Elden Ring’s rolling players terrorize the PvP scene

Written by. Nick Mosier based on the original Japanese article (original article’s publication date: 2022-03-23 15:08 JST)

A tumbling skill in Elden Ring has caught the attention of players lately. The reason appears to be one player’s humorous video combined with the skill’s surprising effectiveness in combat.

Spoiler alert: This article contains images and names of mid-game areas and content in Elden Ring.

Elden Ring is the latest action RPG from FromSoftware. In the game, weapons can be fused with what are called Ashes of War, which come with a wide variety of possible benefits. Lately, an Ash of War called Lightning Ram has been gathering attention. The move is simple. You just roll forward while clad in lightning.

The rams of Elden Ring have a move where they roll when in battle. And in certain areas, these rams also deal lightning damage when attacking. The Lightning Ram is a skill that mimics this move. When you use it, your character belts out a bleat and begins rolling forward.

While it may seem like a blissful move, it actually packs quite a punch to whoever is on the receiving end. For that reason, players have actually been talking about it quite a bit already on Twitter in Japan. But on March 19, a YouTuber named Marco Yolo uploaded a video that turned the Lightning Ram skill into a star.

In the video, Marco dresses his character up to look like Sonic the Hedgehog and uses Lightning Ram to take out players in PvP. Marco likely chose Sonic because Lightning Ram resembles Sonic’s signature Spin Attack and Spin Dash moves. This fake Sonic equipped Caestus weapons with Lighting Ram and eagerly set out to challenge other players.

In the video we get to see the fake Sonic take out a lot of players with its Spin Dash-like Lightning Ram attack. Whether the defeated players tried to run or stand their ground, we can see them faltering when trying to muster a counterattack. It definitely seems tough to find an opening when your opponent just keeps rolling at you over and over.

With the sound effects and editing on the video, you might just think you’re looking at Sonic for a second, but for the victims, likely all that remains is the trauma of being killed by a hairy blue man. At the time of this writing, the video has received over 80,000 views with it spreading even more on social media.

We can also see from the video just what makes Lightning Ram so strong. Beside the incessant fury of the attack, even if you guard with a shield, the lightning damage still goes through. What makes this especially annoying for enemies is that it staggers them. In Elden Ring, the concept of “Poise” exists, which determines resistance to flinching and staggering, something Lightning Ram is quite good at.

In Marco’s video, we can see their victims wearing gear with low poise, meaning when they get hit, they are staggered and killed while unable to move. In the early parts of the game, it’s difficult to get ahold of gear with good poise stats. And if you’re not used to it, you may panic when a player comes rolling toward you like that. Or maybe the panic is from the hairy blue guy pretending to be Sonic. In addition, Lightning Ram is likely also useful against regular enemies and bosses with low poise.

Besides Marco’s video, there have been a number of other videos of players taking out invaders in their games with the Lightning Ram, showing that it’s becoming a popular move. There were also signs of its popularity before the fake Sonic video as well. On Reddit, one player seems to have encountered a number of Lightning Ram users and asks, “how can Lightning Ram be countered?” In the thread, one player advises to simply “jump over them.” Rolling with Lightning Ram is different from a regular roll in that you don’t have any invincibility frames, so jumping to dodge or attack, using long range weapons, or having high poise might be the best ways to handle it.

Furthermore, even if you run out of FP, you can still keep rolling with Lightning Ram making it a great skill that you can use to just roll around and have fun. Lightning Ram can be obtained from a Teardrop Scarab in the south-western part of Atlus Plateau near Stormcaller Church.