Parry

Description

Parrying is a technique where you deflect an enemy attack, leaving the enemy in a special staggered state, vulnerable to ripostes.

Parrying is a technique usable against most humanoid enemies in Dark Souls. It requires some amount of studying enemy attack behaviour, but learning it will provide the player with an advantage in numerous situations.

Execution

1. Equip a shield or weapon that can parry in your left hand. An empty hand works as well but is not recommended as failing the parry will have you take full damage.
2. Face a parriable enemy, lock-on recommended though not required, stand as close as possible. Since your weapon/shield has to connect with the enemy attack itself, your chance also increases if you are nearer.
3. Press L2 (PS3) / LT (XBox) / TAB (default on PC) at the moment (the first frame) the enemy's weapon begins its motion towards you (i.e. after the windup).
4. On successful parry, the enemy will be thrown back for about one second, and you'll hear a echoing cue sound.
5. The enemy will be in an unique staggered state. Ripostes can only be done in this unique state. It is possible to perform actions before the riposte as well e.g. two-handing for higher strength scaling then riposte or even swap weapons, rings (for example to a hornet ring) or even armor, it is also possible to attack, cast offensive magic, heal or run away. Additionally it's possible to attack an enemy, who has poise, otherwise they will be staggered by the attack, with some quick attacks, then riposte afterwards. In PvP circles this is referred to as a "Burrito". Even if you're not performing a riposte, the enemy will receive 40% extra damage within this staggered state.
6. The game allows for players to begin the riposte by pressing R1 while they're still in the parry animation. This inclusion is likely the reason the PvP tech "Parry Backstab" exists.

List of Weapons and Frame Data

Parry animation could be thought of as the active window and the recovery window.

• Active frames are when the enemy will be parried if their weapon connects with your weapon.
• Recovery frames are the "cooldown" period where you can't do anything at all. Animations in Dark Souls can almost always be "cancelled" into different animations, how early this happens depends on what other animation is queued to follow next. The earliest cancel in general occurs by dodging. All weapons are classified by Weapon Speed into fast and slow weapons, which decides whether their animations can be cut off earlier or later. This also applies to parries.

Partial Parry

When you parry a little too early (i.e. already entered recovery frame) or are hit with an attack that can't be parried while parrying, you will do a "partial parry". You don't actually parry the attack (no parry SFX), and you don't technically block the attack either (no deflection), but it has several properties:

• You still take damage, but the damage is partial. The damage taken is calculated from your weapon's actual blocking abilities divided by 2 (e.g. a partial parry by a Target Shield will give you 39% physical damage reduction instead of the normal 78%).
• You don't suffer any kind of block stun, hit stun, or Poise damage.
• You can do this to almost all kinds of attack in the game, including projectile attacks. The only exception is grab attacks; you must dodge those.
• If an enemy's attack would take away more stamina than you have remaining, you will get knocked back. For example, the Mushroom People's punch or the Gaping Dragon's tail swipe.

List of Parriable Enemies

Some of these enemies use the same base model as the player (NPCs, Clan of Forest Protectors, Dark Spirits, etc.). As such, they may carry parriable weapons and thus can be parried.

List of Enemies Who Can Parry

Tips

• All Jump attacks (forward + strong attack) can't be parried and are therefore useful against mobs able to parry the player. This should not be taken as advice for PvP.

Notes

• The classification of Small and Normal for shields does not technically have anything to do with parrying, however with the exceptions of the Effigy Shield and Heater Shield they do correspond to fast and slow shields.
• It is possible to parry an attack from an allied phantom (or the host, if you're summoned)