I'm often surprised at how even in VP, I see weapons used with poor habits or suboptimally. Rollers and brushes not rolling to clear out small fry hoards happens a lot, and there are still times when people fail to work as their weapon's role. People failing to use the stamper I'll forgive tho; it's not exactly intuitive without first considering the numbers.
In SR, the splatana stamper does:
| Attack | Damage |
|---|---|
| Reg Swing Ranged | 100 |
| Reg Swing Melee | 180* |
| Charge Swing Ranged | 180 |
| Charge Swing Melee | 400 |
*this might be inflated by 20 or so, I'm suddenly doubting my memory. It's definitely under 200.
In general in Salmon Run, 200 and 400 are important numbers. When a weapon can do 200 in a trigger pull, that means it can kill a cohock in two pulls. When a weapon can do 400, that means it can kill it in one. Two pull weapons are already coveted. The Splatoon team doesn't give us many, and in my eyes intentionally keeps some weapons from that threshold (Luna, Bloblobber, and H3 Nozzlenoze are all two-pulls; Bamboozler is a notable "stuck at two plus change"). When a weapon can deal 400 damage in one go, you stand up and take note: there are only three (not counting grizzweapons). E-Liter, Dynamo, and Splatana Stamper. Being able to deal with cohocks quickly is huge. Not only are they healthier than steelheads, they operate as meat shields, keeping you from clearing out smallfry or hitting many bosses (this is also why pierce and lobbed walls of inks, like from buckets, is valuable!). Removing them with efficiency is incredibly valuable, and if you can meet the 200 or 400 damage threshold you also know most bosses (500 HP) are going to dissolve too.
So hopefully already you can see where this is going: in order to utilize splatana stamper well, you need to maximize time in melee range and almost exclusively use charged attacks. There's another layer to this, tho: the splatana weapon class has two hitboxes: the melee hit (which is longer than you think) and then the ranged wave of ink. If the melee hit kills everything in its hitbox, the ranged projectile will continue and hit things further out. (The two don't overlap, so you can't do melee + ranged; it's either/or damage-wise.) Since with the stamper you're dealing 400 damage per melee, this is almost always true, which means you effectively have a semi-pierce! Furthermore, anything in the melee hitbox takes the damage, not just the first thing the hitbox touches, meaning you have an imaginary rectangular prism of death in front of you at all times. And I do mean at all times--the charge time for this is ridiculously short for what it is. I don't know the exact timing, but it's close to bamboozler short. You are a reaper, and you are scything through the hoard.
So. 400 damage. Stick close to the enemy, and use charged slashes. If you hold forward when releasing a charged slash, you'll dash. Learn that range too. Your blade will be equally happy filling the role of hoard cleanup and boss killer.
There's some additional nuances, too:
- the paint line/swing time difference between regular and charged is large enough that it's far better to strafe charged slashes to coat horizontal surfaces ime. I haven't like, timed this but I've done a lot of splatanaing in both turf and SR and this has been most effective (pre-2.0 this was true of wiper too! Since they buffed wiper it's much faster to regular spam it to paint. You should be using mostly charged slashes otherwise with it in SR tho). This also is true for shoot-then-swim mobility situations. Your charge is short and leaves an excellent trail for moving through salmon sludge.
- your ranged attack is stupidly long, both regular and charged. Charged edges out regular by a tiny bit, but they're nearly the same. You can be popping chum and chipping bosses when luring things closer to the basket. Regular swings deal enough to oneshot chum. Your range means you're in the middle of the class of weapons that can kill Fish Sticks from the ground and your fire rate on regular swings is almost perfect for it too.
- your regular swing puts out a horizontal disc of ink. This is often a good choice for inking walls, and can actually hit more than one enemy at once: the three smallfry inflatables in the SR shooting gallery can be killed all at once by aiming at the center one.
- your melee regular swings are ideal for smallfry hoards. While your melee damage is considerable, unless there's an ss tier mop-up weapon (like a roller or brush) consider yourself on mop duty during griller and mudmouth rounds, focusing hard on smallfry. In mudmouth rounds don't throw bombs at all--you're also literal perfection for paving the way to gold mouths--only weapons better in a mudmouth round are explosher and grizzweapons.
Splatana Stamper is an extremely good SR allrounder. It's competent at anything, and does well, ~fine~ if you just spam regular. But that's holding you back. This is an S tier weapon when you use it's insane melee power to its full potential. In SR, splatanas should be in melee range and charged up.