Crableg Capital
Love it, wonderful stage. Lots of thin paintable walls to open up little aerial attacks. Space to move around in the middle, not a pressure cooker like Barnacle and Dime (which I still hate btw). You can see Hagglefish Market from this stage. Loads of fun. More like this with even more verticality, please.
Shipshape Cargo
I like this one too. I enjoy the alternating high-ground-low-ground structure, and the theming is very funny. How the hell did these kids end up in the Arctic Circle.
Sloshing Machine Neo
I have always loved the Sloshing Machine, ever since it first turned up in Splatoon 1. It's always felt like the Splatoon version of a grenade launcher, and it's one of the very best weapons for doing my favourite thing in Splatoon: harassing chargers. Being overpowered helped a lot - I struggled with it a lot in Splatoon 3 once it got nerfed, so it fell out of my rotation a little bit to make room for the Bloblobber and Tri-Slosher Nouveau. With this loadout, though, I'm falling in love all over again. The Point Sensor is great for flushing out ambushes and helping me with my poor aim and it's a lot less expensive than the Fizzy Bombs, and I think I'm finally learning my way around the Trizooka after a year of playing.
However! As much as I love the Sloshing Machines, I don't think they love me anymore. It took me ages to get the fresh meter or whatever it's called (you know, the number you see in the lobby when you're playing Turf War) up to 5. I just kept losing. I genuinely don't think I was as bad as the numbers suggested, I think bad luck played a part, but I do struggle to get splats these days with the Machines and I'm always one of the low scorers. I think the debuffs from a while ago wrecked me. (I would love the developers to reduce the special meter requirement back to what it was. 220p for a special along with the reduction to turf coverage feels like an overcorrection to me. It feels Bad. Maybe I'm just going to be salty about it until I die.)
Dread Wringer
So what you'll learn from this post is that I love the Weird Slosher type weapons above all other weapons, and I'm very happy to induct the Dread Wringer into the club. I feel like it needs a tiny bit more oomph - it feels weak when you hit someone full-on with both sloshes and they don't die. My first thought was that both hits should kill together, but that would be wildly unbalanced (even if very fun for me). Maybe the cooldown between swings needs to be a tiny bit faster? I suppose that would need to be balanced with a little less range, since the Dread Wringer is a very good turf inker as it is. Maybe it needed a different special to the Reefslider? Anyway, I like the range as it is and I like how good at vertical painting and opening up routes it is. It's a lot of fun on Flounder Heights, and will be a killer when they stop fucking around and bring back Moray Towers. (Everyone has a few annoying contrarian opinions and this is one of mine: Moray Towers was good, dammit.)
Bloblobber Deco
I've seen one or two people say the Bloblobber Regular is a bad weapon, which always baffles me until I remember that those people are probably playing Ranked modes. I wouldn't dream of taking the Bloblobber into Tower Control or whatever, but it's an absolute beast in Turf War (maybe Splat Zones too?) - it reliably gets you the #1 Turf Inker medal if you just never stop lobbing and you use your Sprinklers and Storms. So I think the Bloblobber Deco is a bit of a downgrade - it's more able to flush out chargers and ambushers with the Angle Shooter and Kraken, so it might be a little better for strategic play on Ranked, but I think I'd rather have the raw inking power of the standard loadout.
Splatfest
I was on holiday during the Splatfest, so I couldn't fight for Frye. Sorry, Frye. I don't think my participation would have mattered.
Big Run
Skipped. I've had a horribly stressful couple of months at work and I decided I did not need Big Run in my life at this time.
Ranked
I usually stick to Turf War and only dip into ranked occasionally. Highest I've ever got is mid-B rank. This season I thought I'd make an earnest attempt to play Ranked. It's more fun than I thought it would be, maybe because (I think) I'm slightly better than C rank so I'm winning more fights than I'm losing right now. The Tri-Slosher Nouveau is such a good weapon (at least at these lower ranks). It's going to hurt when Nintendo notices and debuffs it.
Clam Blitz is a very very funny mode when playing with randos. A team sport in a game with only three ways of communicating with other players, two of which are mutually exclusive depending on if you're dead or not, is such an obviously terrible idea that it wraps back around to being really interesting. The highest highs and the lowest lows. In one game I managed to defend the basket from four power clams in a row and felt fantastic. In another, I missed the power clam throw and cost our team the knockout victory and wanted to go live in the forest. Such a funny and stupid mode.
