A few days ago, I designed a neat little flowchart-style plan to help me, hopefully, gain rank points, starting from around S 40 at that time (stuff like 'stop playing after 3 wins or losses from the start'). It worked surprisingly well, and I climbed up S pretty quickly, considering that that shouldn't really have impacted on my win rate. Last night, I got to S 88, which was just crazy for me (the highest I'd been before this plan was S 70).
Today, I had a less exciting start but didn't
plummet or anything; got to S 65 at the lowest point, and mostly wavered around S 80. Even so, I almost always had a positive record, played the objective well, generally was at the top of my game. This includes the near-miss 3v4 that can be read about
here. The Bluefin/Mahi-Mahi RM rotation ended with me at around S 75, feeling rather robbed after some games, but I thought that Kelp and Hammerhead TC could be my key to victory. Safe mode, I play blasters, I'm especially confident on the latter map.
But it wasn't TC at all! Initially, I thought that it was bad news that it was SZ, as both maps scared me in that mode. After long deliberation, I decided to play with the Soda, as its Special was wonderful on the maps available (and it got a lot of ledges that the Tri wouldn't). First game didn't go as planned - don't remember whether I won or lost, but I didn't feel like my performance was up to the standard that I needed to win consistently, even though it wasn't awful. So I went with my heart after all and switched to the Tri-Slosher.
Correct choice. I invite you now to listen to a song that describes with uncanny precision the hour that was to follow.
Just a bucket-wielding squid on a Tuesday night, looking for the fight of my life. In the Splat Zones world, no-one saw me at all. They said I was crazy. Something, something, I danced into the Splat Zone, could cut you like a knife... I'm a maniac, maniac in the Zone! And I danced like I'd never danced before! Et cetera.
The vast majority of the battles that were to follow, I had complete control over. I didn't win all of them, I'll admit, but I either went around 6/1 in a quick KO, had a high 2:1 record or, in games we lost, typically as many splats as the rest of my team combined (I got taken out loads in return, but still made it positive). A highlight was my reimbursement for the 3v4 injustice earlier on, in which I and two Splattershots faced a balanced team on Kelp, I realised about 90 seconds in that we were down one, and we nevertheless won with my teammates going negatively and myself, something like 18/9.
All of which is a trumpet-blowing build-up to the fact that I am, for now, the proud owner of what I consider to be a well-deserved S+.
