Ink Armor

The Ink Armor is a special weapon in Splatoon 2. It covers the user and their teammates in breakable armor that protects them from enemy attacks.

Appearance
Activating Ink Armor coats the user and their teammates in a skin of their ink and gives them white stars over their eyes. The eye stars show when a player with Ink Armor is hiding in ink.

Splatoon 2
The Ink Armor functions similarly to the Bubbler special weapon from Splatoon, negating up to 30 points of damage before it breaks. The player can still attack with their main and sub weapons when Ink Armor is activated.

Unlike the Bubbler, the Ink Armor's effect is applied to all living team members when activated (unless one of them is holding the Rainmaker or is currently using the Baller or Booyah Bomb), no matter the distance from the activator to the teammate, and is not susceptible to knockback from enemy fire. The Ink Armor's effect ends for a player when the duration of the special expires or more than 30 damage is taken in total. They then immediately begin to receive damage as usual.

Ink Armor does have a caveat, however, in that players are much easier to notice in squid form due to the armor providing glowing eyes. This makes escapes and sneak attacks more difficult to pull off. The glowing-eyes effect cannot be mitigated by Ninja Squid, although the ability still hides the player's ink ripples while swimming like usual. Not only that, but when players with Ink Armor active take over 100 points of damage from one attack, any damage that exceeds 100 damage is directly dealt to the player and knocks them back significantly. However, the amount of damage that can be directly applied to the player is capped at 80 damage.

Special Power Up
Wearing Special Power Up and using Ink Armor increases its duration and decreases how long it takes the special to activate. The following table shows the duration increase when stacking the ability:

Data

 * Upon activation, the player is locked in place for 30 frames, being unable to attack, move, or jump. The player's meter does not deplete during this time. If the user is splatted during this time, Ink Armor is not applied to any living teammates.
 * Squid form cannot be entered for 40 frames.
 * After the initial movement lock, it takes 1.5 seconds for Ink Armor to actually be applied, resulting in a total deployment time of two seconds. This can be lowered to a minimum of 0.5 seconds with maximum Special Power Up, resulting in a total deployment time of one second. If the user is splatted during the activation period, Ink Armor is still applied to any living teammates.
 * When there are two seconds left in Ink Armor's duration and it has not been forcibly dispelled, any players with it active are warned by the armor flashing.
 * With no Special Power Up, Ink Armor lasts for 7.5 seconds, but taking into account the activation time, the actual armor effect lasts for 6 seconds.
 * With maximum Special Power Up, Ink Armor lasts for 9.5 seconds, but taking into account the activation time, the actual armor effect lasts for 9 seconds.
 * After Ink Armor's HP is depleted, it takes 12 frames for it to fully wear off. Any damage that is applied during this time is still nullified.
 * This does not apply when Ink Armor's duration runs out.
 * If the user's Ink Armor is broken, their Special Gauge is instantly emptied, allowing for the special to be charged up again more quickly compared to just letting the special end on its own.
 * A possible tactic is to sacrifice the armor to a low damaging attack in order to reduce the downtime between using armor for the rest of the team.
 * When players wearing Object Shredder attack a player wearing Ink Armor, their damage is multiplied by 3, except for the Sting Ray, which has its damage multiplied by 1.25.
 * This does not count for applying overkill damage, nor affects it in any way. The attack itself must already deal over 100 damage to apply excess damage to the player.
 * Sting Ray's damage is multiplied by 0.445 when attacking Ink Armor.
 * When players with Ink Armor take overkill damage, they are knocked back 600 units over the course of 30 frames.

Quotes
"Grants protection to all allies for a set amount of time. During this period you'll be protected from one hit - no matter how powerful."

- Sub & Special Guide

Strategy
For competitive tips about Ink Armor

Trivia

 * The visual effects of Ink Armor are very similar to that of an ÜberCharge from Team Fortress 2 as both cover players that are affected with their team color and a metallic sheen as well as make the eyes of any affected players glow.
 * The weapons with the smallest special gauge is the Classic Squiffer at 170p, while the largest is the H-3 Nozzlenose D at 220p.
 * There are no sets with Curling Bomb, Autobomb, Toxic Mist or Squid Beakon paired with Ink Armor.