I thought when I made the 52 gal rant, it would be over.
I thought that the 52 gal would definitively be the most unfair and unbalanced weapon in the game.
But I was wrong.
On June 1st of 2024, Nintendo released 2 new weapons for both the splatana and stringer class. The Charcoal Decavitator and the Wellstring V. The Charcoal Decavitator is balanced pretty well in my opinion, being another slow but powerful weapon... but the Wellstring V... its incredibly annoying yet strong. A combination of traits that no weapon should have.
So I'm doing another rant! :D Yippee!
The Wellstring V (im just gonna call it wellstring lol) is a weapon in Splatoon's stringer class, a weapon class featuring various bow and arrows that each have a charge that shoots out 2 projectiles. Typically in the stringer class, each of the 2 charge rings are used to increase range and then bring the arrows together, threatening a deadly one shot, but with wellstring, the first ring brings the arrows together and the second spreads them back out. Similar to tri-stringer, shooting while charging or having the second ring charged turns your arrows into physical projectiles that deal damage to and ink the feet of anybody nearby. Unlike any of the other stringers however, the wellstring v's defining trait is that it shoots 5 projectiles instead of 3.
The first problem with wellstring is it's insane area-of-effect (or aoe) range. This actually isn't an issue in of itself, but rather it exemplifies the other issues that are covered later on. A major part of Splatoon is being able to ink the ground below you so that you're able to freely move around as much as you please. Being in the middle of enemy ink, or even neutral turf, restricts a large amount of your options and could potentially be the cause for losing an engagement. Some weapons, primarily the explosher, specialize not in inking turf for themselves, but in inking the ground of other players. Although the explosher doesn't one-shot, inking an opponent's area in your turf allows you to slow them down enough to get another shot on them to secure the kill; because not only does your opponent have to paint the floor, but they have to move out of the way as well. Another weapon that does this well is the tri-stringer. The arrows it produces ink the floor of players and also explode for 30 damage after a while. It doesn't paint the ground as much as explosher, but it paints the ground enough to trap most players in one of the 3 arrow explosions.
So why is there a problem with wellstring if so many other weapons can paint the ground for players? Well, I think the main problem comes down to speed and range. The first ring for wellstring only takes 40 frames (0.66 seconds) to charge, and shooting at any point after that creates the explosive arrows. As mentioned previously, the wellstring shoots 5 arrows, which makes the total paint area almost double that of tri-stringer. Each arrow does the same 30 damage similar to tri-stringer, so unlike the explosher, you can actually one shot players from afar by using only the arrow explosions. It isn't the aoe that's a problem, but rather how quickly and consistently it's applied.
As stated before, the wellstring has 2 charge circles. One to bring the arrows in and increase damage, and one to spread the arrows out and increase range. When charging, the range and spread is similar to reeflux at one charge, but it becomes more similar to tri-stringer at 2 charges. This creates the second problem with the weapon because the differing range values allow it to play as both a frontline and a backline.
Even though all weapons can technically play as any role, most weaopns only have the tools and frame data to play as only one. In order for a backline to play like a frontline, it would need a splash wall to cover for its slow movement and attack speed (in the case of custom explosher) or it would need to have a fast charge speed while keeping its high range value. Wellstring is the latter. No other weapon is able to reliably one-shot farther away than squiffer while charging faster than it. This allows it to play aggressively like mini splatling or passively like splat charger without even needing to swap kits. Wellstring can fight opponents at any distance while still being able to deny area and one-shot opponents quickly, similar to the 52 gal. What makes it worse than gal is that the area denial can be done from farther away and the exploding arrows make it a pain to approach. When fighting a wellstring player, you essentially start at 70 hp because one of the exploding arrows is guaranteed to hit you. This is the primary reason why wellstring is overpowered, but there's one more feature that sets it apart from all of the other stringers, chargers, exploshers, and 52 gals:
The object damage.
Where do I even start??????????? Its like splatoon's developers entirely forgot to balance this weapon's object damage before releasing it. Any non-player object is entirely deleted from existence the moment a wellstring player looks at it. Splash wall? gone. Big bubbler? gone. My 1400hp tent shield? didn't even know it existed. Crab tank? 2 shots. It can shoot over the tank to kill the rider as well. The object damage of wellstring is so incredibly busted. Only snipewriter rivals it, and its not even a rivalry its like a friendly competition. If Nintendo is going to nerf anything in the upcoming 8/31/2024 patch, this has to be it. This is probably one of the biggest problems with the weapon. Everything that should counter wellstring, such as tenta brella, gloogas, or z+f charger is invalidated because wellstring can just remove or shoot over the shield to deal damage. That is why wellstring is so busted. It's an aoe weapon that can outrange and outspeed most weapon classes, that also has no counters to it, because its insanely high object damage shreds any form of shield. That is what Wellstring V is.
So why do I care? Why did I type out 2 entire essays on why .52 gal and wellstring are so broken and unfair? Well the answer is simple.
They're boring.
High-damage mobile no-drawback weapons are boring. Simple as that. They aren't even fun to watch because no skill is required to play them and it isn't fun to play against because little can be done to fight against them, other than catching them off-guard. I feel that all weapons should have some sort of drawback, but these two weapons either have none, or the drawback is so miniscule that it doesn't really matter anyways. In order to properly balance wellstring, I think the object damage should be scaled back significantly, the explosion damage of each arrow should be reduced to 22, and it should have slightly less range to create a noticeable gap between itself and tri-stringer.
or maybe I should just pick a better weapon and become a splash-o-matic main idk