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What are the features and attributes that makes a particular water blaster great in your mind? Is it all just about output, range, and capacity? How much a factor does style come into play? How important is capacity compared to range and/or output? What about output versus shot time, feel, usability?

I could probably guess at what many would find respectable, but I'm wondering if I'm missing anything or if members are willing to shed more light into the specifics of their thoughts on great soakers.

I'll add my thoughts to this topic once a few others share their own ideas.

Soak on!

Range, range, and...range. Everything else is secondary. Waterfights have always been (to me and my friends) about soaking someone else, and not getting soaked yourself. If you have to engage someone else inside their range, you might as well both just stick your heads in buckets of water and call it a day. On the other hand, if I can engage someone accurately at a distance where they have no hope of attacking back without taking serious amounts of water, I can and will label myself as awesome.

Adrian

Yup, range pretty much sets what most of the other factors will be. Large nozzles better have the power to back it up fully (which would be a lot, probably not worth the tradeoff in pump/shot time) Then there's versatility, such as nozzle selectors, size adaptability, etc. Obviously, capacity should be as high as possible without over-sizing the blaster. The logic here is that anyone who doesn't want to carry too much weight shouldn't fill their tank all the way. Backpacks also come into this with support gunners/tankers.

As for style, my personal favorite is the N-Strike's nerf blasters, second up would be the 1000 and flash flood, but overall, I'm not too big on this, all soakers (at least within specific classes) share similar styling. For blaster selecting, I don't care if it's covered in pink hearts and has fur on the handles, as long as the blaster kicks ass performance-wise. (plus I could paint it up anyway)

Range in OHS or OHK, output and sting in soakfests.
I don't need to explain range, the other two though are purely for intimidation. All my soakfest opponents are even bigger n00bs than myself, and large output will soak them, while sting will make them run.
For example, my XP 110 at close ranges is feared by pretty much all my friends. A 5x shot from my WW Lightning also scared some friends, and they called it "a mini Flash Flood". Of course this isn't the case when I face my more experienced friends, then range is more important.

This depends on the type of game, though a good gun would be able to handle all game types. A good gun would be comfortable, have high capacity and a nozzle selector. The nozzle selector is the real key--you can get specifically what kind of performance you need on the fly. A good nozzle selector should have at least a 1x nozzle for shot time, an optimal nozzle (usually around 5x to 10x) for range, and just the largest possible nozzle for output; but a fourth nozzle won't hurt either.

Very, very complex question.

It depends on the situation. Specialized sidearms and/or special-use soakers can ruin iSoaker's question lol. However, I will keep my thoughts to primaries that you'd wield over the course of an entire water fight. There's a debate over using a gun that is specialized for a certain game vs a versatile one. Well, if you know you're only fighting one type of game, go for a gun that works best in that game type. If you're playing a variety, wield something like the CPS 1500/1700. There's a saying that a generalist is good at everything, but great at nothing. That's not exactly true in water warfare, but it may be applicable to a certain extent. In a soakfest, would you rather have a general soaker or one that specifically excels in soakfests?

To deviate a bit from the bandwagon [because I always have to be different hehe], I'd say the one thing I really need is high effective range. What is that? The ability of a stream to soak at any given point along its path. K-modded guns without nozzle mods often have high overall range, but low effective range. They're deadly within 30 ft, but at 40-60ft, you can barely get a kill with that, the stream spreads too thin. Something like the CPS 1500 has excellent effective range; the stream stays juicy and potent enough to kill at the limit of its range as well as point-blank.

I rank capacity second for stats. A good water gun should be able to hold enough water for at least a half hour's worth of continuous fighting, or at least 1 hour's worth of sporadic fighting. I don't want to put a number on this, as speed of water use varies greatly by user. I can stretch out a CPS 2500 tank to last an entire 2 hour war with no refilling, but that's me. I've seen people blow through a CPS 3200 backpack in 10 minutes.

Thirdly is stream speed. I love to rip off fast tap shots that don't give the enemy much time to react. The faster the shot gets there, the better chance of hitting them. Stream speed includes the time it takes for a tap shot to finish. Some are slow, some are compact and fast [slow CPS 4100 tap shot vs fast XP 150 tap shot for example]. Stream speed and tap repetition make a wicked sweet combination.

Any quality water gun must have a solid trigger. Personally, I also like a trigger with high shot repetition. That's not a high priority on most lists, but the ability to fire off tap shots in extremely rapid succession is something I must have for my style of play. I love the XP 75 and XP 150 for that reason. The XP 95 has good tap repetition too I think, but I haven't ever shot one.

Another thing I like to have is high pump volume. A pump that can deliver more water to the pc per stroke is sexilicious. That makes guns like the XP 150 insane for 1HK/1HS style games, you rarely ever have to pump the thing. Sometimes after shooting for a while, you go to pump and it doesn't let you. The thing still wants to keep shooting even when you think it can't possibly still have water or pressure. Max-D soakers have this, but they lack the strong triggers and lack good stream speed.

An underlying factor is that a good water gun should be practical for its intended uses. These vary too greatly to really define, but basically, the water gun should empower the user to their maximum potential in a given setting. If there is any factor induced by a gun that interferes with this potential, then the gun isn't practical.

As for style, I want to be able to customize my gun. That usually means intense power modifications, paint, sawing, whatever makes it a deadly killing machine - uniquely MY deadly killing machine. My 3rd 21K was my favorite soaker of all time, mainly because I fashioned it into a literally furry beast. Reinforced pump, extreme k-mod, multi-nozzle mod, covered completely in burlap.

I, like Drenchenator, like nozzle selectors. Give me a good skirmish nozzle [3-5x], an optimal nozzle for killing [6-12x], and perhaps a soaking nozzle [15x+]. The only thing I don't like are nozzles that are too weak. 1x-2x streams are very weak, Ridgewood's wars showed how difficult it is to get kills with those nozzle sizes.

There are some stats that I am not too concerned with, such as pc shot time, sting factor, etc. I rarely take a full shot, or even a pulse shot. Tap-pumping allows me to fight multiple enemies at the same time. Things like sting factor can be added in via modding. My furry 21K had such extreme sting that Waterbridge co-commander Guderian absolutely hated the thing and stayed out of its range more than you'd expect. First day I used it battle, I knocked his socks off [not literally unfortunately].

Finally, a good water gun should be durable. You should be able to drop it and not worry about it breaking. The XP 310 is legendary here. The valves should be strong as well, high HPL and a good trigger valve.

Specialized sidearms and/or special-use soakers can ruin iSoaker's question lol.

Actually, no, it wouldn't; it'd just add another layer of complexity to the question, but one that'd be great to explore as well (as I'll do below).

While range is undoubtedly important for a lot of water blasters, I think DX summarized my own thoughts best so far with the statement:

An underlying factor is that a good water gun should be practical for its intended uses. These vary too greatly to really define, but basically, the water gun should empower the user to their maximum potential in a given setting.

I would have used "The" as opposed to "An" for the opening word, but that's me.

While there's always a general demand for a decent, all-purpose water blaster, there's a lot of room for more specialized blasters to compliment different game types or water warfare environments.

A good, all-purpose soaker to me would be a decent size, somewhere between an XP150 to a CPS1000/1200/Orca. It should have a decent capacity (2-3L) and a decent effective range (preferrable 35-40'). Output isn't crucial, per se, but in order to be able to achieve the range sought, it'd probably need a 3-5x stream for one of its settings. A multiple nozzle selector would be nice on such a soaker, but not an absolute necessity. If anything, being able to swap between a stream to a max-output burst is nice, but not needed for an all-purpose soaker. As for pump volumes, as larger soakers should optimally be targeting an older audience, a larger pump volume should be possible, but not to the point that pumping gets too energy requiring. The best air and water pump volumes I've used are on the Super Soaker XP75 and Super Soaker XP150, respectively, pushing ~75mL per full stroke. The worst pump was when trying to pump up the first generation Water Warriors Aqua Master Krypton after pre-charging it; that was particularly difficult. For a separate PC blaster, it should preferrably take only a few pumps to yield a good stream while completely pumping up the PC would yield optimum performance. Pressurized reservoir systems should be used only for pistol-class soakers, thus should also not need too many pumps to achieve adequate pressurization.

As for specializing, it'd be sweet to see soakers that are better suited for specific tasks. A Flash Flood that has a slightly more contained nozzle, but no standard stream nozzle, would become the "shotgun" of the water blaster world having shorter range (aiming at between 20-25' effective range), but high output and area effect. A longer-firing water blaster would be nice to have as well with the output and lamination needed to produce a stream capable of reaching 50'-60' effectively, but a shorter total shot time so as not to compete with a general purpose blaster. I could also imagine at least two types of pistol-class water blasters: one would be like an XP220 in size, but with a slightly larger nozzle; another would be like the Triple Shot set solely to its largest setting as a true last-stand hold-out blaster.

There is, of course, always room for larger cannons and tanker-type blasters. These would be balanced in a water war game in that they'd be larger, thus heavier to wield, thus a little slower to move with. As well, by being larger, they would also likely require more pumping between shots, thus rate of firing would be reduced while output would be more.

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Feel, balance, and styling still play a key role on what makes a good blaster. While some are more than happy to personalize their soakers, others like keeping their soakers stock and want them to look slick as they are. In terms of balance, this also encompasses general ease of use. A good water blaster should feel sturdy and comfortable to hold when empty and when full. Straps should be a given for any soaker longer than a Super Soaker XP110, IMO, while some sort of holster should be available for smaller armaments. While some may prefer closer to realistic gun styling, I prefer optimal water blaster designs. That is, designs that truly consider making the most of the space and functions desired. The clean lines and form of the Super Soaker CPS1000 make use of pretty much all of its parts while offering superb feel and balance. While I do like the XP 150, when loaded, it is more top heavy and less inherently balanced. I do like the clean lines and styling of the Max-I Defender, but its PC shape is sub-optimal; had it used a more bottom-tapered PC, it'd score more points.

These are just some of my thoughts, but far from everything. You guys have brought up a lot of good points and ideas. If you got more, keep the thoughts flowing! You never know who might be listening and considering...

I still believe that despite the present lull in terms of stock soaker performance, there's remains a chance for something better.

I haven't read everything said yet, but I did make a page about what I don't like about current water guns that's pertinent to this discussion. Check it out: http://www.sscentral.org/reviews/problems.html

I'll make a post with some more ideas about what makes a good water gun this weekend.