Let me take a stab at ARIA:
-Reward: B+
ARIA is in the lower half for damage and only has access to a damage ender 1/3 of the time. OTOH, she can always use her HKD and launcher enders on any body. The HKD is great for setting up the vortex with the assists and there are a load of variations for that; the launcher opens up both air and ground flipouts each of which create their own mix-ups.
-Neutral: S
Aria has one of the best neutrals in the game. In all bodies, shotgun blitz can whiff punish from more than half the screen away and the various HKs and MKs cover a lot of screen with big hitboxes. In booster body sheâs very hard to pin down and more mobile than almost the entire cast. In blade body she has a fantastic poke that can be cancelled into an opener. The blade itself causes chip damage which is unique among normals, I believe. Bass body has 3 angles for fireballs and one of the best dashes in the game. And I havenât even mentioned the assists and their role.
-Offense: A-
In general Aria will always have more openers than her opponent, but the damage output is low. Sheâs also hampered as the only character that loses options as she gets damaged.
-Defense: B+
Her great neutral is her best defense, but her wakeup and corner games are not great. If she could call an assist to cover her wakeup, itâd work great, but she canât. Also calling assists has a long startup so canât really help her get out of a corner. Blade body DP is fine, but booster body vertical crescendo will only hit opponents whoâve never faced Aria before as the hitbox is very narrow.
-Breakability: Shadow shotgun blitz is notoriously hard to break as itâs counter-intuitive. MP and LP AD are easy to mistake one for the other but her best AD are kicks not punches. Otherwise, sheâs average to break.
-Instinct: A
Careful health management will get 3 bodies together during Instinct, which makes her one of the best in the game for a short period of time. During Instinct itâs very hard to get a level 3 or 4 ender as the damage is spread amongst all 3 bodies.
-Versatility: Very versatile⊠until she loses her first body.
-Comeback Factor: D
Probably the worst in the game. Low damage, and the only character in the game that gets worse the longer the game goes. No other character loses options as the game goes on (except Mira but not as dramatically).
-Overall: A+
If allowed to play her game she can be extremely frustrating to play against and very hard to escape her many setups and stiffling neutral game. A lockout can knock out a body and put Aria in the backfoot instantly, though.
This sounds like fun. Iâll do raam sometime today
I would like to change Mayaâs with better understanding of how it works and realization. I will change Mayaâs
Neutral:A+: whiff punishing full screen or at least close to full screen
Offense: A
Breakability: A: She is essentially 1 chance breaks but when she isnât juggling she is probably one of the easiest in the game
Overall:A: I just think their are some characters that are better than her such as jago, fulgore, Aria, Omen, Hissko for some examples
Raam.
Reward: S+ : You got in? Stayed in? Congratulations youâre gonna win real fast.
Neutral: B-: But getting in is the real issue. Raam has great buttons. S.hp is amazing, if only you could hit with it. Neutral consists of slowly meandering back and forth until you get to the corner and hoping they dont pull something sudden on you to side switch. You donât have anything sudden to throw off your opponent and the safest youre getting is -1 if you do actually hit with S.hp cancelled into heavy decimation.
Offense: A: This will probably go up once people actually use his mixup potential and find something new past infilâs setups, but as it stands itâs very good but also very vulnerable. His vortex is really hard to get out of so long as you dont have a fast dp. However, a significant amount of his offense outside of those grab mixups rides on the âgrap or throwâ mixup, which is a 50/50 at best thatâll leave you asking for a hurting if you whiff grab.
Defense: B: All things considered, raamâs got it decent. Meterless dp, but comes at the price of being throwawable and not invincible after startup. Youâre gonna have to be tight with your pressure or else youâre getting shadow command grabbed or even regular command grabbed. Youâre not gonna jump at him from neutral, c hp and heavy emergence are just too good at dealing with that. But once you get him knocked down is when he starts suffering. No throw invincible reversals, slow dp thatâs easily safe jumpable, big body making him suffer to projectile setups and crossups like shagos divekick.
Breakability: D, rank of itâs own really. 3 auto doubles, 1 linker, and a plethora of buttons that canât actually be used as manuals. No manuals off light opener. If you canât break raam you deserve the 65%+ youre eating from an instinct cancel
Instinct: S-: Iâd rate this higher if the gain speed didnât slow as much as it does outside a combo. If you get a lockout with instinct youre getting 60% minimum. But outside? Itâs like a snails pace. But it makes people downback. and downbacking means grabs. and grabs means okizeme. and okizeme with all those damn bugs on the screen means theyre probably getting head(unless they have a dp then oh well.)
Versatility: No. When you get up close sure you can wreck them six ways to sunday. Full screen? hope you like backfowarding more than tj combo. Mid screen? maybe the ninth whiff of s hp will actually clip them this time
Comeback Factor: A-: Raam doesnât need much to take a lifebar. A few good guesses with his mixup pressure and youâll have your comeback. But youâll have to spend health you dont have to get in.
Overall: B: Raamâs polarizing. Heâll either stomp his opponents into the ground or heâll get poked or fireballed for the 200th time and keel over and die. Thereâs not much consistency or options to getting in, but he can pull a miracle when he needs one.
As a note, there is no way in Hades Iâd agree that Ariaâs instinct is merely B tier. Until Eyedol in instinct rolled around, Aria in instinct was probably the best character in the game. Even when she loses bodies itâs still potent, because fanfare drone cancels are really, really good. Itâs definitely more on the âinfinite pressureâ side of things than the âboatloads of bonus damageâ side, but Aria in instinct is an offensive powerhouse.
I agree with you. With a single body itâs fairly easy to ignore the drones, though. Itâs just waiting until the insinct expires. Iâve changed it to an A.
Iâm not sure I would agree with this rating; I think the defensive power of shadow dominance canât be understated. It makes many, many offensive options essentially nonviable due to being -1 or worse, and any offensive sequence with a gap greater than 1 frame dissolves as he can simply mash it out between the hits. A lot of characters canât attack him effectively from neutral once he has a bar because anything they do will be punished.
It does hurt a lot that he has no option thatâs invulnerable to both hits and throws, but B feels just a little low considering how much stuff he gets to punish that nobody else does.
Yea Itâs probably a somewhere between B+ and A, I went with B because I think that since raam is just so vulnerable once heâs on the floor, it really tanks the rating. Then again considering the lowest grade is C- it probably is too low.
If I could split up the defensive into âwakeupâ and âability to deal with pressure,â Then Iâd say that wakeup would be a B- because of all the griping i did while defense against pressure is a solid A+ for not giving enough credit to shadow grab.
Actually wow i didnât even mention how amazing it is on offense either when you get it out after medium and heavy decimation. I should bump that up to A+ too
I do also feel like your assessment of his offense focuses a bit too much on his actual mixups and kind of glosses over the fact that he is very well equipped to stay in your face once he gets there. His stand LK is possibly the best pressure normal in the game at 5 frames of startup, +3 on block, and almost no pushback. The others that come to mind as comparable are wulf crouch LK and tusk stand LK, but both have various ways in which theyâre worse (more pushback for wulf and longer startup for tusk,) and neither of them is backed up by a command throw. With its low pushback, raam can easily do 5+ microwalk stand LKs in a row and the opponent either has to sit there and hold it or use a reversal. And itâs not like heâs lacking pressure options once heâs out of range for it, he has a variety of good moves for close offense that are either very fast or plus. If heâs convinced the opponent to just block, stand MK gets him right back in his opponentâs face at plus frames, where he can start this pressure all over again.