the enemies' faces or ones like E-Liter that already control long distances of space super well. Even then I could see people arguing for one of those weapons having good use for this special for one reason or another. For as difficult as it is to design specials like this, it's been pretty consistently great when it's worked.




Booyah Bomb
I don't think I'm as huge on this special as most people but it is REALLY hard to come up with anything wrong with it. You get armor, get a big bomb, and then throw it. It's so simple and tame in all of its effects yet simultaneously it's consistently been a pretty good special that people are happy to see if their main weapon gets it on one of its kits. Kind of similar to Crab Tank in a way.

A lot of people will claim that how long you can hold it in the air to stall it is a problem, but really, every time I've done this it's felt like I'm wasting time. This is an incredibly fast game and any time you spend holding a Booyah Bomb is time spent not painting or not as directly helping your teammates in their teamfights. Maybe it's just me and maybe it's a skill issue though. I haven't played any Booyah Bomb weapons for especially long but even still it's felt very intuitive. What WOULDN'T be intuitive about it? It's a big bomb.

You can definitely panic button this special if you're just a little bit proactive about it but usually this will end up with you having to waste your special by throwing it the person attacking you in hopes of a trade. That much I think is a perfectly reasonable tradeoff. This much assumes people will even be properly held off by your armor, which not all weapons will be, and this still leaves the room for people to 2v1 you if the opportunity arises. I know I play swords but will mention that this comes from being a Shooter player a while ago as well. It's never felt unfair for me.

Not a lot to say but this special does the stuff it needs to well and struggles where it should. The balancing feels basically perfect here. And again, there aren't even too many weapons that feel that bad with it. If you're telling me Hydra and S-BLAST appreciate it this much even if not to the same level, then you've got a special that's really hard to screw up with when designing kits for it. There are quite a few kits in this game where the synergy feels weak even if I'd argue there are less than others would and having specials like this would mitigate that problem.


Ink Vac
To be completely honest, this one is largely on concept to me and it helps that it's pretty inoffensive in execution beyond balancing. There are a lot of great ideas here and I love how this one intrinsically forces its players to use it.

The thing people always say about Ink Vac is that you can ignore it and the Ink Vac user will get no value out of it. Well, that or the fact that you can choose to fill it and force a trade out of their special, but let's focus on the former for now. In a solo setting, this is very easy to do unless the Ink Vac user chooses to use the special around a teammate, which is where the special is meant to shine the most. This is especially the case in the more chokepoint-heavy maps of Splatoon 3 where controlling one area of the map becomes all the more important and having both an Ink Vac user and a teammate there can be very powerful in theory.

The size of the shot at the end being determined by how you many shots you pull to incentivize riskier play is awesome too, although a bit unfortunately you can just fill the Ink Vac if you're on the opposing side. The patch to buff that shot by making it bigger was seemingly an attempt to remedy this and give you some value even if it's filled but it was figured out afterwards that it still is optimal to shoot it at your feet and hope for a trade. It's very unfortunate.

There's already inherent risk in using this special since in helping a teammate out at a choke point, you're likely alleviating some pressure from the enemies on some other part of the map that's important to hold. The simple story is that most maps in this game aren't quite as one-dimensional as people make them out to be. Even most chokepoints have several key places that both teams are fighting to hold and so committing too many resources to one side can lead to an obvious problem elsewhere for the Ink Vac user's team. Turning something like that into a special where a trade is often the best use case kind of sucks, pun not intended. It's only the icing on the cake that there are exceptionally few other specials that it matches up well into.

There's nothing to say this wouldn't be an annoying special to have as a top tier, but until then I'm going to continue to appreciate how it encourages its newer players to approach team play and how novel of an idea it is on paper. I'd take a special like this that's unique and bad any day over something like Reefslider that's just a directly worse version of other specials. If nothing else, the final shot potentially being that big when it's completely full is pure comedy.


Wave Breaker
I think this special has the potential to be really awesome. It's one of those that in theory any weapon could appreciate since the combo number of 40 is very applicable, there's the whole fast ink tank refill thing and people have been talking abut how much Splash Wall and especially sharking need more counterplay. There are so many weapons in this game that would appreciate multiple of those attributes. If this special could manage all of that while being in a stronger state than it is right now then it easily becomes one of the most healthy and positive specials in the series. The big problem though - how does Nintendo get to that point? How could this special become strong enough?

The idea with Wave Breaker is that it's supposed to be disruptive in a way that pushes players to fight alongside it as the opponents are given the choice to either tank the minimal damage and location or force them into the committal movement option of jumping or even to break the thing and divert their attention away from you. Problem is that there are way too many specials that do way more than this. Why would you try out a special that's supposed to be disruptive like that when you can instead pop Trizooka and blast everyone away or pop Triple Inkstrike and get insane amounts of paint control and displacement? The power level the developers have in mind for this game's specials is too high for something like this to be easy to balance.

Even in the case where it is consistent enough at messing with the enemies to the point where it is a high tier special, I doubt it ends up happening with all three of the intended forms of counterplay staying. Either it becomes a lot more difficult to shred either by its placement being tougher to reach or it getting more HP, it becomes harder to justify jumping for one reason or another, or the effects when you get hit become more punishing and it becomes harder to justify tanking it. Even right now in the special's current state it's already hard to justify tanking the damage because the other two options are so ungodly easy so it's already seeing this problem. There are more weapons in the game that do jump while fighting than those that can't and the jump you need to make is so short that it's basically a complete non-issue for the former, plus shredding Wave Breaker is already quite easy for a lot of weapons but can be done ridiculously fast with a small handful of them.

The developers also have to consider that casual players will be using and going up against this special so making it more difficult to play against for higher-level players in addition to not becoming a nightmare for them is another problem. This is a very thin line to walk and I would say it currently fails on both ends. There was a casual lobby I was in where every single Wave Breaker I threw got two kills at the absolute minimum while more involved players obviously see all of the issues stated above. And as an unrelated side note, I don't know what it is about Wave Breaker but I've found it really easy to get hit by a random wave and take pointless damage over it. Maybe it's because of the sensory overload of this game as is when Wave Breaker lasts so long and has such low-key sound design? It would make sense but is something to think about.

While keeping all of this special's design attributes intact seems like a herculean task, it's definitely possible. The only reason I put this as high on the list as I do is because even if you were to make the counterplay a lot more straightforward than intended, like if jumping were the only viable option, the special would still do so much good for the game for the reasons I've stated at the beginning that I don't think the balancing problems are that bad for it in practice. Even if it was less fun to play against it wouldn't be by that much and it would both remedy a lot of the game's problems and also be a good and enjoyable fit for a lot of weapons. Maybe some people would argue for this one going a tier up but I think its core problems are huge.




Big Bubbler
Actually, this post is so long that it'll need to be split into two parts. I'll continue with the rest in the post below this one. I might actually need a third or even a fourth post to completely finish this out funnily enough.

 

[DzNutsKong]

Big Bubbler
There's little to say about this special's function because it's one of the simpler ones in the game. You click the stick and a shield pops up where you stand. Cool. I don't hate it as much as other people do but also won't be jumping to defend it. A pretty common argument right now is that with the game's current state it works pretty nicely for opening up attacking routes that otherwise would be impossible on defense. That much makes sense to me, but so does the fact that a lot of people are saying it's boring to play against or that it effects the objective too much. I have quite literally seen a game where a team lost because their opponents had triple Big Bubbler and took turns activating it on tower to get a massive push.

Part of this, though, was that this team had no specials to deal with it. Triple Inkstrike, Reefslider, Crab Tank, Kraken Royale, post-patch Booyah Bomb, as well as maybe Killer Wail 5.1, Ultra Stamp, and Triple Splashdown all serve as good or at least possible answers to this. If this Big Bubbler is over such an important point of the map then chances are everyone's aware of it and even if playing in solo will be trying to gauge if they have the tools to deal with it. It still is very strong of course and those games where you get matched in solo play without any of those can suck but I don't think the issue is quite as bad as so many people would make it out to be.

At the same time, not nearly enough people are talking about the issue of what happens when you get inside of an opposing Big Bubbler. This isn't something that happens super often in competitive play but is a problem with the special regardless. If you're a Big Bubbler user and someone manages to get into your bubble, you can still use the Squid Beakon on the inside to block the opponent's shots and protect you. This is supposed to be a successful play for the attacker and it honestly feels like a huge oversight that the Big Bubbler user still has an advantage in there regardless of what weapon they're using. The bubble's duration is shortened from taking damage at its weakest point but usually if that ends up being the case then the attacker's lost the engagement and suffers much bigger consequence. Really dumb.

Besides that, I like that the developers have worked it into being a counter towards some otherwise very strong specials. It'd be difficult to do this for Crab Tank but they've otherwise done it for Trizooka, Tenta Missiles, and Inkjet, all of which have been problematic before. Some people might not like this but I think it's nice having something that they can fine tune into answering several other problems at once while also propping up some otherwise weaker specials if need be. If we were in a meta where Kraken Royale were broken then there would be nothing stopping them from making Big Bubbler stop those from entering it for example.

I think there's a lot that could be done better with Big Bubbler but don't hate the current direction they've taken it. If anything this approach has been done more justice than any other "defense" special we've had in previous games even if some of the concepts there could be worked into something better than this.


Tacticooler
Another incredibly divisive special here and another that I have a positive, but not perfect opinion of. I think public opinion is generally pretty negative on Tacticooler. Most people will tell you that Snipewriter is a super boring weapon and that it sucks to have a special that's practically mandatory on all teams when there are so few kits. It's a shame because Tacticooler was in a pretty cool spot when it was weaker where you'd run it on Tri-Slosher Nouveau because it was a Tri-Slosher with a Fizzy Bomb. The Tri-Slosher player gets to be a Tri-Slosher with a Fizzy Bomb in short-range meta and everyone else on their team gets the benefits of a Tacticooler weapon that has plenty of positives without its special being mandatory. Sadly we are well past that point now.

I do think that team comps being as limited as they are if they want to run the mandatory special is not great to say the least. When there are like half a dozen weapons in the entire game that have Tacticooler, some of them are inherently going to be a lot weaker and some of them are going to have aspects about them that make them not ideal as Tacticooler users. A Tacticooler Dynamo Roller might not be bad in a vacuum but why would you run it when you want your Tacticooler weapon to be safe, have super good paint output and can very reliably get a lot for your team?

This boils down to anchors with painting and some shorter-ranged supports, and there's no way we get several of those that are near equally viable. We're lucky to even have multiple good options. This special is basically demanding that over a quarter of the game's playerbase enjoys playing a Tacticooler weapon and while were never going to get there even now, I can't imagine what the state of the game would be like without Heavy Edit or N-ZAP being viable.

But this naturally leads us to talking about Snipewriter. This is an anchor weapon that paints well, flat-out beats almost every other anchor in a 1v1 matchup, and has one of the best kits it could have possibly asked for in the current meta. For what it's worth, this weapon does one thing that very few other weapons in the game can manage, that being role compression. This weapon gives paint support, serves as an anchor, stays alive, provides chip damage for its team and is a big help in handling other backlines. What more could you want in a Tacticooler weapon?

Well, fortunately, Heavy Edit Splatling has been on the come up as of late. Why? Funnily enough, it's the one thing that doomed Pencil on launch - object damage. Big Bubbler and Crab Tank aren't great matchups for Pencil so the tradeoff of having an anchor with less range and that dies a it more is worthwhile for a lot of teams now. Comps with Heavy Edit could already play a bit faster than Pencil and that extra nudge to make the choice that much less obvious for some comps is a big deal. Neither weapon is the absolute best for its role and we're past the point of Snipewriter being the best weapon in the game.

All of this is to say that I don't think Tacticooler is in QUITE as bad of a spot as a lot of other people might even if it's not in a particularly good one. If anything even I would argue it's on thin ice because the stars seem to be aligning for Heavy Edit to compete with, even if not overtake Pencil. In my ideal world with this special N-ZAP + E-Liter comps become a bit better for even slower play and for handling the current anchors better or an AoE backline gets a Tacticooler kit for AoE-focused or chip damage comps, plus Pencil gets light nerfs to its range. Bottom line is that team comps are forced to run one of two, arguably three weapons at top level with basically no questions asked, and that number is very likely soon to drop.

At the end of the day, the team comps thing is only one of a few ways in which Tacticooler effects the game. There are positives here, hence why this special is tiered where it is.

For one, it is a legitimate nerf to sharking. Sharking is very strong and most of the options to answer it have not been very good for one reason or another. Because Tacticooler's effects make the user visible, people who want to shark cannot pick up Tacticooler without losing that option. It's still a strong option but the tap on the wrist is nice.

It also legitimately makes games a lot faster which you could take one way or another. Some people think there's too little downtime in this game, but for me I think Splatoon 3's pacing is great. I play Quick Respawn for a reason and I know a fair number of top-level players who don't that also have this opinion. One might argue that it makes the game harder to get into but Tacticooler is not nearly as commonplace or as optimized at lower level, let alone how much more slow the game is there in general.

Plus, to the point of Quick Respawn, it lets people get a small taste of what Splatoon 1 QR meta is like. Everyone who was there to play the game back then seems to look back at that meta fondly. It's not quite as absurd since there will be points in most games where you die without Tacticooler and need to wait out the regular respawn time. It is a little bit of a cushion to things like Trizooka that are exceptionally difficult to play against though.

My other big complaint is that pushing can sometimes be a lot harder when everyone is respawning much more quickly. Less space gets taken from every kill and defensive specials are popped more often as a result. I don't have as much to say about this other than that I don't mind it so much.

For some smaller stuff, I don't understand why Tacticooler is so much better of a shield than actual shields in this game. Bombs bounce right off and shots get completely blocked. Shooting opposing Tacticoolers down could be nice counterplay and could give legitimate merit to being the person to play Tacticooler weapons, which is kind of lost with how linear and chokepoint-y a lot of these maps are. I've always found it difficult to enjoy a weapon's Tacticooler kit since it's a really boring special to be the one to use.

Ultimately, I get why the special is divisive. Its impact on the game is huge and there is both a lot to love and a lot to hate. I'm somewhere in the middle here. I've played both with and without Tacticooler on my team in competitive settings and outside of sometimes feeling bad putting a flexible player on N-ZAP for the 40th time, I haven't really felt like my enjoyment of the game has gone up or down. My big wish is that this special doesn't return for Splatoon 4 in its current state though. Splatoon 3 is THE Tacticooler game and it should stay as the only one.


Ultra Stamp
Oh, Ultra Stamp...this used to be one of my absolute favorites in the game. I love the idea, it seemed a lot more reasonable than the specials it was trying to be similar to, and it was straight-up fun to use. I think if fixed it would be an easy favorite again but you could say that about a lot of specials here really.

For what is obviously meant to be a Kraken replacement to at least some degree, ditching the invincibility would be a positive for a lot of people by itself but it's interesting to me that this special is particularly vulnerable in a way that only Inkjet really matches. In my eyes, the ideal way to design an aggressive special like this is to make it give an advantage to its user that their opponents can play around even if it's difficult. Making its sides and back vulnerable leaves a lot of room open for this as, similarly with Inkjet, you need to be way more cautious about opposing backlines when using this. I don't think it achieves this as gracefully as Inkjet since Ultra Stamp users don't have as many options against said backlines but having to be cautious about them at all is still an issue.

...sadly, though, as we all know very well by this point, the "protected" front part of the Ultra Stamp is also highly vulnerable. It's a pretty widely-known fact at this point but if you're not aware, half of the weapon classes in this game can consistently ignore the frontal protection the rush mode is supposed to provide. Shooters, Dualies, Splatlings, Chargers, Splatanas, and most Stringers can all do this through some means. The former three can aim for your feet and sometimes don't even need to do that if they have a particularly good fire rate, Chargers and Splatanas need to precisely time one shot and both Tri-Stringer and Wellstring can aim their explosives at the floor, even if in Tri-Stringer's case they need to successfully do this twice or the Ultra Stamp user needs to have taken prior chip damage.

At the very least, Ultra Stamp's protection can reach its full potential against the other weapon classes that cannot do this - Rollers, Sloshers, most Blasters, Brushes, and Brellas. In games against those weapons you can feel what it would be like for Ultra Stamp to get the protection buff that everyone says it needs, and honestly? It would only serve to make it feel even more similar to Kraken. The option to kill an Ultra Stamp user still exists but if you're playing one of these weapons and you're being targeted then it's a non-factor. Just as a Kraken rushing you down leaves you with only the option of running away, all you could do in response to Ultra Stamp is run away.

It's kind of a shame but there's no simple way to fix this special without making it overly toxic and in its current state, it kind of exists as yet another thing to overly buff Shooters. Nintendo has tried their best to fix it in a way that feels fair for casual players at the start of the game. What did they do? They gave its rush mode a massive shock wave hitbox that feels incredibly awkward and unclear to play against, making the counterplay those more unfortunate weapon classes have of hiding around corners to ambush them all the more difficult and vague. Great going guys.

And I mentioned it a moment ago, but there's another point against this special. It's one of those that completely destroys lower levels of play but sucks into higher levels of play. I don't really care that much about this because there are going to be things like this in the game regardless but it'll be a huge knock against it for a lot of people. Worth mentioning. Oh, another small thing I don't have anywhere else to put is that I like how you can stop rush mode with another jump swing to juke people you're rushing down and slightly move to the left or right. Nice little bit of counterplay to its own lack of protection.

If nothing else, I like how this special gives its user several options and forces you to work around all of them in order to get the most use possible out of it. More specials should be designed like this if at all possible. Ultra Stamp feels way more dynamic to use than even something like a Crab Tank because an optimal Ultra Stamp will always use all three "modes" it has and you always need to be thinking about when to use each mode no matter where or when you use it. Unless you die in the middle of rush mode which is unfortunately what will happen most of the time. Such is life.


Triple Inkstrike
Triple Inkstrike is one of few specials that has been in a high-to-top-tier spot through Splatoon 3's entire lifespan, sharing this legacy with only Crab Tank, and as of late it's only gotten better and cemented itself as one of the Top 4 specials in the game. It's weird that three of those are in this same tier... Regardless, I think Triple Inkstrike is fine. Most people hate it but I think a lot of the hate for it is a little overstated even if it comes from a good place.

One thing a lot of people hate is the touch-of-death aspect to it. If you get hit by even a little bit of it you're straight-up dead, no questions asked. I think I'm the only person on the planet who prefers it the way we have it now. Before this got patched in it felt like there were way too many moments where I wasn't cautious at all around an Inkstrike and yet I still managed to live because the special didn't damage me enough. Is it frustrating to die to one "randomly" as many people would call it? Not really, to be honest, especially when compared to a bomb or something.

Another point people often put against it is its object damage, and while I'd be fine with toning it down, the current meta's in a state where it's kind of nice having it the way it is right now. Big Bubbler would have a bit too little of counterplay at top level if we were to remove Triple Inkstrike's object damage and do nothing else about the game. Counterplay would still exist of course, but they'd be far more strapped for options compared to making Neo Splash your painting weapon or letting your Slosher handle it. You could probably still use Triple Inkstrike as an answer to bubble just by forcing its user to throw multiple strikes at it if they want it broken or by only using one to force its user out of the bubble.

Otherwise, I think the special feels a bit better to use than a lot of other people would tell you as well. You can line up the strikes to all blow up at the same time by throwing you first one higher up and your last one lower to the ground and I've always found this to be a lot of fun. There are also admittedly few, but still some use cases for waiting between each strike throw and putting them all on one spot. This is mostly for objective cheese which sucks but exists in every mode with countless specials and so is something I won't dock Triple Inkstrike for that much.

Also, the spammability. I can't believe Nintendo hasn't made it the standard for special cooldown to work like how Tenta Missiles does but here we are. It once again does make Triple Inkstrike a more fun special to use but I can't deny that this special being as easy to get as it is makes it a lot more problematic in practice than it could be. Neo Splash should not be able to get a literal dozen of these per game if it really wants to. It bolsters its paint output and its ability to displace people to a degree that I really don't think should be possible. It has a much more reasonable output on something like a Splat Charger or Slosher but all it takes is that one bad apple.

I wouldn't even call myself a Triple Inkstrike defender since I think it has plenty of issues still, but is a lot better than people give it credit for. It's a shame that Nintendo thought it would be the most versatile thing on the planet and gave it to some very forward-playing weapons like Brella and Slosher that don't have a lot of use for it. If they had the forethought of how removing swim form and your main weapon from Bomb Rush would play out and given it strictly to more patient and supportive weapons, plus had they given it the Tenta Missiles output nerf, I could totally see this special being looked at in a more favorable light than it is right now. As it stands I totally get people's issues with it though.


Again, not enough space...going to need another post.

 

[DzNutsKong]

Super Chump
Oh, Super Chump. Specials like this are proof to me that despite the series being a decade old and having come up with dozens of specials, the development team is more than capable of coming up with new, cool, and very creative ideas. It's a simple displacement special at its core but the concept of making fake super jumps as decoys is very novel. I love the little decoy's design too.

Plus, this special feels like one of the most tame and honest in the game. It's like Ink Storm in the sense that it displaces a huge area with a very weak effect, but here there's a very clear telegraph for when it'll start dealing actual damage as well. The fact that it's so weak forces its users to actually approach into them in order to get any kind of value in a way that seems much more intuitive to newer players than something like Booyah Bomb might. With Booyah Bomb the intention might seem to be to kill people if you're unfamiliar with the game but there's no mistake to be made here - the decoys' explosions and displacement feel weak by design and it plays very well into what the developers are asking of its playerbase. You cannot just pop them and expect them to do their own thing as opposed to specifically going to help them out.

All of that leads you to eventually notice that dang, the decoys can actually stomach hits for me as I go in too. Maybe playing inside of the area that I pop Super Chump into isn't a bad idea. There aren't too many displacement specials that specifically ask for the player to go inside of their effected area in order to get optimal use from them as opposed to firing them into an area that's harder to reach and going from there. This option, however, would be a lot more intuitive for a newer player. Being able to subtly teach the player what a displacement special is like and how you're supposed to play around it, let alone while explicitly making it this much easier to pick up, seems incredibly difficult to accomplish. This is something that Super Chump does better than anything else in the game in my opinion.

So if I have all of these great things to say about it, why is it down here? Well, it's kind of a similar issue to what I talked about with Wave Breaker before, but here it's way more problematic. I don't see a way to make this special good with the current state of the game unless you actively take away some parts of what I've talked about. The power level of the game's specials is way too high for something like this to ever work. You have things like Trizooka and Inkjet that are meant to kill people from a safe distance if used properly, plus Crab Tank which can much more powerfully displace people from a safe distance.

To make those matters even worse, the paint output makes this special dangerously close to being incredibly overtuned in Turf War. Every speck of paint is a lot more important and Super Chump is a lot of very big specks of paint that you quickly need to answer unless you want them to get a lot bigger. This makes it a lot harder to tune in the ranked modes where not every spot on the map inherently matters as much. If this special were even okay in the ranked modes it would become one of the strongest in Turf War and I'm sure Nintendo doesn't want that.

Plus, the super jump decoy aspect doesn't really come into play as much as you'd hope. There are some points where one will go below a ledge by itself and might or might not look convincing enough for people to camp it out, but usually it doesn't end up playing out like this. Also, if you want to set Super Chumps near a teammate to actually let someone jump in safely then even ignoring how obvious of a play it usually is, you're usually not using a displacement special to get into a space where one of your teammates already is. I guess the idea there could be to help a teammate with a fight but again there are better displacement specials for doing this.

I don't think this special is beyond fixing, but it's going to be a huge task and I get the feeling doing so will remove a lot of the things I like about it in the first place. If it doesn't get fixed or the state of this game's specials don't get toned back severely then I don't see this special having any sort of impact on the game which is very sad to me. Maybe this special deserves to be a tier up but I'll go off of my hunch about this and leave it here for now.


Kraken Royale
Yet another highly controversial special that I hold a slightly positive opinion about. This idea has been iterated upon time and time again and I think the developers have a pretty capable idea here, but seem to have missed the mark to some degree every time. Truth be told I don't think we'll ever get a perfect Kraken clone because of how extreme its properties have to be. I guess I can say that Kraken Royale has had better execution than base Kraken, Ultra Stamp, and Reefslider, and while I didn't play Splatoon 2 I doubt Baller holds up very well either.

The elephant in the room when talking about this special is the invincibility, and really? I don't think invincibility is inherently a bad thing. I don't really understand why people say it's uninteractive as people say it is to play against. It's not like there aren't situations where shooting at it is a good option despite the Squid Surge attack being so popular to use and it's not like this game's movement isn't still insanely flexible. Even in maps as linear and cramped as Splatoon 3's I've never felt like I don't have choices when trying to run away from Kraken Royale. Still just as many things to consider and even if your answer is often just to run, it's not like there isn't room for you to make better or worse choices while running.

Also, I really like how both the Squid Surge and jumping attacks were implemented. The downside of you being locked into one direction genuinely forces you to try and call out someone's movement or push them into a checkmate scenario with it and is very easy to play against if the Kraken user can't manage this. The jumping attack still feels like it sees some use, especially with the situational combo you can do with it where you hit someone while landing from a jump, then immediately jump again to one-shot. That's a cool thing to utilize when using the special.

While it's not felt as much in the heat of a game, losing a main weapon for 13 seconds can suck in this game. You either lose a lot of paint or a weapon that's important for a push in favor of an invincible Kraken with no range. This is a reasonable downside that no other special in Splatoon 3 quite has since the only other ones that have this long of a duration are either not transformation specials or are able to hit people at a distance.

And it may have taken a while for us to get here, but objective cheese doesn't feel that bad with this special. It exists in Rainmaker but never gets its user too many points, and it's not something you see in Clam Blitz anymore after the nerf if I recall correctly. Objective cheese like this exists with a lot of different specials so I wouldn't knock Kraken for this.

All of that said, MAN do I wish the knockback was more important. It would be so unique for a special and I'm certain it would lead to so much more dynamic play from Kraken users. At the same time though, Shooters' high fire rate would make it very likely that they (+ Dualies and Splatlings) are the only weapons that could make use of it, and I don't see Nintendo ever making a version of Kraken where Shooters have a negative modifier compared to everything else. This would be another Ultra Stamp case where it's highly matchup-dependant and that would be obnoxious.

Hence Kraken Royale's placement on this list. I don't think it's bad, but there's a bit of room to go until the idea here is fully met.




Ink Storm
Now we get to the specials where my opinion on them is middling for one reason or another. For Ink Storm, it is the most whatever special in the game for me. I don't really like using it, but I don't hate having it on a weapon, and I don't like or hate playing against it either.

I get that this is the point but it feels so weak to use. The paint it covers never feels enough by itself, but if it did then that would be a huge problem. The displacement effect feels weak, but if it didn't then that would be a huge problem. What am I supposed to get from using this special?

Well, the healing buff it got is kinda cool. Feels pretty low-impact for the weapons I like using but I'd never complain about having it. We all can agree that this was a very unique way to approach buffing the special. Plus, when someone does decide to sit in your rain for too long, the combo numbers are very flexible and can be nice for a decent amount of weapons.

Ultimately this special ends up feeling pretty boring for me. The reasons for me to like it are pretty tame and when I load up a game against an Ink Storm weapon it often feels like I ignore its presence. When I'm using a kit with this special it's usually only because the other option is worse or maybe for a decently quick Ink Tank refill.


Reefslider
Oh boy. We go from Ink Storm which I have little opinions on to Reefslider where I feel very strongly about bot what it does right and what it does wrong. This special is the single biggest example of missed potential of any of them in this game and it's not really close to me at all.

First off, I don't think people talk enough about just how well this special fits the pacing of both the playstyle they wanted it to be on as well as Splatoon as a series. Reefslider is incredibly fast in a way that not many other specials replicate. You line up, pop it, explode, and it's done. In an instant you're in a different part of the map, with the developers likely intending for you to be inside enemy lines with this. The only other special with this quick of movement is Zipcaster which locks you into it for a while and has a recall.

There really aren't a lot of specials here that play with the intent of killing someone but also have such a low requirement for aiming, reflex, and a few other things. Literally point your camera in the right direction and go, it's that straightforward. You don't need to have that good of mechanics compared to good ideas to get real value out of this which is mostly the case for more supportive specials.

I love playing against Reefslider too. It's optimal to keep tabs of the HUD even for a slower shorter-ranged weapon like my main, but it doesn't feel like you NEED to. If you aren't aware of the opponent having Reefslider then you can make a mad dash for whatever cover, ledges, or so on there might be and you'll often be fine. This does change a bit more in coordinated play but it doesn't feel bad to play against there either.

If it feels nice to both use and play against, where's the problem? Well, Nintendo's balancing and implementation are 100% to blame here. Everything I just said is about how it should play on paper but it doesn't all play out in practice like this.

Just like Ultra Stamp before it, Reefslider is one of those specials that started its lifespan being notoriously strong into casual players and bad into competitive ones. It was horrible on launch and the developers were scared to give it any meaningful buffs for a long time out of fear of their larger causal playerbase having a worse time against it.

But Reefslider is a good special right now! Yeah, only because of how they overtuned its strengths to a frankly ridiculous degree in a way that has badly soured a lot of people's image on the special, sometimes even the game as a whole. They first gave it a huge buff to its explosion radius and left it at that. It was still a bad special but then people started using it for cheese on Splat Zones which was enough to be a problem for them, so they reduced its paint output but increased its damage radius again??

So what we're left with now is a special that eats up an excessive amount of gear in order to cheese objectives and have a huge, invisible, 70-damage hitbox that can become much bigger or smaller depending on how much gear the opponent wants to waste. This is extremely unintuitive to play against. I've seen people get hit by this 70-damage hit and think they died to lag but no, that's how the special works now.

I can't even begin to describe how baffling this is for me. In a game like Splatoon where the developers have tried their best to make everything visually readable, between Clam Blitz basket distance to Inkstrike startup and so on and so forth, why is there a special that works like this?? A while ago I heard someone say that a lot of people who developed this game left and either a different or a smaller balancing team was left to work on the patches and while I don't know if this is true, it's honestly one of the only reasons I can think of for such a stark shift in mentality here.

This is all ignoring quite possibly the biggest problem with Reefslider, that being that if its opponents are any competent, chances are you straight-up die after using the special. The developers have tried to fix this by making the player invincible until the special is completely over, even after the shark's exploded, but this again makes it very unintuitive to try and learn when you can punish it.

That is, of course, unless you have a bunch of Quick Super Jump, which Tacticooler does give you. Tacticooler jumping out of Reefslider is a legitimately really cool development, but man does it feel like a lucky band-aid solution to a horrible problem. It's not like every time you load up a Reefslider weapon in solo queue you're going to get a teammate with Tacticooler either, and it's also not like you can run a lot of Quick Super Jump when the developers literally patched this weapon into being more gear-dependant as well.

What were the developers thinking with this special? Is it supposed to be used from positions where you're safe and is it supposed to be this punishable without Tacticooler? Is it supposed to be high-risk, high-reward? We saw how that worked out last game and they should've known to try and handle it more carefully this game.




Trizooka
Now we're getting into the real garbage. You know it's great when Trizooka is the first one I get to talk about.

I'll get the obvious out of the way again but it makes no sense that they gave it so little startup. In a game where everything feels reactable and intuitive to play against, why do we have a special where you need to look at the HUD to play against it properly? Is it really necessary for it to handle longer-ranged weapons well enough or would the startup noise of a Trizooka not scare them enough by itself? It technically is reactable but not in the heat of a game where you have a lot of other things to be focused on, especially for the slower weapons this is meant to be a counter for.

And for how strong this special is, it's horribly easy to use with minimal practice. A special being easy to use isn't inherently a bad thing, if anything the opposite can often be the case, but this is on a special where the entire point is to kill people at longer distances both with the initial shot and its falloff after it can curve over ledges.

You would imagine that something like this is at least fun to use, but no. Kills with it don't feel earned at all. To top it all off there are still the hitbox issues that have been talked to death at this point. You can aim a shot directly at someone only for the shots to disperse into the ground before hitting them or go around them entirely, you can play around cover only for two of the shots to break and the third one to spin around it and hit you, and many, many other things. It's all a giant mess.

I don't ever see a special that can consistently kill people at a distance having a healthy place in a game like this. Either you give something with this much power a fair amount of startup and turn it into something like a Booyah Bomb, you give it consistency issues by making it highly difficult to use, or you turn out with something like this. This feels like it has no good counterplay outside of watching the HUD to know when to ready yourself but even still having to play around Trizooka like that will worsen your gameplay in other areas.

Do you want to hear the funniest part? This special was perfectly fine before it got that outer hitbox buff! It still had some of the aforementioned problems but the difficulty there was to using it made it have a much better spot in the game as a mid-tier special. It still benefitted weapons or teams that specifically needed to handle longer-ranged stuff as opposed to being a kill button for anything at a distance. At least the counterplay of getting close to it kind of works but even that is only if Zooka is already active.

What a mess of a special. For all intents and purposes, this is probably my least favorite special in the game. I don't think it's the worst-designed necessarily but I have more negative feelings here than with any of the rest and I don't see that changing any time soon.


Need another post. Next one should be the last one?

 

[DzNutsKong]

Tenta Missiles
Honestly, does anyone here even like Tenta Missiles? If you do and assuming it's not because you liked how strong they were in Splatoon 2 then I'd be interested in hearing why.

Otherwise, it's completely brainless and boring displacement on top of teamwide location without having to think about it. It's better to be further away from opponents when using it and on maps like Splatoon 3's that are more linear, it's not hard to lock onto three or four people with the reticle they give. On some level it's kinda nice having something that's just click and go but I don't like how this is inevitably going to stack up against other displacement specials.

It used to be really annoying to play against, but ever since they toned back the damage it's felt fine honestly. You just...move when the thing targets you, just like every other displacement special. Kills that feel random don't happen anymore. If Missiles lock onto you then playing around them normally at a reasonable pace will lead to you surviving unless you happen to be going up a wall or something in which case it's fair enough that you die there for not respecting them enough.

I've still seen a lot of points where an entire team doesn't have any options against a set of missiles and they feel the need to move back, giving their opponents that space completely for free because one guy picked a Missile weapon and clicked the right stick. This isn't a great thing to see, plain and simple.

I should say that I don't outright despise any of the things listed here. If anything Tenta Missiles is the weapon I think the most highly of in this tier even if I still have nothing really good to say about it. Honestly, it's more that I have the least negative feelings towards this one. Like yeah, it definitely does the bare minimum for being a displacement special, but there's little reason for it to not outcompete so many others unless they're obscenely overtuned or have some other utility like Triple Inkstrike.


Killer Wail 5.1
This...is just Tenta Missiles again. They put a new coat of paint on it and thought we wouldn't notice. It has the opposite issue of how it used to be fine to play against but then they gave it a crazy damage buff so now it sucks really bad to play against. I'd say a lot more here because there is plenty to talk about, but Nintendo didn't feel like coming up with a new idea. It only makes sense for me to give this special the same amount of respect that Nintendo did and not even bother.


Triple Splashdown
Another fan favorite special from Splatoon 2 that had to return out of obligation and kept many of the design problems as it had before. I'll give it this - at least there are a few good things to say about Triple Splashdown even if I don't think the special ends up being much better for me in practice.

The issue Splashdown had seen the most in Splatoon 2 was that you would use it and die. Shooters could aim up and catch you out of the air, backlines would have an easy target and so on. You truly need an awful fire rate to not be able to reactably kill a Splashdown.

How did the Splatoon 3 developers combat this? Well, by giving you two magic hands to do the same thing as you are! It's okay if you die when using your special because now your opponent might die too! What a brilliant solution. Let's not tackle the issue at hand at all as opposed to buffing the special and hoping its strengths become good enough to make up for the downside! I'm seeing shades of Reefslider here and I don't like it.

At its core, this special is a panic button. It can only really work when designed as a panic button. There are spots where you can use it to hit over ledges which are nice for sure, but you're not going to be able to find points like that every time you have your special ready. What good is a panic button when you're using it to get a trade, especially in a game like Splatoon where there are specials that can consistently get kills with less big of a downside?

And just like Trizooka, this is a special where for a lot of weapons, the only reliable counterplay is to use the HUD to see that they have it active. Not only does it encourage its user to die repeatedly, but it also has extremely backwards counterplay.

You can use it with super jumping, which is very nice on paper with how prominent Stealth Jump is in this game, but they absolutely gutted this application for it. You don't get the two hands and the explosion radius for the user is shrunken down as well. It literally only poses a threat if people are extremely careless. Kind of telling when people are instead super jumping in and using this special immediately after landing as opposed to the intended solution for this problem.

This is a game with Tacticooler in it, a special designed to make death less punishing and to allow for bold, aggressive plays, and Triple Splashdown is still not a good special. Every other special in the game would need their power level dialed back to an absurd degree for this special to be balanced without the developers giving a serious overhaul to its design. I don't care how cool it looks or whatever, it's not fun to play with or against.


Splattercolor Screen
I don't think I need to talk about this one, but at the same time, there still is a nonzero chance that someone who hasn't heard of this special's problems is reading this post. In the case that someone reading this hasn't been involved in the broader Splatoon community, welcome aboard. I hope you don't leave the more negative ending of this post as your big takeaway as opposed to the broader idea that I only dislike 5 of the 19 specials in this game.

Anyways, Splattercolor Screen does technically have a lot going for it, way more than any of the rest in this tier. In fact, this is one of the single most unique specials they've ever released. It's a huge, slow wall that blocks both sides' vision, and if an enemy touches it they have to deal with disorientation instead of damage or tracking. That's very inventive and I love that the developers are still so willing to experiment with stuff like this.

However, not only can you Squid Roll through it to block the damage if you're not bothered by its effects, but this kind of effect is something we've already known does not work in a Nintendo game. Look at the Blooper from Mario Kart. That item is incredibly punishing for more casual players and means basically nothing to anyone who has spent a meaningful amount of time with the game. A design like this is going to be very difficult to work with by default because of that.

Nintendo's solution to this problem was to do nothing. Then they chose to not do basic accessibility checks and people across the world started suffering problems with both the visual and audio changes that Splattercolor Screen's effect gives. Yeah, this special triggers all sorts of photosensitivity issues. They did patch it to make the visuals slightly better for some people but not for everyone. Immediately removing fans' ability to play the game is going to be an instant knock down to the bottom of the tier list no matter what because it's frankly inexcusable that they not only let this slide in the first place, but are continuing to let it exist and pretending that they fixed the problem.

A funny thing to mention is that the color lock mode that's designed for people with colorblindness makes it especially difficult to tell both teams' ink colors apart under Screen's effects. Great going guys. Discourage people from being colorblind. Just get better eyes, am I right?

Let's try to ignore this for the rest of the post. It's still not perfect even if none of the rest would put it at the bottom of the list by default. This special kind of goes against the idea of a lot of this game's apparent design philosophy by not being good to use in a solo environment because of how easy it is to accidentally screw over someone who's using a longer-ranged weapon or special. It's nice to have a different type of answer to opposing longer-ranged stuff, but the vision blocking does effect both sides. Giving most weapons with Screen some kind of locating subweapon does not remove the problem since it's their teammates that we're worried about.

With that same idea, what if a Splattercolor Screen user goes up against a Point Sensor weapon? Especially in a team setting where their team needs Splattercolor Screen for whatever reason? It's nice that a special exists to buff weaker options like Point Sensor but Point Sensor is so good at its job that it's probably the single easiest way to counterpick a special in the game. And if your team is located and the opponent's isn't, and if your opponents can Squid Roll through it to block the damage, how is it not completely detrimental to use?

I don't hate Splattercolor Screen. It would take a lot of care, but could absolutely be worked into a fine special that has none of these problems that I just listed. We are a ways away from that point though, and even if we were closer, the fact that people with the aforementioned accessibility issues can't play the game and the fact that people who main the weapons that were given this special can't use one of their two kits in a serious setting.


And there you have it. I do think that this game did a mostly good job on its specials even if the handling of some of them could have been a lot better. By the sounds of Splatoon 1 and 2's special design I would prefer what we have now and could definitely see the developers continue to iron out these problems over time. If you read through all of this...then I don't even know what to tell you. I sincerely hope you took several sittings to read this just as I did to write this.

 

[QuagSass]

I did not take multiple sittings to read all this. My eyes are burning a little, but that's just cause it's late.

Anyways reading this all did make me think how much of a missed opportunity it is that no Splatling got Super Chumps. I mean all those things you said about them being a displacement special that work best when you help them a little? How they can do chip damage and tank hits? In a similar vein to the Wavebreaker on Heavy Splatling, Chumpies would be the perfect enablers to an aggressive Splatling. I could especially see Nautilus and Heavy Edit going wild with Super Chumps. I bet there's a non-zero chance that Naut 47 would've gotten Chumps if it were a launch special. Ink Storm does do similar things for Naut, just lacking the meatshield aspect.
Oh, just imagine a Heavy Edit moving up while charging, using the Chumps to let it do that despite it's long charge time. Or Nautilus using the paint splotches to close the gap with it's chargehold. Honestly Chumps could even make Ballpoint's short range mode shine!


Honestly Wave might be my most favorite special, but Chumpies are a close second. If any specials were to return in the next game, I hope it's them.

 

[solz]

One section down break time ‍ (It's genuinely Impressive how long this is

 

[QuagSass]

I have woken up, and just remembered another special I wanted to mention. Tacticooler being an indestructible shield and how that almost made it kinda fun to use on Edit. I'm not sure what exactly it is, but popping Cooler to use as a shield feels worse than Wavebreaker. Maybe it's because it's just one solid mass blocking your vision instead of having part of it move up and down like Wave. Or maybe it blocks your shots, can't remember, it's been too long.

Cooler shield works! It does! But it feels off in comparison to Wave. Which is a shame, because that part of the special gave it some miniscule amount of depth on Edit. And I say miniscule since most of the time you have to throw it far ahead of yourself, so Cooler shield is generally a soloq panic option. Popping Cooler to save yourself is pretty much never worth it in comp.

Cooler Edit gets close to my vision of Chumps Edit, but only if you play Cooler selfishly. And that's not what Edit does.

Also fun fact, some weapons like Stamper and Wellstring can kill Wavebreaker before it outputs a single wave

 

[DzNutsKong]

I'm not sure what exactly it is, but popping Cooler to use as a shield feels worse than Wavebreaker. Maybe it's because it's just one solid mass blocking your vision instead of having part of it move up and down like Wave. Or maybe it blocks your shots, can't remember, it's been too long.

Cooler shield works! It does! But it feels off in comparison to Wave. Which is a shame, because that part of the special gave it some miniscule amount of depth on Edit.

This is actually important to mention because when writing that section I didn't think at all about specifically trying to use it as a shield. I totally get this line of thinking. Was mostly talking about how it feels to play against where Tacticooler can block your shots against other people for what feels like no good reason.

Maybe it's better that it's like this since being able to shoot through a Tacticooler would mean you can get hit by someone you can't see when they're on basically any weapon. Regardless, it's a very awkward interaction and it's good to know that it feels like that on both ends.

 

[OnePotWonder]

Honestly, does anyone here even like Tenta Missiles? If you do and assuming it's not because you liked how strong they were in Splatoon 2 then I'd be interested in hearing why.

I personally don't hate Missiles and actually like Killer Wail 5.1, but I'll stick to missiles for the purpose of this comment.
The way Tenta Missiles targets and locks onto players is actually very well done; unlike Booyah Bomb or Ink Storm or Super Chump, the special can have a different effect between uses based on how many enemies it targets. It can thoroughly displace one enemy for several seconds or briefly disorient an entire enemy team depending on how it's used. Additionally, since it directly targets players, its targets can direct where the missiles land to make the least of their paint. Unlike every other displacement special that paints, you can't target a Splat Zone with it. Overhead cover is also able to counter it. And its semi-direct location is very useful and fair in a solo setting.

It's not without its flaws, of course. The projectiles' direct one-shot hitbox is a bit dumb. The global range is very unnecessary, and being able to target all four members of the enemy team is a bit much, especially considering you get more missiles out of the special when you target three or four enemies. These aren't unfixable, though.

If Tenta Missiles were to return with no lethal hitbox, limited targeting range, and its maximum targets reduced to three, I would welcome it back. These would all be considerable nerfs, though, so it would probably have to fire twelve missiles against one or two targets rather than ten to be decent.