I was one of the first people to stream RAAM yesterday so here’s my first impressions and breakdown: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A7cP7HC1VE8
But I’ll summarize for you.
RAAM’s pokes are really good. They didn’t seem that way when I was looking at the hitboxes in the lab, but when I was fighting Rico’s RAAM it was very evident. He was competing with my Arbiter in the neutral. In addition to his krill armor moves, pressing buttons against RAAM in neutral is very risky.
RAAM’s jumping HP and HK are godlike.
His dominance grab range is nothing to write home about. It’s better than Hisako but seems to be worse than Thunder’s. It’s a really good tick throw move but it’s not all too deadly unless he has you in the corner.
However, his shadow grab is worth noting. What’s the speed of the fastest moves in the game? 3 frames. Well guess what? Shadow Dominance has 2 frames of startup. 2. F***ING. FRAMES. He can literally punish light wind kick and shadow firecat on block with that. Super scary.
His run grab…I feel this move would be pretty bad without the krill armor. It’s pretty damn slow, though cancelling it into the three punch move (kryll shield) is a good way to maintain space. With the armor, it makes me scared to throw out long recovery projectiles against him, like multi-hails, but I’ve found that using it to get in on zoners isn’t as easy as it is on paper. Also, I see no point to the shadow version. What’s the difference?
The ground stomps are just annoyances as of now. Unless you’re in the corner, the only option he has off it are pokes and the slow run grab.
The kryll shield charge move will be really good when people get the hang of it. Trust me.
Really, the thing I was most impressed with about RAAM was his defense. He has two of the best AAs in the game, cr.HP and medium emergence. He has three variations to a reversal, all of which leave kryll on the opponent. For a big character, dealing with pressure is not too hard for him.
His instinct? It seems like a pretty passive instinct to me, giving free potential damage and keeping you hidden. Honestly, though, I’ve had much success just holding downback during the entire thing because RAAM has bad mixup potential, and his grabs don’t cash out. The walking kryll shield looks useful since it’s even harder to see him during it, but I haven’t seen anyone use that effectively yet.
From what I can see, the general strategy with RAAM is to annoy the opponent with armor, pokes and grabs until you can get a kryll shield on them. Once that happens, the opponent will be desperate to hit you and get the kryll off. Now you can use AAs, reversal and armor to basically make yourself and unbreakable wall and watch the opponent hang himself.
That’s what I’ve discovered.
EDIT: I’m not going to be playing him.
