Where have all the skirmishers gone?

[DualMarmalade]

In tournaments lately I've seen less and less weapons that would primarily be described as skirmishers. Occasionally you'll see a tent or a wiper, Jared pulls out cds on Mahi zones, but in general it seems like teams aren't prioritizing having a skirmisher on their team. Looking at early splat 3 tournament footage and there were plenty of tetras, vds, and wipers, but not anymore.

Why are teams not running them anymore? How does not having a skirmisher on your team affect where priorities fall? How do teams get back in without a skirmisher to "engage the enemy"? The obvious answer is "farm for specials" but I can imagine there are many scenarios where there's just not enough time for that. Are teams just relying on having a lot of special charge on respawn due to cooler? It looks to me like matches are very lock out heavy because of this..

I'm a low level comp player so my understanding of why high level teams run what they run is still developing.

 

[Cool]

Generally its because Cooler effects causing ALL weapons to become skirmishers by design, since it allows death to become a non-issue. So constant fights because of cooler is pretty common, while a lot of people do think skirmisher specific weapons seem pretty good considering this, a lot of people just opt to use zooka weapons, since its just easier to deal with.

 

[DualMarmalade]

Generally its because Cooler effects causing ALL weapons to become skirmishers by design, since it allows death to become a non-issue. So constant fights because of cooler is pretty common, while a lot of people do think skirmisher specific weapons seem pretty good considering this, a lot of people just opt to use zooka weapons, since its just easier to deal with.

Thanks for the insight!

 

[zyf_]

what cool said, except that cooler also means that (1) you can disengage any time you want with instant transmission superjump and (2) you're super fast and hard to hit no matter what weapon you're playing, so anything can play that kiting role

so basically yeah everything REALLY has skirmishing tools

 

[DoubleDrewski]

All of the above, and given that nerfing these traits would mean removing everything that makes cooler, well, cooler, one has to wonder if skirmishers are more or less gone for good in this game at a competitive level.

I suppose a response would be that "skirmishers" never existed. Skirmishing isn't a nice giftwrapped playstyle, it's a mindset in certain situations where taking fights you don't necessarily have advantage in is beneficial. Since Cooler makes those situations far more plentiful for any and all fighting weapons, the value of a weapon's "ability to skirmish" is in diminishing returns with however good your team's cooler output is. Why value the kiting of tetras when any other slayer with cooler is close enough, also having a slew of other benefits?