Using the rod in the "noobs" way (as in, spamming it to keep people away from you) is pretty easy, anybody can do that. In order to be good with the rod, however, takes practice and experience. It takes a while to hone in on aiming and timing your rod hits correctly in order to result in solid combos. To add on to that, the rod incorporates more opportunities to get larger combos, whether through some sort of straight line or strafe.