I’ve seriously given up hope on this matchup. If you fight against any halfway decent Gargos player, it honestly seems impossible to win with RAAM. You literally cannot move when you’re being spammed with teleport punches at full screen while being attacked by the minions.
When Gargos does his swooping ariel attack, you cannot punish on block because he swoops out of range unless he’s in the corner.
Does anyone have advice on this matchup? I’ve given up trying to figure it out on my own.
Have you tried using the focus attack? It can take the portal punches and possibly hit the minnion.
Doesn’t work, you’ll always get hit out of the recovery because it’s too slow.
Can’t you dash cancel it.
You’ll either get hit before the dash starts as you hit the minion, or you’ll get caught on your dash recovery because there isn’t enough of a gap. There just isn’t enough time between the armor disappearing, Raam hitting the minion, and Raam completing a dash for him to avoid the portal punch.
Punch him till he falls down. Usually I have to do that twice to win. It’s a pretty good strategy, though I can’t claim I came up with it.
Seriously though, Going up against a Good Gargos Player as RAAM is hard. Remember that Gargos’s area of effectiveness is an arch from his point of origin. RAAM has plenty of fast long reaching normals that keep him out of Gargos’s effective range. I know that isn’t the most helpful advice, but I’ve never really run into this match up that often.
Since there has been some good advice, allow me to offer some bad advice.
RAAM - Gargos Match-up Decision Conditions:
Am I grabbing him? Yes, keep grabbing. / No, grab more.
Are Kryll on him? Yes, refer to question one. / No, put Kryll on him.
Does he have a life lead? Yes, grab more. / No, grab more.
Should I be grabbing more? If you have to ask this question, stop playing RAAM.
After much research into the Gargos match up all I can conclude is the only way to win is to never let him get a minion out. Gargos’ minion-less zoning is pretty straight forward for Raam to get through. But you must succeed in getting through it before he gets a bar. Once he has a bar you have to make him waste it on something other than minions so as counter intuitive as it sounds, let him shadow counter you. Just go in with a blocked shadow move so he does it. (You could bait the shadow counter with a kryll shield cancel but if you do that too often then the Gargos will stop spending his meter on it) Obviously you’re now getting combo’d by Gargos so make sure your breaking against him is on point. You shouldn’t really take more than 20% if you break early and you can easily make that up in one grab. Start pressuring him, he’ll build a bar again, make him spend it again.
I’ve been having pseudo-success doing this but once he gets instinct it all goes downhill because he gets a free escape along with whatever meter he has.
BWAHAHAHAHAHAHA Gargos can land just ONE portal punch, and then hop hop light reckoning away from you all match and win with time out. Oh yes, IG, this match up is fair.
If put in the corner by a Gargos who is far away to portal punch and you have minions in front, there’s very little most characters can do. Only those with teleports and fully invulnerable attacks (ie: Aganos meter punch) can reliably get out of that situation. For someone like RAAM there’s very little that can be done. The best I’ve manage is to time my Kryll shields to chip away at the minions, but Gargos keeps getting meter and can just summon more.
And yeah I don’t even want to get into characters with high mobility and projectiles that decide to win by time out against RAAM. It’s really frustrating.
So it appears we have officially reached the point where people are whipping out their level 4 Gargoses when they see a Raam player card. Best part? They’re still getting near perfects despite having no clue how to actually use the character. And it’s not like you can just not pick Raam when you see a Gargos player because their player card doesn’t show Gargos, you think you’re about to fight a Tusk only to say hi to portal punch in the balls.
Hmm…odd.
Honestly as a Gargos player I dread seeing Raam. His kryll moves are pretty much a big middle finger to anything I throw at him, and when Gargos gets stuffed in the corner he’s skrewed… minions help, but if Raam knows how to place himself properly they go down fast.
Gargos has a lot of stuff flying around the screen, but one good solid combo from Raam will put Gargos’s life bar well below Raams in a hurry.
I’d like to think that I’m a decent Gargos play, I think this is a really bad match-up for Raam. Yea, it sucks if Raam gets in, but what are you doing letting him in? So many tools to keep him out: wings, portal punch, minons. quad jumps. If the oppenent isn’t getting pissed off, then you’re doing it wrong.
Exactly. The hardest Gargos players to beat as RAAM are the ones who run away and attack from a distance. It’s very hard/ impossible to get in close if Gargos is using his tools correctly.
Soon one day I’ll have a chart on the matchups with each character in the game.
You know, one positive thing about the Gargos match up is that it makes the Kan-ra, Fulgore, Glacius, Cinder, etc. match ups feel much less frustrating by comparison. Even when you get zoned out in those at least you know where your missed opportunities were instead of just constantly question what you’re even supposed to do.
I feel the exact same way.
I take my previous comment back. So hard. @SithLordEDP said something about people just picking their level 4 Garg’s when they see RAAM by your gamer tag and winning regardless of how much they know about Gargos or RAAM. He’s so right. Portal punch until RAAM gets close. Quad jump over him to create distance. It’s really all Gargos has to do. A HUGE step in the right direction is just making Emergence hit above RAAM’s head. It blows my mind that Gargos can quad jump through it up there. That would be the only way for RAAM to take him out of the sky. But alas, it’s not.
Or, they could remove Gargos’s ability to gain meter from blocked portal punches. Make that cheesy ■■■■■■■ earn his meter.
After a month of trying, rebalancing for the sake of RAAM v. Gargos is sounding more and more rational by the day.
Yes, I’m a little salty, now. Just had a Gargos cover me in cheese and taunt me all match while he did it.
I think Gargos’ portal punches should build as much meter as Kan-Ra’s spikes. I also agree that RAAM’s Kryll attack should cover the whole space above him to stop jumping shennanigans from Gargos and Sadira.
MK Emergence’s box should ,waist-up, ether hit max height of quad jump or hit the entire virtual space. This is not a significant buff. In practice, this would not effect MUs or any other character other than Gargos, Sadira, and maybe Rash.