This guy is just plain stupid. The most ridiculous, overpowered, monstrous weapon you can get your little suction-cupped mitts on. A massive, pain delivering, deliriously silly chainsaw of unmitigated destruction.
The catch, of course, is it can't paint. It's almost embarrassing, except for the fact you can cut through anything.
| Attack | Damage |
|---|---|
| Regular Swing | 200 |
| Charge Swing | 1200+ |
I put a plus there because I honestly don't know what it is and I think I heard that number somewhere. It maxes out the dummies at 999 and oneshots Maws and Big Shot, who both have 1200.
So the first and most obvious thing you notice when you're granted this lil machine is "wait, my swing doesn't do anything??" A tap shot drops some ink at your feet, and that's it. No fun little disc like the wiper or stamper. So you try a charge slash ("Oh, this takes a bit, huh?") aaand: same result. Just some at your feet. This splatana is 100% melee only. The thing is, though: you don't need any range. Two tap shots kills any lesser fish in a large arc in front of you. A charged slash puts out a giant rectangle of death that literally nothing can survive except a king. Oh. And that hitbox ignores armor. Goodbye, flyfish. Goodbye drizzler. Goodbye steelhead. Having very little paintability is a worthy tradeoff, imo. There are some tricks to this, though.
After you've mentally gotten over the fear of no paint output, you can find yourself moving at a decent clip simply by walking where there is no sludge and, when there is sludge, tap shotting your way though. I think you can go a bit faster if you're not tapping at your max firing speed, but I'm not the one to test this (it feels faster, so that's good enough for me, lol). Walking and swinging is not a strange rhythm in Splatoon, so this should feel familiar. Your main shortfall (hah) is your poor wall inking. You can ink as high as you can jump, maybe a bit more if you point upwards, and only when you're right in front of the wall. If at all possible, let your teammates do the painting, while you do the killing. If, for some reason, absolutely no one is going for a high priority fish stick (this totally never ever happens, right? right??), you can climb it with just the splatana. It's just a pain: paint as high as you can reach, charge up a squid surge, launch, slash on your way down, and repeat until you can get to the top. You need something just over 2/3rds painted to squid surge to the lip, ime. Once up there, your melee swings will kill it in short order.
Now that we can move, lets get to the good part: the killing. The general strategy for this reaper is to 1) pick a boss, 2) clear the area of lesser fish, and then 3) charge slash the boss. Smallfry and chum fall to a single sing, cohocks to two. You've got a wide arc and anything in it dies, so bunch things up a bit if you can, and tap and double tap to clear out. For most bosses, killing is extremely straight forward. Wait for the charge, and let go (while L stick is in neutral). For flyfish and steelhead, you're safest pointing up towards their center: for the rocketgremlin its the cockpit, for the steelhead there's a magical point in it's like, throat kinda? Aim for the head, basically. (You can see the specific point sometime if you hit one with a Killer Wail 5.2.) For flipper-floppers, you wanna nail them right when they poke their head out before the jump. (I think in most cases you can actually reach them with a hop while pointing straight up irrc, but it's safest to do it when they're swimming). The first time this weapon came around, you could kill a Maws through the floor. The gold rotation seemed to have that fixed, but admittedly the few times I had a sorta chance to try it was pretty chaotic. Try it, but also know you typically have enough time to slip out of the circle, charge, and cut before it sinks back down. Scrappers can be killed from the front, but only after they're broken down--it has a separate HP bar that takes the first killshot (or three taps). Writing this, I'm wondering if a hopped charge slash hitbox could one shot a stinger. It's rather tall, and very well might. It would probably be faster than the 1-2 per cut you can manage with taps (hop and cut, aim for the line between two pots)
You may have noticed I've been avoiding talking about The Other Thing this weapon can do: dash \nLike the other splatanas, if you're inputting forward on the L stick while you release the charge, you run forward to cut. Unlike other splatanas, not only is this range huge, but it also defies gravity. You can shoot yourself across the gap in front of the basket on Marooner's Bay. I saw a clip where someone launched between two fish sticks. If you're going up a ramp, you can launch into the air. But let's back up. Actually, let's back up a little more. Ehhhh, just a bit more. Perfect. Your range for this is long. You can and will miss cuts with this. You can and will Do The Dualie and dunk yourself with this. Start by launching from "hmm, this is waay too far?" and then slowly let yourself try from closer distances till you get a feel for it. Once you do have the range down, you should still ask yourself "is my exit clear?" Unless it's a "clear this target or we wipe" scenario where you dying is an acceptable cost, only use dash charge attacks when the area is clear enough for you to kill your primary target and then point yourself at whatever threat is near and get enough swings to remove it. As I mentioned, the dash attack makes you fly. This means you can slash flyfish that are in the ocean on high tide and smash a flipper flopper if one is lined up with a ramp. This is extremely fun and funny, and you should absolutely try stupid stuff with it. Practice dash cuts, practice not dashing, practice jumping and charge slashing (these can't dash).
Playing with the Splatana
And by playing with, I mean alongside. This is a section all of the Grizzco weapons require, because they're so far into their niche that as overpowered as they are, they have major shortfalls the team as a whole must account for.
We've already established this sucker can't paint. This means it takes longer to get into position and, if trapped by missiles, rain, or sudden inkfall from a flipper-flopper, steelhead, or fish stick, will die. In order to support your friendly neighborhood deathmachine, keep things painted. especially walls. especially walls.
Along with keeping the floor swept and uhhh as tidy as a floor covered in ink can be, you should be clearing things the splatana can't reach: drizzler torpedoes, fish sticks, chinooks, snatchers full of eggs (hopefully close to the basket), and any other enemies it can't get to (like that stinger on the other side of the map. Yes, that one. Why are you standing there!?). Your goal is to make it as easy as possible for the splatana to work. If you've got a shooter, you honestly can't go wrong just following them around, making sure exit paths are available and helping with the small fish.
Finally, ferry eggs. The splatana should absolutely carry eggs too (it's not quite like a e-liter or hydra where going a round with 0 eggs is both normal and good), but its main job is deleting bosses (preferably close to the basket, of course). Facilitate that and rounds generally go smoothly.
Bonus!
During a Cohozuna round:
With the splatana: Just charge slash nonstop. It's the equivalent to like 2-3 eggs. Cut, cut, back away from the belly flop, cut cut cut, charge while the jump lands, dash in, cut cut cut cut...
With other weapons: Floor painty weapons should be cleaning up the king's sludge trail so splatana can go wild. Shoot anything that comes near, and at Cohozuna when the floor's mostly clean. Shooters/things with high rates of fire should try to aggro the boss so splatana can be cutting without worrying too much about where Cohozuna is going. Try to keep the king moving in a tight circle. Boss killing weapons can kill bosses. Everyone should be using eggs to kill these, too. Reviving splatana is a priority.