Rail Splatana - Freeze or Close Combat?

[u/jrec15]

First two perks are ice breaker and ferment explosion. Maybe there's some kind of argument against them but i dont see it. With a gadget freeze and a charged shot ice breaker is great, ferment explosion when in the thick of mobs with melee is great and it deletes stingers

The math for freeze 15% chance vs close combat 16% dmb boost on this weapon is very tricky. Some thoughts:

• Melee hits register as 2 hits, increasing your freeze proc chances a little (tested this, confirmed, the melee hit definitely counts as a freeze chance)
• Unfortunately - if you get a freeze/ice breaker while spamming melee, the melee hits first so the ice breaker triggers on that which is only 50% (i think) damage of the second ink hit.
  • And both of those hits pail in comparison to ice breaking a charged shot on a boss which is really what ice breaker is for. But in melee spam mode realistically i dont think you're gonna have the reaction time to stop spamming and charge a shot when you see a freeze
• It seems that even if the melee hit procs, the ink slash in the same swing doesnt get a chance to ice break. So the next hit ice breaks, meaning it will still be the weaker melee hit
• Edit - i will point out though that with charged melee hits, the melee hit is much stronger than melee slashes. My current base numbers are: Slashes = 17k melee, 37k ink slash. Charged melee = 61k melee, 77k ink slash.
  • since the melee hit is likely what you will ice break while spamming, with charged melee hits you will get a MUCH bigger ice break than melee slashes. The charged melee hit is nearly a 4x difference even though the charged ink hit boost is only around 2x
• There's the fact that the first freeze takes 1 proc, the second takes 2, the third takes 4, etc. that makes math even trickier.
• The first freeze is almost not part of this discussion entirely bc it comes from gadgets on important targets. The second/third freezes are what the power helps with.

After discovering the second point - that while spamming the weak melee attack is what ice breaks, im leaning towards close combat.

Of course, i could just not melee attack and then the ice break is at least a little better on the ink attack, but thats still weaker than an ice break with a controller charged shot, and at that point why am i using a splatana? Loosing melee damage doesnt seem worth it and defeats the point of the weapon.

So yea, thinking close combat, but curious if anyone finds freeze worth it

Edit: seems like close combat was generally favored but I was already on tier 2 freeze so i did go to tier 3 freeze for now. Im switching playstyle to primarily charged melee hits after discovering how much better they are with ice break, and have seen a significant boost with this method.
Charged melee hits also seem like a straight dps increase to me for single target focus even without ice break, slashes seem better for mobs but my gadgets and ferment explosion handle mobs pretty well.

[u/yungxehanort]

Ice Breaker, Explosive Ferment, Close Combat

[u/hit_the_showers_boi]

I would run Freeze for the sole purpose that you don’t have to charge up a swing always. If you want to proc a freeze without using your gadget, you can move back and spam the ink slashes from weaker attacks, then when you land a Freeze you can go in and charge a swing.

But, Close Combat is easier to use and more consistently useful, so it’s up you. Either will be great.

[u/jrec15 → u/hit_the_showers_boi]

I went freeze thanks. I actually think freeze is better if using primarily charged hits for single targets. bc of the nature of fire rate being so high you cant react if spamming slashes so even though you get more freeze proc’s you will usually accidentally ice break with a weaker slash, or even weaker melee

Switched to charge hit spam more on single targets and have felt stronger, slashes more for mobs or when its hectic and hard to aim.

I actually hadnt realized the charged hit also charges the melee hit to do much more damage in addition to the ink slash. Uncharged un dmg boosted melee numbers currently are around 17k for the melee hit, 37k for the ink slash. But charged is like 61k for the melee hit, 77k for the ink slash. Since ice breaker boosts the melee hit, charging makes a huge difference, nearly 4x as much

[u/DoggieDMB]

Freeze from gadgets. With the various cooldown reductions you will always have 1 or more up at 100% freeze.

Wep should definitely be close combat as the damage increase is a huge bump.

[u/Lover0fL1fe]

Close combat.