Parry feels broadly inapplicable to most situations

Starting A3 as Huntress, and I am pretty underwhelmed by this implementation of the parry mechanic. It feels like it has no general application to 75% of the situations I encounter in-game.

1. it has a long startup animation to raise the shield

2. by the time the shield is raised, there are monsters swarming me forcing me to move

3. i put the shield down and rotate my skills to clear the packs because it's safer

So, if I just stand there and wait to parry, in most cases I'm going to be out of position after it procs, and it's almost guaranteed that I'll be taking some damage from other monsters in the time it takes me to do the entire animation.

There's also no indicator that gives me any information about what can and cannot be parried, fighting a boss? I can guess what can be parried and if I guess wrong, ded.

The entire thing feels pretty clunky and out of place.

Parry needs to be functionally forgiving in execution in a game like path of exile, you are squinting at the attack anim of one single monster out of potential 10+ entities on your screen. Correct me if I'm wrong, as I don't think it functions this way currently; should it not just parry in a large cone in front of the player? The most value I get out of it is in 1v1 or 1v2 scenarios, and that simply doesn't happen consistently enough in maps to justify a high skill based parry mechanic.

Sekiro has a visual indicator mechanic called "Perilous Attacks" where an attack that cannot be parried is indicated by a red glowing Kanji symbol, it's a simple way to telegraph QoL into a parry mechanic. In Souls, once you parry and counter attack, regardless of how many enemies are surrounding you, you have I-frames for the entire animation. Neither of these are the case with POE2's parry, it just feels like it's impossible to fully utilize because the game never allows proper windows for it.

Parry initiation should have next to no startup animation in a game like this, just tap or click and it happens within frames of the input. The radius should be large enough that executing the parry is not punishment in itself.

Maybe I'm using it wrong, this is how it feels to me currently though.

Game is great! I loved it....but last patch...hmmm...ruined everything.
I know this is beta and they try and try balance game + remove all lawnmowers gears but right now I pass and wait what they will do.

Parry indeed feels very clunky and honestly cant wait for a charge generation mechanic without parry. The only time parry has helped me is when I'm fighting a boss and know / understand which attack I can parry or small pack of mobs... Otherwise it's gg. And i think it's because the mobs are pretty fast compared to players early on. Add the slow parry time, the need to time and position mobs with spear explosions/procs and i get a feeling i'm handicapped. Meenwhile my sorc just frost bombs / ice nova's everything and only dies from 1shots which i can dodge fairly easily when mobs can't get to me .

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psychedelaholic#0913 wrote:

There's also no indicator that gives me any information about what can and cannot be parried, fighting a boss? I can guess what can be parried and if I guess wrong, ded.

All your points are valid, but this one in particular feels like a cardinal sin on the part of GGG. They make parrying a vital component of the huntress, but then make it useless vs bosses for this reason.

I agree. I tried the "intended" combo way of Parry into Disengage into spear thrown into a gap closer and repeat.

It worked well enough in A1 where the monster density is low. Now halfway through A2, I rarely fight a single pack of melee monsters without a pack of ranged involved, or the monsters have an unparryable slam in addition to a basic attack.

This makes parrying a less and less attractive proposition. It still works okay on a boss, if you know its moves, but into the endgame, I fear it will be completely untenable. Imagine parrying in a Ritual or a Breach.

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Stebobibo#0581 wrote:

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psychedelaholic#0913 wrote:

There's also no indicator that gives me any information about what can and cannot be parried, fighting a boss? I can guess what can be parried and if I guess wrong, ded.

All your points are valid, but this one in particular feels like a cardinal sin on the part of GGG. They make parrying a vital component of the huntress, but then make it useless vs bosses for this reason.

Not entirely true, the Red "this is unblockable/un-evadeable" flash indicates attacks that cannot be parried. The problem is certain blockable/evadeable attacks that *cannot* be parried *don't* flash red. Lachlan is a prime example.

Count me in on Team Clunky, I know it's gauche to make snarky Elden Ring comparisons, but what are we doing here? Also a little unclear on the wording for Parry: "You cannot evade a hit you could have parried." So does this mean if my buckler is up the incoming attack will succeed or fail based solely on parry, or that I *cannot evade at all* with a buckler equipped with all my ER going to stun threshold buckler up or down?

Parry is a death trap - most of the time

When parrying you loss evasion so every projectile hit you (no armor)-> death/near death
When parrying you move slowly so you can't move away from projectiles.


So get good and no casual parrying anymore or :

1. Make evasion work for projectiles with penalty at least during parrying
2. faster moving when parrying to reposition and move away from projectiles


and armor/evasion shields could have both options (raise the shield/parry) both scale from armor or evasion exclusively so half as good for dmg but some options open.

I really like the parry in PoE2, it feels very satisfying and quite interesting in the way it works. The parry is not like Souls games. It feels really cool when you combo it with other spear attacks before executing the parry.

Sorta like Fortification. Hey here's this defensive mechanic that might be good for melee... oh except that's where it doesn't work most of the time. Sigh.

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Pathshaper#5338 wrote:

Not entirely true, the Red "this is unblockable/un-evadeable" flash indicates attacks that cannot be parried. The problem is certain blockable/evadeable attacks that *cannot* be parried *don't* flash red. Lachlan is a prime example.

Count me in on Team Clunky, I know it's gauche to make snarky Elden Ring comparisons, but what are we doing here? Also a little unclear on the wording for Parry: "You cannot evade a hit you could have parried." So does this mean if my buckler is up the incoming attack will succeed or fail based solely on parry, or that I *cannot evade at all* with a buckler equipped with all my ER going to stun threshold buckler up or down?

Thanks for your clarification on this. Before I read this, I did see the in-game tooltip talking about the red flash. But the number of times I've seen that flash is minuscule. I think a huge part of the issue is that enemies your mouse is over are highlighted red. Kinda makes it hard to see a red flash if the whole enemy is shining red. I've always hated that red highlight and wished for a way to remove it. GGG, this is even more reason for you to give us a setting to turn this off, so please do. And of course, some attacks not having a flash at all is a huge problem that needs to be addressed.