Ways to Improve Sting Ray?
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inkcan
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Admittedly: I only skimmed the first page and read a handful of replies, but I get the premise.
First up, the damage:
If you increase the damage, you mitigate the hit registration problem. Understand that the Sting Ray isn't meant to kill; none of the new specials is meant to kill. Especially the Sting Ray. Adding more power on hit could turn it into a 3 hit kill, giving ample time for the opposing players to escape, ensuring the special is not overpowered.
If you increase the strength, the size of the beam and the turn speed should remain the same. These specials, the Sting Ray in particular, is meant to herd the opposing team, or pick up assist splats.
Next, we'll address the beam size and turning speed:
The turning speed, in my experience, is mostly mitigated by repositioning and firing the beam again. I have seen exceptional use of this special in such a way. Sure, re-firing the beam wastes special, but turning that slowly means you won't even get any range out of the thing to start; so those are your current options with Sting Ray as it is now: drop the beam and swim to reposition (wasting special duration) or selectively cover a single area/choke point with the beam's terrible arcing speed (essentially severely limiting the use of the special to very niche situations).
Imagine, however, if the beam size was doubled! Keep the power of the beam as is, but double the size and scope of the beam to ensure it is as threatening as the other specials, and almost as useful in a more robust set of scenarios.
Separate from that, consider speeding up the beam's movement speed, similar to the speed of the sniper mobs in salmon run. Same size beam, same damage output, but now it has a much wider range of uses from a much, much wider selection of map points! Speeding the special up this much adds great versatility!
Okay, but everyone's mentioned all of the above already. What's the end result, then?
An objective look at the Sting Ray, now and based on the above changes:
As much as we want a strong, bad-*** beam cannon to splat foes from a safe distance, the Sting Ray can never be that. If you add all of the buffs myself and others spoke about above, you create a special that fits in very well with the meta of Splatoon 1... but not the current meta of Splatoon 2.
With added speed, size, and power, you have created a special that, by its very nature, would destroy the opposing team; and, I get it, your counter argument would be that the special would be more balanced than that, and you're right, it would. However, I feel like any of the singular tweaks to the special would be enough to give it the competitive use it deserves.
Think about it this way: if it isn't broke, don't fix it. Rather, consider the purpose of the special as it exists now in the current evolving meta. There are methods to use it to a greater capacity than pointing and blasting, and it does have niche uses in every map. In this case, why not consider taking this purpose and applying it in a new, more unique way?
Imagine if the Sting Ray remained the same in terms of beam size and turning speed, but instead of doing damage, applied the Disabler effect (Sploon1) to those it hit! Slows the opponent down, shows their map location, boom. You just took the same concept for the special and reapplied it in a new way to the current meta. I bet that'd see some comp rotation on rain maker.
First up, the damage:
If you increase the damage, you mitigate the hit registration problem. Understand that the Sting Ray isn't meant to kill; none of the new specials is meant to kill. Especially the Sting Ray. Adding more power on hit could turn it into a 3 hit kill, giving ample time for the opposing players to escape, ensuring the special is not overpowered.
If you increase the strength, the size of the beam and the turn speed should remain the same. These specials, the Sting Ray in particular, is meant to herd the opposing team, or pick up assist splats.
Next, we'll address the beam size and turning speed:
The turning speed, in my experience, is mostly mitigated by repositioning and firing the beam again. I have seen exceptional use of this special in such a way. Sure, re-firing the beam wastes special, but turning that slowly means you won't even get any range out of the thing to start; so those are your current options with Sting Ray as it is now: drop the beam and swim to reposition (wasting special duration) or selectively cover a single area/choke point with the beam's terrible arcing speed (essentially severely limiting the use of the special to very niche situations).
Imagine, however, if the beam size was doubled! Keep the power of the beam as is, but double the size and scope of the beam to ensure it is as threatening as the other specials, and almost as useful in a more robust set of scenarios.
Separate from that, consider speeding up the beam's movement speed, similar to the speed of the sniper mobs in salmon run. Same size beam, same damage output, but now it has a much wider range of uses from a much, much wider selection of map points! Speeding the special up this much adds great versatility!
Okay, but everyone's mentioned all of the above already. What's the end result, then?
An objective look at the Sting Ray, now and based on the above changes:
As much as we want a strong, bad-*** beam cannon to splat foes from a safe distance, the Sting Ray can never be that. If you add all of the buffs myself and others spoke about above, you create a special that fits in very well with the meta of Splatoon 1... but not the current meta of Splatoon 2.
With added speed, size, and power, you have created a special that, by its very nature, would destroy the opposing team; and, I get it, your counter argument would be that the special would be more balanced than that, and you're right, it would. However, I feel like any of the singular tweaks to the special would be enough to give it the competitive use it deserves.
Think about it this way: if it isn't broke, don't fix it. Rather, consider the purpose of the special as it exists now in the current evolving meta. There are methods to use it to a greater capacity than pointing and blasting, and it does have niche uses in every map. In this case, why not consider taking this purpose and applying it in a new, more unique way?
Imagine if the Sting Ray remained the same in terms of beam size and turning speed, but instead of doing damage, applied the Disabler effect (Sploon1) to those it hit! Slows the opponent down, shows their map location, boom. You just took the same concept for the special and reapplied it in a new way to the current meta. I bet that'd see some comp rotation on rain maker.
Elecmaw
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Nintendo's actually been real good at nerfing stuff, especially back in Splatoon 1.
For example, Inkzooka turned out to be crazy powerful, it got nerfed. People eventually got real good with chargers and realized the e3k outshined the regular splat charger in every way, e3k got nerfed over time. There's also the different charge levels that got introduced which made several specials a lot less spammable and obnoxious to deal with.
Then the special depletion levels came along, which was a very clever move on Nintendo's part. It made the weapons a bit more punishing/easier to play, without changing how they controlled otherwise. Then in the transition to Splatoon 2, they both swiftly nerfed Chargers, Rollers and the Luna Blaster in one go.
I really don't get what you mean when "they" are terrible at nerfing when they have been doing a splendid, maybe a bit of an overzealous job at it.
And these extremely skilled players don't exist yet, simple as that. As of today this game has been out for just a month. Maybe people will figure out new strategies with the Stingray as it comes along that will make it more viable, but as it is it's only strong in Salmon Run.
I still think it'd be way better if you could cancel out of it so you don't instantly die when someone shoots at you, but that's just me.
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None of those things changes much of anything. All those controversial weapons remained on top. They prevented absolute dominance which wasn't hard to achieve, but other than that, nerfing hardly affected the meta. People almost immediately adjusted to the nerfs and the nerfs ended up leaving. It were the buffs towards other weapons that saved the day. The extreme nerfs in Splatoon 2 you see today are nothing but the result of their absolute failure to handle these nerfs before. They went one large step because the sequel allowed them a fresh start, and we're far from the point where we can say if the nerfs were successful, overkill or useless. Any nerf attempt before that was an absolute disaster and failure. Hadn't it been for their buffs to allow proper counterplay things would have looked even worse.
Oh there are plenty of skilled enough players to properly handle Sting Ray right now. Even merely online in S+ right now. And many of those make the Stingray as lethal as any other special.
A massive buff to a special that can so easily get out of control if we have a full year of balance patches coming along is nonsense. You would do nothing but potentially cause temporary disaster. There is absolutely nothing justifying that. The solution for a special like that is careful and slow buffs. It's the most efficient way to handle the situation, and they have plenty of time to do so.
the
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I think that small buffs would be good, as well as maybe making abilities affect the special in a meaningful way. Because right now, special power simply increases the amount of time to be a sitting duck while using this special, and run speed up does not improve strafing speed with this special at all. Strafing with the stingray is one of the best ways to track opponents, and I'm pretty annoyed that this feature can't be improved when the ability special power up, which helps literally every other special in a useful way, only serves to make this special even more cumbersome and situational to use. I would obviously love some other kind of buff, but making this special actually benefit from ability perks would be a good start. And if run speed never ends up working on the stringray, I hope it at least becomes a useful enough weapon that I would WANT to use my ability slots to keep it in my hands longer.