DzNutsKong
Inkling Cadet
Hey guys!
Recently I had a pretty weird idea/challenge I wanted to give myself. Everyone and their mother seems to have several complaints about Nintendo's kit design in this game and I honestly don't even blame them. For how slow we're getting kits and how many people think we're not getting third kits, they could be doing a lot better given how many weapons will have waited a year or longer to get something. I do think people are A LITTLE harsh, but at the same time a lot of the complaints are very justified.
Just for fun I decided to see how I would be able to do if I were the one giving these weapons their kits. As a limitation though, there has to be the exact same amount of appearances for each sub or special as there are in the base game. I apparently miscounted something so I had one extra "free spot" where I could choose one sub and one special to give out an extra time.
I'm going to say immediately that I don't think it's fair to compare what I end up putting out to what Nintendo has given us since I'm sure they have a lot of design philosophies and constraints that they need to follow that I don't. I talk directly to people in this community more than I'd imagine any Nintendo employees do so I'm going to have a much more specific understanding of what people do and don't want from weapon kits. I'm not especially active here and the number of people I talk to is limited but that's way more than I'd imagine Nintendo can say.
Also, uhh...don't go into this expecting your weapon to have some perfect or even really good kit. I did try my best but I don't main every weapon and I did have to give out ten Splash Walls and Sprinklers to different weapons. You can only do so well with that...
(continued on post 2)
Recently I had a pretty weird idea/challenge I wanted to give myself. Everyone and their mother seems to have several complaints about Nintendo's kit design in this game and I honestly don't even blame them. For how slow we're getting kits and how many people think we're not getting third kits, they could be doing a lot better given how many weapons will have waited a year or longer to get something. I do think people are A LITTLE harsh, but at the same time a lot of the complaints are very justified.
Just for fun I decided to see how I would be able to do if I were the one giving these weapons their kits. As a limitation though, there has to be the exact same amount of appearances for each sub or special as there are in the base game. I apparently miscounted something so I had one extra "free spot" where I could choose one sub and one special to give out an extra time.
I'm going to say immediately that I don't think it's fair to compare what I end up putting out to what Nintendo has given us since I'm sure they have a lot of design philosophies and constraints that they need to follow that I don't. I talk directly to people in this community more than I'd imagine any Nintendo employees do so I'm going to have a much more specific understanding of what people do and don't want from weapon kits. I'm not especially active here and the number of people I talk to is limited but that's way more than I'd imagine Nintendo can say.
Also, uhh...don't go into this expecting your weapon to have some perfect or even really good kit. I did try my best but I don't main every weapon and I did have to give out ten Splash Walls and Sprinklers to different weapons. You can only do so well with that...
.52 Gal - Splash Wall | Killer Wail 5.1
.52 Gal Deco - Point Sensor | Ultra Stamp
.96 Gal - Sprinkler | Big Bubbler
.96 Gal Deco - Splash Wall | Kraken Royale
Aerospray MG - Squid Beakon | Wave Breaker
Aerospray RG - Splat Bomb | Super Chump
H-3 Nozzlenose - Point Sensor | Splattercolor Screen
H-3 Nozzlenose D - Splash Wall | Crab Tank
Jet Squelcher - Toxic Mist | Ink Vac
Custom Jet Squelcher - Angle Shooter | Ink Storm
L-3 Nozzlenose - Fizzy Bomb | Triple Splashdown
L-3 Nozzlenose D - Burst Bomb | Inkjet
N-ZAP '85 - Sprinkler | Tacticooler
N-ZAP '89 - Autobomb | Splattercolor Screen
Splash-o-matic - Torpedo | Zipcaster
Neo Splash-o-matic - Suction Bomb | Ultra Stamp
Splattershot - Suction Bomb | Trizooka
Tentatek Splattershot - Splat Bomb | Triple Inkstrike
Splattershot Jr. - Splat Bomb | Big Bubbler
Custom Splattershot Jr. - Angle Shooter | Ink Vac
Splattershot Nova - Burst Bomb | Killer Wail 5.1
Annaki Splattershot Nova - Squid Beakon | Tacticooler
Splattershot Pro - Splash Wall | Inkjet
Forge Splattershot Pro - Suction Bomb | Booyah Bomb
Sploosh-o-matic - Fizzy Bomb | Super Chump
Neo Sploosh-o-matic - Ink Mine | Reefslider
Squeezer - Autobomb | Zipcaster
Foil Squeezer - Toxic Mist | Tenta Missiles
The big thing I wanted to do with Shooters was to make every special show up at least once here. If I'm not mistaken I think I got everything. The one unfortunate part of this was Tenta Missiles where I know most of the community never wants to see this special on a Shooter ever again so I tried my best to make some kind of compromise by giving it to the Squeezer. It's the only Shooter that really doesn't paint all that well but at the same time it's really hard to use, which kind of goes at odds with the whole reason I wanted to put every special here. This class is supposed to be an intro to the game and Squeezer has by far the lowest skill floor of any weapon here. It's easy to have a REALLY bad Squeezer.
The way I did this was by throwing out all of the weapons on a spreadsheet and trying to give out the subs and specials I thought would be the hardest to distribute first, then filling in the holes where I felt it would be necessary. One of these harder ones was Splash Wall. You'll notice that there's four Splash Walls here compared to the ten that I need to distribute. I feel like Splash Wall needs very specific stuff to work, but that kind of leaves the issue of these Splash Wall Shooters being at risk of outclassing one another. I tried to be cautious of this to some degree by giving the weaker main weapons better specials but I can only be so perfect with weapons not outclassing one another. I wouldn't be surprised if there were some obvious things I missed. Like, literally, while I'm writing this I realize that a Squeezer and Squiffer both have Autobomb Zipcaster which might be a little concerning.
For other things of note, I didn't mind giving 52 Deco Ultra Stamp because the main weapon is fairly strong and I know its first kit is viable. I'd do this sometimes where if I knew a special was weaker I'd just give it to the second kit of a weapon where I'm confident in the other kit being viable while the main and special still have alright enough synergy. I ended up having a lot of bombs and so I was tempted to give Zap 85 its regular kit back but I felt it'd be okay enough as a Sprinkler candidate even if definitely not nearly as good as before. It'd definitely not be meta anymore but Tacticooler Shooter is a strong enough pairing on its own for me to not especially want to give it one of the few Bombs I have. Maybe this is a mistake though.
.52 Gal Deco - Point Sensor | Ultra Stamp
.96 Gal - Sprinkler | Big Bubbler
.96 Gal Deco - Splash Wall | Kraken Royale
Aerospray MG - Squid Beakon | Wave Breaker
Aerospray RG - Splat Bomb | Super Chump
H-3 Nozzlenose - Point Sensor | Splattercolor Screen
H-3 Nozzlenose D - Splash Wall | Crab Tank
Jet Squelcher - Toxic Mist | Ink Vac
Custom Jet Squelcher - Angle Shooter | Ink Storm
L-3 Nozzlenose - Fizzy Bomb | Triple Splashdown
L-3 Nozzlenose D - Burst Bomb | Inkjet
N-ZAP '85 - Sprinkler | Tacticooler
N-ZAP '89 - Autobomb | Splattercolor Screen
Splash-o-matic - Torpedo | Zipcaster
Neo Splash-o-matic - Suction Bomb | Ultra Stamp
Splattershot - Suction Bomb | Trizooka
Tentatek Splattershot - Splat Bomb | Triple Inkstrike
Splattershot Jr. - Splat Bomb | Big Bubbler
Custom Splattershot Jr. - Angle Shooter | Ink Vac
Splattershot Nova - Burst Bomb | Killer Wail 5.1
Annaki Splattershot Nova - Squid Beakon | Tacticooler
Splattershot Pro - Splash Wall | Inkjet
Forge Splattershot Pro - Suction Bomb | Booyah Bomb
Sploosh-o-matic - Fizzy Bomb | Super Chump
Neo Sploosh-o-matic - Ink Mine | Reefslider
Squeezer - Autobomb | Zipcaster
Foil Squeezer - Toxic Mist | Tenta Missiles
The big thing I wanted to do with Shooters was to make every special show up at least once here. If I'm not mistaken I think I got everything. The one unfortunate part of this was Tenta Missiles where I know most of the community never wants to see this special on a Shooter ever again so I tried my best to make some kind of compromise by giving it to the Squeezer. It's the only Shooter that really doesn't paint all that well but at the same time it's really hard to use, which kind of goes at odds with the whole reason I wanted to put every special here. This class is supposed to be an intro to the game and Squeezer has by far the lowest skill floor of any weapon here. It's easy to have a REALLY bad Squeezer.
The way I did this was by throwing out all of the weapons on a spreadsheet and trying to give out the subs and specials I thought would be the hardest to distribute first, then filling in the holes where I felt it would be necessary. One of these harder ones was Splash Wall. You'll notice that there's four Splash Walls here compared to the ten that I need to distribute. I feel like Splash Wall needs very specific stuff to work, but that kind of leaves the issue of these Splash Wall Shooters being at risk of outclassing one another. I tried to be cautious of this to some degree by giving the weaker main weapons better specials but I can only be so perfect with weapons not outclassing one another. I wouldn't be surprised if there were some obvious things I missed. Like, literally, while I'm writing this I realize that a Squeezer and Squiffer both have Autobomb Zipcaster which might be a little concerning.
For other things of note, I didn't mind giving 52 Deco Ultra Stamp because the main weapon is fairly strong and I know its first kit is viable. I'd do this sometimes where if I knew a special was weaker I'd just give it to the second kit of a weapon where I'm confident in the other kit being viable while the main and special still have alright enough synergy. I ended up having a lot of bombs and so I was tempted to give Zap 85 its regular kit back but I felt it'd be okay enough as a Sprinkler candidate even if definitely not nearly as good as before. It'd definitely not be meta anymore but Tacticooler Shooter is a strong enough pairing on its own for me to not especially want to give it one of the few Bombs I have. Maybe this is a mistake though.
Big Swig Roller - Fizzy Bomb | Triple Inkstrike
Big Swig Roller Express - Squid Beakon | Splattercolor Screen
Carbon Roller - Burst Bomb | Trizooka
Carbon Roller Deco - Torpedo | Killer Wail 5.1
Dynamo Roller - Sprinkler | Tacticooler
Gold Dynamo Roller - Angle Shooter | Crab Tank
Flingza Roller - Ink Mine | Tenta Missiles
Foil Flingza Roller - Suction Bomb | Super Chump
Splat Roller - Curling Bomb | Big Bubbler
Krak-On Splat Roller - Splat Bomb | Reefslider
There's only five rollers compared to the dozen or so shooters there are so I have a bit less to say about them. A lot of these happened to already have kits that I'm a decently big fan of minus a few changes especially since there were things like the vanilla Splat Roller and Dynamo Roller that had really strong synergy without being especially important subs for other weapons. I gave kits like this out fairly quickly just because I knew that'd make things a bit easier for me.
Carbon Roller has its Deco kit as its vanilla kit here which makes me feel the need to bring up Burst Bomb. I only had six Burst Bombs to give and there are a lot of main weapons out there that are weaker and really want a Burst Bomb to compensate. Some weapons that really need it didn't end up getting one, but Carbon was a case where it definitely needs it more than most weapons and it's been proven to be a decently healthy weapon with it. The one concern is that there's not many weapons I can give Trizooka to and it might be kind of a bold move for me to give such a strong special to a weapon that can never really play to it because of how bad its paint output is.
Its second kit is Torpedo and Killer Wail. I have a friend who plays this weapon who said this kit would be nice for it which I can totally see. Torpedo is another very rare subweapon that's very strong, which leads me to another point. I sometimes was fine giving weaker main weapons two very strong kits, or at least closer to two very strong kits than I would be able to give most other weapons. I don't want any weapon kits to feel completely useless and those are the ones where it'd come closest to feeling that way. I just really don't like stuff like Clash Neo existing only to be community beatsticks...
I feel like I should mention the Big Swig Roller as well. There were a handful of weapons where I was kind of scared to give them too strong of kits, especially those that are particularly good at painting since weapons like that are usually able to play to their kits better than others. If I gave Big Swig Tacticooler then that'd definitely be a buff and would possibly even make it meta, but it'd probably just end up being a painting bot like pencil is right now. We really don't want that, do we? I tried to compromise but am really iffy about a lot of these weapons regardless.
Big Swig Roller Express - Squid Beakon | Splattercolor Screen
Carbon Roller - Burst Bomb | Trizooka
Carbon Roller Deco - Torpedo | Killer Wail 5.1
Dynamo Roller - Sprinkler | Tacticooler
Gold Dynamo Roller - Angle Shooter | Crab Tank
Flingza Roller - Ink Mine | Tenta Missiles
Foil Flingza Roller - Suction Bomb | Super Chump
Splat Roller - Curling Bomb | Big Bubbler
Krak-On Splat Roller - Splat Bomb | Reefslider
There's only five rollers compared to the dozen or so shooters there are so I have a bit less to say about them. A lot of these happened to already have kits that I'm a decently big fan of minus a few changes especially since there were things like the vanilla Splat Roller and Dynamo Roller that had really strong synergy without being especially important subs for other weapons. I gave kits like this out fairly quickly just because I knew that'd make things a bit easier for me.
Carbon Roller has its Deco kit as its vanilla kit here which makes me feel the need to bring up Burst Bomb. I only had six Burst Bombs to give and there are a lot of main weapons out there that are weaker and really want a Burst Bomb to compensate. Some weapons that really need it didn't end up getting one, but Carbon was a case where it definitely needs it more than most weapons and it's been proven to be a decently healthy weapon with it. The one concern is that there's not many weapons I can give Trizooka to and it might be kind of a bold move for me to give such a strong special to a weapon that can never really play to it because of how bad its paint output is.
Its second kit is Torpedo and Killer Wail. I have a friend who plays this weapon who said this kit would be nice for it which I can totally see. Torpedo is another very rare subweapon that's very strong, which leads me to another point. I sometimes was fine giving weaker main weapons two very strong kits, or at least closer to two very strong kits than I would be able to give most other weapons. I don't want any weapon kits to feel completely useless and those are the ones where it'd come closest to feeling that way. I just really don't like stuff like Clash Neo existing only to be community beatsticks...
I feel like I should mention the Big Swig Roller as well. There were a handful of weapons where I was kind of scared to give them too strong of kits, especially those that are particularly good at painting since weapons like that are usually able to play to their kits better than others. If I gave Big Swig Tacticooler then that'd definitely be a buff and would possibly even make it meta, but it'd probably just end up being a painting bot like pencil is right now. We really don't want that, do we? I tried to compromise but am really iffy about a lot of these weapons regardless.
Bamboozler 14 Mk I - Curling Bomb | Ink Storm
Classic Squiffer - Suction Bomb | Ink Vac
New Squiffer - Autobomb | Zipcaster
E-liter 4K - Ink Mine | Wave Breaker
Custom E-liter 4K - Squid Beakon | Ink Vac
Goo Tuber - Autobomb | Trizooka
Custom Goo Tuber - Fizzy Bomb | Crab Tank
Snipewriter 5H - Sprinkler | Super Chump
Snipewriter 5B - Point Sensor | Booyah Bomb
Splat Charger - Toxic Mist | Ink Storm
Z+F Splat Charger - Splash Wall | Triple Inkstrike
Chargers were a weapon class that I figured would be more difficult to solve because a lot of the weapons within this class play very similar roles to one another, but most of the time backlines don't have too many different specials and subs they want to run and a lot of these aren't super coveted by other weapons anyways. Sorting out which ones got what was kind of the hard part. You can see Goo Tuber has the same thing I mentioned about Carbon with the Rollers - two deliberately really strong kits to make up for the main weapon being outclassed.
Crab Tank and Booyah Bomb are the two very last specials I gave out minus cases like the Snipewriter 5B here where there was literally nothing else to give to a weapon. These two specials are really cool in that they work on almost anything you give them to, which makes how you give them out really important for something like this. Crab Tank in particular is also very strong though so I chose to give it out before Booyah because that mostly went to a lot of weaker main weapons like here and with some of the stuff you may have noticed me me giving it out to earlier.
Classic Squiffer - Suction Bomb | Ink Vac
New Squiffer - Autobomb | Zipcaster
E-liter 4K - Ink Mine | Wave Breaker
Custom E-liter 4K - Squid Beakon | Ink Vac
Goo Tuber - Autobomb | Trizooka
Custom Goo Tuber - Fizzy Bomb | Crab Tank
Snipewriter 5H - Sprinkler | Super Chump
Snipewriter 5B - Point Sensor | Booyah Bomb
Splat Charger - Toxic Mist | Ink Storm
Z+F Splat Charger - Splash Wall | Triple Inkstrike
Chargers were a weapon class that I figured would be more difficult to solve because a lot of the weapons within this class play very similar roles to one another, but most of the time backlines don't have too many different specials and subs they want to run and a lot of these aren't super coveted by other weapons anyways. Sorting out which ones got what was kind of the hard part. You can see Goo Tuber has the same thing I mentioned about Carbon with the Rollers - two deliberately really strong kits to make up for the main weapon being outclassed.
Crab Tank and Booyah Bomb are the two very last specials I gave out minus cases like the Snipewriter 5B here where there was literally nothing else to give to a weapon. These two specials are really cool in that they work on almost anything you give them to, which makes how you give them out really important for something like this. Crab Tank in particular is also very strong though so I chose to give it out before Booyah because that mostly went to a lot of weaker main weapons like here and with some of the stuff you may have noticed me me giving it out to earlier.
Bloblobber - Splash Wall | Triple Splashdown
Bloblobber Deco - Squid Beakon | Splattercolor Screen
Dread Wringer - Suction Bomb | Reefslider
Dread Wringer D - Torpedo | Tacticooler
Explosher - Point Sensor | Ink Storm
Custom Explosher - Toxic Mist | Wave Breaker
Slosher - Suction Bomb | Zipcaster
Slosher Deco - Curling Bomb | Ultra Stamp
Sloshing Machine - Fizzy Bomb | Triple Splashdown
Sloshing Machine Neo - Splash Wall | Killer Wail 5.1
Tri-Slosher - Angle Shooter | Reefslider
Tri-Slosher Nouveau - Fizzy Bomb | Tacticooler
Up next is the Sloshers. If there's any class I fumbled with the most for one reason or another it's probably this one.
Machine is already kind of falling off with a much better kit than the vanilla one I gave it, so why would I want to give it Triple Splashdown? Well, picture it like this - if I recall correctly, the weapon was plenty viable in Splatoon 2, an extremely strict meta, in spite of having the absolute worst special in the series' history. Imagine the timeline where it went into this game with this kit instead of Booyah Bomb. It'd probably never have gotten nerfed to the degree that it did, wouldn't you think? It'd possibly be in an even better spot. I do apologize for giving it Splash Wall on its second kit though, since I'm sure it's not very good but there were literally zero good Splash Wall options remaining by the time I got to this point.
I think the Dread Wringer D with Torpedo and Tacticooler is one of the absolute strongest kits I gave out to any weapon here and in hindsight I probably could have dialed it back at least a little. I just really wanted to give it Torpedo since Dread players got robbed so bad this season and it felt like a great fit for Tacticooler as well because of the paint output. I gave the Tri-Slosher a really weak vanilla kit under the idea that at the very least both of its two kits would play differently from one another, the synergy is there for both Angle Shooter and Reefslider and the Nouveau kit would probably still be viable. There's a reasonable chance that Dread D would just end up outclassing it in this case though which I probably should've noticed while I was still working on this.
Add on the Explosher still not really having a great kit and the Bloblobber being both really bad and being hard to balance by virtue of being a paint bot and yeah, in hindsight I probably didn't really do a good job here. Was bound to happen I guess.
Bloblobber Deco - Squid Beakon | Splattercolor Screen
Dread Wringer - Suction Bomb | Reefslider
Dread Wringer D - Torpedo | Tacticooler
Explosher - Point Sensor | Ink Storm
Custom Explosher - Toxic Mist | Wave Breaker
Slosher - Suction Bomb | Zipcaster
Slosher Deco - Curling Bomb | Ultra Stamp
Sloshing Machine - Fizzy Bomb | Triple Splashdown
Sloshing Machine Neo - Splash Wall | Killer Wail 5.1
Tri-Slosher - Angle Shooter | Reefslider
Tri-Slosher Nouveau - Fizzy Bomb | Tacticooler
Up next is the Sloshers. If there's any class I fumbled with the most for one reason or another it's probably this one.
Machine is already kind of falling off with a much better kit than the vanilla one I gave it, so why would I want to give it Triple Splashdown? Well, picture it like this - if I recall correctly, the weapon was plenty viable in Splatoon 2, an extremely strict meta, in spite of having the absolute worst special in the series' history. Imagine the timeline where it went into this game with this kit instead of Booyah Bomb. It'd probably never have gotten nerfed to the degree that it did, wouldn't you think? It'd possibly be in an even better spot. I do apologize for giving it Splash Wall on its second kit though, since I'm sure it's not very good but there were literally zero good Splash Wall options remaining by the time I got to this point.
I think the Dread Wringer D with Torpedo and Tacticooler is one of the absolute strongest kits I gave out to any weapon here and in hindsight I probably could have dialed it back at least a little. I just really wanted to give it Torpedo since Dread players got robbed so bad this season and it felt like a great fit for Tacticooler as well because of the paint output. I gave the Tri-Slosher a really weak vanilla kit under the idea that at the very least both of its two kits would play differently from one another, the synergy is there for both Angle Shooter and Reefslider and the Nouveau kit would probably still be viable. There's a reasonable chance that Dread D would just end up outclassing it in this case though which I probably should've noticed while I was still working on this.
Add on the Explosher still not really having a great kit and the Bloblobber being both really bad and being hard to balance by virtue of being a paint bot and yeah, in hindsight I probably didn't really do a good job here. Was bound to happen I guess.
Ballpoint Splatling - Squid Beakon | Tacticooler
Ballpoint Splatling Nouveau - Ink Mine | Tenta Missiles
Heavy Edit Splatling - Point Sensor | Trizooka
Heavy Splatling - Sprinkler | Booyah Bomb
Heavy Splatling Deco - Splash Wall | Wave Breaker
Hydra Splatling - Ink Mine | Big Bubbler
Mini Splatling - Curling Bomb | Triple Inkstrike
Zink Mini Splatling - Toxic Mist | Big Bubbler
Nautilus 47 - Point Sensor | Ink Storm
Nautilus 79 - Sprinkler | Killer Wail 5.1
I really don't have a lot to say about this class. It was a very similar kind of deal to Chargers where it was kind of weird to give subs and specials out when so many weapons in here have such similar ideas to them, although the one thing was that it was a bit harder to come up with kits for the midlines here. By the time I got around to these I was starting to run out of subs and specials and so there are some weapons like the Nautlius where I really just didn't know what to give it since if I gave it a bomb and even an alright special it could turn out really strong. To any Nautilus players who read this, I apologize for giving you Sprinkler. A bomb with Wail probably wouldn't have been so bad and I don't even remember asking myself whether or not it would be. That's about it though.
Ballpoint Splatling Nouveau - Ink Mine | Tenta Missiles
Heavy Edit Splatling - Point Sensor | Trizooka
Heavy Splatling - Sprinkler | Booyah Bomb
Heavy Splatling Deco - Splash Wall | Wave Breaker
Hydra Splatling - Ink Mine | Big Bubbler
Mini Splatling - Curling Bomb | Triple Inkstrike
Zink Mini Splatling - Toxic Mist | Big Bubbler
Nautilus 47 - Point Sensor | Ink Storm
Nautilus 79 - Sprinkler | Killer Wail 5.1
I really don't have a lot to say about this class. It was a very similar kind of deal to Chargers where it was kind of weird to give subs and specials out when so many weapons in here have such similar ideas to them, although the one thing was that it was a bit harder to come up with kits for the midlines here. By the time I got around to these I was starting to run out of subs and specials and so there are some weapons like the Nautlius where I really just didn't know what to give it since if I gave it a bomb and even an alright special it could turn out really strong. To any Nautilus players who read this, I apologize for giving you Sprinkler. A bomb with Wail probably wouldn't have been so bad and I don't even remember asking myself whether or not it would be. That's about it though.
(continued on post 2)
