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Contents hide Types of parry Parrying basics in God of War Ragnarok Basic Attacks Yellow Ring Attacks Red Ring Attacks Blue Ring Attacks Parry timing tips Ranged Melee Dash Attacks Multi-Hit/Combo Attacks General parry tips in God of War Ragnarok

Living up to the God Of War title necessitates superior combat skills. However, it’s not all about the offensive – good defensive skills, like parrying, are also essential to beat your enemy in God of War Ragnarok.

While often overlooked, if parrying is practiced and honed perfectly, it can become a pretty strong ability in God of War Ragnarok. It can make all the difference between filling an enemy’s stun gauge or a swift death.

Types of parry

There are two types of parry in the game:

  • Standard Parry – Blocks enemy attacks and staggers them
  • Perfect Parry – Perfect parry happens when you block the attack animation right at the last moment. You’ll know when this happens as time will slow down briefly, and you’ll hear a brief gong sound. A perfect parry not only staggers enemies and break their combos, but also gives your shield special effects for a short time.

Parrying basics in God of War Ragnarok

Hold L1 to raise your shield and block enemy attacks. However, with parrying, timing also comes into play. Rather than holding up your shield, you have to press L1 right before the attack hits you to parry it. Doing so not only blocks the incoming attack but also staggers the enemy. Hit L1 too late, and you might take damage, do it too early and you end up simply blocking.

There are four types of enemy attacks. Three of them can be parried, but one can’t.

Basic Attacks

The first type is basic enemy attacks with no unique animations or effects. These can be parried, blocked, or dodged.

Yellow Ring Attacks

The second type is when enemies have a yellow ring around them when they attack. This means that using a standard block (holding L1) will block the attack, but it will also break your guard, leaving you vulnerable and unable to block for some time. So it’s best if you dodge or parry this attack. Due to its unique nature, most yellow attack animations have a longer wind-up to give the player time to react.

Red Ring Attacks

The third type is red ring attacks. These are entirely unblockable. Enemies executing these attacks have a long attack animation to give the player time to react. While you can use your shield to block or parry, you will still take damage.

Blue Ring Attacks

As for the attacks with blue rings, these attacks cannot be directly blocked or parried; instead, you need to interrupt these attacks with a Shield Bash. To perform a Shield Bash, you have to double-tap L1. Doing so breaks the enemy’s guard and opens them up for you to counterattack.

Parry timing tips

Learning how to parry with make fighting Thor a lot easier. Captured by VideoGamer

The key to getting parrying down is to learn and analyze the different attack types. There are four different attack types in Ragnarok: ranged, melee, dash attacks, and multi-hit/combo attacks. Keep on reading below to see our suggestions for each type

Ranged

Ranged attacks are the easiest to parry. Due to the initial draw animation and the projectile travel time, there is ample time to parry the shot. Simply keep an eye on the projectile and get a feel for its travel time. As soon as it comes near, hit L1 to deflect the attack. If you parry it successfully, then it should, by default, be deflected back at the attacker for some damage unless you are locked onto a different enemy, in which case, the deflected attack targets them.

Melee

With melee attacks, it helps to memorize common attack animations. Doing so gives you a feel for when the animation ends and the right moment to parry. With new enemies, you might not be able to parry right away but give it some time, and you’ll develop a feel for their attack animation. Do remember that the special yellow ring attacks usually have a much longer attack wind-up, so you’ll get plenty of time to get the parry right. 

Dash Attacks

Dash attacks are usually accompanied by a yellow or red ring and a more prolonged attack animation. You can know beforehand whether it’s a dash attack or the enemy is dashing to close the distance by the timing of the yellow/red ring. With a dash attack, the ring appears right when the enemy starts to dash.

On the other hand, a simple dash and attack will cause the ring to appear when the enemy has stopped near you and is going to attack. It’s easier to parry a dash attack as you can hit L1 as soon as the enemy comes near you with its dash.

Multi-Hit/Combo Attacks

These are usually a combo of normal attacks combined with unblockable ones used mainly by bosses. These typically have a pattern that you can memorize after facing them once or twice. With every new boss, you should try to dodge his combo attacks for the first one or two times to learn his attacks. After you know which combo they use, you can parry/block the normal attacks and dodge the unblockable ones.

General parry tips in God of War Ragnarok

Well, we’ve talked about attack-specific tips and strategies, but how would one improve their parrying skills? We have some tips for those as well, although, at the end of the day, the more you practice, the easier it will feel to parry enemies.

  • Be sure to pick the right shield for parrying. The Dauntless Shield is best for a parrying build, while bigger shields like the Stone Wall Shield are better for simply blocking.
  • Practice parrying on lower-level enemies to hone your skills before moving on to parrying bosses and combo attacks.
  • Even in boss fights, taking risks to parry is not as bad as it may seem. God of War Ragnarok has a generous amount of checkpoints, and most of the time, even if you get killed, you spawn almost in the same place. So take risks to improve your gameplay.

About the Author

VideoGamer.com Staff

Related Topics

  • God of War: Ragnarok

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