So I’ve been having a lot of success against zoners lately. Shago, Glacius, Cinder, and Fulgore are all tough but manageable. But Gargos is becoming unwinnable. The match starts fine, Raam can pressure him on wake up freely no problem, advacing through portal punches is no problem, and punishing his shenanigans is no problem. But as soon as one minion comes out Gargos wins. Raam has no forward advancing attack like windkick or slide so his only option to hit the minions is to use a normal. But Raam’s lights are too stubby to reach where the minions like to stand so you have to use your medium. The problem then becomes that there isn’t enough time between portal punches for you to get a medium out and recover in time to block the second portal punch. You are forced to eat a portal punch if you want to hit the minions. You can’t simply ignore the minions and try to advance through the punches normally because the minions will hit you. You can’t kryll rush through it all because Gargos will have enough time to react. You can’t focus attack the punch to hit the minions because the second portal punch will still catch you. You can’t emergence to hit the minions and negate the punch because the second punch will catch your recovery. There is literally no way for Raam to kill the minions without eating the punch.
Now, you could say “well just don’t put yourself in the situation” but Gargos is guaranteed this situation several times throughout a match. The start of the match he can just up back jumps faster than Raam can chase him down. Between rounds again Gargos can just hop away to a distance safe enough to call the minion. Any combo breaker and he’s free to safely call the minion. His multiple instincts allow him to get out of Raam’s lockdown for free multiple times and call a minion. And especially worse if Raam gets a combo breaker Gargos can freely call a minion. So you now have five unavoidable events that are guaranteed to happen every match in which Gargos can put you in the unwinnable situation.
Solution: Make it so that if you combo break Gargos’ ranged combos he gets launched towards you instead of knocked back. That way he can still lock you down but if you decide to eat the punch to hit the minion you can combo break and not be right back where you started.
If Gargos is just doing (light) portal punch over and over again with a stabby minion in front of your face, just block for a while? Wait until the minion stabs you and then Gargos portal punches, then you get a free jump to hit the minion (over the next portal punch). You knock him down and then you’re in pretty good range for Raam and he has no minion support for like 3 seconds. If Gargos waits for you to do that and tries to anti-air you, then he doesn’t have particularly good portal punch support, and you can use crouch MP to clear a minion.
Basically, in order for Gargos to “guarantee” to hit you with portal punch, I feel like he has to be using them a ton pre-emptively. He’s not likely to whiff punish crouch MP on reaction with portal punch while also covering anti-air options and stuff.
This is an oversimplification but I kind of feel like blocking isn’t that big of a deal, even for like 10 consecutive seconds. And you just need to knock the minion down one time (via a jump over a portal punch + jump normal, or a non-whiff punished crouch MP because he’s worried about trying to deal with the jump) and then Raam is in business for the next 5 seconds.
You’re right that focus doesn’t seem to work that well.
Hence my disappointment with Gargos. I really thought the minions were a Shadow Lords feature only. No use complaining anymore now but it’s one of those new mechanics that leaves some characters at a disadvantage and not because of a player’s skills imo. I would have preferred a Sadira web-like or Aganos’ wall-like feature where Gargos sets portals that send opponents to his preferred part of the screen.
I find the minions too distracting, and a mirror match chaos. Like Raams instinct swarms. Also they interfere with my combos sometimes playing as Gargos.
I think it should be 2 shadow meters used to summon one minion. Imo.
Gargos’s defense is way, way too bad for him to not have above average stage control.
You guys can’t just say “minions need to cost 2 bars” or “combo breaking his ranged attacks sends him close to you” without also giving him a way to defend himself. I think in a lot of matches he’s just a giant punching bag already.
It’s kind of Kan-ra esque… I think in 3-4 months somebody has the potential to really crack him and make him really frustrating to fight against. But unlike Kan-ra, he doesn’t have a good backdash or a situational reversal, and is a huge target in the air. So if you catch him, you will get to run offense on him.
Tried this in training mode with a dummy gargos just recorded doing light portal punch over and over again. Unless the minion pokes you at the exact same time as the portal punch then the second portal punch after you jumped will catch your trip guard. Also Gargos is just building meter if you block for that long and then he’ll summon the second minion meaning now you’re going to need to wait for the two minion attacks to line up with a portal punch.
Yeah but this probably happens relatively often? I did the same test as you and it happened pretty much every cycle. (By “it” I mean the minion attacking roughly at the same time as a portal)
The Gargos player can maybe try to time the attacks staggered around the minion but then he’s leaving holes for Raam to fit stuff in there.
I’m not saying it’s easy but I don’t think it’s totally helpless. If Gargos does light portal xx minion summon, he’s basically giving you a free attack on a minion or a jump (because the summon takes a while).
@Infilament@SithLordEDP I tested out the gap between Hisako’s heavy rekkas, and am pretty confident that Raam can not fit a normal command grab in between the string if she’s mashing it out. Even when you get the “Reversal” notification on the grab attempt you will get clipped by the rekkas pretty solidly if Hisako isn’t trying to bait with delays of any kind. You can of course shadow grab through the gap, but even this I found to have a surprisingly tight window - my throw got stuffed on startup quite a few times while I was testing it out (the weirdly delayed/active nature of ORZ’s hitbox helps here I think, as it’s somewhat weird to get true reversal timing out of ORZ blockstun). So Raam kind of has to guess just like everyone in between her ORZ strings unless he’s willing to spend meter.
With regards to Raam/Gargos, I tend to tall along the same side as Infil. Gargos’ up-close defense is waaay too bad to try to penalize him within the breaker system in the manner described. If he’s getting unfavorable placement next to his opponent after every break attempt, then you’d also need to give him better reversal options to compensate for this. I will say though that Gargos has the same gambit defense option that Hisako has if he’s caught in Raam’s grab vortex - his command throw is slower than Raam’s, so if he’s flipped out and mashes his command grab and Raam tries to grab him, he will win that exchange clean. So Raam will need to mix up his vortex options intelligently against him, or else find himself on the wrong end of a command grab.
So fun little thing I discovered while practicing your strategy. Gargos’ punches are destroyable. If his fist appears into an active hitbox it just disappears. So it is possible to smack the minion and destroy the portal punch in one attack, crouching MK has a big box and is active for 6 frames so it’s really good for this, and the timing isn’t that hard if they’re predictably spamming. Though I fear this may be a bug…
After some more playing I’m starting to think Shago isn’t actually a bad match up. Yes he can fill the screen with projectiles but they do so little chip (it takes 190 fireballs to chip a lifebar) that it’s more just wasting time as opposed to actually giving him a sizable lead. I’ve just been walking them down to the corner where they’ll eventually do something unsafe to try and escape the corner and that’s where Raam can put all that meter he’s built to good use.
Great anti-DP tech for the Jago, Fulgore, Shago, and Cinder match ups. For Jago, Fulgore, and Shago, because Raam’s light command grab box is so big, you can safely attempt a grab on their wake ups from a range where if they do wake up DP, it’ll whiff. For Cinder the exact same set up will allow you to low profile his DP with crouching MK. So far I only have a corner set up but I’m sure some mid-screen ones exist that I just haven’t looked into yet but basically:
Light command grab > MK stomp > back dash > (take a slight step forward for Jago, Shago, and Cinder only, not Fulgore) > Light command grab (replace with cr. MK for Cinder to low profile his DP.)
In my experience, I find that Raam struggles more against Sadira than he is even. Thus far, I’ve won almost every single match against Raam. While I have lost a few, I won far many more matches.
Raam has some pretty triple AA anti air, but Sadira has ways to navigate around that. I found Raam to be a much easier grappler fight, than Thunder of whom has a DP that can be pretty effective at keeping Sadira off of his head.
Raam’s slow mobility hurts him in this fight, as he NEEDS Sadira to be on the ground to grappler her and really has no way to knock her out of the air, if she chooses to zone him with areal feint attacks.
IF Raam can get Sadira into a corner and she doesn’t have any meter to use Shadow Recluse, then the match wildly swings in his favor, but that is true for almost any of the cast against Sadira. She simply sucks in the corner, even when fighting against another Sadira.
I’ve also found that Raam’s instinct (unless activated within a combo) proves to be little help for him in this fight and in fact hurts him more than it helps. Because of Sadira’s movement, the Kryll almost always hide her legs and arms making it nearly impossible for Raam to see what direction she is going to strike him from.
I’m not saying this fight is impossible for Raam, but I do believe that he struggles with the matchup due to his lack of mobility and no real way to knock Sadira out of the air, if she chooses to zone attack him from a distance. His only real advantage is IF he can get her into a corner, but I guarantee you, I will do everything in my power to not get there.
You have him beating Aganos, but I don’t see it. Sure, RAAM is very undeveloped, but I see a few things that would have him struggle in this matchup.
He can’t crouch under Aganos’ st.HP, meaning he’s constantly getting pushed out. Same thing as Thunder, but RAAM can’t immediately fly across the screen with a multi-hit DP.
Medium Payload Assault will seemingly never whiff against him, unless he’s very close and crouching (free replacement chunk every time).
Hitting an anti-air with either st.HP or Medium PA pushes him full screen (1-2 free chunks).
Every single rock from Heavy PA will make contact with him (tons of chip).
I feel like Aganos can really win mostly with just st.HP and Medium PA. Each PA does 14% damage and each st.HP does 9%. It seems like RAAM has to connect with 2-3 Kryll Shield dashes or Emergences with psychic timing (that don’t cause hitstun), then still get past Aganos’ heavy buttons. Either that, or you really have to be on point with some st.MP whiff punishes (cr.MP doesn’t work), because he can’t combo off of a st.HP whiff punish.
The one thing RAAM does have is that his jump + HK covers a lot of distance and hits pretty fast on Aganos. Even then, Medium Payload Assault is a guaranteed 14% anti-air that pushes full screen and gets Aganos 2 free chunks.
It’s actually not that hard to reaction whiff punish with st.HP, and you can do it from a pretty good distance away. Yeah you don’t get a combo or remove a chunk but you’ll at least be getting damage in. But if the Raam’s reactions are really on point and the Aganos has no chunks he can react with light stab, and since that’s an opener he’ll get sucked in for the auto doubles despite barely reaching with the tip.
If the Raam can take the life lead then he can sit at full screen and use krylll shield to simply negate any chip from all of the zoning, Aganos can’t really stagger his projectiles in a way that’ll catch kryll shield’s recovery. Raam has literally no reason to go in if he has the life lead making all the anti-air and projectile advantages useless.
I dunno, most of the Sadira’s I’ve fought just jump straight into emergence. It’s really effective at stopping her widows bite jump in pressure. On wake up if the Sadira is doing her cross over then back over shenanigans and Raam has a bar of meter he can just do quarter circle kick in any direction. If he got quarter circle forward, shadow emergence will hit Sadira and add kryll. If he got quarter circle back, shadow kryll rush will absorb her cross up attack and proceed to grab her landing and apply kryll.
I do agree that activating his instinct in neutral is detrimental to him in this match up though. You’ll never see where she’s coming from. But it has such a huge comeback potential in combo that even if the Sadira only gets caught once, he can pop it and catch up or even take the life lead.
I agree one chance break 80% combos while in Instinct is the real deal, but I’ve only had one Raam nail me with one such combo. However, as the player was a tourny player, I’m pretty sure they would have beaten me no matter what character they picked.
As for myself, if I kept getting hit with Emergence, I would start feinting attacks to get Raam to use Emergence and then strike him afterward. In short, I start playing the match up like I would against Hisako. Once a Raam player has been grabbed several times and tossed into a nasty combo, they tend to not rely on Emergence to keep me off of them.
The one advantage that Raam has over Sadira though is raw damage. As you mentioned, with the right timing, Raam can take an entire life bar. In training I was averaging 80% combos while using mostly manual combos with Raam. Setting that up though is the real challenge.
I completely disagree with the devs then. I will admit that RAAM does better than Gargos up close and Gargos does better from full screen (so each character has a place to shine). But keeping RAAM out is a million times easier than trying to get in on Gargos. I have fought many Gargos’s in the last week and they have been relying on zoning for an easy victory with very little struggle. Plus it doesn’t help the Gargos’s damage ender puts some healthy distance between him and RAAM.
