Gear ability

Gear abilities, or simply abilities, are special attributes that are placed on wearable gear in and. Each provides different effects, whose effectiveness is usually based on the amount of the specific ability the player has.

Primary abilities
All pieces of gear come with exactly one specific primary ability (also called main).

In both and, the primary ability cannot be changed after obtaining the piece of gear it comes with, but the latter allows obtaining pieces of gear with an alternate primary ability: all pieces of gear that can be ordered from Murch (which mostly consist of ones that can be purchased from in-game shops) can also appear on the SplatNet 2 shop with a different primary ability than their default ones. Gear obtained through Salmon Run does not have a default primary ability and is instead randomly assigned from all abilities that can also appear as secondary abilities.

All pieces of gear do not have primary abilities that match the gear's brand's favored ability (except for a few, which were originally sold through SplatNet 2). As a result, achieving all slots on a piece of gear to be the same ability (colloquially called "pure" gear) is more difficult.

Primary-only abilities and mutual exclusivity
Some abilities can only appear as primary abilities. These abilities are also tied to a certain type of gear (head, clothes, or shoes), making primary-only abilities on the same gear type mutually exclusive (e.g. the user can only have either Object Shredder or Stealth Jump since both are exclusive to the primary ability slot of shoe items) and prevents the user from stacking them (e.g. the user cannot have more than one main of Tenacity since it is only available to the primary ability slot of headgear items).

The groups of mutually exclusive abilities are as follows:

Secondary abilities
In addition to their primary abilities, all pieces of gear have one, two, or three slots for secondary abilities (also called subs), which are ×0.3 as effective as if they were primary abilities, granting 3 AP each instead of primary abilities' 10 AP per ability.

The number of secondary ability slots that are present by default is equal to the number of stars (rarity) on the gear. If a gear has less than three secondary ability slots, they can be added by Spyke or Murch with a Super Sea Snail (or 30,000 cash at level 20 or above in ) for each slot.

All gears come with empty secondary ability slots (unless obtained via ordering from another player via Spyke or Murch, which has a chance of it inheriting the original gear's filled sub ability slots). Secondary abilities on a piece of gear are obtained by getting experience points from online battles (except for Private Battles) while that gear is equipped. Higher rarity gear requires more points per slot, and each progressive secondary ability on the same gear requires more points to obtain than the previous secondary ability. In, having a drink from Crust Bucket active increases gear experience points awarded by 50% and while the Splatfests were occuring, the Splatfest Tee instead required 7,500 points per slot for a total of 22,500 points.

The following tables show the amount of gear experience required to obtain a secondary ability on a gear item of a given rarity. Numbers denoted with asterisks (*) represent secondary ability slots that must be added by Spyke or Murch.

In, the player can alternatively apply ability chunks (which are specific to each sub ability) to add or overwrite a sub ability via Murch. Unless there are no remaining empty sub ability slots after adding a sub ability, adding abilities this way retains the previous amount of gear experience points. The required amount of chunks per slot depends on the number of existing copies of the desired sub ability on one gear. The primary ability is not counted for this calculation. The amounts are: For example, a gear with three sub ability slots has one Run Speed Up and one Swim Speed Up as its sub abilities.
 * 10 chunks for the first copy;
 * 20 chunks for the second copy; and
 * 30 chunks for the third copy.
 * 20 Run Speed Up chunks are needed to apply Run Speed Up to the empty third sub slot since one sub of Run Speed Up is already present on the gear.
 * 10 Special Saver chunks are needed to apply Special Saver to the empty third sub slot since no sub of Special Saver is already present on the gear.
 * 20 Swim Speed Up chunks are needed to replace Run Speed Up on the first sub slot with Swim Speed Up since one sub of Swim Speed Up is already present on the gear.

Rolling probability
In, there are 13 possible secondary abilities; in , there are 14. Brands that affect roll probability have a ×5 chance of rolling its favored ability, and a ×0.5 chance of rolling its unfavored ability. Secondary abilities are assigned using random number generation.

In Splatoon 2, drink tickets affect the probability of receiving a specific secondary ability when enough gear experience points are obtained after an online match. Drink tickets do not affect Murch's rerolling, unlike brands.

Examples
Here are some examples to help with interpreting the table:

In, the Aloha Shirt's brand is Forge which is a favoring brand as it favors Special Power Up, unfavors Ink Saver (Sub), and is neutral towards all other abilities.
 * With no drink ticket or when rerolling via Murch: The Aloha Shirt has a 2.332…% chance of rolling Special Power Up at least 3 times in a row, a 0.00233…% chance of rolling Ink Saver (Sub) at least 3 times in a row, and a 0.0186…% chance of rolling any other specific ability at least 3 times in a row.
 * With the Special-Up Smoothie drink ticket (boosts Special Power Up probability): The Aloha Shirt has a 9% chance of rolling Special Power Up at least 2 times in a row, a 0.0784% chance of rolling Ink Saver (Sub) at least 2 times in a row, and a 0.3136% chance of rolling any other specific ability at least 2 times in a row.
 * With the Sub-Saver Berry drink ticket (boosts Ink Saver (Sub) probability): The Aloha Shirt has a 20.588…% chance of rolling Special Power Up, a 30% chance of rolling Ink Saver (Sub), and a 4.117…% chance of rolling any other specific ability.
 * With any other drink ticket: The Aloha Shirt has a 21.212…% chance of rolling Special Power Up, a 0.0449…% chance of rolling Ink Saver (Sub) at least 2 times in a row and a 2.7% chance of rolling any other specific ability at least 3 times in a row.

Gear with a non-favoring brand has an equal probability of rolling any specific rollable ability. For example, in, the Armor Jacket Replica has the Cuttlegear brand, which does not favor any ability.
 * With no drink ticket or when rerolling via Murch: The Armor Jacket Replica has a 7.142…% chance of rolling Swim Speed Up.
 * With a Swim-Speed Apple drink ticket (boosts Swim Speed Up probability): The Armor Jacket Replica has a 9% chance of rolling Swim Speed Up at least 2 times in a row.
 * With any other drink ticket: The Armor Jacket Replica has a 0.0156…% chance of rolling Swim Speed Up at least 3 times in a row.

Stacking
Players can use more of an ability (stacking an ability) to achieve stronger effects. For exact details on the effects of stacking each gear ability, see the ability's article.

In general, the more a specific ability is stacked, the less additional effect is accumulated. The degree to which this occurs depends on the ability. To demonstrate this concept, the following charts show the stacking effects for some abilities. Note the diminishing returns as more of the same ability is used.

Splatoon
Spyke, who can be found in an alleyway in Inkopolis Plaza, offers to increase the number of sub ability slots (to a maximum of three slots) or reroll secondary abilities in exchange for a Super Sea Snail (or 30,000 cash if the player is at level 20 or above and has no Super Sea Snails).

Some abilities do not affect certain things, and in-game descriptions do not inform players of these exceptions. For example, Bomb Range Up does not affect some bombs. Another notable example is that Run Speed Up does not affect the run speed while pushing a roller.

Splatoon 2
Murch, who can be found in Inkopolis Square, has multiple services that can affect a gear item's secondary abilities:

Retired abilities
The following abilities were once present in the game but were later removed or replaced:

Version 4.3.0
In Version, the following ability replacements took place:
 * All existing gear slots and ability chunks for Bomb Defense Up and Cold-Blooded were replaced with Bomb Defense Up DX.
 * Gear items available in shops that had Cold-Blooded as the main ability changed to Main Power Up.
 * The following exclusive gear items that had Cold-Blooded as the main ability changed to Bomb Defense Up DX:

Splatoon 3
So far, as of the Release Date Revealed trailer on 2022-04-22, only three abilities are confirmed.

List of abilities

 * Ink Recovery Up
 * Special Power Up
 * Special Saver