A Secret Parrying Technique?
The absurd defensive performance that casually parried every single attack no matter how fiercely it came.
A health bar that vanished in a single blow even though it had clearly been over ninety percent.
It was like everyone else was flailing around with cold weapons while one person alone wore a stab vest and fired an anti-tank cannon.
The futility and powerlessness that came from that.
Ruru had been that kind of character from the moment she was born.
When played perfectly, dealing with her was practically impossible.
The game ended in a smooth victory just like that.
The enemy team, having lost all motivation, surrendered at fifteen minutes sharp.
But the viewers didn’t seem to care about the win at all.
HurienHaneul asked in an extremely excited voice.
“Since the game’s over, I’m going to ask some real questions now. I have way too many things I’m genuinely curious about.”
…Yes? …Ah. Yes, of course, Hurien-nim.
“That dagger you threw from behind earlier—how did you block it?”
…Ah, that? It was… pretty obvious, wasn’t it?
“Obvious…?”
…Yes. Stealth lasts three seconds. The opponent probably realized I might die from the bleed, so instead of attacking from the front they moved behind me. Because the dagger was on cooldown.
And as everyone knows, when you use the rope dagger to dash in and pull the blade, the stealth duration and cooldown start at the same time, right? I just calculated that. I realized they were behind me because three seconds had passed and they still weren’t visible from the front, so I turned around.
“……Ah, right. Well, predicting that much is possible, but… no, even predicting it and acting on it is already amazing. Anyway. How did you parry it? From what I remember, the dagger was already flying by the time you turned. Did you predict the dagger’s timing too?”
……Um. I just… saw the blade coming and blocked it……?
“……Yes……?”
“Then, did you also react to and block Seina’s ultimate?”
The first one, yes. The second one… was a bit of a mind game.
“……….”
‘From less than three meters away? That fast Seina ult? You reacted and blocked it?’
…What kind of monster is this?
HurienHaneul was at a complete loss for words.
The chat window was flooded with question marks and disbelief, mirroring his own feelings.
He barely pulled himself together and asked another question.
“And your parry success rate has been ridiculous the whole time. How do you do it?”
…You just watch the motion coming in, time it right, and block… that’s it.
The answer sounded like it was asking why he would even ask something so obvious.
You could even sense a hint of confusion, as if she couldn’t understand why anyone would ask such a question.
“……Ah. I see.”
“…Oh, right. When you parried Seina’s second ultimate, you immediately went into the Annihilation Spear motion. How did you do that? The spear-twirling motion from the parry was almost invisible.”
Hmm……. I wrote about this in more detail in the Ruru guide I posted on the CeltOH gallery a while ago.
Ruru’s Fluidity skill can be canceled into a basic attack during the cast. And the basic attack can be forcibly canceled into Annihilation Spear.
So parry, basic attack, then the moment the pre-motion appears, immediately Annihilation Spear. If you input that combo quickly, you can do what you just saw.
“…Whoa. That’s an incredibly sweet tip. All you Ruru mains out there, are you taking notes? You’d better remember this.”
You can only safely force damage in that kind of situation by using this. Annihilation Spear has a pretty long wind-up, after all.
“Yes, that’s right. Annihilation Spear does have quite a noticeable delay. There are so many memes of Ruru dying while charging it that they number in the dozens.”
Yes. That’s correct. There is an eighty percent damage reduction while gathering energy, but it’s still the most vulnerable timing for Ruru.
“So in that last situation, you canceled the motion the instant the parry succeeded?”
Yes. That’s right.
“……That’s incredible. It looked like the motion canceled almost at the same time as the parry.”
Because I timed it with prediction. I canceled the motion while anticipating the timing of the incoming attack. If the enemy assassin had used their ultimate even a little later, I would have died.
“……The more I hear, the more amazed I am.”
“Ah, and you’ve been doing really well with the thrust mind games the whole time. Any tips?”
It’s safe to say that Ruru’s only direct damage option is basically Heaven-Piercing Strike—in other words, the thrust attack. Even if you block Annihilation Spear, the pressure point damage still goes through. So the opponent has no choice but to use their basic survival skill on the thrust. You just have to use that well.
“There you have it, everyone. Ruru doesn’t normally use basic attacks on enemy heroes very often. When facing Ruru, most people only pay attention to that final thrust. For guard champions, if you can block just that, you can immediately counter and look for a kill. For evasion champions, you can dodge to prevent Ruru from stacking. The master says she makes good use of that psychology.”
Thud!
The next game was grabbed immediately.
Once again, the furry wheel slayer’s Ruru was picked in a flash.
This time the pick window was quiet.
No one complained about the Ruru pick like in the previous game.
Dong—dong—dong.
The grand countdown ended.
And the game began.
Everyone was filled with anticipation.
Anyone who had seen that absurd play just now couldn’t possibly hide their swelling expectations.
As if to prove it, the viewer count hadn’t dropped at all.
It was actually climbing—rising by about twenty people every ten seconds.
The moment the screen brightened and the white dove flying over the vast battlefield vanished in an instant—
The viewer count had already approached twenty thousand.
The furry wheel slayer’s gameplay had spread across various communities in the blink of an eye and was drawing in countless people.
Low win rate.
Low pick rate.
Terribly clunky controls.
Ruru had been forcibly given nothing but damage buffs to compensate for those flaws.
Nearly double the damage compared to her initial release.
As a result, she now possessed destructive power that felt like punching holes through people with a 20mm anti-materiel rifle.
A character granted absurdly high “spear” damage but rendered unusable due to structural flaws—an unfortunate soul.
And that was exactly the kind of element that strongly stimulated the romanticism of many male players.
Because of that one-hit fantasy, there were still tons of users in the deep sea tiers who spammed nothing but Ruru.
On top of that, she was a cute smiling girl, so the structure inevitably led to the mass production of toxic Ruru fans.
The innocent users of the deep sea tiers were screaming in agony at the vicious Ruru fans again today.
But separate from that, Ruru was still a character loved by countless players.
Even three years after release, she held the undisputed number one spot in popularity rankings.
People simply didn’t want to meet her in solo queue, but they held a very positive view of the character Ruru herself.
Her adorable design, the little devilish look she got when entering Insolence, and yet her bright smiling face and cheerful yet gentle personality in normal times.
She was simply impossible to hate.
That was why so many fan arts were still being made.
If you frequently visited art communities like Pixiv, even people who didn’t know Celt of Heroes would recognize her face—Ruru was that popular.
Her popularity was so great that she had proudly taken the main cover spot, displacing the original main cover character, the Holy Knight—Kriel.
However, Ruru hadn’t always been this popular from the start.
There was a famous CeltOH saying: “Ruru’s performance is inversely proportional to her popularity.”
The Ruru from her initial release.
The so-called—
“That era” Ruru.