Best way to learn how to parry

After stunlocking everything with that moves with greatswords and poise stacking with buffed straight swords ect I thought it was time to get better at parry's to switch it up abit.

At 1st I thought better stack up on the heavy armour then try out the heater shield...but I found that when I don't feel like there's a consequence to missing the parry I just get carried away and miss my timing and only have decent success.

So lately at the kiln I do it naked with just my Dark mask the heater shield and velka rapier/bandits with the hornets ring...so you will pay dearly for your mistakes...I find when your low on health and your back is against the wall this is when you can fight the best or at least I can...I have had great success with this technique the last little while.

At lunch today I went home fired up dark souls...1st guy I fought buffed a CMW claymore I gulped stepped up and nailed him with a parry 1st strike he tried for a OHKO...then I even got a prediction parry on a uchi a couple fights later. Its not for everyone but if ya wanna get better you have to think outside the box sometimes and die lots lol!!

if youre first starting i would either stack poise have no poise at all like youre doing. youre gonna die a lot anyway, in places like kiln or the forest its better to use the shields with fast and reg parries since the nimation is really fast, if someone sees you with the parrying dagger or target/bucler shields they will just go for a bs since the animation on them are so damn slow.

i have been fooling around with dual kats and i actually have started to really like that fighting style. its harder for more skilled players to avoid getting parried because its difficult to tell when you will parry compared to a shield or dagger.

i found dark hand is best for parrying anyone else think this?

LOL ya you def have to be willing to die. I found the same thing Rant as I am just learning and by no means a master such a yourself...when I use the parry dagger or target/buckler and miss I get BS'd almost 100% of the time. But with the heater or even the cress grass as long as I am quick and parry then roll away I find I get punished for misses way less often.

The only problem is now I am actually getting the parrys but I am so used of missing and rolling away that I am missing my RPST window from rolling away

@FruitPunchNinja - very good point man being as unpredictable as possible goes a long ways eh! Once I improve I hope to be more unpredictable like maybe switch from my crest grass shield thats been on my back the whole time cuz I dont use it to much else to a Dark Hand and insta parry!!

@Billy funny you mention the Dark Hand I have heard the same thing...and it will go well with my naked Dark Mask only setup lol...going to try it after work!!

i go with the darK hand most of the time becasue i have so little weight left after equipping my DGM or DGH and since i never block it works for me.

I just go for bare fists--weighs even less than Dark Hand! It's the same as parrying with the Dark Hand.

As for learning, I prefer to stack defense, and I do it during random invasions. Sometimes, when I come up against a rare weapon, I'll take off my weapon and just try and parry him as many times as I can before I die.

I ran into someone using a greataxe recently (pretty rare to invade someone wielding that), and only managed to get the parry timing right when I died--I landed the parry and took damage at the same time, so I died while he was ready to get riposted (not the first time it's happened to me, and it's always been against axes, I think). So I messaged him, offered to give him a Twin Humanity if he would summon me and fight me again with his greataxe! He did, I stacked my armor (was wearing weak armor the first time), and I parried him a good dozen times before he killed me. He made a deal with the devil, if you ask me!

(So everyone can learn from my experience that time: the greataxe is so slow, it's one of the weapons you can actually parry on sight. For a 1-handed R1, you need to parry as soon as he initiates his attack. 2-handed R1 and R2, you need to wait a bit before parrying once he's initiated his swing. The real tricky part though is when your greataxe-wielding opponent varries his 1-handed strikes between R1 and R2. R1 you need to be quick, R2 you need to wait. You need to be so quick on the R1, though, that you can't afford to wait and see if it's a R1 or R2, you need to go for it. Unfortunately I died just before I could test whether I'd have time to parry twice for a 1-handed R2--parry the first time in case it's a R1, and the second time to land the parry on the R2. But for a twin humanity, I'd say I got my money's worth!)

Parrying is awesome. Personally, I would make a Vit-gouged elemental build to practice. Still have decent power, but you won't die as quickly, so you can get more practice in during a fight.

What helped me a lot with parries was looking it up on you tube this was because people told me you had to parry before the swing (to compensate for the lag) but watching it on you tube showed me better and now i am mediocre at parrying now rather than being terrible

Ive been messing around with parrying and I've yet to ever get a successful one (well I take that back, I got one by accident and I didn't realize I had parried this guys uchi and ended up backing away without doing anything), I can do it in pve, but in pvp I just miss horribly. Im currently invading in the kiln, but what are some basic tips for someone who has absolutely no parry experience, should I be using a small shield? How do you time the attacks or anticipate, everyone's attacks go way to fast? Also this mite be noobish, well my whole post is noobsih, but what do you guys mean by stacking defense?

war.

If you're good at PvE parrying, then you're familiar with the moveset of most weapons and when to parry. Basically, take all that knowledge, and parry .5 seconds sooner than you would in PvE. Yes, for faster and medium speed weapons, you'll have to parry before your opponent actually attacks. And for the slowest of weapons, you'll have to parry immediately or soon after you see them initiate their attack.

The easiest way to parry is to use a shield, and you'll see many tutorials for this on youtube. Block your opponent's first attack, and if they're spamming, as soon as you've blocked the first hit, parry, and it'll parry their second attack. Smaller weapons that cause block-stun are too quick for you to be able to block the first hit and parry the second, but they're weaker so it's safer to tank the first hit and parry the second.

And if you're good at predicting your opponents, or baiting them into behaving like you want them to, then you can parry their first attack (so for most weapons you parry before they've ever attacked, totally predicting it). This is my preferred method (for best effect, do this while using the Chameleon spell!). Look for patterns in your opponent's attacks--especially running-R1s or rolling-R1s, or they'll block your attack then attack after (very easy to bait, just attack then parry), etc.

To practice, it's best to have high Vit, Defense, and poise, so you can tank a lot of hits while missing your parries before you get stun-locked or killed.

(Stacking just means giving yourself a lot of, or more of. So stacking defense means equipping armor with more defense. Also, tanking means standing there and taking the hit without blocking, but with high defense and poise you greatly diminish its impact, hence tanking.)

Practice makes perfect and it took me a extremely long time to learn to parry. goto forest and get your butt kicked tons. comp characters in forest no very good practice cuz moves are all teh same. do tons of pvp and die.

I prefer 76 poise.. silver shield..hornets ring.rapier. power within.. just wait for them to make a mistake which they usually do when they see your health falling from PI cus they get ****.. parry..kill... oops my bad:) then smile.. so much fun... parry is King!!

I'd like to be a pro parrying with a curved sword or better.. a rapier. Idk, but I feel impossibility on that department since my main enemies are japanese or american which are quite difficult to predict.

When you are first transitioning from PvE to PvP parries, it can also help to practice with a friendly summon. You can't hurt each other, but you can parry (just no ripostes). It'll help you get the timing down without committing to real combat and using up a stack of humanity or heals. Once you're comfortable, you can then move up to real fights in the forest or elsewhere.

Hey Rant I messed around with the heater and target more on the weekend abit getting better with them but I still like my crest grass better I seem to have better timing with it so far.

BTW aren't the parry's supposed to be the hard part not the rpstl?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3CR7ATXXSsY

DarkW17 wrote:Hey Rant I messed around with the heater and target more on the weekend abit getting better with them but I still like my crest grass better I seem to have better timing with it so far.

BTW aren't the parry's supposed to be the hard part not the rpstl?

[url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3CR7ATXXSsY

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3CR7ATXXSsY[/quote[/url]]

LMAO heavier weapons require a faster reflex dude since they are slow, it happens to me all the time, missing ripostes sucks, sometimes its me sometimes its input lag but it sucks anyway, good job, that guy really sucked though, faster weapons an better opponents will have random strikes so i faster shield would be better but if you already have the timing right just keep practicing, and the grass shield has that stamina regen which is really helpful for big weapons. ipersonally like the heater shiled cause it makes it easier to react to most weapons, the target shield and parrying dagger actually makes it so easy to parry, specially heavy weapons.

LOL ya he sucked big time and he pissed off every NPC in the forest which didn't help his cause to much either. Ya now that I have the medium shields figured out I am going to work on the heater it is going to be my main focus now the parry dagger and buckler or target ect aren't for me yet.

My problem so far with heater is I seem to time it like I would the grass crest and do it to fast I need to wait a second.....practice, practice, practice!!

DarkW17 wrote:LOL ya he sucked big time and he pissed off every NPC in the forest which didn't help his cause to much either. Ya now that I have the medium shields figured out I am going to work on the heater it is going to be my main focus now the parry dagger and buckler or target ect aren't for me yet.

My problem so far with heater is I seem to time it like I would the grass crest and do it to fast I need to wait a second.....practice, practice, practice!!

i would just stick with the grass crest them, the man makes the shield(or some bs like that lol), if you have the timing right an dworks well for you then stick with it, everyone has different style of play dude. i prefer the heater shield but for gangbangers i use the the dragon crest shield cause theyre so predictable and i love using that shield, if i see a host with two sunbros i alwasy switch to it.

After FruitPunches post I messed around with dual Kats thats a really fun way to fight and can be very effective. I went chaos blade on the off hand and +14 washing pole on the right hand so I can buff with SLB if needed...damn even I didnt know when I was parrying with all the swords flying around!!

dual rapiers man