Terminology

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page revision: 21, last edited: 02 July 2017

As Bloodborne is an Action RPG with duel-type combat, you may find terminologies common in RPGs and fighting games used by the community. This terminology shares most of the terms with previous Souls games like Demon's Souls and Dark Souls.

Rally: Is a mechanic which allows the player to regain lost HP after taking damage. When an enemy's attack hits, a portion of the HP gauge briefly turns orange, indicating the amount of damage inflicted. Attack the enemy before the orange bar disappear to restore a given amount of HP.

Aggro: Possibly short for "Aggravate", it is the action of provoking an enemy or NPC into attempting to engage combat with the player. While this usually means walking within a certain distance of a monster's line of sight, it can also refer to pulling a monster from afar, or attacking certain non-hostile NPCs (which turns them hostile, and provokes them into fighting you).

AoE: Area of effect; refers to attacks that only affect those within a specifc target range or distance.

Farming: Exploring a particular area to hopefully grab many rare items from enemies or collect souls. Many players will repetitively travel throughout certain areas of the game in hopes of gathering a rare item from a particular enemy such as Blood Stones.

Fishing: Seeking to perform one action rather than fighting as normal, typically multiple times in a row. Common examples are backstab fishing (usually by circling around an enemy or waiting for them to attack) and parry fishing (either baiting out certain attacks, or simply spamming parry). Fishing is typically frowned upon in PvP, and can trivialize PvE fairly easily.

Ganker: Players who brought allies to a PvP situation, hoping to win by number advantage. In Bloodborne, this terminology usually applies to host players who summon cooperator(s) and deliberately waits for an invasion to happen so that the invader usually ends up in a 1v2 or 1v3 situation.

Griefer: Players who take pleasure in bringing grief to other player, even if the griefer does not gain significant gameplay reward or even at a disadvantage. In Bloodborne, it is usually a player that uses high level gear on a low level character (so that it matches the online level range) to invade people. They mostly invade people on Central Yharnam and other starting areas to easily win fights against novice players.

Grinding: Doing repeated activity (such as killing enemies) to gain experience points in order to level up faster. In Bloodborne, this basically means "Blood Echoes farming" as echoes are used for levelling up.

Jumping: When being invaded/invading, you attack the invader/are attacked by the host immediately after spawning (i.e. "getting a jump on the invader/host"). Sometimes referred as "rushing". In Bloodborne this is not prevalent, since unlike in previous Souls games, there are no predetermined spawning points and invader spawns on spot where s/he rang.

Oki: Short for "Okizeme", which is the Japanese term for the tactical situation that is present against an enemy that is rising up off the ground, typically against someone who is recovering from being knocked down. Example of okizeme attacks (often themselves referred to as "okizemes" or "okis") in Bloodborne is swinging your heavy weapon (or casting a hunter's tool) while the opponent are getting up (and thus unable to do anything) and timed it so that the attack connects right after the opponent's invincibility wears off. Also commonly referred to as a "wakeup" or "wakeup attack".

Pulling: A method used to draw out an enemy for tactical purposes, like separating an enemy from a group, or luring them into a more preferable terrain. This is commonly done with ranged items such as pebbles, but can be done with a variety of long-ranged attacks, including the use of Simon's Bowblade.

Spam: A repeated action (usually an attack) done generally to dish out large amounts of damage in disregard to one's safety. (e.g. spamming Kos Parasite transformed explosion)

Twinking: The act of bringing mid/late-game, upgraded equipment to an early-game, low level environment for the purpose of securing easy wins in PvP. Commonly performed using upgraded weapons, with high blood gems and may kill lower level players in one hit. Twinks are frowned upon by most people, with the act of twinking generally considered cheap and unchallenging.

Whiff: Refers to an attack that fails to connect with the opponent. Whether it misses them completely, or actually hits a character, but because that character was in the middle of a dodge-roll at the time, the attack does no damage. Whiffing an attack usually makes your character open to counter attacks.