I feel really dirty when I turn someone’s simple lock out during a 30% combo into a freaking 70% combo. I’ve also had matches where the other person is destroying me and clearly a much better player than me, yet I land one hit and suddenly their perfect round turns into me taking the round with a 100%+ combo. Seriously, i’ve gotten more 100% combos with Raam in the last two weeks than I have in the entirety of my time playing the game pre-Raam.
At the same time though, it’s hard to say I think it should be nerfed when in the zoning match ups you lose almost your entire health bar just trying to get in, and then when you do get in you might not get a second chance so you have to make it count. In those situations the instinct is perfect, but in normal fights it just feels like it gets out of hand.
RAAMs instinct is probably the worst part of the game right now, imo.
Not because its cheap, but because it is SO LAZY. No creativity at all, and it doesnt effect the actual strategies of either player. I REALLY hope they re-work it at some point. I cant say how much i hate his instinct. Thoughtless to use. Thoughtless to fight against. And thoughtless creation by the dev team.
(As far as “Cheap” goes, i guess it is also pretty BS because the other player only has 2 options to deal with it… 1. Strategically GET combo’d and perform a breaker near the end of the instinct to remove the white life… which puts you at risk for a counter breaker and a 100% damage combo… or 2. Dont get hit for the entire duration of instinct. Pretty ridiculous to ask. )
That is a terrible idea, and it should never be attempted under any circumstance. KI absolutely has situations where it’s better to take the hit, but getting opened up into a combo while Raam’s instinct is active is not one of them.
The idea behind his instinct is not to open people up and do 100% combos. The reason for the potential damage is to get people to avoid getting comboed at all costs. For me that strategy is a simple crouching block. Raam can’t open me up at that point because his jump is reactable and he has no grounded overheads. He has to rely on grabs for damage, which can be a little significant but he won’t be able to cash out potential damage at all.
The trick of the instinct revolves around the kryll shield move. Walking around with it is pretty great, but the idea is that you can’t really see Raam while he’s doing it cause the instinct and kryll shield are making him invisible at the same time. So by the time an unblockable or dash cancel comes out, you may not have noticed he was doing anything.
No Raam uses kryll shield right, which is a shame. It’s a fantastic zone-busting and pressure tool.
So I wouldn’t go as far as to say this instinct is uninspired. It’s got some nifty secrets.
Yes, actually. I mean, the Raam player is more likely to want the combo over the grabs, so he’s not going to want to grab you over and over unless he really knows that you’re going to crouch block every single time you get grabbed. You can try to mix your defense tactics up, but personally I’d much rather turtle up and take half my life bar than risk a counter attack and maybe get 100%'d.
So he has to use the charge unblockable to open you up, which is hard to use and risky.
I thought it was creative that he would be camouflaged, making him harder to break (which was one of his major weaknesses). I also think that it simply looks amazing, all of the kryll on screen.
I tested some stuff out because I was curious. If both ARIA and RAAM are in instinct, RAAM can build up enough potential damage to get an 85% combo on all of her life bars at once. Basically, pray that you don’t pop instinct at the same time. It could be really, REALLY messy.
As far as the topic goes: I wouldn’t say it’s cheap, but it’s very powerful. It’s one of those instinct modes that forces you to change tactics like Sadira or Orchid. As a true grappler, RAAM’s toolset is inherently limited. But when he has instinct, I forces the opponent to play his game. By making his combos exponentially more dangerous (both harder hitting AND harder to break) the opponent will either have to block and hope they can avoid getting grabbed or risk jumping into either Emergence or a full combo punish. Either way, it ends poorly if you don’t respect it.
