Threaded Analysis of the Milquetoast Dissection
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Title: Ban-Waiting Before Launching Today’s Hairball Thread – Full In-Depth Analysis
I dove into every single custom game from the past few days where Hairball Slayer clocked in nearly a hundred matches and left replays. Why bother? Because among all the Ruru players out there, only this one guy plays Ruru with insane purity. I’ll admit it – I’ve always believed it, and you won’t sway me. Sure, others say they’re good at Ruru too, but I see it differently. To me it’s more “they just know how to play Celt of Heroes overall.” If you’re a pure Ruru main, you’ll know exactly what I mean. Looking at replays, most Challenger Ruru players win with pure strategy and object control rather than flashy Ruru-specific plays. That’s why I’m convinced pure Ruru mastery gives Hairball Slayer the edge over even top-tier Challengers. Anyway, enough of that. Today’s biggest event was the Challenge Go-ro showdown, so let’s break it down. (Picture of the masked Challenge Go-ro pick.)
Go-ro picked the swordsman character. Brand-new, only four days old and already cooking. He uses three swords total, each packing its own three unique skills. He swaps the short one, Wakizashi, and the mid one, Tado, on the fly to unleash six different moves before the ultimate. That pulls out a massive stance for fifteen seconds and fires the ultimate skill. Classic new-character kit. The skillset and numbers are on another planet. Of course, hotfix nerfs hit him hard this morning, but he’s still sharp as a tack. Today’s pick rate sits at 35.7 percent and win rate at 61.8. That’s elite territory. Because of the steep learning curve, people who dodge his peak are rare – his ceiling is basically touching the sky. Everyone knows the spear master, Ruru, is at 0.7 percent pick rate and a pathetic 32 percent win rate. The game basically banned him. Performance-wise he’s a joke. The root of it all is his parry-heavy build. Back at launch he had a stupidly wide 0.7-second window that let him spin his full damage cycle without a hitch. But two weeks after that legendary 82.6 percent win rate day, he got fourteen nerfs in one go. Thanks to that, the Ruru-style Flowing Mirror parry window shrank to a tight three frames – just 0.050 seconds. The ultimate, passive, and burst damage nerfs followed, but I’ll stop there before we drift too far. Anyway, Go-ro started the match by immediately pressuring Ruru. Classic solo-lane setup you see in ranked. Ruru is the weakest character in the entire game at level one. At the very start he only has one skill to use – the parry. That’s it. Ruru has to stack ten pressure-point stacks and detonate them with the trigger Annihilation Spear. At level one he literally has no Annihilation Spear. He’s basically a first-grader standing in the middle of Haram with ten billion won in cash. But Go-ro at level one already has two swords and two skills he can swap between. He hammers the lane, levels up fast, slots skills, and keeps the pressure going. By level two Ruru has only four skills while Go-ro has six. Level three? Even worse. Ultimate brings the big stance too. No words. Normally in this spot Ruru would just back off and farm XP, but Hairball Slayer’s Ruru did something completely different. First scene. (Go-ro charges Ruru. He expects a retreat and pre-emptively drops a root skill on the escape path, but the replay shows him turning mid-stride.)
At first glance it looked like Go-ro was going to punish the fake retreat. He threw the root the wrong way, thinking Ruru was running back. But Ruru read it instantly, twisted toward him instead, and never even started his basic attack combo. We all know Ruru’s basic attack is four hits; the last one needs to be a lightning-fast thrust to leave pressure points. Any small interruption or stop resets the whole thing. The parry is the only fix, and everyone knows that. Smart Go-ro immediately swapped to Tado and started a mind game with the Wind Slash. That’s the next scene. (Go-ro raises his arm high, feigning a basic attack motion to confuse. Ruru keeps swinging at empty air without falling for it. Go-ro swings slow enough to miss by a hair. Raises again, holds, then strikes fast. Same thing happens – Ruru lets the hit land. His health drops to about one-ninth. Go-ro has no on-hit stun, so the combo continues.)
I actually gasped here. If this was a normal Go-ro he would’ve panicked and used the Wind Slash. But the Challenger version stayed ice cold. If Hairball Slayer had seen through the fake and parried cleanly, Go-ro would have been forced to retreat. The guy was clearly aware of Hairball Slayer’s insane parry success rate. Even though the hitbox was tiny, the composure was insane. Go-ro tried the fake again. Ruru caught it. He attempted to dodge the same way but let the hit land again. The reason he skipped parrying? I think he was aware of the exact motion cancel where you swing down then immediately pull back up. The game treats any downswing as a full commit. The same thing cost him against some Silver player last time. Hairball Slayer got destroyed in a one-sided exchange. We saw the replay in practice and figured it out live. So Go-ro probably stopped doing the downward basic attack parry. Next scene. (After the downswing, Go-ro spins in a quick horizontal slash. The blade spins away harmlessly off Ruru’s blade. Passive stack one rises quietly. Go-ro raises his sword high again. As he strikes, wind swirls around the blade. Ruru instantly spins his spear to block. Sparks fly. Passive jumps to two.)
Here’s where you see why Hairball Slayer is terrifying. Not only did he block the horizontal slash right after the downswing without breaking a sweat, but he also perfectly parried the Wind Slash. Three frames should not allow this kind of timing. You have to notice the wind effect around the sword the moment the skill starts – it’s basically an instant read. Hairball Slayer reacted to it perfectly. He had already read through all the fake basics earlier on purpose, so this had to be intentional. Two successful parries skipped two basic attack motions thanks to the Flowing Mirror effect. The next skill came out exactly on time – the pressure-point thrust. (Go-ro steps back and swings, but Ruru blocks it effortlessly. Passive hits three. Go-ro repositions. Ruru thrusts fast. Go-ro blocks with perfect stance. Damage cancels but the pressure points stay. With three stacks consumed, Go-ro now has four glowing red pressure points on his body. Then Go-ro counters with his backhand slash. He flips the short sword from his waist, slices upward. Blood sprays. Ruru’s health drops to one-seventh. A slash mark appears above his head.)
From level one this is how pressure points stacked on Ruru. He landed the counter but took a massive early-game loss against the weakest character. Go-ro had to choose: wait for level two or three and fight safe, or keep pressuring and see what happens. Go-ro chose to retreat and farm XP. Ruru refused to let him. At the absolute weakest level one with ten stacks, Ruru had four already. No fear at all. (Ruru pretends to chase, grabs XP, levels to two, plants his spear, leaps, and charges. Go-ro tries to run but gets trapped. All his attacks get parried into oblivion. Passive hits five. Then the Wind Slash comes. Blocked instantly. Passive reaches six – new icon appears.)
And that’s when the special passive Insolence activates. Game over. My analysis ends here. I wonder if anyone found it useful. }