So it’s been a few months since raam’s come out. He’s still pretty good but hasn’t really had any representation. What do you think needs to be figured out for him? Despite his very good vortex I feel like it’s still just 50/50ing yourself in the jump/grab mixup. Despite his good buttons most games just tend to be him and his opponent just jockeying around the barely outside s hp range area. I want to believe there’s just something that could be done to get through his issues before asking for more on the buff side.
What problems do you think raam has and what do you think could be done to work around them?
There really isn’t anything wrong with Raam. The reason you don’t see him represented a lot in tournaments is that he’s just easily counter picked, and while he can definitely deal with those counter picks why bother when you can just pick a different character and have a much easier time?
I don’t really think the counter picks are that common though. Probably the hardest matchup for raam is i think kan ra and he’s such an esoteric character that you can’t really just switch to him for the matchup.
I just think there needs to be work done on raam. So far all i’ve seen said about working through tougher matchups and projectile zoning is “just walk them to the corner,” or for mixups as “grab or stuff them on wakeup.” Which is all well and good but what do you do once youre there, what buttons function best for beating challenges? S.hp > decimation can function like a pseudo windkick mixup for raam, between emergence and command grabbing them, and there just seems to be a lot of open space that could be expanded on thats just kinda left around. Nobody really knows what to do with bear grab ender for example
And I dunno, I just really want to make raam work, he’s fun but yea his very gief-esque playstyle make him weaker to counterpicks but that’s just grappler life i guess. life how grappler life is walking people to the corner
training mode doesn’t help with in match situations. I can find out that if you buffer a whiffed jab after backthrow on shago and immediately jump forward youll get a left right mixup on him, I can’t find out if raam actually has tools to deal with being mid range other than just walking them down. you tell me after only using training mode if you can get in on kan ra with bugs and sand
As an aside, learning to properly walk forward is a severely underrated skill. There’s actually quite a bit of (I think quite interesting) nuance in how to properly be a slowly moving wall against your opponent. To a certain extent, I think that’s part of the allure of a Raam-like character.
With all the characters, you can transitionate from fullscreen to up close(or at least offensive from distance for characters like Glacius) very quickly, with Raam as exception. He has to slowly walk his way.
The plan with Raam is being a wall. Advance forward. Stop. Advance. Stop. Advance. Stop.(you can eat around 5-7% chip damage from some characters in this proccess) Get an opening. Deal huge damage into setup. Profit. They escape, repeat proccess.
Raam deals huge damage in seconds, but he has to spend most of the fight getting in, not staying in. That’s what most people fail to see
RAAM is a tank, or rather a grappler styled character like Gief. One of their biggest shortcoming is that none of them have much presentation. They are relatively boring/bland. I think Third Strike Hugo was the only grappler that I found uniquely fun.
Nonetheless, I don’t think there is much he can get that he doesn’t already have. He is intended to dominate someone up close and usually found working his way up close.
For the most part I have dominated every RAAM player I encountered but one guy found good use of his jumping dropkick along with a deceiving sweep. Utilizing the most of his normals and buttons go a long way.
I just want his command grabs to be throw invulnerable like all the other command grabs in the game. I wouldn’t mind if his damage got toned down a bit more but they made it a little easier for him to get in.
Raam is one of those reasons why I think it was a bad idea, that every character has the same amount of health points. He needs some more health because grabblers traditionally use it more as some kind of resource to get in.
Like you guys already mentioned, move in slowly and patient, eat some damage and chip on your way in, than EXPLODE in their face!
Well, i don’t know what is next for Raam, but after a month playing with all chars of the cast in shadow lords playing Raam again feels like maneuvering a tank pulled by a pair of sick horses.
But his high damage combined with the games low projectile damage effectively creats the same effect. You eat negligible amounts of damage getting in and then take half their health bar once you do.
IMO what is actually next for Raam is scary set play after light and shadow grabs. People are still just going for stomps which are breakable + the mixup is kinda linear (grab or not, and even your frame trap must be canceled into a negative special).
Raam gets set play after both light and shadow grabs, so they should be using them instead of stomps. I have some video on my ki.infil.net Raam page showing the start of some setups that beat many DPs and can be made to hit in the front or the back (including empty jump low/throw stuff).
It would make him a much scarier character if every light/shadow grab turned into serious offense instead of only meh offense.
It’s not, unless in an Opener>Ender situation. The stomps are breakable.
And, seriously, @Infilament has the right of it. What’s next for RAAM is we all level up our setplay. He’s got the kit, he’s not lacking in tools. He just NEEDS a dedicated playerbase to show off that potential.
I imagine he’ll always get dunked by Fulgore or whatever. That’s fine, grapplers will always have bad matchups.
The most important way to optimize a grappler is to make sure his grabs are as scary as possible, so when you do get your one chance, you make it count. I’d argue that stomps alone are not good enough for that.
Imagine if SF4 Zangief got set play after every SPD, and not just greenhand to get close for maybe some sort of gamble at roughly even frames. That’s Raam and it’s unfortunate that not many players are taking advantage of it right now.
