Parry is a timed block, not held guard
Press the block/parry input at almost the exact moment before an attack lands. A successful parry takes no health or endurance damage and fills the enemy’s posture bar faster than ordinary melee hits. Once posture breaks, follow with a critical attack.
There is no separate flashy confirmation for the correct parry input. Learn the enemy’s actual weapon trajectory and press late rather than holding block early. Pre-holding may produce a normal guard, which can still take chip damage and does not build posture as efficiently.
Read the attack colour
Any attack with a red aura is unblockable. Neither block nor parry works, so dodge instead. Do not keep practising parry timing against a red attack and assume your window is wrong.
A Perfect Dodge is also timed immediately before impact. It grants brief invulnerability and a buff to the next attack, making it the correct defensive answer when an unblockable is part of a longer chain.
Build posture, then critical
Repeated parries and precise melee hits fill the posture bar. The goal is not merely to survive each exchange; it is to create a critical window. Faster enemies and bosses often disguise their chains with pauses, so watch the weapon or limb rather than assuming a fixed rhythm.
For consistency, equip Duellist’s Focus to widen the melee parry window and invest in Parry Impact. On PC, binding block/parry and dodge to accessible side-mouse buttons is a practical quality-of-life choice, though the site does not assume a specific default binding.
Common corrections
| Problem | What to change |
|---|---|
| You keep guarding instead of parrying | Tap the timed block, do not hold the input early |
| You parry the wind-up | Wait for the final approach or impact frame |
| A red attack keeps beating your parry | Treat it as unblockable and dodge |
| You break posture but deal little damage | Carry a reliable critical follow-up and avoid spending the window repositioning |
| Old footage no longer matches | Re-test after the October 23, 2026 hitbox and damage-window patch |
Current-build caution
The October 23, 2026 patch adjusted enemy hitboxes and damage windows. The October 28 Halloween update added new Rapier and Saber critical attacks. No exact frame data was independently measured for this guide, so use timing advice as a pattern-learning method rather than a guaranteed frame count.
For passive support, see the Amber guide. For a weapon that converts parry pressure into posture damage, read the Rapier comparison.