RWBY 2024 CRT Part 1: Maiden Scaling

[Cire]

Hello all,

Today, I will be attempting to bring back maiden downscaling. I feel as though it was a mistake and will work to rectify this. I will be using Glassman's arguments against maiden scaling as my major points.

"Low 7-B scaling

This stems from team RWBY and co. downscaling from the Maidens, the problem here is the fact that Maiden Cinder is clearly shown to be on a whole nother level from the team, especially when the end of Volume 8 has all of team RWBY being slapped around by Maiden Cinder with no effort whatsoever, and the fact Ironwood when facing off against Maiden Winter gets his strongest attack effortlessly reflected and he gets KO'd permanently, and to top it all off, the bomb Ironwood was gonna use to blow up all of Mantle, which was calced to between High 7-C to close to baseline 7-B canonically kills Vine, who's physically comparable to team RWBY at this point in time, on top of all of the hunters in Robyn's group is scaled to the same level while also being threatened by the bomb to escape as well, none of the members should remotely scale to the maidens, or even downscale as this ignores how much on a higher level the maidens are to begin with.

Overall the normal hunters/huntresses should go back to their High 8-C to 8-B scaling, alongside anyone else that's comparable to their level."

I will now try and disapprove these points.

"Clearly shown at another level"
This is easily disproven. Winter was able to cut off Cinder's Grimm arm for one. While the arm had no aura protecting it, it was still strong enough to hold up in a giant magic sword clash against Raven. Cinder even used it to hold down Raven and chock her out. Even before Winter cut Cinder's arm off, she and Penny were able to contend with maiden Cinder in an aerial battle, with Winter landing several good fireballs on her. Weiss, in the director's commentary, was also said to be able to hold herself in battle against Cinder in a "1v1."

"Eddy says: “Also I just love Weiss- how much Weiss quietly holds her own in this chapter and the next chapter”. Miles says: “And it speaks to how much she’s grown, like an older Weiss would make a big deal out of having to like, put the team on her back, but she just-”. Kerry says: “Are you guys gonna do anything?”. Eddy says: “1v1’s Cinder”. Miles says: “Yeah she quietly resigns herself to her role and she does her duty just.. just as a good Schnee should- no she does her own thing, it’s great”"

RWBY V8 director's commentary - Orange

V8 E1 Writer: Kiersi, Kerry Director: Kerry Kiersi wrote everything but two pages that Kerry wrote in this episode. Originally Cinder’s backstory (that Kerry wrote) was supposed to be here but since they felt they couldn’t have both that and everything else and do them justice they opted to have ...

docs.google.com

Weiss also took a bloodlusted Cinder's magic attack at the end of V8. In addition, Cinder, Emerald, and Mercury were able to beat Amber, with Cinder explicitly knocking down and hurting Amber while she's in full maiden mode.

For Ironwood, that can easily be explained that he just had a fight with Winter. Aura works as a health bar. The more you damage it, the more it goes down. So Ironwood's was already lowered beforehand in the fight against Winter. Winter blocked said beam with a glyph as well. It blew up in her face, yes, but she did stop it. As revealed by Kdin Jensen, voice actor of May, she states that Ironwood's cannon was made to kill Penny, a maiden robot. This is supported in the show as well. Penny was instructed to come alone to Ironwood. And, when "Penny" (actually Emerald) arrived, Ironwood had the big cannon at the ready to use against her.

For the Vine feat, this is rather simple. ANYBODY would be freaking out over a giant nuke dropping on them. It's a very natural human reaction. And the fact that normal huntsmen, without aura, are able to harm and survive maiden attacks should dispel this notion that they are limited to this feat. Also, Vine used his semblance to successfully contain the bomb anyway. Using the health bar analogy again, he poured all of his HP into the bubble, leaving himself defenseless. Ruby and crew should upscale from him anyway, since they were able to beat him in a fight fair and square. Ruby even says that they are the best huntsmen in Atlas now instead of the Ace-Ops, a fact that she proves right by her team beating them. While the Ace-Ops did fight against a maiden Penny, it was clear that she wasn't going for the kill. Unlike Cinder, who is murder happy as all hell and would certainly try to kill an auraless Weiss.

Another thing to point out is the fact that regular Grimm have city level durability. This comes form when the Grimm river slammed itself into the Atlas shields in V8. In an earlier scene, we see that there are already fully formed Grimm inside of the river ready to go, as seen when a Sabyr's head pops out. Yang even says that it is a river full of Grimm.

https://www.deviantart.com/kirito352/art/Grimm-attack-to-Atlas-RWBY-951069252

In this calc by kirito, he puts the durability of the Grimm surviving said impact at around 1.9 megatons. Now, I know that his yield for the Grimm river feat is different than the one we have on this site, but it is proof enough that the Grimm should be at the very least large town. And these are complete fodder Grimm. I will also point out that he assumes that the Grimm centinals are regular size, which I personally do not believe. After all, they are shown to be around the size of one of the shield generators on Atlas. However, that Sabyr that was shown before still survived the impact. We know that those Grimm, in total, survived the impact because there is no smoke popping out from the impact. As a reminder, when Grimm die, they evaporate into smoke. If they were truly dying, then there would be a ton of smoke. So, when fodder enemies can survive near city level impacts, then it is not an outlier for normal huntsmen to survive maiden level attacks.

In conclusion, the main RWBY cast should be brought back to maiden downscaling due to multiple feats of surviving and harming maidens. It is not an outlier to scale the cast to these characters. The feats of them harming and surviving their attacks, sometimes without aura mind you, should be clear enough to reinstate scaling. Thank you, and have a nice day.

 

[DarkDragonMedeus]

Looks good to me.

 

[Dalesean027]

Following

 

[Kingofwolves999]

I have some thoughts on this CRT. Some things I agree with, some I do not. Will explain when off of work.

 

[Cire]

I had some more examples that I can put up later of characters damaging maidens.

 

[Keeweed]

I disagree with this crt for all the reasons they were downgraded to begin with. Cinder easily won a 5 vs 1 with one of the 5 having maiden powers, Neo, who is terrified of the maiden powers, is directly on par with Ruby in that same fight, and ironwood was one shot by attack winter easily reflected (and he’s superior to most of team Rwby combined). Along with Cinder stomping Winter into the dirt breaking majority of her bones in like 5 seconds when she actually got to straight 1v1 her.

Plus the super weapon Ironwood had one shot him yet did literally nothing to Winter who causally blocked it with no difficulty once so ever.

It’s completely disingenuous to try and ignore all those obvious flaws with them scaling.

 

[Cire]

I disagree with this crt for all the reasons they were downgraded to begin with. Cinder easily won a 5 vs 1 with one of the 5 having maiden powers, Neo, who is terrified of the maiden powers, is directly on par with Ruby in that same fight, and ironwood was one shot by attack winter easily reflected (and he’s superior to most of team Rwby combined). Along with Cinder stomping Winter into the dirt breaking majority of her bones in like 5 seconds when she actually got to straight 1v1 her.

It’s completely disingenuous to try and ignore all those obvious flaws with them scaling.

I can address these points rather easily.

Cinder didn't win a 1 v 5. She was keeping Team RWBY distracted so that Neo can sneak in and kill Ruby. When that failed, Penny jumped in and attacked, which Weiss assisted with. Ruby and Blake, in the meanwhile, were dealing with Neo. Again, Eddy Rivas and Miles agreed that Weiss was holding her own against Cinder.

When Neo fought Cinder in the past, this was before Ruby's training arc. Post training arc Ruby could handle the Ace-Ops and later on the Furious Cat on her own. So saying that Ruby is tied to Haven era Neo after she trained is not true.

Ironwood, like I said before, was already down on aura due to fighting Winter. Winter was able to use her own aura to create a glphy strong enough to stop Ironwood's blaster in the first place.

With Cinder, you are ignoring the fact that, against, she straight up cut off her arm, surpassing Cinder's durability and power. And she did it without aura.

You are trying to prove that the characters have no way of scaling to the maidens at all. I am saying that they downscale because they can consistently harm them and take hits from them with and without aura. I am not saying that the cast is directly on par with them. I am saying that they are strong enough to contend with them.

 

[Cire]

Plus the super weapon Ironwood had one shot him yet did literally nothing to Winter who causally blocked it with no difficulty once so ever.

Also, as you can see here, Winter didn't block the attack. She reflected it back with an ice mirror shield.

 

[Keeweed]

So she made a glyph strong enough to stop Ironwood’s super weapon that can one shot him instantly. Do you not see the problem with that in and of itself when she’s who you are arguing he scales to.

A random ice shard from Raven impaled through Cinder’s arm. Raven literally has a scene saying it doesn’t scale to her because it lacks aura.

 

[Cire]

So she made a glyph strong enough to stop Ironwood’s super weapon that can one shot him instantly. Do you not see the problem with that in and of itself when she’s who you are arguing he scales to.

A random ice shard from Raven impaled through Cinder’s arm. Raven literally has a scene saying it doesn’t scale to her because it lacks aura.

You are ignoring my point that the arm is still strong enough to withstand a giant magic sword clash between two maidens. And that said arm is strong enough to pin down Raven.

For the super weapon business, you are not fully understanding what I am saying here. Ironwood coudln't have been fully one shot if his aura was already lower during the fight. That's simply how aura works. It's a health bar. His was already lowered from 100% due to fighting Winter. The blast just pushed it to 0%.

 

[Keeweed]

Winter, who’s superior to Weiss, got completely obliterated the half second Cinder actually got her hands on her. The director’s clearly aren’t referring to Winter’s power rather her pulling her work to help out. Ignoring the fact the scene takes way more precedence, Cinder beat the crap out of her.

 

[Keeweed]

You are ignoring my point that the arm is still strong enough to withstand a giant magic sword clash between two maidens. And that said arm is strong enough to pin down Raven.

For the super weapon business, you are not fully understanding what I am saying here. Ironwood coudln't have been fully one shot if his aura was already lower during the fight. That's simply how aura works. It's a health bar. His was already lowered from 100% due to fighting Winter. The blast just pushed it to 0%.

It doesn’t though, a random ice shard from the same sword went straight through it. The sword is what blocked.

The weapon is in and of itself superior to him as it’s his only choice against maidens and winter is laughably superior to it. And ironwood is inferior to the weapon despite being superior to majority of team Rwby even together. This already creates a massive chain of circular scaling within 3 seconds if this is accepted. Or we could just have it that the guys that lost the 1v5 and get clobbered by maidens and anti maiden weapons just don’t scale to them.

 

[Cire]

Winter, who’s superior to Weiss, got completely obliterated the half second Cinder actually got her hands on her. The director’s clearly aren’t referring to Winter’s power rather her pulling her work to help out. Ignoring the fact the scene takes way more precedence, Cinder beat the crap out of her.

Eddy clearly says that Weiss is holding her own. And Winter got beaten because she had no aura left. And even then, she was still strong enough to cut off said arm. For your logic to work for me, I'd have to ignore the fact that Winter cuts off Cinder's arm and that Weiss survives the blast from Cinder. Both with no aura.

What I am arguing here is that the main cast can harm maidens and survive their attacks. What you think that I am arguing is that the cast can BEAT maidens, which is another argument.

 

[Cire]

It doesn’t though, a random ice shard from the same sword went straight through it. The sword is what blocked.

The weapon is in and of itself superior to him as it’s his only choice against maidens and winter is laughably superior to it. And ironwood is inferior to the weapon despite being superior to majority of team Rwby even together. This already creates a massive chain of circular scaling within 3 seconds if this is accepted. Or we could just have it that the guys that lost the 1v5 and get clobbered by maidens and anti maiden weapons just don’t scale to them.

You are bringing up the 1v5 again without addressing the points I made about it.

As for the sword blocking the other magic sword, the Grimm arm is what produced enough energy to even block the sword. If it couldn't withstand the necceary energy, it would just break.

And once again, Winter didn't no sell the attack. She reflected it back using ice.

 

[Keeweed]

Getting stomped doesn’t have you scale, they thoroughly lost and ironwood straight god stomped. That’s my argument. If ironwood scales to his gun it breaks his entire plan. If his gun scales to Winter in any way it contradicts Winter’s flick of the wrist defeating the gun instantly.

 

[Cire]

Getting stomped doesn’t have you scale, they thoroughly lost and ironwood straight god stomped. That’s my argument. If ironwood scales to his gun it breaks his entire plan. If his gun scales to Winter in any way it contradicts Winter’s flick of the wrist defeating the gun instantly.

You are once again ignoring that she deflected the attack, not block it. If they were getting stomped, they would do no damage to the maidens and be killed instantly. This isn't the case here. You are still ignoring the Cinder, Mercury, and Emerald argument as well.

We know that characters can harm maidens. And we know that they can take attacks from maidens. We know all this for a fact. There are multiple instances of this. I have provided them in this CRT. What you are arguing is that we ignore all these due to them being "stomped," which is simply not true. How can we ignore blatant feats like these when the evidence is clear as day. Winter cut off Cinder's arm. Cinder knocked down and hurt a maiden Amber before she was a maiden. Winter pre maiden could blast fire balls at Cinder and hurt her. You are asking that I ignore all these due to, at the end of the day, simply vibes.

You are labeling these as stomps without fully addressing my points of the cast harming the maidens and surviving the attacks.

 

[Cire]

I'll put it this way. You are focusing on the mere outcome of the fight. I am focusing on what actually happens in the fights.

 

[CurrySenpai]

Alright... let's get this started, the first obstacle in my path of keeping RWBY in its Tier 8 hell.

"Clearly shown at another level"
This is easily disproven. Winter was able to cut off Cinder's Grimm arm for one. While the arm had no aura protecting it, it was still strong enough to hold up in a giant magic sword clash against Raven. Cinder even used it to hold down Raven and chock her out. Even before Winter cut Cinder's arm off, she and Penny were able to contend with maiden Cinder in an aerial battle, with Winter landing several good fireballs on her. Weiss, in the director's commentary, was also said to be able to hold herself in battle against Cinder in a "1v1."

The series has shown us consistently that Cinder's arm is a weak point, whether it be through the use of the silver eyes or physically cutting it off, it very clearly lacks the same durability the rest of Cinder has, and ya know why? It's a Grimm arm. She can't put her aura on it, the thing that explicitly makes it possible to shield yourself from stronger hits and as such a majority of the time we see the arm in action it's used for restraining and sucking out Maiden powers, but it only takes a few hits, to completely disable it.

Her holding down Raven, though, is an act of Lifting Strength.

In summary, we know it's a weak point, it makes 0 sense to use the obvious weak point with low durability as a means to scale via "Well they could harm it!" and we know Cinder is constantly shown at another level. Every time a Maiden is fought it multiple people struggling to beat one person unless the other person is a Maiden already.

Onto Weiss though...

"Eddy says: “Also I just love Weiss- how much Weiss quietly holds her own in this chapter and the next chapter”. Miles says: “And it speaks to how much she’s grown, like an older Weiss would make a big deal out of having to like, put the team on her back, but she just-”. Kerry says: “Are you guys gonna do anything?”. Eddy says: “1v1’s Cinder”. Miles says: “Yeah she quietly resigns herself to her role and she does her duty just.. just as a good Schnee should- no she does her own thing, it’s great”"

This in no way mentions that she is on par in strength with Cinder, these notes are about Weiss as a character and her development throughout the chapter. Weiss does in fact 1v1 Cinder, but 1v1ing someone simply isn't enough to scale because we see her struggling and losing without any real moment that shows she's on par with her lol. I can 1v1 a LVL 200 enemy in an RPG as Level a 50 player, but if I get one shot, I still lost and couldn't match them.

Weiss also took a bloodlusted Cinder's magic attack at the end of V8. In addition, Cinder, Emerald, and Mercury were able to beat Amber, with Cinder explicitly knocking down and hurting Amber while she's in full maiden mode.

She got launched by a fireball attack that Jaune was very clearly protecting her from and taking some of the impact due to him having Aura, she then falls off without much struggle or resistance.

Also... Amber is literally a featless Maiden, we just see her Fight Mercury, Emerald, and Cinder with no idea as to how strong she really was in comparison to the others.

For Ironwood, that can easily be explained that he just had a fight with Winter. Aura works as a health bar. The more you damage it, the more it goes down. So Ironwood's was already lowered beforehand in the fight against Winter. Winter blocked said beam with a glyph as well. It blew up in her face, yes, but she did stop it. As revealed by Kdin Jensen, voice actor of May, she states that Ironwood's cannon was made to kill Penny, a maiden robot. This is supported in the show as well. Penny was instructed to come alone to Ironwood. And, when "Penny" (actually Emerald) arrived, Ironwood had the big cannon at the ready to use against her.

The issue with Ironwood is the attack was blocked effortlessly, this has nothing to do with his durability since the gun is not tied to that. The fact that the moment Winter became a Maiden, she could just effortlessly flick it away is a testament to her being on another level and him not being able to scale.

Also, without any more insight into the inner workings of the gun and how it was meant to kill Penny, we don't know if it's full on strength or something else, this point does not make sense.

For the Vine feat, this is rather simple. ANYBODY would be freaking out over a giant nuke dropping on them. It's a very natural human reaction. And the fact that normal huntsmen, without aura, are able to harm and survive maiden attacks should dispel this notion that they are limited to this feat. Also, Vine used his semblance to successfully contain the bomb anyway. Using the health bar analogy again, he poured all of his HP into the bubble, leaving himself defenseless. Ruby and crew should upscale from him anyway, since they were able to beat him in a fight fair and square. Ruby even says that they are the best huntsmen in Atlas now instead of the Ace-Ops, a fact that she proves right by her team beating them. While the Ace-Ops did fight against a maiden Penny, it was clear that she wasn't going for the kill. Unlike Cinder, who is murder happy as all hell and would certainly try to kill an auraless Weiss.

Vine still gets one shot by the bomb, there is no sign of him being left, and in fact Inverse Square Law would make it so that containing the bomb is much easier since he gives more surface area for the impact to be absorbed into.

So yeah, no.

Another thing to point out is the fact that regular Grimm have city level durability. This comes form when the Grimm river slammed itself into the Atlas shields in V8. In an earlier scene, we see that there are already fully formed Grimm inside of the river ready to go, as seen when a Sabyr's head pops out. Yang even says that it is a river full of Grimm.

https://www.deviantart.com/kirito352/art/Grimm-attack-to-Atlas-RWBY-951069252

In this calc by kirito, he puts the durability of the Grimm surviving said impact at around 1.9 megatons. Now, I know that his yield for the Grimm river feat is different than the one we have on this site, but it is proof enough that the Grimm should be at the very least large town. And these are complete fodder Grimm. I will also point out that he assumes that the Grimm centinals are regular size, which I personally do not believe. After all, they are shown to be around the size of one of the shield generators on Atlas. However, that Sabyr that was shown before still survived the impact. We know that those Grimm, in total, survived the impact because there is no smoke popping out from the impact. As a reminder, when Grimm die, they evaporate into smoke. If they were truly dying, then there would be a ton of smoke. So, when fodder enemies can survive near city level impacts, then it is not an outlier for normal huntsmen to survive maiden level attacks.

Grimm do not have city level durability here, and you should not try to pass it off as if they do in this CRT. Besides, how does this prove 7-B durability? For all we know, they could have just reformed again, it's a Grimm pool made to make Grimm of course they reformed.

In short, I disagree, but also because I know I'll need some help and support.

With this treasure, I summon...

Staff Members @Theglassman12 @DMUA @Maverick_Zero_X @Damage3245 @Firestorm808 @CloverDragon03 @LordGriffin1000

 

[Keeweed]

They did do no damage to either. Winter and Cinder are 100% perfectly fine after their fights while all their opponent are absolutely defeated or straight dead. Most clear cut stomp I can think of.

Ironwood survives the gun in the same way Bulma survives Beerus’s slap. Except it’s even worse here because the gun straight killed ironwood in the end and it’s completely negates the entire point of it if Ironwood scales.

The outcome is what matters when Cinder and Winter walk out 100% victories with Winter winning her’s monstrously easily by producing something with more power than a gun stronger than a guy stronger than team Rwby. Cinder also murdered Penny, the maiden, easily even with team Rwby’s help, which was absolutely none as Cinder is 100% perfectly fine. The only time she got injuried was the Grimm arm which Raven has a line specifically saying is garbage.