#special weapon

1) Use hitboxes/colliders of the Splash Wall and Bubble Blower to immediately detonate bombs on impact

Having trouble getting around Splash Walls and Bubble Blowers? If you see the enemy constantly using Walls to push your team back you can turn those walls against them if you’re equipped with a bomb-type Sub Weapon. Originally (besides the Burst Bomb) if you use such a bomb there’s a deploy time before the bomb goes off. You can bypass this deploy time though as if you throw a bomb into an enemy collider (Wall and Bubble Blower) the bomb is supposed to dissipate but when that happens is when the bomb goes off, thus making the hitbox active. In shorter terms, you can throw a bomb against a Wall or Bubble to immediately detonate it and maybe take out a foe or two in the process. You can set up the Bubble exploit by yourself if you have a bomb-type Sub Weapon in your kit. Also beware that this same exploit can be used against you if you happen to run Walls or Bubble Blower in your loadout.

2) Know when and when not to shut down specials

Context can mean a lot when figuring out how to deal with a certain situation. Knowing when to shut down enemy specials can mean a lot in determining the flow of battle. At this point in time, a huge chunk of the playerbase already knows how to deal with pretty much all of the specials in this game on paper. In execution though it can become quite different when it comes to dealing with them upfront. 

For one example, let’s take the baller. Usually you’d want to disable and pop the ball before it goes off but in Clam Blitz it becomes a different story. Certain special weapons when used can make the power clam carrier drop their clam as a balancing mechanism to the game mode. The Baller does fall under this rule so in the context of Clam Blitz the enemy would want you to destroy their special as they’re approaching the goal to avoid the drop. To deal with the baller in this scenario, let the enemy baller pop their ball and then shark them after the blast as they have to scurry to reclaim their power clam first.

It’s situations like the one listed above where if you know how to work around the rules and how specials work in certain contexts you should know what to do in certain scenarios. It’s just that sometimes it’s better to punish after the enemy activates their specials rather than trying to challenge them head-on and accidentally give them a greater advantage.

3) A lot of subs can help point out where enemies are

If you’re not running Point Sensors and are having some trouble spotting foes, maybe some of your Sub Weapons can help you point them out, most notably the Autobomb and the Torpedo Subs. Remember that their function is to track foes and chase them before detonation. Pay attention when they activate as their tracking acts as a Point Sensor of sorts while still being able to track the foe to kill them. This allows you to follow up on your sub since you were able to get info on the foe’s position at that moment but you’ll need to make a read to potentially get the jump on the opponent. Squid Beakons have been buffed to also act as a radar so place a few beakons here and there and check your map to see if you have an enemy on the run.

Tenta Missiles, even though it is a special weapon, also can be used to track foes since the UI before deploying your special lets you see the position of all the enemies. Sting Ray has built-in Thermal Ink, but I find that it’s not that great for trying to track foes since with the ray you’re trying to get the snipe from across the stage and the ray obscures most of the details.