by parrying, you go from 0 focus to 100 in an instant, and get a few millennia of free time to decide how to use it. it can stunlock bosses and enemies alike.
on top of that, just put some gems on your gloves and…
free stamina refill, even more free focus, free health.
you would think all this would be balanced out by some very heavy downside, right? right?
haha no
literally all you need to do is press middle click at the right time
is a plague rat harassing you while you’re trying to deal with risen? middle click. is darak loose in your sewer system? middle click. is your marriage falling apart? middle click.
simply put, parrying is too useful.
“but it takes skill to parry everything!”
sure, but you know what it also does?
it also invalidates all the interesting strategy in the game. enemy prioritization, positioning, creative usage of runes, and build knowledge. – all of these fall victim to the monolith, the swiss army knife that is parrying.
the only big thing to hold parrying back is the human skill limit.
and believe me, you do not wanna be telling the indomitable human spirit that parrying is balanced just because it’s hard to do consistently.
i have spent my time analyzing enemies in combat, memorizing every attack in their arsenal and it didnt take long before i got a near 100% parry consistency. the combat is now close to being a joke for me. this is not okay.
what can’t be done
this is the part where a person who has never designed a game in his life tries to give you game design advice.
i’m gonna first explain what i think shouldn’t be done to parrying.
“just decrease the amount of focus you get on parry”
nah. many weapons have 100 focus runes, so doing this just beats the reason to parry in the first place.
“make the parry timing tighter”
in my opinion its already pretty tight for the average player.
tight enough for you to draw your focus away from other things and tunnelvision on getting the timing right. that’s as tight as it needs to be.
also, as i mentioned, the human skill limit is not a valid counterbalance.
“just remove parrying”
don’t be a quitter like that. removing it is a last resort. better to try everything to make it work before jumping to removal.
what CAN be done
here’s what i would do.
first, look at the current limiting factors of parrying:
- some enemies are completely unparriable
- some enemies have unparriable attacks
- some enemies dont get staggered on parry
- parrying costs some stamina
i would take these limiting factors and look at your options for cranking them up a notch. there’s some things that can be done already.
remove the stamina refill affix. maybe make parrying cost a bit more stamina.
make more enemies not get insta staggered on parry.
future level design should consider parrying when choosing which enemies to use.
and lastly, the next time you guys do a pass on enemy AI, make enemies smarter at countering parrying.
if a group of risen see you killing their friends with parry spam, they should know what youre up to and throw curveballs.
more shield bashes, kicks, charges, arrows, etc would work well.
something, anything to give these guys a chance.