What was your first main?

[MandatoryCatalyst]

I know I've posted many a post about how much I like playing ntri and how I used to play Dapples, but with the new patch and the Dapples buff, it got me thinking about how people choose their main weapons, and especially how they choose their first ones. So I ask, what was the first Splatoon weapon you actively thought of as your main, and what was the reasoning behind it? How long did it last as your main? If you're still using it, whether it's a main of yours or just something you break out once in a while, what compelled you to keep with it?

For me, I'd say it was probably N-Zap. I learned pretty quickly I prefer faster weapons and shorter range, so N-Zap was a good start for me, especially given that since I was still learning how to use the specials and which ones I liked, Tacticooler is by far the easiest to actually use and see benefit from, since you don't need to worry as much about placement in solo (...sorry to my early game teammates, who never got their cooler buffs from my very poorly and very selfishly placed coolers), and then obviously, while I wasn't ever good with bomb placement, suction bomb is always going to be a good sub. I think I used it for probably a few weeks before I ended up moving to Splattershot for quite a while, but N-Zap is just generally a good weapon, so I find myself going back to it on occasion, typically whenever I hit a losing streak during Splatfests and need to do something to switch it up so I don't tilt. From there I'd end up kinda floundering around for a bit before I'd finally end up settling on a longer term main, but it's fun to think back on my reasoning and decisions I made for as little as I knew about the game then.

 

[Tereox]

My first main was the carbon roller in Splatoon 2.
My aim was pretty bad and I liked surprising opponents by jumping at them out of nowhere XD

I still play carbon deco quite a bit, but mainly switched to the slosher class and inkbrush

 

[OnePotWonder]

For at least the first six months of this game's lifespan, I jumped around between weapons in an effort to find a worthy main. I even kept a log of what I used. I ended up using just about every main weapon in the game at one point or another, from the Inkbrush and the Dapple Dualies to the Hydra Splatling and the Tenta Brella. The first weapon I remember actually clicking with was the REEF-LUX 450 during the chocolate Splatfest.

Before that, though, I mained Ballpoint Nouveau in Splatoon 2. I and all of the other fans of the weapon still miss its Squid Beakon and curse the devs for giving it Ink Mine in this game instead. It's especially painful considering the other trash they keep giving Beakons to.

 

[Flango]

Depends on what you consider a main, I played the N-zap a lot at launch and during the Splatfest world premiere, but it only has 41 wins on it and is at 3 stars so I don’t think I really mained it. I used it because I could just shoot and kill.

Especially compared to the other contender, after a short transition period before tossing the zap completely I moved onto the hydra, because I like the range and damage but it doesn’t require the precision of the E-litre, in addition the better view of what in the world was going on. (Currently on 461 wins, so definitely mained it). It is still my main to this day but I am no longer a one trick (about 60% of my playtime)

I did try out the other Splatlings but none of them really gelled with me until the heavy edit came out, I don’t know why I like it, maybe it’s the slower charge time or the kill time equal to the hydra, or maybe it’s a weapon I liked that would actually get me on a team. This is my secondary main. (About 30% of playtime)

Then there was the period of time where I locked myself in pencil jail, I didn’t play it that much but I built gear for it and everything. I then realised that unless I’m getting paid for this that I’m never playing pencil again.

 

[ThestralZ]

CJR, tried using it after ProChara's Chill Season Ranking video said it was good, got me from level 5 in Turf War all the way to S rank. I still play it from time to time for old times sake.

 

[nineball]

my first main was the splattershot jr in splat 2. i don't really know why i mained it, especially since it was before the jr got it's +10% ink tank capacity buff, and by then i dropped the game. i also ran 19 AP ink saver main with it at the time and thought it was good (however my highest rank in splat 2 was S+5 so.....)

then in splat 3 i ended up maining jr again since i really liked the big bubbler special and i found out that double bomb jr existed. i actually found it really fun using the replay feature to see places where enemies like to go, labbing out bomb throw spots in recon mode, and getting cheesy bomb kills. this strategy got me all the way to S+. i ended up dropping jr since it was really frustrating missing at slightly-longer-than-close range.

 

[Aiko.Octo]

It's really funny to look back on, but when I first played 3's testfire and could barely walk in a straight line and trying to swim up walls was such a complicated button combination I could barely manage and I didn't even know how to use my special, I tried a bunch of weapons and didn't have a lot of luck with them until I tried a roller and suddenly felt absolutely godlike. The ink coverage was clean and solid and it felt so broken and overpowered that I could just run over people and they would die! (which 90% of the time would happen on accident because so much was going on I could barely visually parse what I was looking at on the screen). I played with that for the rest of the testfire and felt very satisfied with it.

But when the game actually released and I went through the story mode, tried different weapons, and actually got a handle on my controls I realized I could do better than crushing people with a roller, lol. So the actual first weapon I might consider a main was Sploosh. I don't remember why I tried that one out but the fact that it was so short-range meant I didn't have to worry about aim and the ink output was reliable. I stuck with it but I did hesitate to call it a main because I really wanted to find something I liked better-- mostly because I didn't find Ultra Stamp to be a fun special to play (it also suffered a lot of hitbox bugs at the beginning of the game which didn't help it).

Next I got hooked on inkbrush specifically because I was playing exclusively turf at the time and I was winning a LOT of games by zooming into the enemy base unnoticed and making a mess. It was the first time I had developed anything vaguely strategic around my weapon and it felt good to feel like I had a job that I could consistently do pretty well. But eventually it kind of just.... stopped working as a tactic, maybe because I started getting matched against higher-skill players who knew better than to let their base go unchecked for long. The button mashing was starting to get to me anyway, and I had been eyeing the dualie weapon class because dodge rolls looked like a lot of fun and I thought it might give me similar mobility to inkbrush without the carpel tunnel.

I picked dapples to try first because they had the lowest range in the weapon class, which was kind of a must for me at that point because I still couldn't aim for the life of me. And I found that I really loved beakons. It was a lot of fun stealthing around and hugging walls trying to find the best spots to place beakons where they would be less likely to be found. And if I actually managed to sneak up on another player I could make short work of them. It kind of felt like a secret-agent support weapon. Not having a bomb was really difficult though, and as I played mostly solo it felt like no one was using my beakons or drinking my soda. I kind of liked being support in theory but in practice it was really hard without communication. If I was honest with myself I wanted a weapon that would at least give me some ability to hold my own.

Sorry this is long lol, I know this question is about first mains, but thinking about it I'm not sure if I considered myself as actually 'maining' any of these even though I may have been by some definitions. Still, I stuck with each of them for a period of around 3-5 weeks, which It felt like forever back then at the beginning of the game even though it feels like nothing now. When Chill season rolled around, I decided that I really wanted to find an 'actual' main to commit to learning. Specifically, I wanted to try out anarchy modes and I wanted to be able to learn those modes without the added obstacle of switching between and relearning different weapons at the same time, so I laid out and executed a plan to one-star every single weapon, take notes on how I felt about each one, narrow down a selection of weapons that felt good, and then test and pick from those. It took me nearly all season but it was via that process that I eventually tried out tetras, fell in love with how well they rewarded/let me get away with the high-risk/over-aggressive plays I loved to make all along and... everything else just clicked into place from there and I've barely deviated since.

I do still sometimes pull sploosh and dapples back out during splatfests though, both for old-times' sake and because they ink pretty reliably.

 

[neonscreenlight]

i remember being an idiot getting splat 2 for the first time and thinking "oh dualies are the new weapon so i should play it because it's cool". i am still a dualies main

 

[Masked_Katz]

In Splatoon 1, I mained the N-ZAP '85... In Splatoon 2, I mained the Slosher...
I was much younger and the sole reason why I really enjoyed these weapons was because they were both niche but versatile.

In Splatoon 3, I now love to play all the shooters and sloshers, but the Jr. now takes the place as my favorite. While other weapons I enjoyed playing previously can do many things better, the Jr. is the only weapon that has a kit that is completely reliable and fun.

 

[sevenleaf]

i was pretty much always a tetra main lol. in the testfire i was trying a bunch of different weapons and just kinda... clicked with tetras. when splatoon 3 launched, i didn't realize early on that i could bribe sheldon to get them before i'd leveled up enough to unlock them, so i played vdualies for a while, but it was more of an "i'm using this until i can play tetras again" thing, yknow?

now i'm playing vdualies again, but i'd still call tetras my main. rly was love at first sight with those for me, huh

 

[reelrollsweat]

i think the first weapon i stuck to in s1 was krakon roller but the first weapon i mained was octobrush. and by mained i mean onetricked lol. i put a lot of time into both but im pretty sure i played the nouveau kit way more

in s2 i experimented a bit more w/ stuff i enjoyed playing in the story mode. i dropped octobrush in favor of slosher in early 2018 and primarily played both slosher kits for around a year until i picked up heavy splatling. i was slowly learning chargers too but i wasnt great at them (i played sticks lmaoo) so i used them more casually. by the end of s2 my weapon pool was basically just slosher heavy and kensa dynamo. idr why i picked up kensamo i just thought it was fun

considering how i one/twotricked thruout basically all of 1 and 2 i think its cool to see how much my weapon pool has grown lol. vheavy is still my definitive main and vslosher is my token frontline pick but ive also put a ton of time into hydra and ballpoint, as well as zf and naut and bow and other similar weapons. i cant imagine onetricking again its so nice to have variety

 

[Grushi]

My very first main and I do mean "I have just finished s2 story mode and one of these weapons will be my main", was heavy splatling. I always wanted to play backlines, (which is kind of funny considering my current mains) but if I had to guess chargers felt a bit too overwhelming so I picked heavy since it painted pretty well and I basically outranged everything.

It lasted me like, two weeks before splat brella came out, and after brella I think I moved on to splat charger? But heavy was the first one so I do have a weird soft spot for it, though I basically never played it since.
And yes, my first special was stingray, and I'm pretty sure I enjoyed it lmao

 

[Norilla]

Aerospray RG in the first game; played it as a slayer, and was somehow successful at it... would be at A+99 when that was the highest and than got into S+ when it first came out. Put the game down for a few months (got really busy with life and usually only had enough time to sleep when at home), and then came back, and it was there I realized just how bad the weapon's short comings were, and then switched to Ttek and Dual Squelcher.

 

[isaac4]

I've talked about it before I'm pretty sure but the first weapon I can consider a main is Octobrush. I don't know why I picked it, I think I just liked the idea of using a brush in a game about ink. It also helped that the kit wasn't bad either with Suction/Zip.
I remember using Zip a lot to paint the enemy base but honestly, I didn't really play the weapon all that much.
I did play it more than the other weapons but I was trying out everything early on so I only got it to 3 stars.

Even though my main changed to Machine, I did think about trying Octobrush again later on. The nouveau kit was revealed and I wanted to try it out but after I did, I realized I just didn't enjoy using it anymore. Maybe I would have felt differently if it got Kraken and a bomb instead of Beakon/Storm but it still wouldn't have been my main again.

 

[☆Oblivion☆]

In 3 I wanted to try a bow out so I went to go buy what I thought was the Tri-Sringer then the best mistake of my life happened when I found out the Reef-lux was a different weapon from what I thought I had brought and I instantly fell in love with it, thinking it was a good weapon and I was just bad with it at the moment. On the other hand in 2 I didn't habe a true main until the incredible 4.0 update released and from there I mained the Kensa Splattershot pro.

 

[Lisku]

Im pretty sure it was ttek, i 4* it when i was new

 

[RubberCF]

I "mained" a lot of things early on when i started playing splatoon 2, but the first thing that really stuck i think is mini splatling, but it might have been bamboo. Bamboo was at least the first thing i was dedicated to getting better at, mini was just fun at first.

 

[Catloafman]

I messed around with a lot of weapons before I really had a main
I played Nzap 89 and Bamboo mkIII in S1 (I really liked inkstrike)
When I first got S2 (which was after it was done with updates) I played the tetra dualies cause they look cool
but when I reached level 9 and unlocked the Splat brella I tried it and loved the idea of it and jokingly told my brother "Im on my brella arc now"
except heres the funny thing I actually stuck Brella

 

[Deleted member]

vroller. like any newcomer.

then I liked flingza

then aerospray

then enperry dualies

then ndapples

then custom/ normal jr

then splash

 

[LinnGreene]

First love back in Splat1 was 100% the Aerospray RG and the vPro <3 very happy memories with inkstrikes.
Splat2 rolled around and started out with the Krak-On and Kensa Rollers
Splat3 came out and originally started with the vRoller and Splash, and now I'm back to playing vPro and Zap <3