HELLO TIDERS,
[TLDR AT BOTTOM]
I’m here today to propose a change to the way the parry special action works. As a quick run down of the current way parry works, on activation the character plays a roughly 2 second animation of preparing to parry an attack. If an enemy attacks within that window, the attack is instantly blocked(for a reduced stamina cost) and a high damage strikedown is immediately thrown out(at whatever you are currently aiming at, even if it is not from whosoever attack you parried), which has high chance to stagger whatever enemy hit you. However this will only parry the first attack to hit you, and any following attacks will still hit, unless you parry again in time. You can’t just hold down parry. This is great to use against enemies like crushers and maulers for their instant knock swing-down attacks, making it so you can actually block them without dying, and it’s great against ragers and chaos spawn, to parry and stun their attack to stagger them, giving you a window to kill them before their endless swinging starts again. It’s also EXTREMELY satisfying to land one, and the high damage makes it a GREAT ATTACK.
There are downsides though, if you’re fighting a mob of ragers and use the parry, it’ll stun anything in front of you, but not to the sides. So any ragers attacking on either side of the first rager will hit you immediately after and you won’t be able to capitalize on this, even if both ragers attacked at the same time. Also if you are preparing to parry a crusher or mauler hit, and a smaller enemy attacks you before the swing-down lands, it will activate the parry, but the parry attack will not typically stun either of these enemies enough to prevent the swing-down, making it so you still are hit by it and instantly downed. The change I’d like to propose would help with these situations and make the parry an even more high skill- high risk reward weapon.
I believe the best change for the way the parry currently works, is to shorten the window for a successful parry down from 2 seconds to less that 1, making it so you can’t just use the parry at any point in the charge up for a powerful swingdown attack and successfully parry it, you have to actually time the parry a lot better. However, if you successfully parry an attack, you gain invulnerability for about .2-.5 seconds, or have any other attacks in that time also be counted at part of the initial block. This way if you are attempting to parry a large swingdown attack, but a poxwalker walks through the crusher and activates your parry, you aren’t immediately hit and killed by the swing-down attack(Which feels a lot like getting robbed of a cool moment, because of some enemy walking though another, or running around to behind you to attack while you’re dealing with an active horde). And instead of that you have the opportunity to continue fighting the fight. Or if dealing with a mob of ragers, if you parry one of their attacks, and kill one rager but one of the many others still hits you, it won’t stun you and will give you an opportunity to back up and prepare to strike the next one.
I’d also like to say that this could be incorporated as a blessing on weapons with parry, to encourage building into this style of gameplay and playing as a masterful melee combat character. It sort of makes the game feel a bit like a soulslike and is extremely satisfying. I think this would also pave the way for more versions of weapons with parry special attacks, making it a full on style of gameplay, in the same way that a lot of other weapons have a forward jab on special activation.
[TLDR - We should shorten the window for a successful parry, but give the parry invulnerability or increased blocking time after activation for about 0.2-0.5 seconds to allow players to handle multiple attacks in a short window and give the special attack a lot more utility and make it a lot more skill based, and less of a gamble on if something will hit before what you planned to parry, making you die. Also just making it so the weapon plays a lot faster. This could be incorporated across the board or as a blessing. I also think this would pave the way for the addition of more weapons with parry specials.]
(Changes based on Replies- parry is a 180 degree attack facing in front of the player instead of a 360 degree as it is now, thus making it so blocking (which is 360 degrees) still has a good reason to be used. Also possibly a short cooldown between parries on a missed one that doesn’t actually block an attack, to prevent spamming, and reward people who can always time their parries correctly so they can chain them. Random other thought, successfully parrying could also just count as a push as well, to give that window and not require you to have invun or increased block time. Ill expermiment with if this would solve some of the issue tomorrow.)
THANKS FOR READING AND LET ME KNOW IF YOU CAN THINK OF OTHER WAYS TO BALANCE THIS OR OTHER PROPOSITIONS FOR CHANGES TO PARRY, and please try out parry and how it feels before you comment anything.
