Parry with a shield takes half the stamina bar?

[Grim47]

Is the parry with shield supposed to be so expensive stamina wise?

[Thinking of ♥♥♥♥♥]

I noticed it too. Very strange. not quite half the stamina bar but it is very draining. Maybe it gets better with perks in Shield but as things stand dodging is much, much better for the vast majority of attacks. Shields are definitely not an early game weapon

[Drake]

You need perk, strength and endurance to effectively block and parry. This is not an action game, it's an RPG, stats matter, if you want to be good at parrying, you need to level up for it.

[Grim47]

Originally posted by Drake:

You need perk, strength and endurance to effectively block and parry. This is not an action game, it's an RPG, stats matter, if you want to be good at parrying, you need to level up for it.

parrying with a one hand or two hand is like 5-10% stamina lost instead of 50%. There's even a perk in one hand called duelist that reduces parry stamina for one hand with no shield, which is effectively useless perk because one hand parry is so cheap anyway. There is no perk to reduce shield parry stamina cost.

[wei270]

i think after you upgrade shield it becomes the better parry in the end, as of early game the one hand and who hand is better.

later shield has greatly reduced parry staman, they all do but shield has the greatest damage reduction when parring

[zaroua]

Originally posted by Drake:

You need perk, strength and endurance to effectively block and parry. This is not an action game, it's an RPG, stats matter, if you want to be good at parrying, you need to level up for it.

I've got perks. I've got levels. I've got gear. I've got upgrades. I've got stats. Blocking sucks donkey balls. Parries barely dent low level mob's stamina bars, and that's with the 60% increase stamina drain on parries. Charged 1h attacks barely make the stamina bar move. I'm using the Duel Shield +6 and I regularly lose 30% or more of my stamina bar parrying a single 1h attack from enemies. Losing more than half of my stamina bar parrying attacks from bigger enemies is a common occurrence. If a shield/parry focused build is meant to parry > heavy attack > stagger enemies, then it fails spectacularly on Veteran difficulty. ♥♥♥♥ sucks and I'll need to respec out of this garbage build.

Edit: I forgot the most important part as to why Parry sucks: half the ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ mobs in the game don't even have a stamina bar to break.

[chollman82]

It's an RPG, you start weak and get stronger. Persevere, don't be so impatient.

[Brady4444]

In addition to the obvious benefits a shield brings, there is a shield skill tree. In that tree are bonuses to damage. To me a one hand and shield build can be better than a two hander later. That said, since you can have several presets, there's nothing stopping you from being good at both eventually.

[Nikanuur]

I don't know where's this coming from. Granted, there may be some opponents stronger than others, but I've just gone testing—reapeatedly doing the same fight over and over. Quicksaved before 2 Red Death Infected in Avalon (barely made it to 2nd level so far, so I'm an absolute neophyte as far as leveling goes), and:

1. If I parry successfully with my shield, something like 1/6 to 1/8th of my Stamina is drained, very roughly speaking, similar amount get's drained from the enemy's Stamina bar, too. Probably a bit more. However, this is very useful, true to the tutorial's hint, because the enemy gets staggered for approx. 2 seconds, recoils, and before it is even able to get back to me, my Stamina's charged back to full.

2. If I missclick parry, and a thus a shield block occurs, something of a 1/5 of my Stamina is drained instead—along with, say 5-8 HP of a damage out of 52 (not much, tbh)—and the enemy just continues its movement or blow-baraging me.

3. If I parry so poorly that I let go of blocking before the hit connects, I lose around 1/3 of my HP per one strike. Playing on hard. This is properly hard, yeah.

Last but not least, an absolute treat of a combat mechanics is happening here—enemy commits to its attacks same as the player does. That means that if you side step to the respective, correct position, enemy's blow follows the momentum in the original direction. For crying out loud, you can even get to enemy's back like this—should you encounter an enemy that is as slow as Read Death Infected.

All of this is NOTHING like the ever-so-poorly mentioned reference to Elder Scrolls games.

[Grim47]

Originally posted by Brady4444:

In addition to the obvious benefits a shield brings, there is a shield skill tree. In that tree are bonuses to damage. To me a one hand and shield build can be better than a two hander later. That said, since you can have several presets, there's nothing stopping you from being good at both eventually.

oh wait you can make presets? that would help out, how do you access them?

[Grim47]

Originally posted by Nikanuur:

I don't know where's this coming from. Granted, there may be some opponents stronger than others, but I've just gone testing—reapeatedly doing the same fight over and over. Quicksaved before 2 Red Death Infected in Avalon (barely made it to 2nd level so far, so I'm an absolute neophyte as far as leveling goes), and:

1. If I parry successfully with my shield, something like 1/6 to 1/8th of my Stamina is drained, very roughly speaking, similar amount get's drained from the enemy's Stamina bar, too. Probably a bit more. However, this is very useful, true to the tutorial's hint, because the enemy gets staggered for approx. 2 seconds, recoils, and before it is even able to get back to me, my Stamina's charged back to full.

2. If I missclick parry, and a thus a shield block occurs, something of a 1/5 of my Stamina is drained instead—along with, say 5-8 HP of a damage out of 52 (not much, tbh)—and the enemy just continues its movement or blow-baraging me.

3. If I parry so poorly that I let go of blocking before the hit connects, I lose around 1/3 of my HP per one strike. Playing on hard. This is properly hard, yeah.

Last but not least, an absolute treat of a combat mechanics is happening here—enemy commits to its attacks same as the player does. That means that if you side step to the respective, correct position, enemy's blow follows the momentum in the original direction. For crying out loud, you can even get to enemy's back like this—should you encounter an enemy that is as slow as Read Death Infected.

All of this is NOTHING like the ever-so-poorly mentioned reference to Elder Scrolls games.

We are not complaining, something just seems off. You say a successful parry does 1/6th stamina - I am just testing out parrying the air and it drains half my entire stamina bar -> https://imgur.com/a/0DJxL4I

The same test without the shield, it drains only 1/10th of my stamina bar. So it seems very punishing to attempt a shield parry.

On that note, I gave up parry entirely respecced to 2h damage, stamina, and dash. Doing way better.

[Grim47]

Originally posted by zaroua:

Originally posted by Drake:

You need perk, strength and endurance to effectively block and parry. This is not an action game, it's an RPG, stats matter, if you want to be good at parrying, you need to level up for it.

I've got perks. I've got levels. I've got gear. I've got upgrades. I've got stats. Blocking sucks donkey balls. Parries barely dent low level mob's stamina bars, and that's with the 60% increase stamina drain on parries. Charged 1h attacks barely make the stamina bar move. I'm using the Duel Shield +6 and I regularly lose 30% or more of my stamina bar parrying a single 1h attack from enemies. Losing more than half of my stamina bar parrying attacks from bigger enemies is a common occurrence. If a shield/parry focused build is meant to parry > heavy attack > stagger enemies, then it fails spectacularly on Veteran difficulty. ♥♥♥♥ sucks and I'll need to respec out of this garbage build.

Edit: I forgot the most important part as to why Parry sucks: half the ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ mobs in the game don't even have a stamina bar to break.

Yup, I think parry and block is a supplement but the primary defense is actually dodge. Esp in early game.
Maybe when your characters are fully leveled then the amount of total stats and perks just outdo anything, but early game esp lvl 1-15 dodging is king.

[zaroua]

Originally posted by chollman82:

It's an RPG, you start weak and get stronger. Persevere, don't be so impatient.

I'm 20 hours in, it doesn't get stronger.

Originally posted by Nikanuur:

blah blah blah parry stuff

I'm in act 2. Two handed generic mobs take 90% of my stam bar on a perfect parry. Their stamina bar basically doesn't move. It takes about 30 seconds of non-stop perfect parrying to stagger a mini-boss/bounty guy. But since parrying takes so much of my stamina, I don't have enough left to take full advantage of the stagger state. If any fight with more than 1 enemy, it's impossible to even stagger anything. All on veteran difficulty. With parry talents.

[Nikanuur]

Originally posted by Grim47:

Originally posted by Nikanuur:

I don't know where's this coming from. Granted, there may be some opponents stronger than others, but I've just gone testing—reapeatedly doing the same fight over and over. Quicksaved before 2 Red Death Infected in Avalon (barely made it to 2nd level so far, so I'm an absolute neophyte as far as leveling goes), and:

1. If I parry successfully with my shield, something like 1/6 to 1/8th of my Stamina is drained, very roughly speaking, similar amount get's drained from the enemy's Stamina bar, too. Probably a bit more. However, this is very useful, true to the tutorial's hint, because the enemy gets staggered for approx. 2 seconds, recoils, and before it is even able to get back to me, my Stamina's charged back to full.

2. If I missclick parry, and a thus a shield block occurs, something of a 1/5 of my Stamina is drained instead—along with, say 5-8 HP of a damage out of 52 (not much, tbh)—and the enemy just continues its movement or blow-baraging me.

3. If I parry so poorly that I let go of blocking before the hit connects, I lose around 1/3 of my HP per one strike. Playing on hard. This is properly hard, yeah.

Last but not least, an absolute treat of a combat mechanics is happening here—enemy commits to its attacks same as the player does. That means that if you side step to the respective, correct position, enemy's blow follows the momentum in the original direction. For crying out loud, you can even get to enemy's back like this—should you encounter an enemy that is as slow as Read Death Infected.

All of this is NOTHING like the ever-so-poorly mentioned reference to Elder Scrolls games.

We are not complaining, something just seems off. You say a successful parry does 1/6th stamina - I am just testing out parrying the air and it drains half my entire stamina bar -> https://imgur.com/a/0DJxL4I

The same test without the shield, it drains only 1/10th of my stamina bar. So it seems very punishing to attempt a shield parry.

On that note, I gave up parry entirely respecced to 2h damage, stamina, and dash. Doing way better.

Okay, thanks for the explanation. That is indeed strange. I don't have means to record a video to prove what I am saying, I just stand by this. Bcs, I experimented in, like, 20 repetition of the same combat to understand what's going on. My 2 cents into this:

1. Poor parry often results into a block. Like that, I concur that as much as 1/3 or more of my Stamina went poof. It's really easy to confuse these two. Parry is best recognized by an actual, visible enemy stagger and zero HP deduction on your side.
Reading into your eloquency, I would rather say you distinguish pretty well, so forgive me for saying, but perhaps this is what's been happening?

2. Encumberance / mismatching equip / bugged playthrough, or some other bugbug?

3. Have you tested with various equipment? Quicksave, drop everything you have on the ground, equip only one weapon, test?

[Grim47]

Originally posted by Nikanuur:

Originally posted by Grim47:

We are not complaining, something just seems off. You say a successful parry does 1/6th stamina - I am just testing out parrying the air and it drains half my entire stamina bar -> https://imgur.com/a/0DJxL4I

The same test without the shield, it drains only 1/10th of my stamina bar. So it seems very punishing to attempt a shield parry.

On that note, I gave up parry entirely respecced to 2h damage, stamina, and dash. Doing way better.

Okay, thanks for the explanation. That is indeed strange. I don't have means to record a video to prove what I am saying, I just stand by this. Bcs, I experimented in, like, 20 repetition of the same combat to understand what's going on. My 2 cents into this:

1. Poor parry often results into a block. Like that, I concur that as much as 1/3 or more of my Stamina went poof. It's really easy to confuse these two. Parry is best recognized by an actual, visible enemy stagger and zero HP deduction on your side.
Reading into your eloquency, I would rather say you distinguish pretty well, so forgive me for saying, but perhaps this is what's been happening?

2. Encumberance / mismatching equip / bugged playthrough, or some other bugbug?

3. Have you tested with various equipment? Quicksave, drop everything you have on the ground, equip only one weapon, test?

I gave up on parry at the moment lol will pump dodge/stamina and damage until I can no longer, then maybe even armor and healing after that. I see parry as my last priority rn.

[Gho4st]

Originally posted by Grim47:

Originally posted by Nikanuur:

Okay, thanks for the explanation. That is indeed strange. I don't have means to record a video to prove what I am saying, I just stand by this. Bcs, I experimented in, like, 20 repetition of the same combat to understand what's going on. My 2 cents into this:

1. Poor parry often results into a block. Like that, I concur that as much as 1/3 or more of my Stamina went poof. It's really easy to confuse these two. Parry is best recognized by an actual, visible enemy stagger and zero HP deduction on your side.
Reading into your eloquency, I would rather say you distinguish pretty well, so forgive me for saying, but perhaps this is what's been happening?

2. Encumberance / mismatching equip / bugged playthrough, or some other bugbug?

3. Have you tested with various equipment? Quicksave, drop everything you have on the ground, equip only one weapon, test?

I gave up on parry at the moment lol will pump dodge/stamina and damage until I can no longer, then maybe even armor and healing after that. I see parry as my last priority rn.

I had similar issue with parrying but after reading one steam post, I finally understood how it works. For you to parry, you have to tap your block button. You know you are parrying whevener you see an animation for it. Parry happens at the end of that animation. If you hold the block button even in the slightest, it will switch to block stance.