A copy paste from a translation from a teammate who understands Japanese from a japanese tristringer player:

“don't play it to kill, play it as a support. Your role is not kill, it is to help others kill. Use the explosion anywhere around the enemie's area to paint and annoy the enemies. Alway stay behind your allies as they are your shield and you can attack from a stay distance. Your strongest strength of bow is the power of assisting, that should be your playstyle. If they die, it is best to run away as your mindset should be "if my team die, then I die so I need to fall back". Alway use one charge (half charge in our language ig) as your job is to mainly to support for teammates. Full charge while it does increase killing power, you still use it to annoy enemies and support team from afar. However, it is important to realise that you should never think of it to kill, which is why half charge is generally better. Use poison mist to slow enemies while you're running or help allies get kills. Your special cannot get kills at all so it is best to use it as a support for your team or for yourself. It is also important to note that you have to spread it towards different enemies. Your special is used to increase your team killing power.”

Basically your job is to play for chip damage and support your team during fights. Try to play it as a explosher and change to charger if you absolutely need to. Spam the 1st charge to put aggressive pressure on your opponents. Its also a great stalling weapon if you need to. Most of your splats you come from the chip shots more than the 1 shots.

One tip I can give is once the x are non-visible, you CAN still hit someone. You need to aim slightly more higher and its range with this way is in between splat charger and hydra. Experiment with aiming with and get a feel for it. I recommend Nbound for more tristringer tips and drills. Hes not a comp player but explains the weapon well and clearly for me to understand.

Thermal ink works well for me as you are doing chip damage and you wont splat a lot with this weapon as well and it helps with the arc shots. Run speed is great for strafing. Other good abilities are Ink saver main, last ditch effort, quick super jump (to escape bad situations as will lose a 2v1), special saver or charge up (Believe me killer wail has saved me in overtime matches). Respawn punisher “can” work but it relies on you staying alive and if you’re being more mobile or you have a team is more aggressive, I would choose something else as it will hurt you more in the long run and plus you are playing for chip damage, not for kills and respawn punisher only activates after you splat them, not assists.

Make sure you combo your kit the best as you can (Nbound covers this) as the kit goes perfect together. Dont sleep on toxic mist (or poison mist in Japan) as it help your team or you to get a pick and use killer wail to put pressure while you your sub and main to put a ridiculous amount of pressure on the other team or use killer wail to put pressure on one area and your main to another area so you’re putting to pressure in two areas in one go.

Happy splatting!

Tri-Stringer: A pretty technical backline weapon that takes some skill to use correctly.

Reef-lux:  M  I  S  S  I  L  E  S

remember, one REEFlux is helpful, but two on one team is a detriment
- Captain 3, maybe

I cant wait for the painful episodes (chargers and brellas)

If you are a tri stringer main and looking to learn more about the weapon, I highly recommend Nbound's videos. He is a dedicated tri stringer main who has made some really great advanced guides for the weapon.

was waiting to see this one. i really like how you explained how that as a tri stringer you should aim to have an impact on every single fight you see

A few notes (I'm a tri stringer 4 star so I have some idea of what I'm talking about): You stated that the quickest DPS you'll get if someone is on top of you is tap shots. I'd definitely not go for tap shots, because something that's always important to mention with tri stringer is that it does max damage after the first charge. Each shot will do 35 damage on a direct, and the explosions will do a certain amount of damage, whether you full charge or only partial charge.

Going for those when someone is on top of you not only does more damage with a similar fire rate, but also helps defend yourself as it denies them area around you and paints their feet twice instead of once. Chucking toxic mist down, running a few feet, and then spamming one ring shots is very good as a get off me tool. (If you have killer wail, a toxic mist and then a wail always catches people off guard at close range, doing that and then following up will guarantee a kill on most people)

Also, the reticle of the tri stringer will always aim slightly below where the shots are actually gonna go, especially when going for one shots. Aim a bit lower than you think you have to, the shots will go higher

Now, for painting. I'd recommend going for single charge shots and just aiming them intelligently. They will paint much more than you'd expect, especially if you've gotten yourself a good vantage point. If you're just trying to get out of spawn, follow his advice

This isn't a universal thing, but something kinda funny to mention on mahi mahi is the water level. Before the water level drops, on most modes, it's a very good tri stringer map (I'm not a huge fan of zones and turg war but they're fine). When the water level drops, on TC, Clam Blitz, and RM, it becomes one of the worst tri stringer maps in the game, and it's very funny

Around 14:35 you said there's a laser on the tri stringer. I think you got this very mixed up with chargers, I want to stress that one of your biggest advantages over chargers is that there isn't a laser on you. You have much more surprise, between the angles and arc shots you can hit, and no laser giving your position away

For gear, since you're a backliner who gets a lot of kills and relatively few deaths, you can definitely do well with respawn punisher. Alternatively, what I personally run, is thermal ink, because it means that you can hit arc shots over cover, and then your opponent can't hide from you, and will likely forget or not realize you can see them behind walls until they try to join another fight and you know how to find them and hit them. LDE is a given, and some subs of main saver will help. For boots, I'd make like a splatling and go for a few subs of run speed up. You've got about 4-5 subs free after all that to give to whatever you think is important other than those

That's about all I got, I'm obviously not as good at the game as Gem but I have a lot more experience with stringer so I thought I'd throw my hat into the ring on knowledge of the weapon

*Jump shooting once slightly downwards is enough to paint forward for tri stringer. There's usually a blob of ink that falls directly on your feet after your shot, creating a straight line of ink.

another tip i have for the reef lux in particular (probably applies to stringer too) is when someone is swimming, their hitbox will be wider than it is long, as opposed to when standing; in this case its usually easier to hit the horizontal shorts than the vertical, so try to predict the opponents movement to decide whether you should go for a vertical or horizontal shot

If you do jump shots due to how the arcing of the arrows function they will all land in the same place regardless of charge.
This allows you to do one shots with partials if you are cracked at the game.
Nbound made a vid discussing this a bit more in depth which I don’t have the link for on hand.

I think the tri stringer is one of the most balanced weapons in the game... which perhaps is part of why it can seem weak as other weapons often have more of an advantage. I think people get the wrong idea assuming its a backline weapon, it can be, but its more that its a relatively slow weapon, which isnt too big a problem so long as the enemy cant hit you, which can work out cause you can shoot over cover in many more ways than a slosher can, once you get more comfortable handling the weapon dont be afraid to go more midline, support your teams push, if the enemy is occupied with with them they are less likely to focus on you anyway. Any time theres a bridge or a sharp ledge you can get in fairly annoying positions for someone to hit while harassing them with charged arrows and youll get a fair bit of splats actually if you are laying down cover fire as much as you probably should.

Tip for Tri-Stringer: Object Shredder is fantastic on it, landing the full 3 shots on a Wave Breaker will oneshot it. It adds to the identity as a support weapon because you can drop specials like tank and wave way faster, plus it shreds rainmaker shield.

I was waiting for this (as a 5 star tri-stringer) and you did pretty well at explaining the weapon but I my general tip is to play it as kind of a support and an anchor at the same time. Tri-stringer is both a charger and an explosher, and generally likes to trap enemies with the arrows and the mist. This makes it extremely powerful at zoning out areas, forcing enemies to retreat, or lose a 1v1. For positioning, the hardest thing is to know when to push up, but on a lot of maps you should play behind your teammates and if they die or you get pushed RETREAT (so they can jump to you). You can zone out a lot of area, you're basically dishing out a bunch of bombs, so you can use this to displace anchors (kind of like a support) but you can also support your teammates in a fight with your arrow bombs. Tri-Stringer is a little difficult to get used to but once you do, it feels great honestly

Woooo I've been waiting for this one!! As a 5 star tri stringer player this still taught me a few things!! i normally default to jumping for the up-down ink pattern because it has fewer holes in the distribution, but i can totally see when having the wider spread would be handy. I find that the toxic mist is really useful for the tricky aiming -- if you have a target that's quick and mobile (like an inkbrush or dualies), throwing a toxic mist at them will stop them in their tracks for long enough to line up a shot on them. it's also useful for emergency repositioning -- i'll throw a TM on someone that's on my tail to give myself a half-second headstart to get back to my optimal range. Killer wail synergizes well with the tri-stringer too, because the bomb arrows have a lot of utility for controlling space (they're basically mini suction bombs!), so when i pop killer wail I shoot my bomb arrows into my target's most likely path of escape. Gets em every time 😎 Thanks for the tips Gem!!!

We need a new tutorial for reef lux post-missiles nerf lol

There's a few things I'd like to add on the Tri Stringer, It actually can land 90 damage tap shots but it's only reliable on dummies at best, What you have to do is jump and fire downwards at a 45 degree angle while being next to them, While I wouldn't recomend it for damage I would recomend it for painting since it gives you the fastest line forward while also moving in the air, Secondly throw Mist befor starting Wail to force enemies into retreat if they want to survive, Lastly for playing in teams is how incredibly well it pairs with Splattershot, Land even a single explosion and you're decreassing the number of shots for your partner, I never really play in groups but got to try the combination during last splatfest and it worked wonders

this sparks a large amount of joy

Not mentioned in the video: Reeflux gets curling bomb, don't use curling bomb.

I know this is an older vid at this point but I wanted to say thanks for this. The advice I took away from this has made it much more enjoyable to play stringer and inkline stringer in all modes and I’ve made a comeback to the game because of it.

Thanks again for sharing your takes and knowledge of the mechanical skill. It really has helped!

You can hit 3 tap shots at once by jumping with your stringers ! When you jump, your spread becomes vertical instead of horizontal !