Secret to disarming enemies?

[retsa2b]

Went through the trouble of earning the correct orb ("Dead Man's Hand"). During training, the enemies obliged me by constantly blocking so I could disarm them. I've been playing the game for half an hour now and not a single enemy has bothered to block, including the one gold sneak that I managed to locate.

Is there a "Block, you idiot!" button that I haven't been pressing?

[tools guy-kun]

there's an ability in the swordsman tree where it's a type of reversal. as soon as an enemy hits you, you do the parry as you would a komaki reversal in the older games, and there's a chance they will drop their sword. it's not guaranteed but it would probably take a few reversals.

another good way is using the dog trooper's ability. whoever they attract, they will all drop their weapons, aside from a few special exceptions but I'm not entirely confident that will contribute to... whatever achievement or something you're trying to do to progress, if there's any.

[retsa2b]

Originally posted by tools guy-kun:

there's an ability in the swordsman tree

Well... good to know, even if it's for the tree I've paid the absolute least amount of attention to. Yikes.

Folks talking about disarming enemies are invariably referencing Dead Man's Hand. So I can't help wonder why every enemy I run into is happy to just get shot. I'm gonna find the wimpiest gun I can get my hands on and hope it enhances my odds...

[Duck]

Disarming with sword is alot easier. But I get that you are asking about gun specifically, and honestly, I had no luck with disarming enemies with gun so far, they would either run towards you or just get shot, even if they block, they will stumble and get shot instead of disarming.

[retsa2b]

Originally posted by Duck:

even if they block, they will stumble and get shot instead of disarming.

I finally had one enemy block and this is all that happened. It's a conspiracy! Everyone pretended Dead Man's Hand was the next best thing to sliced bread and I fell for it.

[Velesianus]

Originally posted by Duck:

Disarming with sword is alot easier.

That would only be true if you're not using a charged gun.

Originally posted by retsa2b:

Went through the trouble of earning the correct orb ("Dead Man's Hand"). During training, the enemies obliged me by constantly blocking so I could disarm them. I've been playing the game for half an hour now and not a single enemy has bothered to block, including the one gold sneak that I managed to locate.

Is there a "Block, you idiot!" button that I haven't been pressing?

When people talk about farming elemental swords with gunman they mean using something like Soul Beat.

This is how this works in practice against a Golden Sneak for example ;

• While the battle is loading hold down RB+LB
  
• Let him complete an attack against you while blocking
  
• As soon as his moveset finishes, release only LB and fire a charged shot (doesn't matter if he's blocking or not)
  
• If it doesn't disarm him, wait for him to get back up and, if he has enough health left, repeat
  
• If that doesn't do it (rare) then let him kill you and try again.

You get one charged shot per second (slower on Model 10/14) so the whole process, including picking up the dropped sword and defeating the GS, should only take 3 or 4 seconds.

NOTE: This might actually only work on higher difficulties. Without any buffs, a standard Soul Beat for a rank 9 gunman will hit about 320 raw damage per shot.

This being the case, on lower difficulties you might have to create a deliberately low damage Heart Beat or Model 10 and remove all other ATK buffing gear.