The Most CONTROVERSIAL Weapon in Gaming History - Elden Ring

Rivers of Blood has been the subject of controversy in the Elden Ring Pve and PvP community since its release. The weapon is heavily despised even to this day... but why is this? Ranni the Witch and Melina will explain to you the entire history of Rivers of Blood today! And why SPAMMING is not as "bad" as some gamers make it out to be.
In Elden Ring PvP, players tend to get annoyed when they don't know how to fight something. It gets even worse if their opponent abuses that something, to the point of spamming it all the time. Most players don't know how to deal with this and prefer to just not fight it. They would also go online and complain about that said something, without realising that maybe, just maybe, the reason they lost is a combination of two things: that something being A BIT BUSTED and THEIR OWN IGNORANCE.
JJJreact.
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Thumbnail Art by Sardianic
0:00 Intro
0:59 Katanas
1:54 Corpse Piler
3:21 Spamming
5:23 Noob Crutch
6:27 Misinformation, Ego and Cognitive Bias
8:23 RoB NERF
9:01 How misinformation destroyed the weapon
10:46 Outro
#eldenring #ai #videoessay

[@OnlyWaifuYT]

YES, I KNOW NOW THAT ENOLA GAY WAS *NOT* A BOMB LOL I forgot to maybe point out that PARRYING RoB is not the ONLY way to deal with it. High poise, high robustness armor with Heavy hitting weapons such as DOUBLE LANCES or DOUBLE NAGIS, Double Straightswords, etc, could deal with RoB fairly well. There were many options to face RoB, many of which people outright didn't even bother to find out. There's nothing wrong with that, though. You may just not want to deal with something, and that's okay. What's NOT okay is to go on reddit to complain and be an entitled little bi-

[@ColdNorth0628]

The thing in my experience that made it worse is even if you did have the counters. What you could not counter was the p2p connection and being set up with someone with a worse connection than you, and you just explode in your own blood. That is also what I think inflated the problem, that and phantom procs of early days.

[@adrammelechthewroth6511]

I'm so happy that I'm not a redditer.

[@juliusbush9432]

I have something to talk about For some reason people complain constantly about people that "sweat" or "try hard" but they are just people that are good at the game. But if we're bad at the game we got made fun of so we can't be good or bad at a video game for some reason. But Rob users are neither. They are just people that like to make other people's life more annoying

[@Eo-ms3kw]

And as long as they mindlessly spammed Corpse Piler you could also just get out of range and then do a jumping attack during the downtime between the different parts of the ash.

[@RastaPirata]

So according to you. "Getting gud" means wearing high poise. Powerstanced weapons and high robustness specifically to counter blood?

[@thelonelystankmuncher8879]

I think the katana shouldve been named corpse piler and its weapon art's name should've been rivers of blood

[@Blittsplitt5]

The only smart comment

[@thighhighenthusiastic1268]

i think sometimes

[@Tyranride]

@@thighhighenthusiastic1268Same

[@Aluxschmander]

That actually makes more sense

[@sinanbabayigit3426]

It's Japanese name is 屍山血河 which means "Mountain of corpses, rivers of blood." It's truly scary name.

[@kodiakbear9794]

Memories broken, the truth goes unspoken

[@OnlyWaifuYT]

I'VE EVEN FORGOTTEN MY NAMEEEEEEEEE

[@burrzie8446]

@@OnlyWaifuYT I DONT KNOW THE SEASON OR WHAT IS THE REASON

[@OnlyWaifuYT]

@@burrzie8446 I'M STANDING HERE HOLDING MY BLAAAAAAAAADE

[@SaturNo_O017]

A DESOLATE PLACE (PLACE) WITHOUT ANY TRACE (TRACE)

[@fenrir4752]

​@@OnlyWaifuYT A DESOLATE PLACE

[@crowiltiziodeltreno4177]

Ranni explaining elden ring stuff is absolutely amazing. Ranni you're the best, always remember that

[@chihshiangshee9002]

I think the fact that bleed proc forces you out of rolling frames invincibility is a very strong reason why bleed is pretty busted in this game. All previous soul titles did not have this occurred so you could just roll through it. If they remove this stagger mechanic then bleed will become laughably easy to proc without much trouble.

[@samsonweiser7504]

They patched that only a bleed proced from bloodflame blade will actually stagger you out of s now. Apparently I haven't played tons of pvp recently. It will still buildup through your s, but the actual proc won't knock you out of them unless it's triggered with bloodflame blade. idk about frostbite I think it works just like normal bleed though.

[@manguy01]

I have no idea why status buildup can happen while in i-frames. It shouldn't. Easy fix

[@RedAngelXV]

Okay, and I don’t like getting crouch poked by dudes with colossal swords. Should they patch that, too?

[@aNsWeRkEy02]

its doesnt even have a downside..it should have an effect like bloody slash where in it damages the user if you use the weapon art consistently..same thing with chaos blade from previous souls games or chikage from Bloodborne

[@RedAngelXV]

@@SoriethRisika You mean those dragon incantations that make your character completely stationary and very easy to attack so long as your opponent knows how to run diagonally towards you?🤨

[@peri5552]

I’ve never malded over it, it was easy to counter especially with parries, but I sort of remember that it procced blood crazy in PvP, which is a “phantom hit” problem rather than weapon problem. In my humble opinion, a balancing, some kind of nerf was necessary but Fromsoft made weapon completely obsolete. That’s not balancing, that’s just giving in to the Reddittors.

[@glatykoffi6672]

Rob won tournaments next to moonveil. Considering i-frames build up is NOT getting fixed, it was the fix that made sense. Maybe it was a bit much, but now it's much more appropriate with how easy to land it is.

[@lolwtfover9k]

It was legit overtuned prenerf in the context of invasions. The huge buildup made it an absolute menace of a blender, able to bleed you out of a dodge roll from a silly range. and

[@iridiculous8662]

This is not fun in a 3v1 or 2v1. If ghost procs got fixed a lot of the cheese wouldnt be an issue in invasions/duels

[@sekira4516]

@@iridiculous8662 it would however From Soft has run with basically the same engine for nigh on 20 years and with the same PvP netcode. Elden Ring is the most innovation they've done with their system to date, and it's still an outdated system. I adore the Souls games but yeah the engine and netcode are ancient af and don't measure up to modern expectations. So yeah the problem with fixing it is that it's so ingrained in the entire studio that they'd have to bring in new staff to help put together a new netcode system for their game engine... which is both costly and very time consuming. Would people even wait for the time such changes would require? They don't ever seem willing to with how much they bitched about Cyberpunk being delayed only for it to get released early to appease them and it was an unfinished mess.

[@RastaPirata]

"Especially with parries" the parry crowd is so braindead it hurts. Every thing is easy to counter with parries you braindead mong, the only reason people dont parry alot in this game is because the latency issue in this game is ridiculous

[@akechijubeimitsuhide]

I wish they had a blackflame variant of this. It would look cool for a Genichiro cosplay build.

[@lol101lol101lol10199]

And also a medium-ranged lightning damage AoW that you can put on a katana and use while jumping like a Way of Tomoe dex build.

[@lapatataconclase5464]

Closest thing you have is Godslayer's Greatsword

[@The_Novu]

If black flame blade lasted longer than a moth fart.

[@visualcipher8372]

blackflame rivers would look soo good

[@grimreefer213]

we really should’ve gotten a mortal blade weapon art, that would be cool

[@sigma20xx]

We need more arguments between Melina and Ranni in these segments. In a side note. I guess years of playing invasions in souls games prepared me for pvp in eldin ring. ROB was difficult to deal with at first, but light rolling and partying made it manageable. It was only a problem in 3v1 and close quarters 2v1 scenarios.

[@LGBTQHDTV_OLED_plus]

"how are you gonna face life when it kicks you in the balls when youre overwhelmed by pixels on a screen" genius

[@lukai5782]

“Oversized soaked tampon” I choked on my drink with that one. 😂

[@theris7935]

The most annoying part about RoB was that at least 80% of players I invaded used it before 1.06. It gets boring to see same braindead L2 spam over and over again

[@user-jr3zr2mp9c]

Kinda like current patch moonveil

[@LyllianaTV]

@@user-jr3zr2mp9c moonveil player are passive af usually backpedaling alot

[@kokokocho]

Invading an rob was always a fun opportunity to parry

[@user-jr3zr2mp9c]

@@LyllianaTV bc its the weapon of mages, but there are people who use it offensively and my god is it annoying

[@kixakii436]

Moonveil can sometimes be even worse than RoB. My experience with RoB as of now has been inconsistent as sometimes i can just dodge the whole weapon art and punish or other times it catches me while i am rolling. But i have some difficulty fighting against those that hold the stance for a long time because the longer they hold it the more difficulty i have to react as soon as they swing. Also since it is just a powered up Unsheath AoW it can catch you off guard pretty well if used right

[@miscJAMA]

I remember using RoB on it’s prime, and it was ridiculous how easy it was to win any invasion, I didn’t even had the proper stats to use it at it’s full power, just had 25 arcane and 55 strength of my Ooga-booga build. I knew that it was overpowered af but they didn’t have to literally destroy it with a lot of nerfs, it was literally way more easy to deal with instead of the double-seppuku spears

[@AlexofZippo]

I started playing Elden Ring pretty early on and freaking LOVED bloodhound’s fang. So I looked up builds using it and the first one I saw was a bleed build. NG+ I wanted to switch to the hand of malenia and really see what successive hits bleed looked like and was very pleasantly surprised. Then I looked up “best katanas” and saw ROB at the top of every list. So I tried it out and was very underwhelmed. Now I know why, lol.

[@Bayonettasguns]

My friend is totally a noob crutch guy. I beat his river of blood with endure on my great sword (so he can have a chance to kill me with corpse piler) and he yelled " I hate this game, all u have to do is be strong and tanky and you win." I didn't feed his anger but I thought it was hypocritical and smol minded since he's literally using a dex/arcane build he saw when the game first dropped.

[@Bayonettasguns]

6:58

[@specialnewb9821]

Being a katana main, back in the day I used to take advantage of crutch expectations. I would would bait a parry to r1 spam and then hit them with something else like a special or strong attack while they were stuck in the parry. I could do it over and over because they were stuck in the mentality that r1 spam is how the weapon was played

[@yikes6969]

Things that never happened

[@glatykoffi6672]

Educate him. Switch builds and make him realize he forgot about that little thing called skill.

[@qualiswilliams7403]

It's some truth to his complaint especially if you're a pure dex build...it's not many heavy dex swords and because of that your stamina doesn't have to be over 35 but in pvp becomes a slight issue especially when your opponent only swings to trade blows because well they're tanky lol I've run this strategy and it's completely reliable ...if I see a katana I automatically switch strategies to exchange blows when I'm a strength build because 9-10 I win the exchange 🤷🏽‍♂️ again it's just some truth to it but of course there are exceptions...I do think the katana needs a slight poise buff maybe ...it's weight to speed ratio doesn't add up in my opinion....slower than straights and curved swords tho a little heavier but also almost as heavy as a great sword but lacks the stance damage...either give two handed katana wielding more stance damage or increase the speed of the weapon...the math really doesn't math imo

[@0atslaughter]

Rivers of blood is sort of like pichu in smash ultimate. Base game it was a top tier pick but over time as updates kept rolling out for the game those options became less and less viable because of some patches and nerfs.

[@eliminoh_p7877]

I just used rivers of blood a couple months ago and it was still WAY op. Im not even great at souls games but still beat Malenia on my 3rd try in like 20 seconds.

[@tumultoustortellini]

Honestly, really fitting, though lucina is a better example. They were good in early meta when damage wasn't optimized, they were accidentally overtuned, and they seemingly had control over mid-range, but after they were reasonably scaled, they got severely outpaced by strictly better characters, their control over midrange stopped existing as people got better at neutral, and once people developed counterplay, lucina's counter-counterplay is pretty bad.

[@alexturnbackthearmy1907]

@@eliminoh_p7877 Weapon is not op. Bleed is however.

[@typo_3148]

Crying at PvE builds is so weird, you're playing against no one, the only one offended is the people that are unaffected by it

[@godjesus3232]

the logic of "rob isn't even that strong, you just need to memorize the entire moveset and git good at reading every opponent who uses it, change your armor, talismans, and weapons to give you as much bleed defense as possible, and powerstance weapons specifically to deal with it, but it isn't even that strong" lolll

[@OnlyWaifuYT]

I mean... do you really think that the moveset is hard to memorize?

[@godjesus3232]

​@@OnlyWaifuYT i'm not saying it was the most OP weapon when it was at its prime but it was undeniably broken. Dying to a stunlocked animation at 2k+ hp is the definition of stupid busted. By your own logic if it wasn't as big a problem as you made it out to be, this video wouldn't even exist.

[@M.S.G.95]

@@godjesus3232Best comment I've seen so far, it's amazing how genuinely stupid some Souls players are when faced with the obvious fact that RoB was insanely broken, it's like denying reality.

[@viktorthevictor6240]

@@M.S.G.95 The core of the problem is the imbalance between the ease of performing corpse piler, and the difficulty of countering it. Yes, it's a noob crutch that is easily countered in experienced pvp. I don't care. Yes, other weapons are far more broken in pve. I don't care. The problem is that an extremely powerful move that reaps a huge reward should be equally as difficult to pull off. A move that is easy to pull off should be just as easy to counter. But it isn't. For the user, it's L2. For the defender, it's difficult parry timing, or much worse (what if my build does not include a shield?). The ease of its use is not matched by the difficulty of its counter. It's imbalanced (was). It's the same old story every time, with every game, and the exact same roles are filled by divisions of each respective fanbase. The angry mob, the defenders who use the the strat, the high end competitive players being confused and begging the devs not to nerf it, and the people who just say git gud. Again, if it's easy to use it should be easy to counter, or it shouldn't be as rewarding to land.

[@T51B1]

Is it really that hard to know the moveset and use a shield? How dare they suggest a shield to counter something. It's all pointless anyways. pvp in the game is a joke and there is no point to it, and trying to balance weapons for pvp and pve at the same time is always a crapshoot.

[@SaturNo_O017]

I get why people hated RoB in PvP but why would anyone get angry at it in PvE?!?

[@OnlyWaifuYT]

Ego lol

[@zawarudo8991]

To be fair, it would be understandable if the game wasn't Elden Crutch, where there are dozens of ways to just trivialize PvE. Like, come on From, did ya think people would use max lvl summons/+10 Spirits to not cheese the entire game? Also Status-effects (rot/bleed) being unbalanced af for pve.

[@kylegonewild]

@@zawarudo8991 No, they didn't think that. They thought "we put all this cool shit in the game for the players to experiment with and utilize to beat it" and then a bunch of people with self-image issues decided that wasn't actually what they intended to do and they had somehow whoopsie-doodled their way into a game you can crack in half if you really want to, or you can play naked bonk-stick man. There have always been "crutches" in these games. None of them even have as punishing a death mechanic as Demon's Souls, the literal first game before the franchise was even popular. In none of the other games does a new player dying repeatedly make the game harder.

[@zawarudo8991]

@@kylegonewild >DS2 Has entered the chat

[@leeham6230]

​@@kylegonewild If you die in DS2 repeatedly, you lose max health up to 50%, and can only restore it by consuming a human effigy, or killing a boss.

[@Silver4Hire]

You forgot to mention the fact that old bleed proc through s still dealt damage. Anything above 200ms latency and you can Insta kill people by chaining corpsepiler from 2k+ hp with them having no way of fighting back.

[@cactusmann5542]

That was a good thing for roll spammers.

[@gramfero]

​@@cactusmann5542roll spammers? Simply stop r1 spamming, then suddenly they'll stop rolling

[@JohnDoe-og2bt]

​@@cactusmann5542Rolling is done in response. What do you spam for the same response to be so effective?

[@grimr3vp3r84]

I remember fighting one a month after release one combo flushed me .

[@DIsturbios1234]

This is onlywaifu you're watching. She leaves out information and only shares what's relevant to her argument

[@beachtrooper5884]

*Eleanora's poleblade laughing at the corner*

[@leyrua]

I'm a fan of the Carbot animation where the guy only pauses spamming RoB to dip it into a bucket of blood.

[@ZebraOnYourNose]

Thank you for the history lesson for us newer players who weren't here to witness all this madness

[@attackmanatee02]

Be thankful. It made pvp so boring and unoriginal because it's all people would use. Wasn't even its damage that was annoying, just the fact that it kept people from making interesting builds

[@donaldtrumplover2254]

I quit pvp on this game to go back to ds3 almost a year ago, you missed nothing. I don't know if its like this anymore but the game used to just feel like if you combined ds2 and ds1 combat systems with jumping. And that's not even mentioning that one shot kill curve sword thing that used to be around. Elden ring was a huge step back in pvp.

[@Fausto_4841]

This isn't madness, this is bleed.

[@ZebraOnYourNose]

@@Fausto_4841 Okay that was a good one 💀

[@animeturnMMD]

@@donaldtrumplover2254 If you want to play pvp go to play WoW or LoL or something, in Souls Games pvp is just and extra to give the game some more live and things to do not the main focus of the game, if from software starts to care too much about pvp and turns the thing into an Esports BS, it will only make the game worse.

[@carlosmayorca4642]

This was a fun video! I'm new to the game and I started as a samurai because I like them a lot, I was thinking about getting Moonveil or RoB; I have the Nagakiba, but I'm sticking with Uchigatana. Anyways, the video was great. You have a new subscriber!

[@kokorochacarero8003]

Everytime I saw an invader whiping out the Corpse Piller spam I knew all I had to do was to lure them towards the nearest cliff/elevator and just let them do the rest Fight the player, not the weapon

[@redspark5455]

Tbh that sword never was a problem, the real problem is the status proc even when you roll. If they fix the “ghost” status proc probably it could be a fun weapon

[@glatykoffi6672]

It's never getting fixed, so you can't leave it out.

[@ValeRay2]

Just latency

[@DogMechanic]

Agreed.

[@foxxo217]

​@@glatykoffi6672it was fixed in DS2

[@imadethistocomment4386]

It will not be "fixed" so you must take the weapon as is and balance it WITH the ghost status proc. OK So the question is HOW to do that.

[@Eternal_Placidity]

It was extremely strong in pve, especially on a dedicated build. But from my experience it was never a huge deal in pvp. The only time I remember having a problem with it was when the space was limited. Fromsoft just went full clown mode and over-nerfed the weapon instead of addressing real problems like phantom hits.

[@the98themperoroftheholybri33]

Just use bloodhound fang, it's 3rd ash of war move can phase through it's attack, then repeated light attacks will stagger them unless they roll away

[@dragonwings206]

Sure learning to counter it wasn't the worst or anything but if you had the AUDACITY to invade below RL100 every single invasion had 2 bullgoat RoB summons and even if you rolled it latency would inevitably roll cancel you with bleed resulting in die which was VERY not fun. It also didn't help that this was in the early stage of ER pvp where i thought it wouldn't be a crime to run a 0 poise drip build

[@sentientdogma1206]

Cry harder

[@bilowik123]

It was very oppressive in ganks, much worse than the moonveil bc of its wide range and that if it bled you out of a roll you’d be guaranteed to get blendered to death from the gank. Invasions pre-rob nerf were miserable if it was a 1v3 and at least one of them had RoB, which was the case 90% of the time back then. Even going in on a fully clean opening risked getting bled out of roll as you retreated by corpse pilier and getting blendered from there. Basically required maxing your bleed resistance and even then it was still a huge risk.

[@Helleuphoria]

This. I just finished commenting but I'm glad I found a comment with a sensible rebuttle to the videos' arguement.

[@Eo-ms3kw]

I always considered Moonveil much more dangerous in ganks than RoB for having significantly higher range and being much faster.

[@rengokiri]

@@Eo-ms3kwI think they were both dangerous in there own ways. RoB had the wide sweeping range and bleed proc. Moonveil had such high initial damage and the ability to delay the unsheath by keeping it sheathed, along with how fast the recovery is for moonveil. That’s still my personal issue with moonveil, it feels unpunishable, but maybe I’ve been dealing with it the wrong way.

[@kuroyuuki7979]

Tbf bleed status back then broken. And what im hear that status already got change

[@V01DShinigami]

I've been avoiding using ROB even after it got nerfed into oblivion even though its a really cool looking weapon. the thing I've noticed is people forget it's a katana not it's weapon art, but even if I used the ENTIRE moveset without using the AOW I'd probably still get hate mail for it

[@baeber]

I've been pointed down even without using the ash yeah people don't like the weapon

[@glatykoffi6672]

@@baeber It's because they are ignorant bandwagonners, nothing more.

[@REvoLverj98]

And you deserve the hatemail. If you spam RoB, you're bad at the game. If you use RoB but never the AoW, you're just dumb and using a blunt object as a weapon. Either one, it's not great optics for you as a player

[@3limin8ted89]

@@baebergot ganked to many times by it, the mental scars wont go away

[@bluevines1303]

Why does everyone hate katanas in the souls community on all my dex builds I usually go duel spears or ugichtana

[@joshs3775]

I hate the argument that because you can counter something it can't be broken. Not every build uses a parrying shield. If i need to swap builds to counter a weapon art then something needs adjusted

[@squirrellordsgaming2772]

Very good take. I play a space game, very often and some of the space ships and weapons get changed around in the meta, and people lose their minds instead of learning new tactics and flight patterns. Different game same problem.

[@bubbajoe117]

@1:03 to explain this a bit from someone that’s been playing souls PvP since DS1 went free with gold in 2014, the stigma around katanas started because of how overtuned the weapons overall speed and damage was, hitting you for damage numbers on base attack that were only slightly off from greatsword class weapons, with swing speeds only slightly slower than a DMB Falchion, and had running attacks that were overall better and faster than any spear in the game. Mashing the R1 button was dangerous for you but the initial first hit came out so quick, you could swing it and roll back before the sound effect for hitting the ground even fully played. Come to think of it, I think the only game in the franchise that didn’t have katanas predominately in the meta was Dark Souls 3. Even Bloodborne found itself plagued by them with Rakuyo blenders.

[@sekira4516]

I forgot Bloodborne *had* a PvP environment in it's heyday, it was always the Co-op game to me.

[@AstralLaVista]

Didn't DS3 become Bonk stick meta instead though?😅

[@Adam-tu1qx]

Its issue was too much damage, and it was brought down to reasonable damage... but damn near every other ash of war still does too much damage.

[@REvoLverj98]

That's the main issue with Elden Ring PvP. With Dark Souls 2 and 3 (not counting DS1 because it's all backstab fishing) you actually have to learn the neutral game, R1s, R2s, blocks, etc. Elden Ring PvP can be summed up as "spam weapon arts: the game" because 90% of all ashes of wars are way overturned, be it with range, accuracy, or damage

[@Deoxippus]

@@REvoLverj98 DS1 was all neutral. Mess up in neutral, eat a bs. High level gameplay was lots of footsies to find opportunities to score hits while still playing to avoid or get a bs. Often no backstabs would happen, but they still shaped the fight.

[@andrewabrams1535]

Someone is butt hurt 😂

[@Excaliwolf2]

It's kinda funny hearing about it. Cause after a certain point, you just learn to roll through the stuff and not get hit. But it's painful to go against in a Gank, but a gank is usually a bunch of BS anyways. I abused Unendurable Frenzy in tight areas, Vyke's Spear's AoW and all that. Maddening I know.

[@yulfine1688]

It wasn't the actual weapon it was the fact bleed would proc through rolls and deal damage which also meant it stuns you. Now at least it only procs and stuns but shouldn't do damage do you if you roll through. If they fixed their netcode it wouldn't be an issue in the first place

[@Cerran032]

If I remember correctly, the Bloody Helice AoW (Dynast’s Finesse) was extremely useful for dealing with corpse piler.

[@TRIC4pitator]

There's much worse, but that doesn't make it any less obnoxious or annoying

[@hamonoverdrive6111]

Wdym it's so easy to dodge

[@TRIC4pitator]

@@hamonoverdrive6111 yeah , but phantom status effects

[@hamonoverdrive6111]

@@TRIC4pitator you can dodge bleed proc

[@TRIC4pitator]

@@hamonoverdrive6111 what do you mean?

[@glatykoffi6672]

@@TRIC4pitator You can negate the bleed proc damage if you happen to roll, but what he doesn't understand is that it still stuns you and that can lead to death by creating combos out of thin air. That's ignoring how it can just proc when actually getting hit once, even if you dodged the 5 attacks before.

[@joelofjudah9144]

If you see someone coming at you with this thing. You can safely predict what they are going to do.

[@PseudoNym13]

Parry bait

[@TheAdventGamer]

But what if they come at you with that weapon and never once use Corpse Piler. Making you think that they will spam the move so you are prepared to counter it but they never do so as to get into your blind spot in your defense? Granted that's probably overthinking on my part.

[@Grimnoire]

It's the most obvious thing to do with such a well known weapon, the smart thing to do would be to unequip it at the last second and replace it with an actually good weapon, then equipping it once more as if nothing happened. Or, better yet, using it with a full int build, making the enemy think you re going in for a melee when in actuality you are unable to use it anyway.

[@TheAdventGamer]

@@Grimnoire Basically, use it to play mind games with your opponent.

[@user-jr3zr2mp9c]

​@@TheAdventGamertwo handed katanas are bad in 1v1

[@larsbohmer6319]

I personally learned to work around the lag from invasions since I wasn't playing with an active Shield at that Time... I just used that one moment to quickly use Gavel of Haima from behind and they were flat on their Butts

[@BuildFly]

The outro speech was incredible

[@Thereisnogreatersword]

"They just deemed it unfair, complained on reddit, and moved on" *narrator voice* they did not move on

[@OnlyWaifuYT]

LMAO

[@ToshiroKoji]

Some basic math and general things that happen to RoB: Corpse Piler -25% damage then buffed by 10% meaning that its only about 88% its original damage, General Status decrease and separated Corpse piler hit box meaning you only get about 80% status build up from original at close range only. Nagakiba double slash occult/Quailty Bloodflame infuse does about the same Damage and status buildup as Corse Piler *Close range* while having more general range, build diversity, for 1/4 the FP cost since double slash is about 10 fp and Corpse Piler is around 40 fp.

[@yoshitsune5691]

Love the fighting game analogy, funny thing is, this same kinda thing is happening in sf6 with drive rush and modern controls.

[@Squidlowmhm]

Good video keep it up and what’s the music at 7:30

[@fullfildreamz]

It really is a shame. I never even used RoB but I still feel bad that it got nerfed so hard. In regards to the delusions about it being OP... I think that counts for a lot of stuff. People are generally clueless when it comes to what is good, not understanding the utmost importance of unpredictability due to how strong dodge roll is. One example would be people's perception of magic in PvP. If you listen to redditors, you'd think it's the most OP and easy to play thing in the game. But if you check tournament rules and outcomes and the perception of top tier players who actuallly were good at sorcery (like the best ER player omega), you'll realize it hasn't been meta since slicer nerf, and it is one of the highest skill playstyles. Careful, don't share this with redditors, their head might explode from overwhelming amounts of cognitive dissonance.

[@OnlyWaifuYT]

You share this on reddit they'll send a SWAT team composed of overweight neckbeards that smell like onions and doritos

[@user-jr3zr2mp9c]

Im sure people saying magic is pvp easy mode strictly refer to ganks. Its almost a meme at this point the image of a lonely mage spamming stars of ruin and rolling 56 times whenever someone gets closr

[@criminal_6877]

Low skill floor high skill ceiling

[@_You_Are_Not_Him_]

I used it once in invasions pre nerf and it just decimated everything 💀

[@Dr.AvenVon]

"But if you check tournament rules and outcomes and the perception of top tier players" the wast majority of fans of every single game that exists don't cares about top players. the wast majority plays games for fun and don't want to become the bestest player there ever was in this game. like, maybe 1% of all elden ring players really ever tried a tournament, even less play those regulary. it doesn't really matter if top tier players think a weapons isn't that strong, if the weapon causes such a huge amount of problems for the average player.

[@ColourizeTheStreets]

I never hated the weapon, i always thought the design was cool. However, what I hated about it was how many times I encountered it during the early days of release. It felt like every second or third opponent would use it. Thats why I think it was so hated, because it was so common. It began to strip you of many exciting possible match ups with unique builds and thus PvP started to feel repetitive. Like a catchy song that gets played too much, eventually you get sick of it and start hating it, despite that its actually a good song. I also always struggled with fighting RoB, I have never been good at parrying and am much better at dodging, so i never use shields and prefer longer weapons and keeping my opponent at a distance (SPears, Halberds, greatswords, etc). Despite being good at dodging, the bleed build up would always get me while i rolled, so even though Corpse Piler rarely directly hit me, it would eventually build up blood loss and stagger me leaving me open for the finishing combo. Moonveil is op too, but at least you could properly dodge it with good timing/awareness. I also believe that a lack of bleed based ashes of war led to RoB's rise. Ashes of War are cool and fun to use, Bleed is a cool status and is going to popular, however, the bleed spells arent good in PvP, and the blood projectile ashes of war all deal damage to you, but RoB doesnt making it a standout choice of weapon for bleed builds. I think it was poor design by From soft, they give you dozens of magic damage sorceries, but only a select few bleed spells. They just didnt have a diverse pool of spells and AoW for bleed when compared to other damage types. The fewer good options you have for build types the more likely players will overuse the best ones. I hope Shadow of the Erdtree gives us more bleed spells and AoW's. More frozen lightning options, more black flame options, more madness weapons and or AoW's, and Holy damage spells are needed as well. Maybe a couple new fire spells and AoW's too. And maybe a couple other things i Missed :)

[@mikebell117]

Side note. The FFX soundtrack in the background triggered some awesome nostalgia.

[@LaNoches]

That bone crackling every time that hand comes up, gives me the shivers Good vid tho, love the Ranni roleplay

[@somedudewithakeyboard5388]

My only issue with Rivers of Blood(after getting over the whole getting one shot deal the first few times I died to it) was that landing a parry and riposte in an invasion isn't exactly the easiest thing, especially since during its heyday, ROB users almost always had someone else spamming pre-nerf stars of Ruin and decimating your HP while going for the ROB parry. I cannot begin to describe how thankful I am that the game's invasion balancing has actually improved since the days of pre 1.06

[@wolfcraftwar7211]

wow damn, i love how you explain this. to be honest, i'm a new player, and at the time i had heard the debate about the RoB being broken or disgusting or something like that. then I learned about the bleed nerfs and stuff here, and until today I didn't understand if the RoB was still a valid or broken weapon. congratulations, nice video and excellent explanation (also funny.)

[@Mugiwara2k]

That music starting at 1:18, what is that from? It’s on the tip of my brain and it’s driving me crazy.

[@OnlyWaifuYT]

Final Fantasy X - Calm Before the Storm

[@mj_out]

The whole thing about "learn to deal with it" would be no problem, if you could easily create a dummy for training purposes with low damage output where you could learn the timing for dodging or parrying. But in most cases you face it and die and you barely have a idea how to approach this attack. "How to..." videos are a pretty good solution for it but ingame there are little possibilities to practice against things like that.

[@Imdippinout]

Thank you for mentioning the split fire damage on the PVE side. It's a god send on low level runs.

[@lordvalinar774]

I'm still sad about Flame of the Redmanes... it was just sitting there not hurting anybody with its shitty fire damage and purely PvE poise breaker - and yet for some reason people wanted it nerfed (instead of .. you know .. using another ash of war? Like Flaming Strike?) and now both its damage AND stance damage both suck 😭

[@leme686]

Still not sure why that got gutted in the first place. It was a purely PvE ash afaik..

[@pellobikandiortega3829]

DEFINITELY. I just had made a build inspired in vaati using thay aow to break poise, and when I finally got it together it got nerfed the following day. It was so frustrating

[@Nobody32990]

It's the same issue with Rob. Weapon/aow is not a problem, the problem is mechanical flaw. In case of RoB it's phantom status build up and with FoR it's lingering hitboxes.

[@glatykoffi6672]

No one complained about it, it's fromsoft that nerf things in pve on their own accord, sometimes for no good reasons like for COLOSSALS getting a poise damage nerf... they don't think too much about it.

[@Imdippinout]

Fromsoft just mad that their cool bosses got smoked. Sort of like how you can't parry final bosses anymore presumably because Gwyn got clowned on by even first time players.

[@ChadZLumenarcus]

Your videos are informative and Brilliant and fantastically narrated.

[@blade6357]

I wonder when people will realize that you can parry ROB just like any other katana if you get in their face. Yes it’s an annoying weapon but it I can be dealt with.

[@yulfine1688]

Not every play parries or can parry, latency for pc especially has outright ruined most of pvp it's so bad, forcing players to work around garbage netcode that if they fixed would correct most of the issues with things like status or parry timing etc and not look like bullshit half the time because the game doesn't even know what to call when it's sending information between the clients and server..

[@RaidenKaiser]

BTW I actually would place RoB in the same tier as Vyke's spear. Yeah Vyke's spear takes alot more skill to use but the mindset behind building for for Vyke's spear and the strategy is the same exploit lag to inflict ailment to stun but unlike RoB if you can get good at its far more evil to go against because the stun time of madness is ridiculous and you're stealing fp. I don't use either weapons tho I'm mostly theorycrafting in this post I get bored of using ailment weapons.

[@ZaddyGohan]

My main problem with the weapon is when you invade and someone has 2 max lvl phantoms wearing bull goat’s armor, one spamming RoB while the other spams stars of ruin and the host t-bags you! Miyazaki RUINED invasions. There is also the problem of latency buildup and procing bleed, which almost no amount of “adapting” can combat. However, I will say that it’s easy in 1v1 to counter, if the user is just brain dead spamming L2 like most

[@ColdNorth0628]

Miyazaki did ruin invasions, he wanted invaders to be a roaming boss or obstacle but then goes back on his words and makes them a push over with how lacking online was in terms of actually making a fight...well a fight. There was no 3v3 like ds3 and that was a step back.

[@PCDisciple]

Your Melina voice is really nice too. Bless the algorithm

[@Apexwolf117]

In DS1 my main weapon was Chaos Blade. Every Souls game I've always used katana. RoB was OP but you put in someone's hands that has 5k+ hours in Souls games it was downright god tier. I miss it :(

[@ColdNorth0628]

7:00 The main issue will always be the fact that both moon-Veil and rivers in my honest opinion deserved to be tuned down for consistency or pushed even further into the games end game. You can not complain if it was end game cause IT IS END GAME. The fact that Moonveil is as early as you can get had people basically steamroll away the challenge and rely on without thought. And then slap in a even later on version for arcane or have someone drop it for them at plus zero and boom. Your brain shuts off and you never have to worry.

[@Nobody32990]

That's open world for you. You won't be able to tunnel players to n o t get items early, player freedom is both advantage and disadvantage. However, there is in case of moonveil at least, easy fix. Just buff the boss it drops from.

[@ColdNorth0628]

@@Nobody32990 True. That is the downside. Which is why stuff like leveled items existed in games before elden ring where you could not just stomp through the single player experience. But the damage is done. I find the bastards stars more worthwhile in mage aesthetic because day 1 was horrendous in terms of pvp.

[@borge4256]

This AI voice is so good its scary

[@lengskeng3831]

its ai?

[@Walking.L]

@@lengskeng3831doesn’t sound like it to me

[@dyesax]

​@@Walking.Lit's in the description

[@pockethugoodss]

I never learned the parry frames from it only learned the spacing and that shit was like a football field

[@Rawkabilly57]

ROB is definitely ONE of the most hated weapons in gaming history. However... there's no way it's more hated than "the noob tube" in CODMW2, or "Akimbo shotguns" from that game onwards.

[@KRIMZONMEKANISM]

This whole video and its message reminds me of a pure RL110 Dex Samurai build I did a while ago. It was on the Raya Lucaria pvp spot (before the colosseum update). I used only a Keen Uchigatana with Sheathe. I played against a meta wizard build wielding a pre-patch Moonveil and spamming pre-patch Stars of Ruin. Two times I played against him, and both times he beat me with Stars of Ruin spam, he used the Moonveil a bit, but never landed a hit. Then, a final fight took place, and for some reason he didn't use Stars of Ruin. He probably got bored and decided to use his Moonveil... He didn't even land a single hit on me. I had a flawless victory, lmao. This dude had, by all accounts, the superior weapon in terms of both damage and range, it had the same moveset as my Uchi. But. Because he had "brainrot" from spamming a powerful weapon art and a busted spell everytime he engaged in pvp, he never actually learned timing, baiting or anything else.

[@GETNAKD]

Ranni and Melina's AI voices are becoming natural too much, it scares me. :O

[@boonana1184]

Wait, could you parry the corpse piler? Like is it only the RoB blade itself you can parry while the ash of war is going off, or can you also parry the extended range blood slash?

[@RepellentJeff]

Your use of sound effects cracks me up. 😂

[@HerraHissi]

The most annoying part about RoB wasn't necessarily brain dead gameplay but oversaturation. Even in PvE you could encounter it during Great Jar npcs as it pulls loadouts from real players. At the height of the madness 2/3 phantoms were using it and it my opinion is that it ruined the encounter.

[@vonbon212]

Still a fun weapon to use 👍 Looking forward to rivers of cold in the dlc

[@defalttheloner]

Oceans of Souls when?

[@redneck13265]

I recently got elden ring and for the great jar challenge i still saw it quite a bit along with some other weapons that still outclass it and i was getting frustrated and tried different things but one of the things i didnt try was parrying because im still on my first run and i am going for a build i came up with on the fly as i progressed. as someone who had heard a little of it but didnt experience fighting it even with a npc being in control it is a daunting weapon right now if you dont understand how to counter it or other weapons.

[@shatteredskullstudios]

Even when I first started playing and was using a greatsword I never had trouble against RoB unless I missed my dodges or got too aggro with my attacks

[@DaSharkCraftMC]

While I understand RoB is easy to parry, where there many other ways to counter it at the time? With medium-high latency, it felt painful to deal with the phantom hits and not everyone was (and still are) comfortable with hard swapping to golden parry. Genuine question btw.

[@OnlyWaifuYT]

High poise, high robustness and hard hitting setups were able to do the trick just fine.

[@Nobody32990]

Stalwart horn +1 and bulbs. There is no solution to running into high latency tho.

[@The_Ham_Sandwich]

I dont think it was overnerfed, it just happens to sit at a reasonable place in the weapon selection available. its not long enough nor can have better/versatile ashes and infusion to compete with the nagakiba and there isn't something special about it, like the frayed blade having animation cancels with its unique WA in DS3. it was an absurdly overtuned DPS stick which was carried by the games handling of phantom hits even further than it deserved (especially with how much stronger status is in the game compared to previous installments).

[@alessandromasini7697]

Little John Cena with Bullgoat and RoB fucking killed me

[@alejandroindustrial5151]

Great video! You should tell your opinion when Armored core comes out.

[@josephcola9662]

I personally have 2 problems with RoB. The first is ghost hits building status, which is honestly a problem with all status weapons, and the second is the sheer *quantity* of players who still use it today, of which a near entirety's entire "strategy" in PVP begins and ends with "spam corpse piler until one of us dies." It stopped being funny after the 20th invasion like that. It stopped being sad after the 50th. It stopped being infuriating sometime after the 100th. I've lost count by this point, but I'm assuming the number of RoB users I've seen in entirely separate invasions is well over 500. At this point all I feel when I see yet another guy who does his best to play L2-den Ring with RoB, a white mask, Mohg-lester's Exultation, and two butt-buddies (who may or may not also be using the exact same setup) to cover his complete lack of skill is outright disgust, disdain, and genuine hatred at how much of a laggy mess the online of this game is.

[@Fausto_4841]

Seethe harder. I still use RoB if I play elden ring, but I don't really use the corpse piler, I like the jumping and crouching L1. I don't play pvp or invade so if u see me it's on you.

[@pinkynoise5380]

Even if what you said is true I’m still happy to not see ROB so much since the nerf. Right now I see a lot of various build in pvp and that make me happy. I guess I’m a simple man.

[@YONE.MIE.]

I’m new and just started my first play thru. Thanks for this video :-)

[@Cosmic-Sorceress-17]

My biggest gripe with Rivers was more the damage and stun than anything else: it was too high at launch and now I really have no issue with it aside from mild annoyance. Katanas have always been a thorn in my side, but Rivers is the least ridiculous of the meta ones. Nagakiba, Moonveil, and Hand of Melania are far, far worse in my mind. There are definitely aspects of PvP I need to improve on, especially since I play a mage the most: parrying would save my a lot of heartache if I can get the timings down. Actually managed to get the second hit on two handed claymore down pretty well: block the first attack, parry the second. I think magic gets the most amount of unreasonable hate in the game: with Stars of Ruin nerfed, most spells are incredibly easy to dodge by simply sprinting to the side and yet people still treat mages like anathema. The process of Rivers being hated explains a lot about what's gotten people hating magic so much when it's far from PvP's worst problem.

[@randomnothingness6557]

RoB was always the normie cannon, but everyone forgot about the truly busted katana; the wakizashi with double slash.

[@aclevername7613]

Bleed is inheritly a borderline busted status effect in honesty. Also I am not bothered by bleed but if bleed is native to a weapon it's base attack should be low.

[@unholybiscut6743]

When ER started I was not confident in my parries compared to DS3. So what did I do to counter RoB? Used Bloody Helice for it's unique Ash of War which gave s, and with Spear Talisman, got free counterhit damage with an extra 8%. Free 1k+ damage

[@Cthulhu357]

Funny red sword looks like lightsaber

[@uncle1839]

RoB got nerfed too much while Moonveil stayed as OP as it was....

[@lastrider9188]

I always thought rivers was a mid weapon and easy to counter the problem i had with it was how busted it was in ganking and how free it was to get killed by three phantoms with rivers

[@Terminalsanity]

The problem with RoB was a unique combo of power, range, and ease of use. Skilless noobs forced skilled users to come up with skilled counters to RoB that required at least partial build dedication. It literally let noobs shape the PVP meta.

[@2.hyeon_tak.17]

"It's just pixels on a screen bro" with that voice is so unexpectedly hilarious lmfao

[@ethangnasher3848]

Imma bury the light deep within until i have even forgotten my name.

[@StanleyG23]

The thing about Rivers of Blood is that it usually gets outclassed by weapons like Mohgwyn's Sacred Spear, the Blasphemous Blade, the Death's Poker and even the Dark Moon Greatsword these days.

[@TheAdventGamer]

Hm, interesting video. Basically it's not the weapon but rather the player behind it. Honestly the topic of countering Rivers of Blood reminded me of Metroid Dread's Raven Beak fight. He smashed my face into the pavement a lot but every defeat I learned from and I got closer and closer until finally I learned his moves and how to counter them (some I had to be told like his generate a freaking Sun could be countered with a Power Bomb). Honestly speaking I prefer Moonveil over Rivers of Blood on the coolness scale. I like Katanas and I like Moon magic.

[@OnlyWaifuYT]

Yeah, tbh Moonveil is more fun to me.

[@glatykoffi6672]

The weapon attract and keep the user. It's the weapon.

[@albertchen2020]

I find the easiest way to deal with River of Blood is to just roll away and use a crossbow since they are locked in and can't dodge during the Cospe Piler animation.

[@Spycrafter-G-101]

I'm questioning how many bones or cracks on those joints you've done

[@issatsumo5054]

I had a duel with a friend of mine who used rob, and this was before the rob nerf. I got destroyed a couple of times, so I went through my inventory and put on equipment that increases my robustness and equipped a bloody helice and fingerprint shield with the Greatshield talisman, and used a crimson whorl bubble. And the strategy was to tank bleed and start shield poking him. His rob managed to almost kills me every time but I managed to endure his attacks until he ran out of fp. I put him in a situation where he has to panic roll to heal and regain fp every time he spammed that move. And I just poke him to death every time. He just gave up and I took his W. He never wanted to duel me again, there’s always gonna be counters for these kind of things.

[@lastboss2418]

Thats because ur friend is a nuub 😂 He just need to use thunder dragon bolt blessing for body buff.. U are never going to win.. Theres many ways to counter rob as much as shield poker.. Bhs with 2bleed pike is the one that 1st reign the game.. Despite all of that comunity dislike rob the most proof they are mostly nuub following memes

[@abaddon130]

​@@lastboss2418it seems you're one of those sweaty rivers user lmao

[@lastboss2418]

@@abaddon130 ah the memes again 😂

[@lastboss2418]

@@abaddon130 that would make waifu one of those sweaty rob no? 😂😃 Yet all his stream mostly about spaming poke weapon 🤡 either claw or trusting sword

[@lastboss2418]

@@abaddon130 nuub! 😂🤡

[@D.Cooley05]

My first build was a Rivers and Moonveil dual wield

[@SkitLegoIdeaTheory]

Buddy, my first and current playthrough I literally made Jetstream Sam. Where do I find the bloody weapon

[@1Meepman]

I feel like even if you can't parry, a polearm such as the pike or lance could out range the ash. Worst case you win the trade because the r1s do more per hit than each little hit of the ash.

[@BSJINTHEHOUSE420]

The same PvErs using ROB are now using Moonveil. The cycle continues. Truly a Dark Souls lore moment.

[@Nobody32990]

Which is also easy to counter.

[@Sky_angel98]

How did the creator get that blue ghost thing version of their character? I dont know how to explain it

[@Attaxalotl]

Enola Gay was the name of the bomber, and also the mother of one of the airmen (I think the pilot?)

[@snipercomrade3059]

I don't play pvp at all, but I was wondering, perhaps the hate comes from people getting tired of having to go against RoB rather than not being able to figure out a tactic against its ash of war. The things you mentioned make sense to me, parrying the weapon or using heavy armour are effective; but I guess people wanted to interact with different builds. I play pve and while RoB was strong I noticed that the ash of war takes time to fully land and some enemies just counter it by being immune to blood loss or fire, so having an ash of war such as lion's claw or giant hunt was much more effective overall. It's also fun launching enemies up into the air lol. I do wish the hate against RoB wasn't so severe because the sledgehammer nerfs really do feel unnecessary as Fromsoft tends to nuke their heavily criticized items. Flame of the Redmanes for instance, I found its 40 poise damage too high but now they reduced it to like 10 or something and it's way too weak now. I wish they would playtest their balancing patches a bit more :/