Counter Attacks

[Michiko_of_Mugenkai]

You guys can try this out too. Not sure if this is a bug or a feature they forgot to mention, but I'll put it up here anyway.

 

Here's how it works. If you guys haven't tried the Parry mod yet, basically if you block a melee attack from humanoid enemies (including rifle butt strikes from Lancers and melee attacks by Crawlers) while you have the channeling button held down while the Parrying mod is equipped, you get a prompt like a stealth attack based on a chance as described on the mod card, based on its level (up to 96% chance on max level). And sure enough it really does work as advertised. As long as you have the Energy for the channel and the Stamina for the block, it will work 96% of the time at max level.

 

However, I noticed that even without the Parry mod installed, it still triggers but at a significantly reduced rate (something like 25-30% based on my estimates?).

 

Now I bring this up because it makes me question what the Parry mod really does. At rank 0 it gives a "16% chance" to initiate the "stealth" (counter) attack prompt. It feels like without the Parry mod it already triggers more than 16% of the time.

 

Parry mod is not installed in my weapon for this. Again you guys can try this too if you think I'm cheating and actually have Parry installed or something.

 

Why am I bringing this up? Because it's a cool mechanic that seems like nobody is looking at and could definitely be improved. It's impractical to use in a serious mission because you're required to stand there like an idiot, taking fire waiting for your melee opponent to finish his swing animation, when all this time you could've dispatched of him faster by doing your normal melee combos instead. I love the idea of counter attacking, but it's ridiculous right now.

[Bryy]

I felt exactly the same way when I first discovered this LOL

[RealPandemonium]

It would be cute if counterattacks had invincibility frames during the animation but some vulnerability after the end to force you to take evasive action immediately.  

[Michiko_of_Mugenkai]

Yeah I agree. Would be nice to have some benefit or reason for doing it especially for those of us that like to use melee weapons as our main weapons, other than the whole "it's got a cool animation" thing. Even some bonus damage could go a long way.

 

There's some argument that after your counter attack the enemy will be in the prone/grounded position so you can do a ground finisher, but that's still too much time of you standing in one spot and possibly taking a lot of heat from his allies. It's not practical even in "duels" at the moment, against decently-leveled enemies, simply because you're better off using combos from your stance that do a knockdown or stagger, especially with some stances that guarantee it like Burning Wasp's normal attack stagger locking.

 

Also I wish they would allow us to counter all melee attacks already. Chargers and Ancients should be counterable. We have stealth animations for them, so maybe it's only a matter of time until they design the counter maneuvers to work on Chargers and Ancients too.

[Dawnstrider]

No one is going to waste a mod slot on Parry, it's not efficient in the slightest.

 

Since DE are happy with the mentality that every weapon and frame have nearly identical mod loadouts it seems its going to be forever a useless mod card that no one will touch alongside the status chance mods, ammo drum, hush, intruder etc

[Fanzschnabs]

I think the "special move" appear normally on "channeled parries"... that is : pressing BLOCK + CHANNELING... it does push the target away giving you a brief opportunity to do a finisher on the enemy. No need for the parry mod. Which is, imho, totally useless (the one doing things automatically...)

defense has to be a player's choice. Still, the mod, instead of deletion, could be reaffected to "reduce the cost of blocking attacks by X%"

[Michiko_of_Mugenkai]

Watch the video I posted. It doesn't always work without the Parry mod. Maybe 25-30% of the time only, which is unreliable.