Hey Readers, welcome to the 52 gal blog. This will be a place for me to share my thoughts about the weapon and go super into detail in a ton of different situations on every map, every position, against essentially every type of weapon. This won’t be just a 1-post blog, as that would take PAGES and PAGES of writing (undiscussed with others, unedited too) for you guys to sift through. I thought making it into a bunch of smaller posts would make it easier for me to keep your guys’ attention as well as open each part up for feedback before I just threw a 1000000000 page document at you where all the information would get lost to most.



So who the hell am I to be saying anything about this weapon? I’m Dylan26, team captain of C2C and member of the competitive community since Ink or Sink. Never have had many great tournament placings, the best being 17th at Messtival! 2, but I have played (and played against!) .52 gals for as long as I have been playing seriously. I am a 17-year-old s+ rank high school 11th grader based in NYC (got S and S+ with .52 gal) and I have been watching and analyzing this game since streams and videos for it existed. I hope this gives me enough credibility with you squiddos to be able to talk about the weapon. I know I’m not considered a “top player,” but you don’t have to be the best in the world to know how such a common weapon works. Since nothing like this exists in English (sorry Japan, I can’t read your language. I’m sure there’s a ton of great content out there though), I want to relay what information I have to you all. The last note for the intro is that this will be about ranked modes, not turf. I just don’t care enough about turf and there’s no strategy that needs to be figured out. Sorry casuals. Actually, not sorry at all. Play ranked.



Alright so now that my formalities are finished, let’s get into my first topic, and the first part of any game: your rollout.



Your rollout is C R I T I C A L in making sure that you get out to the middle of a field efficiently. For all you newbies, here’s the basic way to roll out from spawn:



- Shoot



- Swim to the edge of your shot



- Repeat



Not that hard, is it? I know, right? Don’t worry about not doing it already if you didn’t. First off, When you shoot initially, don’t try to arc your shots to reach further, as they don’t actually increase in distance if you arc your shots. Splatoon’s shot physics cause your shots to slow down and fall almost straight down at the edge of your range, so if you’re arcing your shots at all, you actually won’t shoot at your max range. Don’t arc your shots. Second off, when you roll out, you should be shooting a MAXIMUM of 3-4 shots out of your weapon before you squid through. Don’t shoot more, don’t shoot less (there are exceptions), as this will hinder your speed in getting to mid.* The last point about rollouts is to take advantage of your teammates’ ink to swim through (these are the exceptions!). If you have a sniper on your team and they shoot a line out, don’t keep inking the space in his shot. Just swim through it! He’s giving you a line to go through. Splatoon is all about taking the advantages that your ink afford you, and this is just a small part of that. Similarly, if someone shoots out a lane and there is a gap in the ink, just give them a helping hand. Rollout in ranked is all about getting to the middle, especially if you’re a .52 gal who doesn’t have a special that can immediately impact the game like a bubble or kraken. Wail can be gained and used more effectively for the second phase of the game, so don’t worry about it squiddos.



*A short note on vocabulary: I will be using vocab from the callouts of maps that I have created, as it is the only way to actually tell you guys where anything is. I will attach maps at the bottom of each post for the map callouts I refer to, so don’t worry. “Mid” just means the middle of any map, like where the tower is on moray towers.



Once you get to mid or wherever you’re going with your rollout, you’re gonna have to make a decision on whether or not you want to be the aggressor, defender, or just get into a straight fight. Actually wait let me rephrase that: depending on how quickly you get out of mid, you can choose whether to be aggressive or defensive at mid. The best option is ALMOST always aggressive as long as you’re not getting baited (which won’t really happen all that much in stuff like soloqueue, only in tournament). If your rollout is actually fast and you have freedom in mid, the nature of your approach to mid can be defined by your wall placement forward or backward. The further forward you place your wall, the more area you cut off for your opponent to take. Therefore, you and your team can take more of mid than them, effectively creating more map control. Wait what? That easy? Uhh… yes?? Obviously!! If you want to have more map control, you place your wall further forward. The SAFETY of this, however, is determined by how quickly you can get to mid. Only throw your wall out as far as you can without getting splatted for it. That doesn’t mean that once the wall is off your hand, you are safe. There is a whole period of lag after you throw it out, and furthermore, there is a whole period of time once your wall plants in the ground before the wall actually protects you. Don’t think your wall is keeping you safe until you know it is safe. Only when you’re safe can you start getting Effective Splats,or splats that CHANGE THE GAME. I don’t have exact frames, but anything can get through your wall until the ink from it hits the ground. The frames aren’t what matter though.



What matters at the end of the day is that you’re paying attention to where your opponent is going, where they currently are, what their options are (at least the most common ones, if they do something crazy then you just have to tip your cap), and what you can do to maximize the space available to you. Always be looking to see how you can safely push your positioning forward and assert yourself as that strong forward player, always reestablishing the front lines for your team. Figuring out how you can skew this first interaction in your favor by acquiring more territory will help determine who gets objective first. We’ll be covering the next steps after First Result, the first outcome of the game in regards to who gets objective, in the next posts. We’ll be starting with splat zones.





Again, thanks so much to all of you gallers who are reading this!! I’d appreciate feedback in the comments below or on my twitter post or reddit thread. Keep improving, walling, and splatting, and I hope to see you all reading and commenting on the next post!! J <3