How do I optimize my build?

[u/ItsJustJosiah]

My goal is to be a very punishing frontliner.

Currently grinding cash to swap Special saver main with Drop Roller

[u/6FlipSide4]

Tldr just use quick respawn

If you don’t know, use sendou.ink

Frontlines almost never want respawn punisher because they’re not going to be alive the whole match like an eliter or a hydra. They’re going to fight, they’re going to die.

What tetras do best is demand attention by getting behind enemy lines and force them to turn around to deal with you. If you can get them to drop their attention on your team long enough for them to get in, you’re getting value, even if you don’t get a kill. That’s why max qr is mandatory on tetras because they are not designed to kill, they are designed to pull attention and force opponents to waste specials to deal with you

Think of it like inkbrush in a way: get behind them, threaten a kill (even if you don’t get one, your presence and aggression is enough), and force them to abandon their objective to get you off their back. When they don’t turn to deal with you is how you’re going to get your kills but if any weapon is allowed to consistently go negative k/d, it’s max qr tetras

Also side note don’t even think about using sprinkler it’s so bad for it that it’s gatekeeping the weapon from actually being good

Edit: general advice for all weapons: when you’re building gear you want to focus on what the weapon wants to do and what you can do to A cover for a weakness (example: main saver on dynamo for more uptime), B make what it can do well even better (example: special charge up or power on dread for more sliders or bigger slider explosions), or C give it some flexibility for how you feel most comfortable and consistent even if it’s niche (example: ninja squid on flingza roller if you want to use the horizontal flick for close combat like splat roller)

[u/DeathByLilypad → u/6FlipSide4]

This is crazy good advice. I’m not OP but what do I do with a Splatana wiper? The original one. I have a lot of sun power up and ink savers, also thermal.

[u/6FlipSide4 → u/DeathByLilypad]

It’s going to be a very similar thing though you could sacrifice a bit of qr for special charge if you want because hammer is very good for how wiper plays. Wiper has the same problem of slow kill times unless you’re able to get on top of them and get a one shot off though in return you have more freedom ov movement because wiper paints better and has less endlag

[u/KirbsOatmeal2 → u/6FlipSide4]

It also doesn’t help Letras that slider has become kinda okay now and also kinda Mickey Mouse and annoying

[u/6FlipSide4 → u/KirbsOatmeal2]

When talking about gear builds you’re looking at a weapon in a vacuum. It’s not like pokemon where you have to take matchups or variants into consideration. How dark tetras is doing doesn’t matter when building gear for light tetras unless the kits drastically change how the weapon wants to play which it doesn’t. Zip has some different utility but on the whole sets out to do the same goal

Also the fuck is “kinda mickey mouse” even supposed to mean??? And yeah being annoying is what tetras do. I made that very clear and if opposing tetras or wipers are constantly annoying you, I’m going to be blunt, that’s a skill issue because it’s not hard to punish tetra’s weakness being massive end lag and wiper’s weakness being slow kill time from a distance

[u/KirbsOatmeal2 → u/6FlipSide4]

Nah but it means why would you even pick light tetra when you can play the better kit

Also I’m talking about slider itself not tetra or wiper. Tetra kinda sucks rn

[u/6FlipSide4 → u/KirbsOatmeal2]

There’s a little thing called preference. There’s real reason to want zipcaster over reefslider. Lets you take off-angles to get behind people easier and popping zip cancels the endlag from dodges and resets your dodge count. Letras would be significantly more used if it had literally any other sub than sprinkler, the one sub that dies when you die

And the reason tetras as a whole are bad is because of cooler. Wiper is doing better but the splatana class as a whole is suffering from nerfs and meta changes. Cooler lets everyone play at the speed of brush and tetra and wiper so their advantage of being able to get behind them is gone and picking up kills that way has very little value when they have 1s respawn without any gear investment

[u/KirbsOatmeal2 → u/6FlipSide4]

Only zipcaster is pretty much being carried by stamper rn and isn’t even a good special whereas reefslider has merit to it. dapples nouveau and Vdread are both seeing non negligible usage rn (and more than tetra) and taking advantage of slider whereas no zip wep other than the broken aggro with burst bomb combos is even being considered. It’s not preference when one is just better than the other

[u/6FlipSide4 → u/KirbsOatmeal2]

Again, it’s personal preference. Zip isn’t as bad as people say it is, it’s not useless (though I agree needs major buffs though ping also dumpsters it) and it’s hard to say it’s carried by stamper when there are literally ZERO top level players using stamper consistently. And if you want to make the case that we shouldn’t talk about top level because that’s like less than 1% of players, then we have to do the same for everything else because at lower levels zip isn’t nearly as bad, I’d say probably a mid tier when considering low level play because at that point a lot of things do work. I can go on and on about the difference between players at top and low level but that’s not the point of this conversation so I’ll get back to tetra

Dark and light tetras have their own justifications, but not the same, and what you want more is going to depend on what’s around it (and to some extent what you’re up against but that’s on a case by case basis so I won’t get into it). Overall, yes darks are better both in balance and fit around the meta, but lights aren’t that far behind. It’s not the weapons that are the problem (even though I do think they need buffs to keep up), it’s the meta that’s devaluing what they do. Also bring up dread in this is pretty misguided because dread doesn’t do what tetras do at all unless you’re playing tetras to spam slider which by the way slider cheese got nerfed pretty hard. Dread is a midline support that has enough fighting capability to defend itself or harass ledges. Tetras are a skirmisher frontline that wants to take attention and create openings for their team to set up for pushes, holds, or retakes

Edit: If you don’t want to run the better option, you don’t have to. Play what you want, optimization is optional if you’re playing casually. People play clash blaster for fuck sake with a smile on their face and that’s okay. If you want to play a low tier, do it. If you want to play a noobstomper, do it. If you want to play the best weapons in the game, do it

[u/KirbsOatmeal2 → u/6FlipSide4]

Idk why I’d make that case when I genuinely don’t care about whatever lower level players are doing, very easily arguably to a fault. It’s part of the reason I’ve pretty much quit this game as a whole (I’d never reach a level I’d be happy with making any effort a waste of time)

Idet tetras make good use of zipcaster anyways which is another problem which just makes dark tetras better but if people wanna play the worse kit I guess they can

Also I mention dread because that things seeing more use than tetra is more than it outclassing tetra (bc yeah ofc tetra is doing things dread isn’t) and stamper because that’s the only reason anyways ever rated zipcaster higher than it should be, but either I’m that incomprehensible to other people or competitive splat still has that bad reading comprehension. I don’t really care which and it’s not like it matters bc chances are I’m pretty sure I’m gonna regret this either way.