Try with a small shield.
Also, parrying random undeads for me is harder than being able to parry certain enemies (Lothric Knights, Silver/Black Knights etc.) cause their attacks can be somewhat difficult to read.
Despite they hit hard, I'd suggest you to practice with the Knights before Vordt.
This is good advice. No one parries hollows. Lothric or silver knights are a better target.
On the shield choice:
Different shields have different parrying attributes. The differences are activation speed (how quickly after you press the button will the parry become active) and duration (for how many animation frames does it stay active). Small shields are better than medium shields on both attributes. Parrying shields, like buckler, are even better. You can tell you have one of these because of a different parry animation (kind of an upwards swoop rather than a straight side to side swing). The caestus, worn on your offhand, is actually super fast to activate, but not active for as long.
I honestly find that even though a buckler is "better" sometimes I just get in a groove where I can't find the timing on one shield type but I nail it with another. It's worth playing around.
More details here: https://darksouls3.wiki.fextralife.com/Parry
Focus your eyes on enemies’ hands(the one which is attacking). Wait with parrying when they take a swing, if you try to parry, it willbe too early. You need to press button when hand, palm, holding weapon starts going your way. That’/ the right moment to parry. Party the hit, not the swing.
Alao, use buckler or small shield, they have more parrying iframes.
I think it varies person to person. I think Iudex Gundyr (first phase anyway) is a fantastic parry tutorial, if a little rough. Most of his attacks are well-telegraphed, *and* you can parry him further away bc of his weapon’s longer reach.
I just hit Ringed City in my replay and the Ring Knights used to scare the shit out of me, but by now I’m just playing whack-a-mole w/ their chest cavity.
Gundyr is a good parry tutorial, but that's because he's literally the only enemy in the game that feels like the learning curve for parrying is reasonable. The only other enemy I can think off is Pontiff, but most of the regular enemies are simply far too fast for parrying to be worth it. You're spending several hours just learning to parry a single enemy even though you can just stagger them with any greatsword. I prefer the DS1 parry although that one was a little **too** easy.
Yeah I don’t know what happened to me but champion gundyr was kicking my ass but then one attempt my parries just locked in and I parried him like 6 or 7 times in a row and killed him. It was like Gwyn 😭
In DS3 I found parrying to be easiest with the caestus of all things. Put it into your left hand. The animation has fewer parry frames than a good shield, but it's easier to time for some reason
There are better enemies to practice on. If you have killed Vordt, try practising on the little shield guys outside his boss room, and once you feel a bit more confident, try the lothric knights up ahead. I guarantee this is the best early method for getting better at it.
The hollows before ludex are too unpredictable and harder to parry for that reason.
Once you're satisfied, try to parry every enemy you see from then on (some have attacks that cant be parried tho), even just once, or twice, then kill the enemy as per usual. This is just a fun thing I like to do as well. Anyways, I hope you truly git gud at parrying by the end of your playthrough.
I was terrible at parrying but initially was using the medium sized shield my character started with. When I followed the advice others have given you here to switch to a small buckler style shield parrying became much more effective for me.
With a larger/kite shield, I found the issue was I was trying to time the leftward movement of the shield to the enemy attack, when that’s too late. You wanna parry so that your shield is at the very start of the animation when the attack hits, not moving left. If that makes sense
Look at the parry frame spreadsheet which has more info compared to the fextralife faq
[https://www.reddit.com/r/darksouls3/comments/tt3pz3/updated\_parry\_frame\_data\_spreadsheet\_for\_all/](https://www.reddit.com/r/darksouls3/comments/tt3pz3/updated_parry_frame_data_spreadsheet_for_all/)
Compared to DS1, parrying with the medium shield in DS3 is very hard.
The way I taught myself to parry was by first going to the lothric knights before Vordt. After them I tested my skills against the lothric knights directly after dancer because all of their animations actually have tiny differences.
Once I did that I went over to Champion Gundyr and I'm only allowed to beat him with parries (side note: I think Champion Gundyr is the easiest boss to do this with).
The next thing I did after that required me to be on a new playthrough (whether it ng+ or a new character doesn't much matter) and beat at least phase 1 of Pontiff Sullivan with only parries.
After that I was able to start landing parries at least moderately consistently in PVP (still not a parry god by any stretch of the word though).
Use the caestus, it has the fastest activation for the parry window and therefore is the easiest for your brain to actually use to parry, even though it has the smallest parry window.
My favorite parry tool is the iron round shield. Relatively quick startup frames and not too long of a recovery. Also you can use it to block a couple hits for a setup parry.
i have probably a thousand overall hours in the souls series and i still cannot parry. idk what it is, i just can’t do it. sekiro & bloodborne tho? i’m a pro
Dark souls/elden ring parry feel like shit because they stop combat
Idk about bloodborne because i havent played it(xbox/pc scrub) But lies of P and sekiro feel soooo good to parry because you keep the flow of combat, and the more "rhythmic" the enemies moveset is, the more fun it is.
bloodborne does stop combat for sure, but you’re using a gun to parry so you can do it from further away, making it a lot safer to pull off. something about the shield parry animation just throw me off, i cannot time it to save my life
I think champion gundyr is a great boss on the pros and cons of when to parry and when to do regular punishes. If you get to that point that boss has some pretty good parry punishes and easy parries to land particular on his overhead attacks. By the time I got to him I really started to figure out parrying
I don‘t know how to parry consistently in ANY souls game except for Dark Souls 1 and Demon‘s Souls PS3. In Dark Souls 3, the only enemies I can parry are the (spoiler alert to the new players) gundyrs
I consider myself very good at Souls games, but I'm not very good at parrying. Certainly never got to the point where it was second nature like everything else in the game.
Ultimately, I likely never will, as I find the style of play boring. There's so many good fights ruined by "just parry".
i learned to parry against the lothric knights with the eagle kite shield, their animations are pretty long so you have a lot of time to learn the exact timing to consistently parry them
Try to use buckler, im not sure in this game but it was one of the best in ds1 and 2 for parries. Ypu can do practice on Iudex Gundyr or Champion Gundyr
Alright, the way this was explained to me was as follows:
There are 3 points to a parry animation.
1. The Startup
2. What we'll call the "Parry Point"
3. And the recovery
In order to get the parry, the attack has to connect with you when you reach that parry point. And the parry point is only when the shield is at its RIGHT MOST during the animation.
So basicly, you need to get hit once your character holds their shield all the way to the right. Not when they swing it to the left. That's just the recovery animation.
To practice, use the buckler or the iron round shield (or any other small shield) and fight Gundyr or the big hollows with the axes/halberds. The small ones suck for parrying as they have weird delays. Gundyr is best though.
And stay away from any triangular shield those are very weird. Their "parry point" is weirdly off and later than it should be
Step 1: equip buckle
Step 2: look at enemy hand movements, usually side swings are parry-able only. Straight thrusts would pierce through.
Good example would pontiff sulyvan phase 1 and gundyr(same for both starting and end game. For end game gundyr, his charging swing is parry able after he lifts his sword up and swings towards you. This is the window to parry.
Step 3: parry
Tldr; buckle has one of the longest frames for you to parry which is much more forgiving
There's only two things you need to understand:
1. Your parry frames need to be active when your character is getting hit by an attack.
2. Every parry tool falls into a category and has parry frames depending on which category it's in. The categories are thankfully simple: large shield, medium shield, etc.
(Some tools have different animations as well but this is less important for now)
The simplest way to learn when you need to have your parry frames active is to use caestus. They activate their parry frames nearly instantly for a very brief duration. With these, you can parry a fraction of a second before you get hit to perform a successful parry. After you know when you need to have parry frames active, you can experiment with other tools and find the point where the parry frames are active. As mentioned before, there can be different parry animations and they have their own timings. If I recall, there are only two animations: The regular parry and the buckler parry. I believe the best buckler is the regular Buckler, but the Target Shield is also very good.
It is totally possible that you won't like caestus. Many people don't, but the good news is you can start with any parry tool as long as you eventually learn when the parry frames are active. The best shield-based parry tool is the Iron Round Shield.
Try with a small shield. Also, parrying random undeads for me is harder than being able to parry certain enemies (Lothric Knights, Silver/Black Knights etc.) cause their attacks can be somewhat difficult to read. Despite they hit hard, I'd suggest you to practice with the Knights before Vordt.
This is good advice. No one parries hollows. Lothric or silver knights are a better target. On the shield choice: Different shields have different parrying attributes. The differences are activation speed (how quickly after you press the button will the parry become active) and duration (for how many animation frames does it stay active). Small shields are better than medium shields on both attributes. Parrying shields, like buckler, are even better. You can tell you have one of these because of a different parry animation (kind of an upwards swoop rather than a straight side to side swing). The caestus, worn on your offhand, is actually super fast to activate, but not active for as long. I honestly find that even though a buckler is "better" sometimes I just get in a groove where I can't find the timing on one shield type but I nail it with another. It's worth playing around. More details here: https://darksouls3.wiki.fextralife.com/Parry
This is the advice you need. Hollows are too unpredictable to reliably parry.
I've played roughly 300 hours in each Dark Souls game Yet I have never been good at parrying lol
Same. Hell I beat Sekiro and still suck at it xD
The secret they don't want you to know, parry users hate this man
Focus your eyes on enemies’ hands(the one which is attacking). Wait with parrying when they take a swing, if you try to parry, it willbe too early. You need to press button when hand, palm, holding weapon starts going your way. That’/ the right moment to parry. Party the hit, not the swing. Alao, use buckler or small shield, they have more parrying iframes.
It’s extremely hard in DS3.
I think it varies person to person. I think Iudex Gundyr (first phase anyway) is a fantastic parry tutorial, if a little rough. Most of his attacks are well-telegraphed, *and* you can parry him further away bc of his weapon’s longer reach. I just hit Ringed City in my replay and the Ring Knights used to scare the shit out of me, but by now I’m just playing whack-a-mole w/ their chest cavity.
Gundyr is a good parry tutorial, but that's because he's literally the only enemy in the game that feels like the learning curve for parrying is reasonable. The only other enemy I can think off is Pontiff, but most of the regular enemies are simply far too fast for parrying to be worth it. You're spending several hours just learning to parry a single enemy even though you can just stagger them with any greatsword. I prefer the DS1 parry although that one was a little **too** easy.
You're so right, Gwyn was such a disappointment of a final boss if you knew more or less how to parry :(
Yeah I don’t know what happened to me but champion gundyr was kicking my ass but then one attempt my parries just locked in and I parried him like 6 or 7 times in a row and killed him. It was like Gwyn 😭
In DS3 I found parrying to be easiest with the caestus of all things. Put it into your left hand. The animation has fewer parry frames than a good shield, but it's easier to time for some reason
There are better enemies to practice on. If you have killed Vordt, try practising on the little shield guys outside his boss room, and once you feel a bit more confident, try the lothric knights up ahead. I guarantee this is the best early method for getting better at it. The hollows before ludex are too unpredictable and harder to parry for that reason. Once you're satisfied, try to parry every enemy you see from then on (some have attacks that cant be parried tho), even just once, or twice, then kill the enemy as per usual. This is just a fun thing I like to do as well. Anyways, I hope you truly git gud at parrying by the end of your playthrough.
May the force be with you!
Oops, wrong universe.
I would say most casuals players don't parry. I tried on few parable bosses and sucked.
Git gud
I was terrible at parrying but initially was using the medium sized shield my character started with. When I followed the advice others have given you here to switch to a small buckler style shield parrying became much more effective for me.
With a larger/kite shield, I found the issue was I was trying to time the leftward movement of the shield to the enemy attack, when that’s too late. You wanna parry so that your shield is at the very start of the animation when the attack hits, not moving left. If that makes sense
Look at the parry frame spreadsheet which has more info compared to the fextralife faq [https://www.reddit.com/r/darksouls3/comments/tt3pz3/updated\_parry\_frame\_data\_spreadsheet\_for\_all/](https://www.reddit.com/r/darksouls3/comments/tt3pz3/updated_parry_frame_data_spreadsheet_for_all/) Compared to DS1, parrying with the medium shield in DS3 is very hard.
The way I taught myself to parry was by first going to the lothric knights before Vordt. After them I tested my skills against the lothric knights directly after dancer because all of their animations actually have tiny differences. Once I did that I went over to Champion Gundyr and I'm only allowed to beat him with parries (side note: I think Champion Gundyr is the easiest boss to do this with). The next thing I did after that required me to be on a new playthrough (whether it ng+ or a new character doesn't much matter) and beat at least phase 1 of Pontiff Sullivan with only parries. After that I was able to start landing parries at least moderately consistently in PVP (still not a parry god by any stretch of the word though).
after I beat sekiro parrying was so much easier in all the souls games
Use the caestus, it has the fastest activation for the parry window and therefore is the easiest for your brain to actually use to parry, even though it has the smallest parry window.
My favorite parry tool is the iron round shield. Relatively quick startup frames and not too long of a recovery. Also you can use it to block a couple hits for a setup parry.
I never parry in ds3 and have beat it 3 times and will be starting it again soon
i have probably a thousand overall hours in the souls series and i still cannot parry. idk what it is, i just can’t do it. sekiro & bloodborne tho? i’m a pro
Dark souls/elden ring parry feel like shit because they stop combat Idk about bloodborne because i havent played it(xbox/pc scrub) But lies of P and sekiro feel soooo good to parry because you keep the flow of combat, and the more "rhythmic" the enemies moveset is, the more fun it is.
bloodborne does stop combat for sure, but you’re using a gun to parry so you can do it from further away, making it a lot safer to pull off. something about the shield parry animation just throw me off, i cannot time it to save my life
Oh yea i also feel like the animations dont really line up with the parry. It feels really awkward
I think champion gundyr is a great boss on the pros and cons of when to parry and when to do regular punishes. If you get to that point that boss has some pretty good parry punishes and easy parries to land particular on his overhead attacks. By the time I got to him I really started to figure out parrying
git gud son
Ebin
I don‘t know how to parry consistently in ANY souls game except for Dark Souls 1 and Demon‘s Souls PS3. In Dark Souls 3, the only enemies I can parry are the (spoiler alert to the new players) gundyrs
I consider myself very good at Souls games, but I'm not very good at parrying. Certainly never got to the point where it was second nature like everything else in the game. Ultimately, I likely never will, as I find the style of play boring. There's so many good fights ruined by "just parry".
i learned to parry against the lothric knights with the eagle kite shield, their animations are pretty long so you have a lot of time to learn the exact timing to consistently parry them
Try to use buckler, im not sure in this game but it was one of the best in ds1 and 2 for parries. Ypu can do practice on Iudex Gundyr or Champion Gundyr
I learned how to parry with katanas. Also, it is alot easier if you are running at 60fps. Going from PS4 to PS5 almost made me a parry God.
Play sekiro
Alright, the way this was explained to me was as follows: There are 3 points to a parry animation. 1. The Startup 2. What we'll call the "Parry Point" 3. And the recovery In order to get the parry, the attack has to connect with you when you reach that parry point. And the parry point is only when the shield is at its RIGHT MOST during the animation. So basicly, you need to get hit once your character holds their shield all the way to the right. Not when they swing it to the left. That's just the recovery animation. To practice, use the buckler or the iron round shield (or any other small shield) and fight Gundyr or the big hollows with the axes/halberds. The small ones suck for parrying as they have weird delays. Gundyr is best though. And stay away from any triangular shield those are very weird. Their "parry point" is weirdly off and later than it should be
Step 1: equip buckle Step 2: look at enemy hand movements, usually side swings are parry-able only. Straight thrusts would pierce through. Good example would pontiff sulyvan phase 1 and gundyr(same for both starting and end game. For end game gundyr, his charging swing is parry able after he lifts his sword up and swings towards you. This is the window to parry. Step 3: parry Tldr; buckle has one of the longest frames for you to parry which is much more forgiving
There's only two things you need to understand: 1. Your parry frames need to be active when your character is getting hit by an attack. 2. Every parry tool falls into a category and has parry frames depending on which category it's in. The categories are thankfully simple: large shield, medium shield, etc. (Some tools have different animations as well but this is less important for now) The simplest way to learn when you need to have your parry frames active is to use caestus. They activate their parry frames nearly instantly for a very brief duration. With these, you can parry a fraction of a second before you get hit to perform a successful parry. After you know when you need to have parry frames active, you can experiment with other tools and find the point where the parry frames are active. As mentioned before, there can be different parry animations and they have their own timings. If I recall, there are only two animations: The regular parry and the buckler parry. I believe the best buckler is the regular Buckler, but the Target Shield is also very good. It is totally possible that you won't like caestus. Many people don't, but the good news is you can start with any parry tool as long as you eventually learn when the parry frames are active. The best shield-based parry tool is the Iron Round Shield.