Why Zipcaster is Bad, Actually

[OnePotWonder]

I'd been meaning to make a post covering Zipcaster for a while now. It's my personal opinion, certainly a hot take, that the special is immensely overrated and always seen in a positive light just because it's cool when it's at its best. People never look at the special with a critical lens. So today I'm fastening mine in front of it in the hope of bringing some attention to its core issues.

Also, yes, the title is meant to be clickbait-y. I don't think Zipcaster is inherently bad, but I do think it is flawed, and its flaws need addressing.

First of all, what is Zipcaster supposed to do, what is it good at doing? The answer is the problem with the special.
Let's go back to the beginning. By which I mean the very beginning; the promotional trailers where Zipcaster was first revealed. The first time we ever saw it was in the RotM trailer, where a Splash-o-Matic uses it to dive an enemy charger and splat them. The next time we see it is the Release Date trailer, where an Octobrush uses it to, guess what, dive an enemy charger an splat them.

You can already see where I'm going with this, but let's also look at Zipcaster's launch stats for good measure. Zipcaster received three important buffs over the game's content cycle. At launch, compared to now, using your main weapon in Zipcaster cost 50% more ink/duration, the minimum zip length was longer, and landing on an enemy with a zip couldn't splat them from full health. The special was even worse at close combat than it is now.

Looking at its stats as it exists currently, zipping to a wall inflicts no end lag and allows the user to jump higher than usual. Zipping to a floor inflicts a lot of end lag and comes with no movement bonus. It's no exaggeration to say it's always better to zip to a wall above an enemy you're trying to splat with the special than zipping to a floor in their vicinity. The only exception would be splatting an enemy by zipping on top of them, which wasn't possible at the game's launch. The special has always been best used to target enemies directly below high walls and especially above ledges.

Despite providing no protection outside of while the user is locked into the movement of a zip, the special is on three short-range dive weapons, all of which had the special on launch, and two of which have the shortest range in their class and don't paint. This is a special where zipping to a floor inflicts punishable end lag. How are Luna Blaster or Carbon Roller supposed to splat something like a Splattershot with the special in open terrain, other than landing on top of it with the zip direct? They really can't. The reason Splatana Stamper is the only truly good Zipcaster weapon is because it's the only one with enough range to be able to land shots on enemies from safe zip landings. That and it has a real sub weapon, unlike the relevant Slosher and Tetras.

So, what is Zipcaster supposed to do? The answer is to dive enemy weapons. The answer on launch was to dive enemy backlines. The problem is that it's still only good at diving enemy backlines on most of the weapons it's on. The problem is that it's too good at diving enemy backlines on those weapons.

The problem is that nobody looks at how Zipcaster affects the game when it's used on weapons like Luna Blaster or Octobrush, because all anyone cares about even for the sake of the special's ranking in tier lists is Splatana Stamper. People turn a blind eye to the special's bad iterations because the best one is really cool and awesome and hey look at the cool Stamper Caster play they got a triple isn't that awesome?

I don't hate Zipcaster as a concept because I seldom hate anything as a concept. The special is, in fact, really cool when it's able to land a splat against an opponent with its main weapon. I even like using it myself on Stamper and Slosher. The problem is the fact that it's encouraged and enabled to specifically go after backlines with the abilities it has and lacks. Nintendo has already tried to address this problem with the buffs they've given the special and all of the weapons they gave it to post-launch, but it's not quite enough. To be fair, it would take a complete rework to fix this problem completely. Regardless, there are smaller things that can be changed to make the special less biased. Here's the fix I came up with:

Zipcaster

Zipping to a floor allows a player to execute a Drop Roll on landing​

Jumping while stuck to a wall pushes the player farther away from the wall than current​

The solution to making the special usable on short-range weapons is to get rid of its unnecessary end lag, believe it or not. Making it so zipping directly in front of an enemy isn't a death sentence actually makes it much, much easier for said weapons to fight non-backlines. Then there's the wall jump change, which makes it more difficult for the same short-range Zipcasters to hit enemies by peeking over a ledge with a jump, and makes it impossible to jump up to a ledge a player zips beneath. Sitting on snipe would actually provide a bit of safety against the special. The change also makes it slightly easier for short-range Zipcasters to reach enemies by zipping to nearby walls, as a bonus.

The point of these changes isn't to make the special particularly stronger or weaker in general. Zipcaster's power level is fine on its best weapon. The only goal behind these changes is patching up the overlooked holes in the special's design; making it so the special's value is consistent between different main weapons, both in terms of users and targets.

Feel free to share your own thoughts below. I'm happy to discuss the topic.
Thanks for reading through this whole ramble of a post, and have a wonderful day.

 

[Algae]

Ah, nice. If you can throw yourself up a wall, launching yourself on the ground should logically work.

 

[solz]

Another Spider-Man reference

 

[sly_snivy]

I've wanted to talk about Caster for awhile, as I main the Slosher Deco and really love Zip on it. I do think you bring up a great point on the endlag on zipping the ground. It would help a lot to have that dodge roll so you can at least steer that endlag in a safer direction or give the user a chance to mix up their opponents. I also agree that Zip is much much better on weapons with range.

I will say that I disagree on what Zip is good at. Sure, diving and harassing backlines is not something it's bad at, but if you look at the bigger picture, Zip can afford to fight other weapons if it has some sort of other advantage going for it. For example, if your team's has a lot of paint up, Zipcaster has a much easier time getting kills. The enemies have less options to escape, so landing the one shot is easier, not to mention fighting with the main weapon during Zip is considerably easier with paint at your feet, instead of diving the enemy plat where there will be none for you. After all, you cannot afford to paint for yourself with the limited time before the recall. If your team has player advantage, your team will be able to fight with your Zip more, and the attention taking power of Zip is more effective since there are less enemies that can look at you. What I am getting at here is that Zip is not like other specials in that it creates an advantage when you use it like the killing power of Zooka or the displacement and paint from Strikes. Zipcaster excels at extending the the advantage your team already has.

To double down on this, one change that could be made is reducing the passive drain on Zipcaster. This would allow weapons to use Zipcaster to position ahead of the enemies and then lay low for a bit. It would effectively serve corral the enemies away from you. This could prevent teams from retreating into you if they realize they are at disadvantage. Plus, since Stamper uses Zip more aggressively and short range weapons could excel with this strategy, I think it buffs the right part of the special. What do you guys think?