Splatoon 2 Abilities
Lean, Twitter: @leanyoshi

Abstract— This report provides an overview of abilities andtheir mathematical background in Splatoon 2.

I. I NTRODUCTION
One of the most important aspects in Splatoon 2 is Gearand their corresponding abilities. Planing ahead and using
abilities that are beneficial for yourself is important as theymight give you the edge you need to win a match. In thisreport an overview about abilities in Splatoon 2 and the way
they are calculated is given
II. M AIN PART
Abilities are one of the most important parts in the game.
They are split in two categories: main and sub abilities. Everypiece of gear has one main ability and can have up to three
sub abilities. The main ability on a piece of gear is fixed,
while sub abilities can be changed at any time. But what
exactly are they?
A. Abilities
Abilities are used to handle stats like the speed whilerunning, swimming, how fast you recover your ink, and soon. Most abilities can appear as main and as sub ability ingame, but some are limited as main ability only. A list ofabilities can be seen in Table I.
B. Abilities and Gear
Abilities are tied to your gear. Every piece of gear caninitially have one, two, or three slots that can hold abilities.
These slots need to be leveled to unlock the corresponding
ability hidden on the slot. To level them online matches
must be played. After a match the amount of experience
is displayed and added to the equipped gear. The amount ofexperience needed to unlock a slot depends on the amountof initial sealed abilities, which is called rarity. This is also
represented by the amount of stars the gear has. Table III
shows how many experience points are needed to level one
slot. To unlock more hidden slots Super Sea Snails1 need
to be used. The ability that is unlocked is predeterminedwhen adding the gear to your inventory. The brand of thegear is used to decide affinities, see Table II for more info.
These slots can be rerolled, scrubbed, filled with chunks ormanipulated with drinks.
1) Rerolling: Gear can be rerolled by talking to Murchand offering him one Super Sea Snail. Rerolling will convert
the current slots to chunks and add them to your inventory.
Further, three new slots will be randomly generated.
1 cf. https://splatoonwiki.org/wiki/Super_Sea\_SnailFig. 1.

Example loadout.

2) Scrubbing: Scrubbing is another way to remove thecurrent abilities from the gear. It converts all unlocked
abilities to chunks and then randomly generates these slots anew. Scrubbing costs 30.000 for normal gear and only 2.000
for the Splatfest-Tee.
3) Chunks: The previously mentioned methods to replace
abilities are purely random. Chunks can be collected and beused to replace specific slots with specific abilities. To add
a specific ability the first time on a piece of gear, 10 chunkswith the corresponding ability are needed. To add the ability
a second time to a piece of gear, 20 are needed and 30 for
the third time. Chunks can be used on unlocked and locked
slots.
4) Drinks: Drinks are able to change the predeterminedability after a level up. While a drink is active there is a 30%
probability that the ability is the same as the drinks ability
and a 70% chance that the ability is different. The brand of
the gear is ignored for this process.
C. Effect of AbilitiesThe most asked question when working with abilities is if
your current loadout is beneficial. To answer this one needs
to calculate the exact effect. There are three steps to calculate
the result. We will do this along the loadout in Figure 1.:1) Point Calculation: Each main ability contributes 10
AP (Ability Points) to the ability effect. Each subabilitiy contributes 3 AP. It does not matter if theabilities are spread in your loadout or all relevantslots are on one piece of gear, they are all treated thesame. This leads to a minimum amount of 0 AP and amaximum amount of 57 AP for a single ability. In ourexample we have 19 AP of Quick Respawn, 10 AP ofSwim Speed Up, 9 AP of Ink Recovery Up, and 19
AP of Ink Saver Main.
2) Calculate Value: In this step the ability effect will becalculated. Every effect that is calculated here has aminimum effect, maximum effect and mid effect. First,
we need to calculate p, the percentage value:

Icon

Name

Description
Stackable Abilities

Quick Respawn

Reduces respawn time after getting splatted repeatedly without splatting any opponents.

Quick Super Jump

Increases Super Jump speed.

Ink Recovery Up

Increases ink-tank refill rate.

Special Power Up

Improves the effectiveness of your special weapon.

Sub Power Up

Increases sub-weapon proficiency.

Ink Saver (Sub)

Decreases amount of ink consumed by your sub weapon.

Swim Speed Up

Increases movement speed in squid form.

Special Saver

Reduces special-gauge decrease after getting splatted.

Run Speed Up

Increases movement speed in Inkling form.

Bomb Defense Up

Reduces damage taken by blasts from sub weapons or special weapons.

Special Charge Up

Increases special-gauge fill rate.

Ink Saver (Main)

Decreases amount of ink consumed by your main weapon.

Cold-Blooded

Decreases effectiveness of opponent Point Sensors and other items that reveal location.

Ink Resistance Up

Reduces damage taken and improves mobility when walking through enemy ink.
Headgear-Only Abilities

Opening Gambit

Boosts your speed while moving for the first 30 seconds of battle.

Last-Ditch Effort

Boosts ink recovery rate and weapon ink efficiency for the last 30 seconds of battle.

Tenacity

Fills special gauge automatically if your team has fewer active players than the enemy.

Comeback

Boosts some of your abilities for a short time after respawning.
Clothes-Only Abilities

Ability Doubler

Doubles the effect of other gear abilities attached to this gear.

Respawn Punisher

Increases respawn time and special-gauge spawn penalty for you and any player you splat.

Ninja Squid

Leaves no trace when swimming in inked ground, but slightly reduces swim speed.

Haunt

Once you’ve respawned, reveals the position of the player who splatted you.

Thermal Ink

Allows you to track distant players hit with shots from your main weapon.
Shoes-Only Abilities

Stealth Jump

Hides your Super Jump landing point from distant players.

Object Shredder

Increases damage dealt to all non-player targets.

Drop Roller

Tilting the L Stick during a Super Jump allows you to perform a roll in that direction when landing.
TABLE IL IST OF ALL ABILITIES IN S PLATOON 2.

BrandFavoredLevel

Experience
One Star
1
2000
2
6000
310000
Two Star
13000
27000
311000Three Star
14000
28000
312000Splatfest-Tee
17500
27500
37500

Unfavored

SquidForce
Zink
Krak-On
RockenbergZekkoForgeFirefin
Skalop

TABLE IIIL IST OF EXPERIENCE POINT NEEDED TO UNLOCK NEW SLOTS ON GEAR .

Splash Mob
InklineTentatek
Takoroka
Annaki
EnperryToni Kensa
GrizzcoNeutralCuttlegear

Neutralamiibo

NeutralTABLE IIB RAND AFFINITY TABLE . FAVORED ABILITIES APPEAR WITH A
10PROBABILITY OF 35 , WHILE UNFAVORED APPEAR WITH A PROBABILITY
1Fig. 2.

Percentage curve p(AP ) = min(3.3AP − 0.027AP 2 , 100).

2OF 35 . E VERY OTHER ABILITY APPEARS WITH A PROBABILITY OF 351FOR GEAR WITH FAVORED / UNFAVORED ABILITIES , AND 14 FOR

NEUTRAL GEAR .

p = min(3.3AP − 0.027AP 2 , 100)p describes how much of the effect is applied. A graphshowing the ability curve is provided in figure 2.
The end result is calculated with
res = min +(max − min) · lerpN

 p100,s

mid−minwhere s = max−min
and lerpn is an interpolation
function, definedas
ps = 0.5 pp = 0.0lerpN (p, s) =pp = 1.0
ln(s) (− ln(p)) s 6= 0.5ln(2)eD. ExamplesWe will cacluate a few examples to make things clear.
In the appendix document2 we can see tables withthe current low, mid, and high values for each ability.
For these examples we will use Swim Speed Up andSpecial Saver.
1) Example: 1 Swim Speed Up: We will use themedium class here. so min = 1.92, mid = 2.16, max =2.4.
2) Example 1.1: 1 Main 1 Sub: For 1 Main and 1
Sub we have 10 · 1 + 3 · 1 = 13AP . We insert thisinto our formula for p and get p = min(3.3AP −0.027AP 2 , 100) = min(3.3 · 13 − 0.027 · 132 , 100) =min(38.337, 100) = 38.337. Next, we calcuate s.
For this we need the three earlier mentioned values
mid−minand we get s = max−min= 2.16−1.92
2.4−1.92 = 0.5. And
last, but not least, we calculate res with res =p
min + (max − min) · lerpN 100, s = 1.92 + (2.4 −1.92) · lerpN (0.38337, 0.5) = 1.92 + 0.48 · 0.38337 =2.1040176. This means that with 1 Main and 1 Sub
we travel 2.104 distance units/frame.
2 https://leanny.github.io/paper/abilities_appendix.pdf

3) Example 1.2: 3 Main 9 Sub: For 1 Main and 1
Sub we have 10 · 3 + 3 · 9 = 57AP . We insert thisinto our formula for p and get p = min(3.3AP −0.027AP 2 , 100) = min(3.3 · 57 − 0.027 · 572 , 100) =min(100.377, 100) = 100.0. Next, we calcuate s. For
this we need the three earlier mentioned values andmid−min= 2.16−1.92
we get s = max−min
2.4−1.92 = 0.5. And last,but not least, we calculate res with res = min +p(max − min) · lerpN 100, s = 1.92 + (2.16 − 1.92) ·lerpN (1.0, 0.5) = 1.92 + 0.48 · 1.0 = 2.4. This meansthat with 1 Main and 1 Sub we travel 2.012 distanceunits/frame.
4) Example 2: Special Saver: For Special Saver wehave min = 0.5, mid = 0.8, max = 1.0.
5) Example 2.1: 1 Main 0 Sub: For 1 Main only
we have 10 · 1 + 3 · 0 = 10AP . We insert thisinto our formula for p and get p = min(3.3AP −0.027AP 2 , 100) = min(3.3 · 10 − 0.027 · 102 , 100) =min(30.3, 100) = 30.3. Next, we calcuate s. For
this we need the three earlier mentioned values andmid−min= 0.8−0.5
we get s = max−min
1.0−0.5 = 0.6. This
time we have s 6= 0, so we need to calculatep, s in more detail. For s > 0.5 the result islerpN 100
ln(0.6)
lerpN (0.303, 0.6) = e( − ln(0.303)) = 0.4148....
ln(2)And last, but not least, we calculate res with res =pmin + (max − min) · lerpN 100, s = 0.5 + (1.0 −0.5) · lerpN (0.303, 0.6) = 0.5 + 0.5 · 0.4148 = 0.707.
This means that with 1 Main you keep 70.7% of yourspecial bar after dying.
E. Usefulness
Now the question remains about how useful it is tostack more abilities. By looking at the derivation p0 of
p this question can be answered rather easy:p0 (AP ) = 3.3 − 0.054AP
It is obvious that the more is stacked the less the effectis. As long as p0 (AP ) ≥ 2 holds the effect can be seenquite well. This is true as long as AP ≤ 24.
3) Apply Post-Calculation Effects: This step is only applied for Respawn Punisher and Ninja Squid. Respawn
Punisher reduced the AP of the opponents QuickRespawn to 15%. Additionally 45 frames are added
to the opponents time, while 68 frames are added toyour time. Further, Respawn Punisher multiplies theAP for Special Saver by 0.7 and then removes 15%of the end result for the opponent and 22.5% of yourown. This means that when 20AP are used, only 3AP
are used for the calculation. Ninja Squid works a bit
different: First, after calculating p, p gets multipliedwith 0.8. Then, after calculating the effect, this value
is multiplied by 0.9.
F URTHER DATA
An implementation can be found on github (https://github.com/Leanny/Splatoon2Parameter) anddata mined parameter can be found there as well (https://github.com/Leanny/Splatoon2Parameter/blob/master/parameter.json).
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
I would like to thank WemI0 (https://twitter.com/WemI0),
OatmealDome(https://twitter.com/OatmealDome),
andSimon(https://twitter.com/Simon1844) for helping mewith general data mines of the game. Further, a big thanks toLunaji (https://twitter.com/lunaji_spl2) for
helping me with lerpN. All content in this article is basedon data mines alone. The example loadout was created onloadout.ink (https://loadout.ink/).