Ok wait hear me out. The title may sound a bit extreme, especially if you play 52 gal in Splatoon, BUT I really need to talk about this weapon and how it conflicts with Splatoon fundamental game design as a whole.
If you don't play Splatoon, or otherwise have never heard of this weapon, the .52 gal is a weapon in Splatoon's shooter class, with its main gimmick being that it only takes 2 shots to kill. Each shot deals 52 damage (hence the name) and each shot comes out in around 9 frames (0.15 seconds). The weapon is considered to be in the middleweight class and it is very, very common across all gamemodes in Splatoon.
Already, the first issue with .52 gal pops up: The mobility. Any other damage-focused weapon in Splatoon is often incredibly slow and is very committal with any shots it has to take. Chargers have to.. well.. charge before one-shotting opponents. Blasters have a long cooldown before and after shooting. Tenta brella (my main :3) does have a relatively fast one-shot, but it is inconsistent and short ranged. 52 gal has none of these downsides. It kills in just 18 frames, rivaled only by splattershot, while needing only 2 bullets instead of 3. By itself, the kill time wouldn't be a problem, but paired with its high mobility due to its middleweight classification, the 52 gal is able to consistently remain threatening while easily being able to reposition at a moment's notice.
Now for issue #2: The kit. What were the devs cooking when they gave this thing a splash wall?? Not only does this weapon have the fastest kill time in the game, but now it has insane survivability as well. I'm all for giving weapons their dream kits, but seeing gal get a splash wall and killer wail while my weapon gets an ink vac just doesn't feel fair. It synergizes way too well. The only thing that would make the vanilla kit more powerful is giving it trizooka instead of killer wail, the best special in the game right now. Otherwise, .52 gal got incredibly lucky and essentially got its dream kit, allowing it to be aggressive, yet safe, for a large portion of the match.
Finally, my 3rd issue with .52 gal. Combining both the 1st and 2nd problems with the weapon, we reveal the overarching problem with the gal as a whole: its accessibility. In of itself, accessibility is by no means a bad thing. In fact, I'd say the complete opposite. If it wasn't for easy-to-play weapons, nobody would pick up this game to begin with. There's a reason the game given you the Splattershot Jr. as your first ever weapon, the weapon with an insanely high paint output and incredibly good ink efficiency. It allows players to focus more on learning the game's mechanics rather than figure out how to move around with their weapon. If you started out with something like the e-liter instead, newer players would be forced to figure out how to aim while they know little to nothing about Splatoon's fundamentals. It would be frustrating at best and utterly infuriating at worst. The starting weapon has to have a low skill floor and a low skill ceiling to incentivise new players to experiment with other weapons to find something that fits their playstyle.
So how does all of this relate to .52 gal? Well, I've talked about the high damage, mobility, and survivability of the weapon, which leads me to believe that .52 gal has a very, very low skill floor; it doesn't require much understanding of Splatoon's fundamental mechanics to start picking up and playing this weapon well. This wouldn't be an issue... if it wasn't one of the best weapons in the game. Traditionally, many weapons in Splatoon's metagame have had some sort of drawback or downside that required players to learn how the weapon plays before bringing it into ranked modes. At the start of Splatoon 3, sloshing machine required people to learn how to hit people over walls and get used to the weapon's endlag. The snipewriter was a charger, requiring people to perfect their aim and learn how to paint passively for their special weapon. Even the N-Zap '85, another weapon in the shooter class, required people to learn spacing through the use of suction bombs, and learn when and where to place tacticoolers to make them as effective as possible. The .52 gal doesn't really have any of these steps to learning how to use the weapon. It's a shooter, so you already have a general idea of how it's supposed to play. It has a splash wall, it's pretty obvious that you throw it out to help shield from attacks; and killer wail just requires you to point in the general direction of who you want to hit. It's incredibly easy to pick up and learn, which is why I think it has the worst design out of any of the Splatoon weapons in the entirety of the game's history.
To wrap everything up, I want to briefly cover 2 weapons that I think showcase how to properly design a 2-shot kill weapon in a way that doesn't make it hopelessly overpowered: The glooga dualies and the .96 gal.
The glooga dualies are not in Splatoon's shooter class. Instead, they are classified as dualies. If you hold ZR, you alternate shots from each of the guns that you're holding, which deal 36 damage each at a relatively slow rate. After rolling with the B button, however, you move a short distance in any direction you like and you become stationary, similar to a turret, shooting shots that deal exactly 52.5 damage. This is actually a weapon that I main, and I absolutely love the way that it's designed. For one, you don't immediately start with a 2-shot. You have decent range, but your firing rate is just as slow as the 52 gal, meaning it would take about 27 frames to kill. After rolling however, you gain increased damage and can match .52 gal's kill time at 18 frames. This would be a problem if the roll wasn't insanely committal. You're stationary and you can't move at all during this period, and if you do try to move, you go back to your 36 damage shots and slow kill time again. The below-average ink efficiency and slow strafe speed make this weapon feel a lot like a glass cannon. Powerful if you're in its sightline, but easily able to be shot down by a weapon that sneaks up behind it or outranges it.
Similarly, the .96 gal struggles with the same issues too. It is much, much more similar to the .52 gal, only having more range and slower fire rate at 12 frames per shot (but it deals 62 damage per shot). Additionally, the strafe speed is very, very slow and the ink efficiency is horrendous, only allowing 40 shots before needing a refill. This may seem like a lot of downsides to an otherwise high-damage weapon, but I feel that they are necessary to make a weapon like this to feel fair for both sides of the weapon encounter. Of course, some features like the ink efficiency or strafe speed could be toned back, but powerful weapons need to have some sort of downside holding them back, which I think the .96 gal does very well.
I honestly don't think the .52 gal needs to be outright banned or nerfed to the ground or anything like that. I feel that slightly worse ink efficiency, slightly less strafe speed, and maybe slightly worse shot rng are really all .52 gal needs to feel like a balanced weapon. It's simply too easy to play and it has too much uptime throughout the match. If you play .52 gal... uh... idk pick a better designed weapon like squeezer or glooga dualies or .96 or bamboozler. Ok that's all bye.