I know. But this is not good game design. It’s not fun to fully avoid attacks from way out of range in complete safety, and spam a single attack over and over.
Oh, what a great take!
Sure, instead of reporting that in this EA game some enemies position themselves wrong, I should just shut up and parry the second swing…
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For that particular enemy’s 2 hit combo, the 1st hit is basically a bait right? I think it is done on purpose on Devs part to catch players off guard. Once you learned you can make the parry 100% of the time by parrying the 2nd hit.
Nope, it’s 5 hits, and there’s no way they did that for 1 single low tier enemy and nowhere else… it’s an obvious positioning error.
Ah the one in the castle near the fire? For that one I running up to its face to reliably parrying the 1st attack. But this mob and the one with the claws? that jump lunge at you or do the 3 spins I usually just block, much safer and it can stun them out of the multi hit combo.
Not sure how stagger and poise work but I think 25-33% is a bit too much. I think it should scale with stats and enchantments. Bigger shields deal more poise damage (on block I suppose) but give less focus, lesser deal less poise damage but give more focus. I’m not sure how all of this applies now in terms of parry vs block though. The poise damage in the stats only applies on block, since parry doesn’t even build up the poise bar now. Focus is only gained on parry (w/o enchantments), does it give 25 + the amount stated in the stats, based on shield class, I suppose?
Parry should obviously deal poise damage otherwise you can’t really find a big enough opening in a parry focused build without other form of control. It may have a multiplier that is different for different classes of shields and which could be affected by enchantments too. And it should obviously stagger for a moment, to break series of attacks. But how does this stagger work, I would like to know. It is a guaranteed stagger? Should it always be that way? Maybe it should compare your poise damage (with multiplier) and enemies stagger resistance, or poise? It’s all actually quite confusing. Poise bar should be named posture. And poise itself should be about stagger itself, the ability to withstand hits while charging or casting an attack or a spell. Then there’s also knockback that knocks you down on the floor I suppose which is different from kneeling down when you have your poise bar filled. These are confusing, the only difference between them that I see is that you can only roll out when lying on the floor.
This is so true. Too many people here block feedback forgetting the whole point of EA is feedback and changes. Why the heck is called EA otherwise?
These people are so defensive on behalf of the developers that they are preventing them from hearing feedback and improving the game.
If anything, that is the most dangerous thing once can do for a game.
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This isn’t just a parrying issue too, it’s just melee combat in general. Some enemies have too good defense in that they are way more mobile, or aggressive that makes melee combat significantly more difficult than ranged. I think Parrying being lukewarm is just a symptom of melee being mediocre compared to ranged until late game.
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Yeah, I’ve been playing since before Breach and as I said above, melee seems waaay less haptic than before. My theory is still that co-op caused a lot of overtuning to the detriment of single player
This is exactly what happened.
The hardcore players that normally complain about the game being too easy on single player complain even more on coop since mob hp and damage does not scale linearly with the contribution of each extra player.
So they keep buffing mob poise and hp and nerfing parry, but don’t restrict that to coop and the massive collateral damage to systems happens to single player and normal difficulties.
I don’t get what’s the point of different difficulties and rulesets if they are going to balance the game anyways mainly around no life hardcore players playing together and ruin the experience for the far more numerous rest of players.
It’s not just Wicked that does this. Developers across all games are spellbound by hardcore players and almost every game you come across nowadays has an inordinate amount of development designed around this tiny group of people and designers seem to place a premium on their opinions and preferences at the exclusion of everyone else.
It happens in WoW and MMOs, it happens in Diablo, it happens in MOBAs. And it never ends well for most of the players.
It might be an unpopular take, I think all damage needs to be reduced. Melee has one benefit and that’s high poise damage, but most mobs die before they are staggered. Mobs also do a lot of damage forcing melee to invest in defense early than archery and mage.
If parrying refunded your stamina by default, similar to the Sinew enchantment, and did decent poise damage, it would make melee about resource management and staggering. And range is about damage and movement.
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The parry window is big enough, not sure what youre complaining about. This is a skill issue, no other way to put it. I dont even have much hours (100hrs total off/on since EA started) in the game and I parry most enemies/bosses.
The problem is not “executing” a parry, it’s the follow up window during which the enemy is staggered that is so small you’re pretty much better off just dodging/running and attacking.
You can barely get behind smaller enemies to backstab them, though most of the time they’re already up and attacking before the backstab skull icon even appeared.
The stagger from parry itself should stay as is or get even smaller (a bit). Instead, parry should deal poise damage the same way block does but with a multiplier. Bigger shields have more armor and poise damage but lesser parry multiplier so they’re better for parry, lighter shields have high multiplier for parry but less armor and poise damage. You either block the entire attack combo or try to parry it. Short parry stagger should maybe check your poise damage and enemy’s poise/stagger resistance. And based on that the enemy can either ignore the parry stagger or you interrupt their attack combo. Filling/building up enemy’s poise/posture bar could lower their stagger resistance gradually and when filled up – next stagger/knockback source staggers or knocks them for much longer time.
That might be feasible for bosses, but not for common enemies.
By the time you break their poise with parries you’d have already killed them just dealing damage AND you might have stance broken them just with damage.
It’s a matter of efficiency.
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The damage and stats overall are just too high. Why bother parrying, rolling, blocking when you can just run around one-shotting enemies with any weapon you want and throw rune from a distance? Or with the whole arsenal of wand/staff runes. Resistance based on durability, durable facet, good exalt, low health, barrier or full focus enchantment power gems and you have absurd resistances with just one body armor slot. Even in cloth.
If or rather when they balance it a bit, we need improvements in other systems including parry and poise/posture.
It’s preference, if you want to cheese the game, cheese the game^^
true, havent played without damage reduction tbh. but i also play hard mode. with 80% DR and leech and Reginabl Health (but with pretty average gear tbh)
so you mean, that DR is a Requirement and not an option?
I think it’s hard to balance, because it’s a trade off. if you want to be in the thick of it, you need protecting or insane skill and positional and situational awareness.
But i agree: I don’t think parry is designed for fights vs mutliple enemies. I use a shield with DR while blocking and also gain Stamina on block, so I can regen Stamina there, without getting destroyed. because getting attacked by 6 enemies, from different ranges doesnt sound like a situation for parry to me^^
so i think it’s about using the right tool in the right situation. if you are a god gamer that not only has perfected parrying, but also positional and situational awareness, you can get a lot more out of the parry buffs, but the learning curve for that IS INSANE, so blocking is the safer bet.
And you can at least utilize the multiple offhands, like a shield that is designed around block and the other around parry.
But being in the center of it all at max pestilence (or whatever your skill ceiling is) definitely requires preparation and thought.
The post might sound a bit tone deaf, but i think it is also about using the right “damage avoidance tool” in the right situation. It’s not about specializing in just one, but using them all and knowing where and when they apply best.
But i agree, parrying should feel more fluent and one way is to get rid of animation locking or at least allow parry input mid animation, where you at least don’t get the damage, which could be called deflect, but even then, that would probably be too op. maybe only reduce damage by 50%. something like that… but there should be a cooldown so you don’t just skilllessly spam it.
so yeah needs more fiddling…
Agree, parry is currently in a bad spot.
Increasing the number of active frames to appease casual players was a mistake. They already have dodge and block as safer ways to avoid damage. Parry should remain a high-risk, high-reward mechanic for more dedicated players. Right now, it is neither.
The amount of focus gained from a successful parry should be reverted to 100. The real issue lies with runes, so those should be addressed instead.
As many people here have said, stagger after parry is far too short. Fully reverting it to the previous state would not be ideal, since it would allow highly skilled players to permanently stagger enemies. A better solution would be:
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The first successful parry on an enemy causes a heavy stagger.
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After that, the enemy gains temporary stagger resistance.
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While this resistance is active, parry causes only a light stagger.
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After resistance ends, parry again will heavy stagger enemy and repeat the cycle.
This would create a meaningful window to act without enabling constant stun-locking.
To those saying parry was too strong. You are forgetting that only the top 1% of players were skilled enough to truly “abuse” it. Even then, that situation was far better than what we have now.
I think it’s very telling that I’ve felt little to no motivation to get good at parrying in this game, and I like parry mechanics. I hadn’t thought much about why, but I think I agree with you, it’s all risk and very little reward, and the enemy attacks seem designed to fake you out. Much more worthwhile to just dodge away right now.
When you are first learning the game, dodge is king. Once you get some decent survivability you can learn the parry timings without constantly dying or eating all your food. Parrying can be very strong with the right enchants. Since my main builds are barrier builds, I parry all the time to refresh my barrier. With a shield, you can get pretty close to that 100 focus we used to get on parry. Nice part as well is that you can parry most attacks - kicks, shoves, etc. My parry build shreds and can one shot a lot of trash on a single parry.