Parry - How It Works, Why It's Not Feeling Good... Yet

This is based upon day 1 of patch 0.2.0 and may be subject to change.

Added in 0.2.0, Parry is a mechanic central to Frenzy Charge generation on characters that use Spears as a primary weapon.

As of day 1 of the league, it is widely considered an underperforming mechanic by players. Partly this is because it has some non-obvious conditions attached to its use.

When you activate Parry while using a buckler, your character enters a defense-oriented state. During this time, you 'parry' most projectiles and strikes aimed at you, but you cannot parry certain monster moves. In theory monsters should flash red before unleashing a move that cannot be parried, this is not always the case.

WARNING: As of day 1 of 0.2.0, early game boss Lachlan of Eternal Torment has abilities that cannot be parried but that do NOT show the red 'you cannot block this' flash. One of these is a killing strike, so beware. Other bosses may have similar moves.

A successfully executed parry allows you to follow up with Disengage, which in theory will deal damage in a wide area and grant you a Frenzy Charge.

Pay extremely close attention to the language used on Disengage.

"Consumes the Parried Debuff on Hitting Enemies to release a shockwave and grant you a Frenzy Charge"

Note that this debuff is on the monster. It is not consuming a buff that was placed upon you as a reward for parrying, it is consuming a debuff that was placed upon the monster as a punishment for it having a move parried.

This means your Disengage needs to hit the EXACT monster you parried a strike or projectile from, rather than firing into the nearby pack of monsters.

This is the first reason you frequently successfully execute Parries but fail to gain a Frenzy Charge.

The second reason is that Parry can only parry projectiles fired at point blank range (0-1 meter). If you are struck by a projectile fired from 2 meters away and it either deals negligible damage or your Evasion Rating causes it to miss, you may believe you executed a Parry when you did not, and so you may initiate Disengage with no available targets that would grant the shockwave and the Frenzy Charge.

A third reason is that rarely, Parry's retalliatory damage will outright slay the monster you parried. This is likely to happen more often since 0.2.0 Hotfix 6 applied sweeping nerfs to monster HP in the campaign.

In the absence of GGG adjusting the mechanics of Parry and/or Disengage, it is an unreliable source of Frenzy Charges and the damaging shockwave of Parry.