»»Competitive Splatoon Guidebook

Competitive Splatoon Guidebook

by Samino & Radha •

Article ported from the Splatoon Stronghold website

This part of the guide aims to help newcomers who are new to the scene get a foothold and start improving and growing as a player. Before getting started in competitive Splatoon, it's crucial to understand the core mechanics and basic concepts of the game through not just playing the game but also studying it. This also requires knowing what area you want to work on.

Generally, players tend to stick to one or two “roles”. Roles are styles of play tied to certain weapons. Weapons can fit into a single role, (eg. Splat Dualies being a “slayer”) or be a hybrid between two or more roles (eg. Splash-o-matic being a “support-slayer”). It is important to note that a weapon being considered a support does not limit it to only supportive action. A weapon’s role simply describes what they do most of the time, and how they fit into an overall team composition.

Choosing a particular weapon type or set of 3 or so weapons is encouraged since the smaller your weapon pool is, the faster you'll improve. Sidenote: it also helps you to become more iconic and associated with that weapon.

Figure out what role you want to learn and play. There are four main roles; slayer, support, skirmish, and anchor. A fifth one is sometimes mentioned, called utility, though this is a niche role. There are also three main "positions"; namely, frontline, midline, and backline. Here is some more detailed information on the roles and positions.

Roles Explained

  • Slayer: Push key points and exploit openings, the aggressive power of a team’s weapon composition (a.k.a. “comp”)
  • Support: Maintain paint control of the map and provide support to teammates.
  • Skirmish: Forces fights and enables slayers and supports to win fights through assistance.
  • Anchor: Superjump anchor for the team, holds game-winning specials while providing long-range support.
  • Utility: Less-common, but is a niche pick for satisfying game winning conditions (ex. holding rainmaker, setting up beacons).

Positions Explained

  • Frontline: Weapons with close up range potential, usually going after kills.
  • Midline: Weapons with mid range potential, usually for general skirmishing.
  • Backline: Weapons with long range potential, usually for holding team positions.

Foundational guides

Having good game awareness, mentality, and knowledge of various in game tricks are super important. It is highly recommended to read through and watch the guides and information listed below as these will help to give you a firm foundation to jump off of.

After going through all of those guides, you have now set yourself miles ahead of any other new player that hasn’t gone through them. With that foundation, you are now equipped with the fundamentals and knowledge to get your hands dirty in the scene.

Goals

The next step is now to set goals for yourself as a player. If your goal is to “become the best player in the scene”, then you need to rethink what you’re prioritizing. There’s nothing inherently wrong with that goal; it’s the side effects that will take you out. The main problem is that this goal is not measurable, not easily achievable, nor does it have a deadline. Goals such as “I want to apply sub-strafing to my gameplay before the tournament this weekend” or “I will work to reach X rank (starting at S) within the next three weeks” are achievable since they are clearly defined and allow you to focus on one aspect. This will help you to see constant improvement in the small things, which will all eventually add up to you climbing the skill ladder as a player.

Getting set up

Now it’s time to get setup. There are a couple websites you’ll want to create accounts on since you’ll need to use them quite frequently. The biggest one is a Discord account since it is the main site the community resides upon and that 99% of all communication is done through. Next, creating an account on sendou.ink is highly encouraged because this website allows players to create their own profiles to store weapon builds, bios, and even ranks (not to mention the website hosts lots of tournaments and a number of other useful tools). Lastly, make sure to create an account on Battlefy since some Splatoon tournaments are hosted here. It is also recommended but not required to create Bluesky, Twitter, Twitch, and YouTube accounts. They can be useful when interacting with Splatoon related accounts in the public space. Make sure to join the Splatoon Stronghold Discord server as there are parts of this guide that will link off to there (If you can’t see the channel at first, go to “Channels and Roles” in the server to grab a role that will give you access to the channel).

This is a lot of information to take in at once, so take your time and don’t rush yourself. Once you’ve finished it all, you’re all ready to start playing competitively. You got the fundamentals, you got the goals, and now you’re all ready to hit the ground running.

To participate in competitive Splatoon, playing with a team isn't required, but it is highly encouraged since this is a team game after all. A team allows you to practice with a set roster of players to form synergy and friendships over time. You can either find a team and join one, or you can create your own. The choice is up to you.

Competitive Lingo

There’s a lot of terms you’ll see get thrown around by players in the scene, so here you’ll find a list of some of the most frequent ones you’ll hear and what their meanings are.

Terms:

  • Rotation / Rot = An in-game rotation (or selection) of maps & modes, usually changing every few hours.
  • Solo Queue / Solo Q = Refers to anarchy battles where you play with other random players online and randomly assigned to teams in a 4v4 match.
  • Open = A version of anarchy battles where you can play with 1-3 teammates to take on other players.
  • Series = A version of anarchy battles where you play a set of battles to earn points which boosts your rank.
  • X Battles = X Battles are unlocked once you reach rank S+0. It uses a points based system, where you gain and lose points for wins and losses.
  • Private Battles (a.k.a “PB”) = A private battle where a group of players meet up to either play in a scrimmage, team practice, mini-games, or events (such as tournaments). The host can assign teams and up to two people can spectate the matches. Private battles can also be closed off with passwords to prevent randoms from joining.
  • Host = This is the person who hosts a private battle by creating one. They can choose to set up a password for it.
  • Meta = Meta, short for metagame, is what is commonly considered the most favored forms of competitive play whether that be weapon choices, gear, team compositions, etc. The meta of a game shifts throughout its lifespan as patches are released and players discover new things.
  • Playstyle = A playstyle is the “style” of how a person usually plays and what roles they use. If they like to be aggressive, short-ranged weapons with high kill potential may be most suitable. For more information on roles and playstyles, see the Foundational Guides segment under How to start in competitive.
  • Compositions (a.k.a “comp”) = An arrangement or composition of a team’s selection of four weapons.
  • Spectating (a.k.a. “spec”) = For players in a private battle, a spec is a player who can spectate the games being played via an overhead or switch between player POVs (point-of-view). This mode is frequently used by coaches, commentators, and tournament organizers. It is considered proper to ask the opposing team if spectating is allowed and for spectators to mute themselves to not give callouts to their teams during a match.
  • Scrimmage (a.k.a. “scrim”) = A scrimmage is a private battle between two teams or pickups for practice, usually in a 4v4 format. Ranked modes are often played in preparation for tournaments.
  • Free agent (a.k.a. “FA”) = A free agent is a player with no team that is actively looking for a team to join.
  • Pickups = A group of players not on the same team playing for practice or in a tournament.
  • Callouts = When in voice chat with your team, it is common to give callouts during the game to improve your coordination and other various aspects of how your team plays. Naming a specific region of the stage, telling where an enemy player is or what they’re doing, or giving directions to your team are the three main types of callouts.
  • X Power (a.k.a. “XP”) = This term refers to the power number a player receives in X battles that helps to define their ranking.
  • Feeding = Used to describe when a player is running in right after respawning and dying without accomplishing anything.
  • Squidbag = This is a common in-game taunt that involves pressing the ZL button rapidly. A player usually does this after getting a weird kill or having a good streak (such as wiping, a.k.a splatting all four players). Since it also changes your hitbox, some players will do it to get out of tricky situations. Outside of that however, it’s usually considered poor sportsmanship.
  • LUTI = Leagues Under The Ink, the largest Splatoon league where teams that sign up are sorted into divisions and play throughout a season (lasts around 2 months) where they’ll have a match every week.
  • Division (a.ka. “div”) = A division is a ranking number assigned by a league tournament (LUTI being the most universal league) based on a team’s past tournament results, history, and a player’s competitive background. For LUTI, the divisions start at X (the highest) then decrease numerically 1, 2, 3, so on.

Joining a team

When looking for a team to join, you’ll find most teams will have a set list of requirements and will be looking for a player that plays a specific role or pool of weapons. Division & in game ranks are often looked at to measure skill, so working on getting a decent rank in the game can go a long way to help in your search for a good team. Some teams can be flexible with their requirements, but as a general rule, stay close to or within the team's requirements before asking to tryout. You can find team recruitment posts in #team-posts (go to “Channels and Roles” and grab the @Recruitment Access role if you can’t see the channel). If you find a team that looks suitable to you, send a direct message to the poster asking to tryout and sending a copy of your free agent post. A free agent post is where you can advertise yourself to other teams that are looking for new recruits. You can also put up your free agent post in #fa-posts (a post template can be found in the channel's pinned messages). Team captains will direct message you if they're interested in trying you out for their team.

Creating a team

When creating a team, you'll need to be prepared for the large time commitment required to not just start one, but to also keep it going. You'll need to figure out how many players you'll want on a team, how active the team will be, what roles/weapons you'll be looking for, and what requirements you'll have among other things. You can theoretically form a team with only four players in total, but usually having somewhere between 5-6 players is considered the sweet spot since you'll be prepared if a player or two cannot make it to certain events.
The general role structure for a team is to have at least one slayer, one support, one skirmish, and usually an anchor as well. You can find a template for creating a team recruitment post in #team-posts (go to “Channels and Roles” and grab the @Recruitment Access role if you can’t see the channel). Potential recruits will direct message you asking to tryout and they'll typically send a copy of their free agent post (if they didn't, make sure to ask since this is how you get an idea of who this person is and what they have to offer). You can also look through the posts free agents send in #fa-posts to see if there's anyone suitable there that is looking for a team to join.
When conducting tryouts where you’ll play with the potential recruit to see how they perform and get to know them better, there are some things you’ll want to keep in mind and pay attention to. This document, Tryout Advice, will help you to conduct a tryout with confidence.

Playing in scrimmages

As mentioned above in the Competitive Lingo section, a scrimmage is a private battle between two teams or pickups for practice, usually in a 4v4 format. This is commonly considered one of the best ways to practice since you can play the maps & modes you struggle on to get better at them.

The general format for typing out a looking for scrim message is as follows

  • @Scrim - The role or “ping” you do to notify people you’re looking for a scrim.
  • Div 4 / XP2600 - The division (often abbreviated to simply “d”) or power level you want to play against.
  • 8:00 PM EST - The time you want to scrim at, make sure to specify your timezone. If you’re wanting a scrim right away, replace the time with “now” or “rn”.
  • DM - This tells potential scrim partners to direct message you if they are interested in playing against you.

Below are some examples of messages people may send when looking for a scrim.

  • @Scrim div 6-7 now dm
  • @here 2600XP 9:00 PM ET dm
  • @Scrim d3 dm

To find a scrimmage, there are a number of ways to go about this. In our Discord server, you can ping the @Scrim role in #look-for-scrim to find one or look at others who are currently looking. If you can’t find any there, then check out #scrim-posts where a bot posts messages from other people that are looking for scrimmages as well. Below are some of the recommended Discord servers to join to find more scrimmages.

SendouQ

As mentioned previously, Sendou.ink is a website made for competitive splatoon that has many useful features. One of Sendou.ink's most popular features is SendouQ. SendouQ is a fan-run alternative matchmaking system. Players can create a group of 4 players and battle other groups of players in competitive best of 7 sets. Wins and losses are reflected in a player's Sendou Power or “SP”. For in depth details on how to play, consult the information page on Sendou.ink. Sendou Q is a great way to practice competitive formats, improve in a team environment, and meet new players.

Improving as a player

Introduction

How does one continually improve their gameplay as an individual? One way to think about it is that competitive Splatoon is 50% mentality & confidence, 20% game knowledge, 15% teammates, 10% mechanics, and 5% luck. If you can win at the mental game and play confidently, you’re already halfway there.

Mentality & confidence

There are a number of ways to improve your mentality and keep a healthy mindset. While there is no one-size fits all method, a couple common methods are as follows. Stop playing when you begin to tilt (a.ka. rage / get mad). Take a break when your mentality is declining or if your gameplay has gotten messy. Watch montages and videos of other people playing to get inspired to improve. Better yet, find a really good clip or video you have of yourself playing to build up confidence. If you have certain music/songs that make you feel good, listen to those before or even while playing. It’s the little things that will add up.

Also, one final note for this section. Always remember that there is no such thing as a win or a loss, only a win or a lesson. Making mistakes is how you learn to get better. Never let a defeat get to you; use it as an opportunity to figure out what went wrong and how to fix it so it doesn’t happen again. If you can master this, then you have truly won the mental game and you will become a force to be reckoned with.

Game knowledge

Game knowledge is something that comes with time spent not just playing the game a lot, but also researching the stats of the game and learning tricks that will help to give you a competitive edge. Finding the best routes and positions for you to take up with your weapon using the sendou.ink map planner tool is one such example. If you’ve watched and read all the foundational guides earlier in this guidebook, then you are off to a great start. There is still much more to learn of course, but game knowledge is best learned by experiencing it for yourself.

Teammates

Since Splatoon is a team-based shooter game, you will have to put a certain reliance on teammates. In the solo queue setting, this may lead to a number of frustrating interactions. Focus on how you can play around your teammates and what you can do for them rather than what they can do for you. You’ll be surprised by how differently things will go and it may even show you some flaws in your own teammate interactions.

Finding compatible teammates when forming or joining a competitive team is crucial to going far together. The group must not just be skilled; they must mesh well both in the game and outside of the game. If there is tension or animosity that forms between players, then they are not compatible teammates. If your teammates can have good in-game synergy and a good time together in voice chat, then you’ve found compatible teammates.

Mechanics

For those who aren’t familiar with the term, mechanics is the ability of a player to manipulate the controls with ease, precision, and rapidity. Best way to improve your accuracy is to create warm-up drills to use in the training room, such as these charger warmup drills used by Brian. To improve your general mechanics, grinding solo q is recommended since you’ll get to experience the whole spectrum of what you may encounter in scrimmages or tournaments.

Luck

As with any game, there is a certain element of luck and Splatoon is no stranger to that. The timing of a special could have been perfect. There was just one second of latency that allowed the tower to take the lead when it should not have. When first starting competitive, it can seem like matches are heavily influenced by luck, but as you continue to improve across the board, the things you once attributed to luck will make more sense.

Improving as a team

How does a team continually climb the skill ladder and stay together? Playing with a team can be an incredible experience where you’ll make many memories you’ll cherish for years to come. However, simply staying together and climbing the skill ladder can be an uphill battle. Below are some starters on how to learn, grow, and thrive as a team.

Practice

Like you’ve probably heard before, practice, practice, practice; that’s the way to go. Finding a good, consistent schedule your team can practice on a weekly basis will go miles toward your improvement. Make sure you have a healthy balance of how you’re practicing and how often you’re playing together. Practicing together more than five times a week is not sustainable and you will all quickly burn out. Play around with schedules to try and find a system where people are available and don’t get burnt out. Using a mix of scrimmages and league practices helps you to focus on improving/fixing specific things during scrims and league battles help to give you general practice against random teams. Make sure to also set aside time to discuss strategies and review your gameplay (more on that in a following section).

Setting goals

As mentioned in the how to start in competitive section of this guidebook, setting goals helps to give you a personalized measuring stick to see your improvement. Some common team goals could be reaching a certain division during the next LUTI season, making a certain bracket in a tournament (ex. Alpha Bracket in Low Ink), and working to consistently not feed in scrims.

Tournaments

Entering tournaments allows a team to measure their improvement against other teams in the scene. They provide a benchmark for a team to see how they did compared to last time. Say your team got 30th place out of 40 teams the first time. After this second time, your team got 23rd place out of 35 teams; that’s improvement there. In the next part (Part 2: Tournaments), tournaments will be further explained and a variety of tournaments will be listed for your team to potentially enter if you are inclined to.

VOD reviewing

Video on demand, commonly abbreviated to “VOD”, in the context of competitive Splatoon is the process of a team or individual rewatching their gameplay to find ways to improve their performance for next time. For a team, this is most commonly done via rewatching an overhead recording (usually taken by a spectator in a private battle) or the anchor’s point of view (due to them being further back, more of the game can be seen from say the slayer).

To rewatch the gameplay with your teammates, there are a couple ways to do this. You can simply share your screen into the voice chat, or you can use alternate methods to show the video. Insights.gg provides a number of tools such as being able to draw over the video to help review your footage. Watch2Gether is a simple website where you can watch a video at the same time with your teammates (everyone in the room can control the video, making pausing to make comments very easy).

Outside the game

Lastly, outside the competition, you should take time to relax and have fun with your team. Whether it’s playing mini games in Splatoon or even branching out to other games, doing this will help your team to bond and grow closer. This in turn will positively affect everyone’s performance and gameplay, helping to make you all an even better team.

Forming connections

A common question people will have when wondering how they or their team move up in the scene is how they make connections. Forming connections with players that are at a higher level than you helps you to not only improve but also gain access to resources you may not have otherwise had access to. The latter of which is one of the main reasons Splatoon Stronghold was founded, to remove the barriers in place that kept information from players.

Simply reaching out to higher level players and asking questions is a good start. Most are a lot more down-to-earth than you’d expect, so there’s nothing to be afraid of when asking them questions.

The main thing to keep in mind when making connections is to not see the connection as “only a path to get something” but as an actual person you want to play with and get to know. If you take the former approach, don’t be surprised if people ignore you. Forming connections should be thought more of as making friends with others. Also, don’t focus on what you want to talk about all the time, ask questions about the person that they have an interest in. It shows that you’re not self-centered and have an interest in what the person cares about.

In short, most of this section is just general life advice since this is about talking with new people you want to learn from. Be respectful, take interest in what they care about, and you’ll be making strides.