Octobrush Nouveau - Analysis and Thoughts
(This could be a long post.)
OK, so I spent an hour in Turf with Octobrush Nouveau this morning. I've been thinking about equipment for this weapon for a long time, so I had an idea of what I figured should work well. But most of my time this morning was spent leveling and rerolling the gear, so now I also have some experience with how badly the Nouveau sucks without certain things.
To start out, here is the loadout I leveled and rerolled this morning (I'll follow it up with reasoning below):
With the original Octobrush, I ultimately settled on a triple QR build with Special Charge Up and Special Saver to make up for the fact that Octobrush dies all the time. I made it to S+ with that build, along with a highly aggressive base invading strategy that involved distracting enemies from the objective so that my teammates could push, cap the zone, whatever.
My prediction: that QR build won't work nearly as well with the Nouveau. Without beakons and kraken, constant base invading becomes less effective, requiring some other strategy. But the Nouveau has something that the original Octobrush doesn't -- RANGE!
That's right, you can now toss bombs and fire inkzookas with a ranged effectiveness that Octobrush has never had (and quite frankly, an effectiveness that I'm not accustomed to at all). What I'm
hoping is that these ranged options will improve the overall k/d ratio to an extent that QR isn't necessary, allowing me to run gear that isn't meant to counter tons of deaths.
Special Charge Up x2.5 - Charge time for Inkzooka is bad, so if you want to use it then this seems pretty important.
Ink Recovery x1 - Absolutely necessary if you want to use your splat bombs. Most of my time this morning was without this crucial component, and it sucked. You simply must be able to throw your bomb and quickly get back enough ink to splat nearby enemies (or throw another bomb).
Cold Blooded - If you don't run QR, then you'll want this to survive echolocator. It will save your bacon, and maybe even the match.
Swim Speed x1 - Because squids are slow without it.
If I find that constant deaths are still a problem even with the new ranged capabilities, I will most likely reconfigure with
Special Saver.
Another perk that will likely be a massive help, if you can fit it into your equipment, is
Bomb Range Up. I ran into a number of bomb-tossing situations this morning where a bit of extra range would have made an important difference.
Of course, all of this analysis is still largely theoretical since I spent maybe 40 minutes in Turf without good equipment and then another 10 minutes in Turf after rerolling the loadout above. And I'll have to take this stuff into ranked to reach more final conclusions about it all.
So far, I like the Nouveau. It's gotten me out of situations where the vanilla Octobrush would have been at a supreme disadvantage. But I'm also not used to using splat bombs or inkzooka, so I certainly missed many opportunities to use them during my first Nouveau orientation. Is it as amazing as its older brother? That remains to be seen.
EDIT: And thanks, Nintendo, this was most definitely the best birthday present I will receive today.
