Sole purpose of a Parry - avoid damage by timing block via weapon. BUT
It does not mean that it should work only in such way.
Some games does not have stamina at all.
Some games does not consume your stamina on parry.
Some games perform damage to enemy posture on parry.
Some games have a counter-attack as a parry mechanic.
So there is not simple way to do a ‘correct’ parry in a game.
Why does Dodge Roll Allow Follow-up Attacks?
Because it is allowed by devs, lol
Not every single game has follow-up attacks after roll. It is just a thing to make combat mechanic more deeper.
I agree with this a lot, especially the risk vs. reward issue for heavy weapons.
I also understand why the old parry system needed changes — it was probably overtuned. However, the current implementation feels like an overcorrection. Parry now carries very high execution risk but offers almost no meaningful payoff, especially for slow weapons.
A possible middle ground could be:
Parry still builds enemy poise, but does not instantly break it.
Each successful parry contributes around 25–33% poise.
After multiple successful parries, poise breaks and creates a clear damage window.
This would prevent parry from being overpowered, while still rewarding precise timing and supporting heavy weapon playstyles. Right now, parry feels mechanically demanding but strategically unrewarding, and I think there’s room for a better balance.
I hope you are not talking about me. I have over 1k hrs played and i have played EVERY STYLE of play possible in the breach patch. Haise a OG with more playtime then me that Parries so much its practically his purpose in life agrees that Parries in Breach were way too strong and needed a nerf.
Using Ek as the bar for Risk Reward combat is what would be Unhealthy considering a Majority of the playerbase cannot kill him.
Please keep in mind i am not trying to insult anyones preferred playstyles. Looking at overrall game balance parry was not in a healthy state in breach.
I just fundamentally disagree. Most players cannot kill him is all the more reason to not remove systems that give them openings to do more than just 1-2 hit and dodge roll for the next 10 seconds on repeat.
On this update I have way more reason to use shoulder barge than parry, on almost all enemies except some bosses shoulder barge gets me a way longer, more guaranteed opening to punish enemies. It’s insane that parry has been this neutered.
Neutered to the point where now builds with % barrier or % damage/damage increase on damage dodge are just far better, more consistent rewards.
The risk to reward ratio has been completely warped, and the opportunities to create openings for satisfying full attack and rune animation sequences has been all but wiped out.
This build just completely skewed the rune attack balance towards large single hit runes that are not prone to getting interrupted because with the combination of parry nerf and enemy poise buffs, protracted expensive rune attacks with long animations are deeply punished and foiled whereas something instant like Buster Rift or Eruption is ideal.
New player here, started the game just before the free weekend.
I prefer parry over dodge in any game. Not just because of the mechanical differences between the two (if there are any in a given game), but because of the style and feel of a parry is much more rewarding than simply rolling through an attack. I vastly prefer parry in this game because it feels good. I noticed the differences in dodge vs parry and the different enchants supporting either of those, and noticed that there is a tendency to dodge being more rewarded than parry.
But big annoyance to me in this game is readability of enemy moves and what the enemy is actually doing, where a dodge is simply better than parry.
Example:
Enemy with a spear is starting up an thrust attack. “I’ve seen that move before, I’m far away though, but I still prepare to parry, just in case” Surprise, its a shadow bolt in the face despite looking like a regular thrust attack. (Some regular enemies in the wild)
Enemy with a 2hand sword starts a swing, I’m in range to parry it. Aaaaaand its a wave projectile instead that you cant parry and you get hit. Despite being in melee range the enemy used a projectile and completely tricked you into getting hit for free. (The boss on floor 10 in the Rogue-like mode thing)
In both examples, doing a dodge instead of a parry would have have avoided the hit, while the attempt to parry was punished by a surprise unparry-able projectile in the face instead,
Edit: and also there is an annoyance with the “I got parried” stun animation that enemies and bosses do. Especially on large enemies and bosses.
In many cases parrying an attack puts them into “Oh I got parried” animation, but they continue with their next attack of the combo anyway. The “Oh I got parried” animation actually makes it harder to read their next attack because their animation awkwardly transitions into the next attack from their “got parried” pose, instead of the end of their previous attack pose.
This sometimes leads to large weapon animations of their next attack seemly being much faster than letting the previous attacks intended animation play out completely by dodging instead.
Or attacks making weird startup-angles and timings because the animation tries to transition from the “Got parried” animation to the attack animation.
It was necessary to nerf the spammability by adding a lingering animation to parry
And the amount of focus gained from parrying was way too high.
It was also a good idea to increase the parry frames, as there are a lot of unique enemies with many attack patterns.
But it was too far by reducing the stagger duration on a parry. The duration should be longer, as now it’s a high risk low reward system.
Increase stun duration; weapons and medium shields gave baseline duration, small shields have lower duration but a lot of frames to parry, great shields have short frame to parry but longer stun duration.
refund stamina on a successful parry
On a successful parry, remove post-parry animation (only keep the animation on a failed parry).
Allow missiles (bombs, arrows, spells) to be parried.
on backstabbable enemies its still very high reward, by parrying you can spin around behind them and backstab them, potentially 1shotting them from full health. i agree its usability is kinda limited otherwise, mainly cuz it costs a TON of stamina.
i think if it did a bit more poise damage, cost less stam atleast on a succesful parry, repelled projectiles and had a slight aoe stun effect it could be really fun.
The only thing I’d add is that co-op should diminish the returns as number of players rises as I imagine they originally went this route to stop all 4 players from charge attacking on a single parry
I’ve been reading through this post since the start of it. And I can see the points of both camps with the new Parry system.
I did fairly well with the old system, and do okay with the new system. But I have to agree, the reward (read punishment) for using it with some builds is pretty terrible. I have brought around 20 people into the game, and the immediate advice I give them is to just avoid parrying, as it’s current state is going to piss them off, and they’re going to refund the game.
I know some of you young folks are killing it with the new system, and love playing your games in the most meta way possible, but there’s a world of people out there who don’t/won’t/can’t do that. And for Moon to turn their noses up to this part of the community would be insane.
I’d propose a couple of parrying systems, selectable from the options. Perhaps the various methods of parrying could be expanded, or timing windows.
I don’t really see the need for such black and white approaches to it, and there certainly isn’t any point in personal attacks over it. At the end of the day, this is a video game we all love (Devs ~ all player types) and we all want to see it succeed.
I didn’t mention it because it’s not at all the norm among players, but my favorite NRFTW runs are precisely with a big, slow, two-handed weapon, using only quick attacks and charged attacks. No rune attacks, infusion or anything else, a particularly “soul-like” play style.
I’m well aware that very few people play like this, so no worries if the issues only affect me and a certain style of play. That said, even with other styles of gameplay, the parry seems a little broken, as most people here have pointed out.
Thanks to everyone who has given their opinion on this topic, hoping that it will help move things forward a little on the parry issue.
One more irritating thing: some enemies have a way of positioning themselves as to make parrying completely useless.
The giant with the huge mace, when parried gets so far away you have to lose time running up to him to even get 1 hit in (I’m using the gauntlets).
The sword and shield enemies position themselves far enough from our character that their first attack does not connect with the parry, after that, their follow-up attack chain all connects because we are staggered at that point.
Trying to get closer to these enemies is useless because you either walk them against a wall, or they’ll keep walking back until the described situation happens.
For me, the haptic combat pre-Together is just ruined. Dodge is now the only reliable defense in single-player I find (I have no intention of playing multiplayer), especially since stagger has been nerfed so hard. I just think the needs of multiplayer, with the way things worked pre-Together, there are too many fundamental tensions in how the combat has to be tweaked to serve that trade-off with single-player.
I am a new player and very skilled. I am using the claymore as well and parrying literally gets me killed more than not. I can literally just run away, and charge attacks and do more damage safer than parry ever does.
but I need parry because too many attacks are tracking lunges, so I can’t walk to space myself, I need to essentially stand full screen, especially against multiple enemies, to charge attacks, or parry and get basic swings. Parry needs more risk, more reward, and being spaced properly needs to allow for walking as an option to evade attacks. Right now you just spam low stamina roll as walking is too slow.
I mean these are just game knowledge issue. If you know that you kept missing parrying the sword and shield enemies’ 1st hit then you should anticipate it by parrying the 2nd hit. Its great that every enemy type have different attack patterns that requires different parry timings.
Some 2H weapons’ run lunge attack are actually great for thinning groups because the animations are usually very quick and have very long reach. So you just hold A run around the group and lunge attack repeatedly. You can also just run away far enough to do charge attack that usually hit the whole group.
We are getting away from the topic lol. I don’t have problems with current parry duration, I can still pulling off backstab after parrying them, that is enough for me.
