Platinum Cup 5
Apologies, I am not as familiar with players outside of the Top 4, so I don’t feel like I can comment on those matches. You can still see their matches and more at the links at the end of the article.
Top 4 Summary
Norishio picked Carbon Deco on TC Wahoo whereas he almost always chose the regular Carbon Roller on previous TC games. Wondering if choosing between Kensa and Enperry is a preference thing for SZ Sturgeon. Kensa’s kit overall seems better than Enperry there, but I guess it depends how useful you’d find Inkjet.
Torpedo is a thing. Nice to see the Brellas being played at this level in the West in general.
BackSquids’ CB Humpback comp looked a bit unusual at first, but they did use very similar comps during RSL Qualifiers #2 and #3. Echo was usually the one to go on Kensa Dualies. Humpback is a good Blaster map, I just wasn’t expecting them to go double Blaster.
Torpedo is still a thing. Norishio has used Tenta Brella for solo CB in the past, but he didn’t for any of the SJOpen games. I wonder what prompted him to pick something more meta here. TC Manta and RM Sturgeon were especially close games. Very exciting to watch.
Congratulations to Ghost Gaming for being the first non-Japanese team to win a Platinum Cup. SterKinderen were especially impressive given how young Melon, Norishio, and YuMild are.
It’s unfortunate that both Kraken Paradise and SterKinderen did not have the same rosters they won their respective qualifiers with. Kraken Paradise had Banana in RSL Qualifier #1. SterKinderen had Kirin in SJOpen Day 1 and Kami in SJOpen Day 3.
Main Weapon Usage
Fairly large variety of weapons used.
- Ricchan was the only H-3 Nozzlenose D user.
- Enperry and Kensa Splat Dualies had similar pick rates. The main difference was in TC and CB, which isn’t surprising. Outside of SZ Walleye and SZ
- Skipper, the SZ maps seemed to favour Kensa overall.
Special Weapon Usage
A bit surprised that Ink Storm wasn’t more popular seeing as SZ was the most played mode this tournament. The map/mode combinations might have also played a hand, especially with Bubble being a bit on the lower end. 6 of the 18 Bubbles were from CB Humpback alone.
Main Ability Usage
At the time of writing this, there are 3 games missing gear loadouts:
- Group A R1: BackSquids vs Kraken Paradise Game 2
- Group B R2: Ghost Gaming vs Sweaty Greasy Nerds Game 1 + Game 2
This tournament had subs disabled, so it’s particularly interesting to see what players were going for. Quite surprised at how much Quick Respawn was used. It was one of the least used abilities during the Splatoon 2 World Championship 2018. Ninja Squid felt a lot more common compared to previous tournaments I’ve seen.
Win/Loss Info
Somehow, BackSquids didn’t get to play a single RM game. I think SterKinderen mentioned in their post-game interview that they focused on SZ since it was their weakest mode in SJOpen Final. It certainly shows.
Feel free to look at all the data and more via the links below!
Link to Spreadsheet
Link to HTML version of Spreadsheet
