Ragna the Bloodedge/Move List

Ragna the Bloodedge is a character with easy-to-use and basic, but effective, bread-and-butter combos. Unlike most main characters, Ragna does not use projectiles for range, but focuses much more on using moves such as 5B or 5C to control space and confirm into a combo with long-yet-overall-high damage combos. He is all about forcing his way through the opponent’s guard by any means necessary with some mixup tools, confirming into a hit that can lead into a combo that can also potentially carry foes into the corner.

His Drive, Soul Eater (ソウルイーター), saps life from his foes via life orbs that emit from them once a hit from any Soul Eater-based move is landed; a simple ability at best which cements him as a rather simple character at further glance. It works on both hit and block, giving him solid combo tools and ways to chip out his foes in blockstrings (though Barrier Block can negate it). It’s also thanks to his Not Over Yet (まだ終わりじゃねぇぞ) move, his wakeup game can be fairly ambiguous (which instead changes into a more combo-extending-heavy tool as of Chronophantasma).

Ragna however, has his weaknesses. Firstly, at 10,000 health he is amongst one of the lower HP characters, making him more of a 'glass cannon'. On top of his, he needs to be up-close to his foe just to take hits further as landing far-distance conversions limits his options due to pushing his foe out too far. Despite his offensive gameplan, Ragna's pressure is very average at best and his high-low mixup tools are limited or lacking in safe frame data, thus against specialists when it comes to his very simple kit, has to rely more on unorthodox tactics or reads to open them up. Characters who can zone him out such as Nu-13 and Jin Kisaragi can give Ragna a hard time to get in close, even with movement options at his disposal.

Much of his offense and defense alike also can be difficult enforce without meter for Rapid Cancels due to the lag on his moves; this can be true in that while his Inferno Divider (インフェルノディバイダー) is among the best “dragon-punch” reversals in the game, it has notable recovery on the flipside. Thus, this makes Ragna also fairly resource-reliant, as well as momentum-based via the nature of his Drive.

Soul Eater's mechanics had many changes throughout several iterations. Originally healing instantly on contact in Calamity Trigger while having their values work off of damage done and via damage scaling (which in turn causes Ragna’s longer combos to yield less life steal), it has since been reworked since Continuum Shift by also giving each life steal attack its own minor value that does not scale with damage done. However, each Soul Eater hit landed in a combo will increase the value of the life steal amount over 100% bit by bit until said combo is halted; this can easily reward good Ragna players with solid momentum increase when utilized correctly and improving Ragna’s combo game by a lot further. The tables of value increases in each iteration of the series has changed.

His Overdrive is Blood Cain Idea (ブラッドカインイデア), an Overdrive-converted version of one of his Distortion Drives that no longer drains his life gradually when activated. Like the original version, it increases the power and life-steal amount of his Soul Eater attacks (alongside other subtle properties such as hitbox size increase, changing up hit effects or adding new cancel routes). It can easily be utilized to increase Ragna’s reward off of correctly using Soul Eater, which in turn leads to more offensive-into-damage conversions when correctly thrown into a combo.

Basic moves
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Throws
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Drive
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Overdrive
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Special moves
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Distortion Drives
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