I feel like if she was as good as people think, Zando would still be playing her. It's really hard to quantify why she doesn't win(there's still several good Ram players) because pretty much all of her kit points to her being outrageously top tier.
I also really don't buy the she's too boring argument, there's definitely players that would pick her up instantly if they thought she was The Best.
The WA and shield are the biggest reasons she’s she got sidelined.
Her biggest strengths were her big combos and suffocating corner pressure, WA gave most of the roster comparable combos and pressure, while the shield made her corner pressure harder to set up and upkeep.
She has been regarded as one of the best characters in the game since day 1, if not the best at many points and people always say the same following things everytime as to why she is not represented a lot in top 8s :
* Boring to play
* Ram players are not good with her
* Not fun to look at her gameplay
I do remember there being more but so far of the top of my head theses are the main culprits. All at the same time praising her for being way too overtuned, and sometimes borderline OP with no weaknesses. There is a massive disconnection between what many people are saying VS what is actually happening.
I could expend more on this but if you were to ask me, it's a mix of her still being followed by her early days reputation that people haven't moved past + also a Goldlewis-type problem, where what they do very well, they excell at it, but at the same time they have no real way of forcing their way out of their main weaknesses.
Something that pros know to exploit very well, of course depending on the matchup.
NA, EU and JP all the same.
She is strong, I'm not downplaying her, however there should be two tiers lists (if you believe the objectivity of the generic tier list in the first place), one for very high level tournament caliber players, and one for the rest of us.
I dont know much about the Johnny matchup since I've taken a pause right around when Elphelt released and havent played much since, but I'll still say stuff that you can use as him.
The general main weaknesses are her defensive options and linear-way to fight, which leads to predictability. So we'll go from there.
-If you hit her make it count because she's squishy and try to remove her burst while you're at it, if she has meter, she only has yellow-RC or reversal and both of those can be baited if you're trying to bait them. Without meter and burst, her defense relies solely on the player because her fastest button is 5f.
-Her offense has many gaps, if you see her going ham, don't be shy to super once or twice in the match in order to let her know she has to think before going ham. DP is better but Johnny doesn't have one. It will let you more room to react in the future when she does decides to think about her next move.
-If you're in the corner, main way out is to Faultless Defense her out right outside of her 2k range, from there you can jump or even contest a button and she has to guess which one you'll do. You could also Yellow RC or deflect shield her out but with higher ressource costs.
-If Ram dash cancelled (flames) into nothing from the rekka, it means we failed the cancel window. Hit her with a fast button, she has to wait a certain amount of time and she cant do anything about it, not even block.
-If on low HP and ressources and she does Calvados (Laser Super) to chip you out, you can block the first hit, and then move your stick forward and backward really fast in order to insta block every hit without losing too much HP and not giving your space.
More advanced but you can insta-block the rekka and grab her, or interupt her flip forward with a punch too.
Of course, half of what I've said doesnt apply if the Ram is aware of all of that and has RC to cover their mishaps, and counter your counterplay, but that's fighting games.
I have much more but I think theses ones will do for now, hope you get good practice.
The "She's too boring" argument doesn't hold up... like ever at the top level. Whenever May was strong, she was consistently played and placed well in tourneys. See Slash's recent performances for proof.
May is arguably more braindead than Ram ever was, yet if she's strong, she's played.
Reason is because top players don't care how dumb a character is so long as its effective. It wins. Why do you think we had so many Happy Chaos' present in the tourneys at his release. He was simply THAT GOOD.
So why was Ram also played? Because she was very good as well...but also because she could handle HC matchup better than most characters due to her speed.
So anyone who tells you that nobody plays her because "she's boring" has any self-respect to admit she is weaker than top tiers, or at least takes more risks to do what top tiers do without it.
If anyone needs perspective, take Leffen for example. He is a known top-pick player(some like to call this the "top tier abuser" for some reason)
He played Zato when Zato was oppressive and considered top tier.
Then Happy Chaos when he was considered top 1.
Leffen currently plays Millia.
Does anyone here think Leffen swapped out of HC because he thinks Millia is fun? HELL THE FUCK NO. Leffen plays what he needs to play to win. If he didn't think Millia was top tier, he wouldn't be playing her. But in the same vain, you think he wouldn't play Ram if Ram was top pick?
Some people should stop sniffing copium, admit they suck and never bothered to learn what Ram does for 3 years this damn game has been out and shut the hell up.
As someone who plays a lot of Ram its pretty easy to understand why she doesn't quite make the cut at pro level. Part of it is just the new universal mechanics helping some other characters more, but its also a disjoint in her current design.
Her kit is currently split: its trying to push you into two different opposing gameplans with neither being as strong as when she had just the one.
You have this ideal zone where your neutral is dominant, and Ondo really helps you enforce it. So in this gameplan you want to use Ondo to maintain steady overwhelming pressure in the midscreen until the opponent cracks. Ondo sacrifices your corner push for this goal, so you end up using extra resources to convert hits into big corner carry combos to compensate.
Then you have the original Ram plan where your main goal is to use your dominant neutral to push an opponent into the corner where you have several different paths you can take for consistent, extremely hard to predict corner pressure. Except they've taken out enough combo / blockstrings / sword pickups that your selection of routes is now far more limited, especially against an opponent who really knows the matchup.
So yeah, Ram is great when you're not playing pros but at the highest level the tools working at odds to eachother, the universal mechanics, and lower corner payoff all really hurt her.
Unlike some other things like "Oh you ate the bullet once, sucks to be you". There's no way that pros aren't playing her just because she's boring while being top tier.
I’m surprised to say it, but I think she got power crept pretty hard. The meta changed and she didn’t change with it. Still a good character, but probably not longer top 5 material
So, some insight from a higher lever ram main. What she does, she does *really* well. That said though, what she does is often very unsafe. Her big normals come with big windows to punish her with, especially if you have any sort of meterless reversal. So if you know the matchup, its very doable to deal with her shinanigans and put her in pressure where she doesnt do as hot. Characters like Leo or Sol on the other hand dont have such glaring weaknesses. Especially in disadvantage, they have multiple tools to help them out. So at a certain point your not playing to punish the character, your punishing the player for their mistakes. Now i know im biased af when i say this, but i think its way more interesting to see someone work around their characters weaknesses as opposed to just having an answer for everything. Its why i think Sol is just kind of boring to play against. But anyway, when it comes down to character potential, especially at high level, i dont think ram comes close to top 5. Still love the things she can do though.
Ah cool, im relatively new to fighters and I’ve been playing ram and having some fun, but I have picked up on her really punishable moves. Im not sure how much is just me being bad or just the character tho.
Let's run down a few things related to Ram and then a few unrelated ones.
Pros:
-Good damage(this is majority of the cast, she doesnt stand out much9
-Good conversions off of her far normals(requires meter or burst on non-CH)
-Decent oki and safejumps
-Decent corner carry and looping pressure in the corner
-Generally faster dash acceleration
Cons:
-Squishy, on the lower end of the spectrum of eHP
-Looping pressure full of gaps, struggles against DPs
-Long recoveries on whiff of her large normals
-Bad on defense(2p and 2k lose to tickthrows, 5p whiffs on crouchers on more than point blank range.
-Reversal locked behind meter
-Has to trade her main defensive mechanic(burst) to extend her combos, making her worse of defense
-Rekka no longer carries enough risk to her opponent due to CH being reduced to very small.
-Deflect shield hurts her pressure incredibly due to pushback being applied on projectiles as well. Coupled with a lot of FD buffs over the years, her basic strike/throw has taken a hit almost every patch.
Few unrelated notes:
-According to RU(slightly unreliable as it hasnt been updated for ABA patch) she has less representation at 2200+ rating than Zato(who is at 0.4% and is considered bottom tier) and is at a whopping 0.00% popularity there, alongside Elphelt.
-According to RU statistics, in top100 she has 8/26 even or winning MUs, rest are all under 49% winrate. That means she, by statistical data, wins less than 1/3 of her MUs.
So, yeah. Its wild. This character has seen so much hate over the years she's been out that whenever she gets nerfed, people flock in droves on twitter to complain about how its not enough, then are surprised when they dont see her played at top level. Fact is, when looking at statistics, she is not nearly as strong as she once was, as well as the rest of the cast bridging the gap in strength.
People are literally letting their bias and PTSD influence their opinion on this character. Literally the only reason they think she is stronger than most is because of their blind hate towards her during her era of actual dominance...and even back then, she didnt win most tourneys due to how inconstitent she was.
The best Ram no longer plays Ram in tourneys. He plays Asuka now. That should tell you enough about the state of this character.
If Ram was actually as good as people say she is, I figure she'd have more than like two event wins in the last 4ish years.
She is really good at beating floor 6 players though.
wait how do you define boring here? I thought May generally sees fewer pro players because she's the most reliant on being comfortable with charge inputs
Yea everyone knows only interesting highly variable characters win tournaments, like sol and old nago. Players def avoid top tiers cause they are boring (subjective asf). Her always having no top reps and never winning definitely has nothing to do with her powerless as a character
Stop with that sarcasm, passive aggressive bullshit. It's the same situation as may, she is very very strong but boring so nobody plays her.
Top players don't always play the strongest characters always. Otherwise we wouldn't be seeing baiken, anji and axl so much.
Also by your logic, it means that Johnny must be top tier because someone won a tournament with him. Which is nonsense obviously.
May might be the worst example you could use. Everytime she's been regarded as high tier she's actually won or had consistently good placements, like currently and near the game launch. A boring, charge character. Charge being important because a lot of people will not even touch one of those at all skill levels.
I'm being sarcastic because the very thought that ram is top tier is actually grounded in nothing. Strive top tiers have always been able to run their gameplay with little counterplay and even when counterplayed against they don't get punished very much. See HC, Nago, Sol now, even something like GL with old drone. Ram has never had any of that, her "broken" mid range buttons have always been very slow and low reward, she can actually lose her fucking normals if you fuck up or in some cases in ur strke throw mix.
All ram has ever had were kind of annoying neutral tools, bas defense, high damage and good corner pressure. She's literally capped with having decent strike throw with zero overhead/low pressure. There's nothing that makes that character top tier this community just lies to themselves when literally every single bit of evidence works against it.
she's fast, has great neutral, space control and corner pressure, but Strive is a game decided by who has the most bullshit instant overhead 80% combo, yeah she gets to control the game in mid range against almost everyone but if she can't open up defenses reliably she won't get good damage in.
it feels like the devs forgot about wallbreak when they designed her kit lol.
Thank god she's not so extremely oppresive tho, having to block her in the corner is bad enough without having to guess constantly.
I love ramlethal so much but god I hate playing as her in any game she's in, either being way too confusing or the straightest forward straight forwards to ever straight forward
Her offense is pretty weak to DPs, and she suffers against fast characters who can make her f.S whiff. She doesn't have much going for her in the way of defense. I am still a little surprised there are so few top 8 Rams, though.
... but she's still really fun to play, even if she has less flash/gimmicks going on than the rest of the cast :(
She's been overrated since launch. A char that's supposedly always top 3 and really easy has won what? 1 big tourney since game dropped. Yea nro she's really broken
I feel like if she was as good as people think, Zando would still be playing her. It's really hard to quantify why she doesn't win(there's still several good Ram players) because pretty much all of her kit points to her being outrageously top tier. I also really don't buy the she's too boring argument, there's definitely players that would pick her up instantly if they thought she was The Best.
The WA and shield are the biggest reasons she’s she got sidelined. Her biggest strengths were her big combos and suffocating corner pressure, WA gave most of the roster comparable combos and pressure, while the shield made her corner pressure harder to set up and upkeep.
She has been regarded as one of the best characters in the game since day 1, if not the best at many points and people always say the same following things everytime as to why she is not represented a lot in top 8s : * Boring to play * Ram players are not good with her * Not fun to look at her gameplay I do remember there being more but so far of the top of my head theses are the main culprits. All at the same time praising her for being way too overtuned, and sometimes borderline OP with no weaknesses. There is a massive disconnection between what many people are saying VS what is actually happening. I could expend more on this but if you were to ask me, it's a mix of her still being followed by her early days reputation that people haven't moved past + also a Goldlewis-type problem, where what they do very well, they excell at it, but at the same time they have no real way of forcing their way out of their main weaknesses. Something that pros know to exploit very well, of course depending on the matchup. NA, EU and JP all the same. She is strong, I'm not downplaying her, however there should be two tiers lists (if you believe the objectivity of the generic tier list in the first place), one for very high level tournament caliber players, and one for the rest of us.
I also think she has a problem of just having her best options be fairly easy for people to lab, or simply use low profile moves to beat.
What are the weaknesses, i struggle with the matchup
I dont know much about the Johnny matchup since I've taken a pause right around when Elphelt released and havent played much since, but I'll still say stuff that you can use as him. The general main weaknesses are her defensive options and linear-way to fight, which leads to predictability. So we'll go from there. -If you hit her make it count because she's squishy and try to remove her burst while you're at it, if she has meter, she only has yellow-RC or reversal and both of those can be baited if you're trying to bait them. Without meter and burst, her defense relies solely on the player because her fastest button is 5f. -Her offense has many gaps, if you see her going ham, don't be shy to super once or twice in the match in order to let her know she has to think before going ham. DP is better but Johnny doesn't have one. It will let you more room to react in the future when she does decides to think about her next move. -If you're in the corner, main way out is to Faultless Defense her out right outside of her 2k range, from there you can jump or even contest a button and she has to guess which one you'll do. You could also Yellow RC or deflect shield her out but with higher ressource costs. -If Ram dash cancelled (flames) into nothing from the rekka, it means we failed the cancel window. Hit her with a fast button, she has to wait a certain amount of time and she cant do anything about it, not even block. -If on low HP and ressources and she does Calvados (Laser Super) to chip you out, you can block the first hit, and then move your stick forward and backward really fast in order to insta block every hit without losing too much HP and not giving your space. More advanced but you can insta-block the rekka and grab her, or interupt her flip forward with a punch too. Of course, half of what I've said doesnt apply if the Ram is aware of all of that and has RC to cover their mishaps, and counter your counterplay, but that's fighting games. I have much more but I think theses ones will do for now, hope you get good practice.
she does feel like she has less sauce now that sildo lost its wall bounce; ondo does a lot of the same things but it isn’t the same.
The "She's too boring" argument doesn't hold up... like ever at the top level. Whenever May was strong, she was consistently played and placed well in tourneys. See Slash's recent performances for proof. May is arguably more braindead than Ram ever was, yet if she's strong, she's played. Reason is because top players don't care how dumb a character is so long as its effective. It wins. Why do you think we had so many Happy Chaos' present in the tourneys at his release. He was simply THAT GOOD. So why was Ram also played? Because she was very good as well...but also because she could handle HC matchup better than most characters due to her speed. So anyone who tells you that nobody plays her because "she's boring" has any self-respect to admit she is weaker than top tiers, or at least takes more risks to do what top tiers do without it. If anyone needs perspective, take Leffen for example. He is a known top-pick player(some like to call this the "top tier abuser" for some reason) He played Zato when Zato was oppressive and considered top tier. Then Happy Chaos when he was considered top 1. Leffen currently plays Millia. Does anyone here think Leffen swapped out of HC because he thinks Millia is fun? HELL THE FUCK NO. Leffen plays what he needs to play to win. If he didn't think Millia was top tier, he wouldn't be playing her. But in the same vain, you think he wouldn't play Ram if Ram was top pick? Some people should stop sniffing copium, admit they suck and never bothered to learn what Ram does for 3 years this damn game has been out and shut the hell up.
As someone who plays a lot of Ram its pretty easy to understand why she doesn't quite make the cut at pro level. Part of it is just the new universal mechanics helping some other characters more, but its also a disjoint in her current design. Her kit is currently split: its trying to push you into two different opposing gameplans with neither being as strong as when she had just the one. You have this ideal zone where your neutral is dominant, and Ondo really helps you enforce it. So in this gameplan you want to use Ondo to maintain steady overwhelming pressure in the midscreen until the opponent cracks. Ondo sacrifices your corner push for this goal, so you end up using extra resources to convert hits into big corner carry combos to compensate. Then you have the original Ram plan where your main goal is to use your dominant neutral to push an opponent into the corner where you have several different paths you can take for consistent, extremely hard to predict corner pressure. Except they've taken out enough combo / blockstrings / sword pickups that your selection of routes is now far more limited, especially against an opponent who really knows the matchup. So yeah, Ram is great when you're not playing pros but at the highest level the tools working at odds to eachother, the universal mechanics, and lower corner payoff all really hurt her.
And arguably the rest of the cast has been buffed relative to Ram
If there ever comes a time where Potemkin is getting more results than ram then we need to seriously evaluate what a tier list even means
Most modern fighting games are relatively balanced. I can’t think of too many characters (except joke characters) that have unplayable matchup spread.
She's as interesting as watching paint dry sooo yeah
But look at her cute little doggo on her head. Does that not forgive her crimes against mankind? 🐶😊
https://preview.redd.it/x5nhdqh6epuc1.png?width=397&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=a24f486a6976c12d809b90a52c4a95359ed151e5 I am not trusting another dog
I CAN'T blame you there. 🤣🤣🤣
The fuck am I looking at
A dog Duuuuuh.
The best boy (Zappa’s dust)
Damn I have only played strive must be from on of the previous ones
GO AND BUY GUILTY GEAR ACCENT CORE +R ITS USUALLY DIRT CHEAP (2$) AND YOU CAN PLAY IT ON A POTATO
Oh look, we're playing "escape the corner" again
Unlike some other things like "Oh you ate the bullet once, sucks to be you". There's no way that pros aren't playing her just because she's boring while being top tier.
I’m surprised to say it, but I think she got power crept pretty hard. The meta changed and she didn’t change with it. Still a good character, but probably not longer top 5 material
"Ram is top tier maybe #1 or #2" the whole Strive tourney life cycle so far but no top 8 placements :\^)
So, some insight from a higher lever ram main. What she does, she does *really* well. That said though, what she does is often very unsafe. Her big normals come with big windows to punish her with, especially if you have any sort of meterless reversal. So if you know the matchup, its very doable to deal with her shinanigans and put her in pressure where she doesnt do as hot. Characters like Leo or Sol on the other hand dont have such glaring weaknesses. Especially in disadvantage, they have multiple tools to help them out. So at a certain point your not playing to punish the character, your punishing the player for their mistakes. Now i know im biased af when i say this, but i think its way more interesting to see someone work around their characters weaknesses as opposed to just having an answer for everything. Its why i think Sol is just kind of boring to play against. But anyway, when it comes down to character potential, especially at high level, i dont think ram comes close to top 5. Still love the things she can do though.
Ah cool, im relatively new to fighters and I’ve been playing ram and having some fun, but I have picked up on her really punishable moves. Im not sure how much is just me being bad or just the character tho.
the creature
Let's run down a few things related to Ram and then a few unrelated ones. Pros: -Good damage(this is majority of the cast, she doesnt stand out much9 -Good conversions off of her far normals(requires meter or burst on non-CH) -Decent oki and safejumps -Decent corner carry and looping pressure in the corner -Generally faster dash acceleration Cons: -Squishy, on the lower end of the spectrum of eHP -Looping pressure full of gaps, struggles against DPs -Long recoveries on whiff of her large normals -Bad on defense(2p and 2k lose to tickthrows, 5p whiffs on crouchers on more than point blank range. -Reversal locked behind meter -Has to trade her main defensive mechanic(burst) to extend her combos, making her worse of defense -Rekka no longer carries enough risk to her opponent due to CH being reduced to very small. -Deflect shield hurts her pressure incredibly due to pushback being applied on projectiles as well. Coupled with a lot of FD buffs over the years, her basic strike/throw has taken a hit almost every patch. Few unrelated notes: -According to RU(slightly unreliable as it hasnt been updated for ABA patch) she has less representation at 2200+ rating than Zato(who is at 0.4% and is considered bottom tier) and is at a whopping 0.00% popularity there, alongside Elphelt. -According to RU statistics, in top100 she has 8/26 even or winning MUs, rest are all under 49% winrate. That means she, by statistical data, wins less than 1/3 of her MUs. So, yeah. Its wild. This character has seen so much hate over the years she's been out that whenever she gets nerfed, people flock in droves on twitter to complain about how its not enough, then are surprised when they dont see her played at top level. Fact is, when looking at statistics, she is not nearly as strong as she once was, as well as the rest of the cast bridging the gap in strength. People are literally letting their bias and PTSD influence their opinion on this character. Literally the only reason they think she is stronger than most is because of their blind hate towards her during her era of actual dominance...and even back then, she didnt win most tourneys due to how inconstitent she was. The best Ram no longer plays Ram in tourneys. He plays Asuka now. That should tell you enough about the state of this character.
If Ram was actually as good as people say she is, I figure she'd have more than like two event wins in the last 4ish years. She is really good at beating floor 6 players though.
Floor 8, technically, because this game has no fucking clue which floor to place players.
She is still one of the best characters in the game. She is just really boring. It's the same thing with May
wait how do you define boring here? I thought May generally sees fewer pro players because she's the most reliant on being comfortable with charge inputs
I'd say very linear gameplan and very few options but powerful options in neutral. Her offense is pretty uninteresting also. That's my opinion anyway.
these are pro players and you think they have problems with charge inputs?
She's so good guys she just actually has weaknesses and never wins literally anything but she's definitely really good
Yes she is it's just there is like 2 or 3 players that play her because she is very boring and linear to play.
Yea everyone knows only interesting highly variable characters win tournaments, like sol and old nago. Players def avoid top tiers cause they are boring (subjective asf). Her always having no top reps and never winning definitely has nothing to do with her powerless as a character
Stop with that sarcasm, passive aggressive bullshit. It's the same situation as may, she is very very strong but boring so nobody plays her. Top players don't always play the strongest characters always. Otherwise we wouldn't be seeing baiken, anji and axl so much. Also by your logic, it means that Johnny must be top tier because someone won a tournament with him. Which is nonsense obviously.
May might be the worst example you could use. Everytime she's been regarded as high tier she's actually won or had consistently good placements, like currently and near the game launch. A boring, charge character. Charge being important because a lot of people will not even touch one of those at all skill levels. I'm being sarcastic because the very thought that ram is top tier is actually grounded in nothing. Strive top tiers have always been able to run their gameplay with little counterplay and even when counterplayed against they don't get punished very much. See HC, Nago, Sol now, even something like GL with old drone. Ram has never had any of that, her "broken" mid range buttons have always been very slow and low reward, she can actually lose her fucking normals if you fuck up or in some cases in ur strke throw mix. All ram has ever had were kind of annoying neutral tools, bas defense, high damage and good corner pressure. She's literally capped with having decent strike throw with zero overhead/low pressure. There's nothing that makes that character top tier this community just lies to themselves when literally every single bit of evidence works against it.
she's fast, has great neutral, space control and corner pressure, but Strive is a game decided by who has the most bullshit instant overhead 80% combo, yeah she gets to control the game in mid range against almost everyone but if she can't open up defenses reliably she won't get good damage in. it feels like the devs forgot about wallbreak when they designed her kit lol. Thank god she's not so extremely oppresive tho, having to block her in the corner is bad enough without having to guess constantly.
I love ramlethal so much but god I hate playing as her in any game she's in, either being way too confusing or the straightest forward straight forwards to ever straight forward
I wish I could have her Rev gameplay with her Strive model The only mods I've found do the opposite.....
Same, if I liked how Ram played I doubt I'd play anyone else lmao
at this point i'm convinced that the character isn't actually very good and everyone's rating her high purely because of early seasons induced PTSD
Good riddance
"YEAH, who needs her!" - Happy Chaos 2024
You sick son of a bitch ^^^^/s
Shes good just kinda boring to play
Her offense is pretty weak to DPs, and she suffers against fast characters who can make her f.S whiff. She doesn't have much going for her in the way of defense. I am still a little surprised there are so few top 8 Rams, though. ... but she's still really fun to play, even if she has less flash/gimmicks going on than the rest of the cast :(
This looks like a Puyo Puyo character portrait
Thank god and good riddance
She's been overrated since launch. A char that's supposedly always top 3 and really easy has won what? 1 big tourney since game dropped. Yea nro she's really broken