Is it just me or should Ramos have more on his card?

[WWHSD]

With all the different podcasts talking about Nicodem, I spent some time looking at his cards and upgrades. Some of the things that jumped out at me is how many of the things on his base card are things that Ramos needs to buy upgrades to be able to do. 

Nicodem's Corpse Conductor ability combines the buffs found on Under Pressure and Field Generator. The defensive buffs affect only friendly Undead models instead of all friendly models like Arcing Screen but doesn't take an AP and and an 8+ card to fire off. 

Decay probably isn't quite as good an attack as  Electrical Fire but it's a way better heal than what comes on Combat Mechanic. It needs a 7 of any suit instead of a 3 but it heals the same as the moderate healing flip of Combat Mechanic without consuming a marker that you need for summoning. If you get to a straight flip you can cheat in a moderate card to either heal or damage other models with the blast. If you're willing to burn a marker it allows you to completely heal a model.

Nicodem's stats are better, his summons don't come in slow and he's got two attacks that are support abilities when used against friendly Undead and damage or debuff when used against anything else. The only real advantage that Ramos seems to have is that his attacks are more damaging and his summons per marker tend to be more efficient. With the comparative ease that Nicodem gets corpse markers, his huge hands, and replenishing soulstone pool that efficiency isn't probably that much of an edge. Especially since Ramos is in a position that flipping a Black Joker can mean that there will be nothing summoned that round.  Ramos's better attacks are nice and all but they aren't good enough to make him a master that is bringing the damage for his crew. That AP would be more damaging if it could be used to give a beater that was getting  flips to their attacks like Nicodem can.

I like Ramos and all and don't think that he needs to be the Construct version of Nicodem but it's a bit disheartening to see another master getting abilities that Ramos would spend 6SS and all of his upgrade slots to get and having those abilities be better in many cases . 



 

[Flippin' Wyrd George]

If he needs a change I think it's just a minor one to bring him fully up to speed with wave 5. I'd like to see accomplice on his card which would mean the combat mechanic slot can be freed up, or perhaps it could be moved to one of the aura upgrades? I'd also like to see the TN or his gun reduced to 12 as his crew has limited card draw and I find after giving reactive and summoning spiders it is hard to hit those TN14s with any spare AP he has. As for combat, I wouldn't object to his melee being raised to 6 or 7 so the large severe damage can be made more relevant with a simple focus. At Ml5 it's too easy for most models to negate the focus by drawing the duel.

I think comparing Ramos to a Nicodem is fairly futile as Nicodem will surely be seeing the nerfbat in the foreseeable future, and Ramos also has an aggressive element to him which Nico lacks

 

[Ludvig]

Might not be just Ramos that is a bit jealous. If you add Necrotic king to Nicodem he becomes a very strong buffer.

 

[retnab]

IMO the only thing Ramos needs (or, "needs") is a bit of a quality-of-life change, in allowing him to summon a 6-wound Steam Arachnid Swarm when he could summon 3 Arachnids if you'd like.  I feel like if we could directly summon them in instead of needing to place 3 Arachnids properly and hope they don't get killed before the one touching the others activates that'd bump up their stock and we'd see them more regularly in-games.

I do agree that Ramos gets pretty out-done by a lot of Summoners, especially Nico, but as I mentioned in my M2E post I feel like his "fire and forget" style of summoning really makes up for that and is one of his biggest strengths, since he'll actually use AP on other things.

[WWHSD]

8 minutes ago, retnab said:

I do agree that Ramos gets pretty out-done by a lot of Summoners, especially Nico, but as I mentioned in my M2E post I feel like his "fire and forget" style of summoning really makes up for that and is one of his biggest strengths, since he'll actually use AP on other things.

I like Ramos a lot. My frustration is that he needs to buy expensive upgrades to be able to support his crew and to get some actions worth spending his AP on. I also feel like I need to bring Arcane Reservoir on him as well as a mostly full cache because he's so dependent on getting high  cards.  It would be great if the Electrical Summoning upgrade didn't need the same cards that spider summoning does and if Combat Mechanic didn't need a scrap marker. 

[Fictor]

For me Ramos need a important buff.

You compare with Nico, bot now do the same with the Dreamer...

Doesn't need markers to summon

His Nightmares low WP on 3", and our Arachnids need base contact

His walk up to 7" vs 4"

He heals in pulse

His shoot upgrade give him +1Ap for shoot, do dmg for each Nightmare... really let Ramos do dmg for each construct... and we'll see

His defense does't are trigger so cant be negated or need suit.

He can give suit with a totem of 2ss to summon out suit...

And remember that always, Ramos can summon 3 spiders but need 11 AND SS, if you have RJ but no SS you CAN'T summon 3 spiders, but all the other masters can summon his best miniature. AND another miniature to provides him scrap, sometimes it counts a lot.

[Ludvig]

@Fictor

Arm +2 and incorp are about the same against most attacks and Dreamer also has a trigger so it can be negated by the same stuff that negates Ramos'. It's just built in and on wp as well.

Apart from that you have some points.

[WWHSD]

19 minutes ago, Ludvig said:

 

... Dreamer also has a trigger so it can be negated by the same stuff that negates Ramos'. 

The Dreamer's trigger can't be negated by standing in front of stuff. Ramos's (mostly) can.

[Fictor]

20 minutes ago, Ludvig said:

@Fictor

Arm +2 and incorp are about the same against most attacks and Dreamer also has a trigger so it can be negated by the same stuff that negates Ramos'. It's just built in and on wp as well.

Apart from that you have some points.

True, a little mistake with Collody's defense ability 

[Ludvig]

5 minutes ago, Fictor said:

True, a little mistake with Collody's defense ability 

Thankfully Collodi's ability reduces the damage so a lot of the recently released stuff that can't bereduced messes Collodi up bigtime which is somr small comfort to someone who has suffered at it's hands.

[Ludvig]

18 minutes ago, WWHSD said:

The Dreamer's trigger can't be negated by standing in front of stuff. Ramos's (mostly) can.

Coming from a guild heavy group I don't often see masters surrounded as much as killed from afar so I'm not sure how often that happens. Triple Sonnia blasts make Dreamer pretty sad, especially since his sacriricial buddies go poof quickly and having the cards to discard for Dreamer's trigger isn't always a given due to austringers and the abysmal defense on some models in his typical crew.

[WWHSD]

22 minutes ago, Ludvig said:

Coming from a guild heavy group I don't often see masters surrounded as much as killed from afar so I'm not sure how often that happens. Triple Sonnia blasts make Dreamer pretty sad, especially since his sacriricial buddies go poof quickly and having the cards to discard for Dreamer's trigger isn't always a given due to austringers and the abysmal defense on some models in his typical crew.

Ramos's trigger pushes the attacker directly away from Ramos. It's usually not that hard to make sure that push doesn't push far enough to matter as long as you keep the trigger in mind. If the push is mitigated the trigger is just +1 Df  per . If he's spending a soulstone it's going to max at Df +2.

 

[Ludvig]

True, charging and making sure you hit his base would make moat models able to keep hitting him.

[grim_stoki]

I think it has to do with inter-faction balancing. Resurs are the "summoning" faction, so naturally their summoners would be better. The comparison shouldn't be Nico vs. Ramos, but Nico and supporting crew vs. Ramos and supporting crew. There, I think the comparison is a bit more even. 

[MuMantai]

While I agree with you there, I think even then, Nicodem is a bit stronger than Ramos.

In my eyes, the problem is not Ramos being too weak (he is not), the problem is Nicodem being too strong. And I hope that gets fixed at some point in the future.