I block every parry user m. I will not be punished for not using whips or only jump attacks. Stupid mechanic. And no it is not hard, it is so easy to parry especially in PvP, it’s such a cheap and boring crutch. Oh, you like to cast to punish parries? Sorry, we have magic parries too, all in one! Only whips and jump attacks! What fun!

"Yeah no, parry isn't viable, use stance-break."

*proceeds to furiously complain about every high poise humanoid enemy with slow swings*

Mechanically, it appears as if a nearly missed parry is treated as guard/block.

As a result, having higher guard boost means less stamina drain when you miss your parry. I tested this with the greatshield talisman and a +0 buckler on soliders at Gatefront. After several intentionally missed parries (and many accidentally successful ones--damned muscle memory) it was clear that much less stamina is drained when just missing the parry with the greatshield talisman equipped. If you have a shield that you parry with a lot, it's worth leveling the shield some to get the extra guard boost.

I disagree with the article's assessment above that "you will do more damage with stance break for criticals than trying do parry, since this will do damage before you stance break." Parrying is not in an exclusive alternative to other strategies but complementary to them. You can put a buckler in your left hand and a zweihander in your right. AFAIK, enemy stance points are in no way affected by successful parries or vice versa. You do the most damage when you blend available strategies efficiently and parrying most certainly increases your damage output when you successfully blend it.

The comment in the article is the result of the logic of "builds" where someone is trying to put together the best combination of equipment for that single (sometimes mindless) playstyle that leads to spamming one or two attacks to do all your damage. While those builds are certainly viable, comments to the effect that parrying is "suboptimal" derive from assuming that you are somehow trying to do a "parry build" or simply that you can't pull it off reliably. Neither is a worthwhile assumption.

Two next-best-things that you can do to dogs instead of parrying them: 1. Knock them out of their incoming attack with your own attack. 2. Jump straight up as their attack reaches you and it'll (usually) whiff so you can punish with a jump attack immediately.

For context, I resent being forced to roll out of the way of dogs (or having to hide behind a shield and guard counter them). I want to assertively hold my ground against them and shut them down in a parry-like way (meaning something that requires some skill/awareness and rewards you by being resource efficient, not a guard counter which is mindless and wastes stamina), but they can't be parried, so these are my next-best options. The jump counter is probably especially useful on very slow or stubby weapons.

I've been running parry in pvp with the dagger talisman and a misercorde in my other slot. Absolutely worth the practice, I can beat players who have 100% better spacing than me, higher poise/hyperarmor, i can win vs high pressure fast attacking dual-wielders, and i absolutely wreck greatspear users. No it isnt going to win you every duel but if you practice reading your opponent, sometimes you can end a duel in the first ten seconds. I use a weapon that has a bad ash of war i would never use in pvp anyway, so parrying has become my bread and butter

They gotta rebalance this. Nothing about it is broken, but it's not right that 100% phys reduction **** can slot a long distance parry with better frames than the Buckler. Or that the parry that allows you to meme mages doesn't cost anything if you don't block projectiles. Unlike the one that only blocks arrows and bolts, which always uses FP and, by the way, has worse frame data.

Just really bizarre all around.

Why are so many types of parry straight up worse than others? I wanted to use great epee with sidearm parry rapier for a cool giant rapier/dagger combo but there's pretty much no reason to do so instead of just using a buckler/golden/carian

Parrying usually isn't worth the trouble since the risk/reward/effort ratio is so skewed, a crit can be obtained more easily by jump attacks and guard counters. A few enemies however make it worth considering; Crucible knights get absolutely wrecked by parries and many of their attacks are pretty easy to parry, and with a bit of practice some of the most frustrating fights in the game can be utterly wrecked by parries.
shame it takes multiple parries to riposte bosses like melania, parrying would be way better if that wasn't the case

-"Humanoid enemies are parriable"

Not Godfrey, be careful out there.