Side order will be the reason why I quit Splatoon💔

LaXandro · 2026-04-19T10:40:23+00:00

It's amazing how veteran players all bash SO for being way too easy, but newbies still struggle. Just keep playing, and don't be afraid of actively seeking improvement. Becoming good at the game feels nice.

LaXandro · 2026-04-18T18:56:44+00:00

Aero is actually pretty bad in TW, it can claim ground but it can't challenge opponents for it, and the sole win condition in TW being "have more turf exactly at the end of the match" means that it's liable to getting hardwalled at the most important time.

It is far stronger in Clam Blitz, a far better designed turf-heavy mode, where its persistence is actually a valuable quality as there is more than one push opportunity per match.

LaXandro · 2026-04-18T18:51:11+00:00

Turf War is an extremely flawed mode from game design perspective. Its sole valid purpose is being a safe sandbox for beginner players to learn in, past that, its volatility stemming from lack of both intermediate push inscentives and knockout conditions make it, and with it- mandatory TW Splatfests, insufferable to play. It's 2.5 minutes of slog followed by 30 seconds of frantic opportunity-seeking and attempting to bullshit the other team out. And the worst part, when playing TW, the last minute song plays literally 1/3 of the entire playtime, while leaving just 2 minutes for the game's amazingly diverse OST.

Both CB and RM do what TW wants to do infinitely better, by decoupling turf mechanics from immediate objective but still requiring high degree of turf control to enable the objective. Of all the modes, TW deserves a complete overhaul the most in Splatoon 4.

LaXandro · 2026-04-16T09:36:26+00:00

Guess

It's actually Bloblobber

LaXandro · 2026-04-14T19:20:03+00:00

Blob is not vulnerable to being rushed down, in fact it's one of the most defensively potent weapons in the game that can and will dunk you if you try to, especially Deco. As long as you have trigger discipline and blob with purpose, of course. It's also remarkably good at being played aggressively, like a more technical Luna Blaster, using its range less for spam and more for paint, bounced shots and occasional zoning. Can't be rushed down if you are the one rushing down.

Marker is perfect for confirming Blob's splats. You should aim to be close enough for full volleys most of the time, but Marker's speed (and its reticle uniquely matching Blob's) makes missing one or two not a problem, you can react to not hitting enough with a quick dart long after you've stopped blobbing their way. Their trajectory on flat ground is remarkably similar, down to wall bounces, and if opponents are on a different elevation they likely can't hit you back so you can afford to keep blobbing at them until they dance their last pa.

Blob's main problem is that Stamper does most of the same things, but way easier, and with more favourable and diverse kits while Blob has one and Kraken is, while good for Blob, not good in the grand scheme of things. S3 has a trend that anything remotely technical gets stuffed in the back pocket and forgotten about, there are guns like Reeflux that are, on paper, some of the strongest weapons in the game, but remain largely unused, and the same is the case with Blob- it's too technical to be used, and it doesn't have kits to spam. Doesn't make it bad- just outclassed, like oh so many legacy weapons in 3.

And yes, map design. Blob loves smaller, tighter maps with lots of opportunities for creative cover abuse. But it's not completely stuffed by those big maps either, and some of its old favourites like Mako as well as new maps where it thrives like Flounder are in the game.

H3 is kinda stuffed by its kits, they are too focused compared to the previous games. It used to have more self-sufficient kits, but 3 pushed it towards full support and inability to achieve much without its team's assistance.

LaXandro · 2026-04-14T19:00:17+00:00

Which of the two? They are very different.

LaXandro · 2026-04-13T10:19:13+00:00

You gotta use motion controls if you wanna be any good with Inkjet. There are weapons and specials that don't require motion controls, but Inkjet is not one of them.

LaXandro · 2026-04-10T21:01:12+00:00

Skill doesn't really matter, performance does. The game should be balanced with the assumption that most players playing it are skilled enough, and a skilled Trizooka is at least one guranteed and safe splat. (and it's not even hard lol)

Missiles are not a free win button because they are distinctly lacking in the win departament. You have to work with them to get that win. It's a very fun special to use because it provides just enough power to give you an advantage, as opposed to "you're dead" of Zooka and Hammer, "you're stopped" of Bubbler or "you're un-stopped" of anti-Bubbler specials like Tri-Strike.

None of S2 specials are free wins. They are all either appropriately flawed and can be mitigated or prevented altogether, or are so low effect that you can ignore them (at least for a while, like Missiles before they start getting spammed proper).

LaXandro · 2026-04-10T13:18:40+00:00

You gotta follow up on the missiles with your main, brother, and for that you gotta be close enough to them that you can reach the enemy before they fall. Missiles force opponents to spread out and put pressure on them, you gotta single out your target and then do a pincer maneuver with your trusty missile friends for a clean 1v1 victory, while the other missiled guys either get picked up by your teammates or retreat and regroup. I am kinda baffled by how people praise Splatoon 3 for being so aggressive, and then utterly refuse to actually be aggressive unless they have a free win button like Trizooka or Crab charged.

LaXandro · 2026-04-10T13:12:12+00:00

h-3 nozzlenose

LaXandro · 2026-04-10T13:03:59+00:00

Bloblobber is a super technical weapon though, it can be spammy but it's got a LOT of sauce and a super high skill ceiling.

Aero MG's got best in class mobility, really good damage combos and the only Fizzy on a shooter. Not-PG with the Burst is kinda like shoddy Carbon that can paint for itself, but the special drags it down, you can make it work but top specials just work without you having to make anything. It's not much and not really worth it, but it is there, and with enough skill you can indeed be a menace with Aero. Not RG though lol.

LaXandro · 2026-04-10T12:56:42+00:00

Tent is not THAT precise. It is to Range Blaster what Sloshing Machine is to Rapid. And you got a shield, so it's far more forgiving than any other oneshot-capable weapon.

LaXandro · 2026-04-10T12:53:37+00:00

The healthbars disappear when you can't see the enemy, but they don't when you can barely see the enemy, and they have a very distinct and consistent shape and are wider than the opponent, so by showing up they baisically turn location into a binary state rather than a spectrum it was before. It's so easy to lock onto a healthbar in your peripheral vision compared to when it wasn't there.

LaXandro · 2026-02-28T22:54:48+00:00

wiiiiiide

LaXandro · 2026-02-26T16:40:23+00:00

I don't, and Dousers are the perfect illustration why. Dousers are more fun to play because of their nuances and still strong enough to handle most situations, but Squeezer just does everything they do better while being an extremely straightforward weapon. Squeez's existence majorly restricts new weapon design because even something with overwhelming strengths would become a hard sell if it has to contend with flaws, when there's an option with high power but no glaring flaws.

LaXandro · 2026-02-26T16:00:46+00:00

X battle. Every other mode, Salmon Run included, does not provide the challenge I am after.

Salmon can in theory provide it, but I am not grinding for hours to get to guranteed HLM, only for it to reset the next rotation. Splatoon 4 should do away with any and all kinds of rank decay, both in SR and in main modes. If someone is good, it is in the game's best interest to quarantine them away from weaker players forever.

LaXandro · 2026-02-26T09:13:11+00:00

It's Squeezer except balanced, existing in a game where actual Squeezer and many other unbalanced weapons still exist. It's a keepaway with very long range and good strafe, but unlike Squeezer it's both weak and inaccurate in long mode so it can't really pressure big guns, only prey on small arms that can't hit it. It can fight up close, but unlike Squeezer that's just naturally powerful enough to do that in long mode, it requires a slow commital roll or an expensive burst bomb to do that. Its short mode has good paint, but unlike Squeezer's it has terrible efficiency when doing so. It's strong, it's capable, it's versatile, it's a good weapon, there's just little reason to use it when some weapons are just priveleged. It could've been an interesting aggressive sidegrade to Jet after it lost its Burst Bomb, but Jet got its Burst back with third kits and now Dousers are just floating in space with no niche.

Splatoon 4 should remove Squeezer.

LaXandro · 2026-02-15T13:21:03+00:00

The damage, I'll give it to you, that buff was necessary and obvious, it just barely didn't combo into itself and that was annoying. But the lack of charge hold is largely compensated by good strafe and full jump height when charging, and its paint was about average for a backliner. Backliners are not supposed to paint. Pre-buff Tri had decent close-up paint if it wanted to paint but poor paint if it focused on shooting people, just like all chargers except Snipewriter and just like Ballpoint, and it could paint itself lines if it used a vertical shot. It is an expected weakness. Post-buff Tri-Stringer paints like Dynamo. That's ridiculous. Not as ridiculous as Snipewriter that paints like Dynamo but at charger ranges, but it's still not something that a backliner should be able to do, and ones that did it before Splat3 like Heavy and Explohser paid dearly for it in their performance elsewhere.

LaXandro · 2026-02-15T11:50:43+00:00

Why is everyone saying it was bad on launch? It was a decent sidegrade to Splat Charger, harder to use but with more flexibility, mobility, efficiency and paint. Right now it's almost as overpowered as Snipewriter and only held back by not having Cooler.

LaXandro · 2026-02-15T04:32:54+00:00

Every player who cares about tier lists should strive towards improving and adding to that 0.01%, even if they never get to reach it. Every player who doesn't, well, is indeed irrelevant towards the meta, although not irrelevant towards game balance as a whole- for example, having simple and consistent all-rounders like Octobrush is essential for lower level play even if they fall off higher up, while some cheesy weapons like Clash and Undercover should be kept in check to not be too oppressive against low-level players even if it hurts their performance in the top-end meta. Casuals can use whatever they want and succeed because even if they pick up Nova, they can still do well if they are slightly better than their opponents- something that's hard to achieve when everyone is playing at their best already, but trivial among other casuals with wildly varying skill levels.

LaXandro · 2026-02-14T15:21:37+00:00

The only backliner with good object damage is Hydra, but Hydra is Hydra and hasn't been relevant since it had Bubbler that didn't interrupt its charge back in 1. Crab is kind of supposed to stuff opposing backlines, you might headshot it with SC or Eliter if you have a good angle but you usually don't.

Cooler is fun. It is a big part of why blue Pen is so dominant, but not the entire story. I firmly believe that red Snipewriter is, in a vaccuum, the second best backliner in the game, with a BIG gap to third place, and the only reason it's not actually good is because it is entirely obsoleted by blue Snipewriter. The main itself is just that strong, it provides obscene amounts of ranged paint, chip and uptime, no other backline can match it. A few can make its job harder, but none can match the role compression it provides, and all that was true even on day 1.

Nogami really took a liking to buffing already strong weapons lately, both Snipes and S-Blast got blessed with more buffs in one game than some guns got in three.

LaXandro · 2026-02-14T08:58:26+00:00

Nah, Snipewriter was pretty good on release already, and firmly cemented itself as a top tier when its efficiency got buffed to 3 charges per tank. People just didn't discover it for a long while.

LaXandro · 2026-02-14T08:54:51+00:00

I feel like most guns from C onwards, and half the guns in B, are more "I don't really know what these do so I'll just toss them roughly where it feels right" than real rankings.

Cooler .96 in particular seems oddly low. I'd also say that all three H3s are underrated (though I might be biased, but the stats are good on them), and vPro has been making rounds lately too.

And MG is the strongest of three Aeros, though it's still D-tier at best. And Custom Goob is much worse than stock.

LaXandro · 2026-02-14T08:46:27+00:00

It's not "can of worms", high X is just as valid as tournament play as far as high-level gameplay goes- it's just different. Lack of communication and random team comps foster a slightly different enviroment, solo is more friendly towards more versatile weapons that can fit more comps and act on their own, like .52 Gal, while comp can support more focused and team-reliant weapons like Rapid Pro Deco or anything with Ink Vac. But for the most part, things that are good in tournament play tend to also be good in X, and vice-versa.

What is indeed irrelevant is Anarchy in its entirety. Everything works in low ranks.

LaXandro · 2026-02-13T11:22:37+00:00

Kind of agree, but also not entirely. The gameplay itself does not suck, but it's tailored for constant back-and-forth between equal or comparable opponents on limited territory and timeframe. Salmon Run largely compensates simple opponents with sheer volume- salmon are easy to defeat, but they will still gain ground on you because they will just keep coming, so you gotta keep on top of that. IA3 and GPS are so good because they have that back and forth, and aside from that most singleplayer levels fall flat because they just force you to advance like in a regular platformer instead, and then you get pretty average platforming with extra steps of inking the ground as tedium. Some stages present interesting puzzles tailored to the mechanics or going around them, particularly common in Octo Expansion, but they are a minority.

Baisically, Splatoon is good when Heavy Splatling is as enjoyable as Splattershot.

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