Essential COMBAT TIPS! | How To Parry & Juggle, Hidden Combos, & More! | God of War Ragnarok

combat is the bread and butter of God of War and Ragnarok is no exception though it can't get quite frustrating at times so let's dive into all the most essential tips you need to begin mastering combat in Ragnarok including some hidden mechanics the game won't tell you about and don't worry there won't be any story spoilers here as long as you've played through alfheim let's first do a speed round of all the more well-known tips just to make sure we're all on the same page with the basics even if you think you know all these check them off with me to make sure I didn't miss any if I did leave a comment down below to help other players out ready go tripping enemies with the ax is a great way to down them so you can follow up with a more powerful attack or bounce them off the ground with a heavy attack to start juggling them to trip enemies throw the ax at their legs similarly you can freeze small enemies by Landing an R2 heavy ax throw on them which totally immobilizes them until you recall the ax this either takes them out of the fight until you're ready to deal with them or lets you deal damage or knock them off Ledges for an instant kill speaking of which anytime you have an enemy backed up against the ledge try to use the shield bash Perry R2 kick or a series of R1 light attacks to push them off for an instant kill when fighting a group it's smart to take out ranged enemies first so you don't have to worry about their projectiles these enemies are usually weak and can be killed with a couple throws of the ax or direct hits if you can reach them ruinic attacks can be very strong but they all have a cooldown period consider using your ruinic attacks at the start of a fight so they can be recharged and used again remember those ruinic attacks have limited invincibility frames so you have to be careful about when you trigger them single tap Dodges and double tap rolls do have iframes though so you can dodge through attacks with them but the window is short so you need to be careful an R3 stun grab is the only way to get an extended period of iframes you're totally Invincible during this animation most enemies have some kind of weakness you can exploit it just takes some experimenting to figure out what they are for example if you hit light elves in their mask it will stun them instantly you can queue up weapon swaps by hitting left or right on the d-pad before an attack animation is over for example if you're finishing up an ax combo you can hit left on the d-pad before it's over and Kratos will pull out the blades as soon as the ax combo animation is complete permafrost and immolation are important skills to unlock and use as often as possible these apply Frost and burn damage with every hit when active but to activate them you need to perform a bunch of hits without taking any damage yourself so prioritize blocking and parrying to preserve your Elemental build up don't forget about leveraging stun either filling up the stun bar under an enemy's health bar will make them fall down and prompt you to use a powerful R3 stun grab by clicking your right stick optimize your use of Rage by only using it when necessary either to gain some health get yourself out of a sticky situation or prevent a fatal blow and remember you don't have to use all of your rage every time you trigger it you can cancel rage at any time the same way you start it by pressing the left and right thumbsticks some enemy attacks are telegraphed using colored rings to indicate how you can deal with them red rings are the worst these are unblockable and unparriable so be ready to dodge them double blue rings are also unblockable but can be interrupted by double tapping L1 to use a shield bash if you're quick enough yellow rings will break your block and stagger you unless you time a Parry perfectly which staggers the enemy instead the yellow ring is telegraphed pretty early so wait until it's about to disappear before trying to Parry any attack that doesn't have a colored ring can be blocked or parried normally the arena in nilfime is a great place to practice everything we're covering in this video this area unlocks early in the story and you can fight here with infinite health and enemy respawns it's also smart to grind your most used skills here to unlock their tokens which lets you use a boost to make them even stronger it costs some XP to unlock these boosts but once you unlock any one of them for a particular skill you can switch between all three of the options for free so don't worry about which one you pick first alright now that we've covered the basics let's dive into the good stuff starting with pairing and blocking both of these actions are performed by holding L1 to bring out your Shield the only difference between a parry and a block is that a Perry occurs automatically when you press L1 at the last second now you do want to hold down L1 not tap it think of a Parry as the exact same as a block you're just starting it at the last second in general enemy attack animations have a bit of a wind-up to let you know they're about to happen that means you often need to wait a bit longer than you'd think to start holding L1 to Perry Perry's are strong because they simultaneously stagger enemies and apply stun in fact you can stagger an apply stun to multiple enemies at once if they're close together the best shield for parrying is The Dauntless and I'd actually argue that dauntless is the best shield in the game despite it being focused on parrying you can still block with it like any other Shield so there's really no downside and its special ability is great on a successful Parry The Dauntless will gain some charge indicated by a glowing yellow for a partial charge or red for a full charge you get yellow from an okay Berry and red from a perfectly timed one you can unleash the charge by using a shield bash which is triggered by double tapping L1 just like with any other Shield however a shield Bash from a charge dauntless Will Blast enemies backwards and deal a large amount of stun this is really useful for controlling the pace of a fight building up to an R3 attack and knocking small enemies off Ledges now it's tempting to immediately do a shield bash when you get your dauntless charged but the enemies will already be staggered from your successful Perry so you're wasting a bit of additional stagger Time by doing it right away instead if you can wait about three seconds after parrying before doing the shield bash to optimize the amount of overall stagger time keep in mind you can Parry projectiles too which bounces them off your Shield you'll often end up sending the projectile back at the enemy that fired it but it actually goes in whatever Direction you're facing so you can hit other enemies too while the double tap L1 Shield bash is particularly powerful on The Dauntless don't forget about using it at other times too it's the easiest way to break an enemy's block and can also be used to interrupt them and apply some stun to make Shield bashes a bit quicker to use I bound it to swipe up on my controller touchpad the nilfheim arena is a great place to practice your parries spend a solid 10 minutes here doing nothing but parrying and I guarantee you'll improve that being said you don't need to Parry to be successful if you're more of a blocker then I recommend using the Stonewall Shield this one will charge up while blocking attacks and can then unleash a ground slam with an L1 double tap launching enemies into the air where you can juggle them for easy kills wait until it's glowing red with a full charge before doing this to ensure enemies do actually get launched the other really nice benefit of the Stonewall is that it's the only Shield that can block those yellow ring attacks but once it's glowing red it can't block them anymore so make sure you use the charge when you get it whatever Shield you choose it will also be useful for canceling a subtle but important mechanic canceling refers to cutting off an attack animation early by using another input to interrupt it now using cancels to speed up combat is definitely more of an advanced tactic so I'll save the Deep dive here for another video but the key takeaway here for all players is that you're pretty much never committed to completing a full attack animation you always have a way out either by holding or tapping on one to pull out your Shield or by dodging let's talk about our two Dodge options by the way a single tap side step or a double tap roll now I think most players have a tendency to roll much more often than necessary it's important to train yourself to use the single tap side step more often contrary to how it looks this simple move can actually keep you safe from most attacks in fact the only times when you should use a double tap roll is when you need to get some distance from the enemy quickly or know an attack with a large AOE is coming otherwise train yourself to use the single tap Dodge doing a single tap Dodge will actually allow you to continue a skill combo if you were in the middle of one that's important because skills requiring a chain of inputs generally deal more damage on their final hit so you want to get to those whenever possible also a side step has much faster recovery than a roll helping to ensure you don't miss an opportunity to deal damage or Parry speaking of staying close to enemies generally God of War rewards playing aggressively if you hang back enemies will either bombard you with Annoying ranged attacks or close in on you anyway so offense really is the best defense most of the time also being far away often means you'll miss opportunities to deal damage or take advantage of staggers and stuns which only draws out the fight and makes dying more likely instead you'll want to take control by closing in on enemies quickly yourself you should definitely unlock the Hyperion grapple skill as soon as you can this is an upgrade from the Hyperion pull which drags an enemy towards you by holding L2 and tapping R1 Hyperion graph Apple flips this around pulling you towards the Enemy by holding R1 simultaneously closing the Gap and ending in a collision that deals a solid amount of stun damage in fact as you get more powerful Hyperion grapple becomes one of the best ways to apply stun filling an enemy's stun meter anywhere from 25 to 75 percent Hyperion grapple is also one of the few ways to interrupt Red Ring attacks with relative ease so this is a great skill to work into your gameplay another method for closing the distance on enemies is to use the forward Dodge skills for the ax and Blades I tend to prefer spinning Chaos on the blades for this as opposed to whirling storm on the ax also consider using Frost Rush on the ax and rushing Chaos on the blades to close in quickly these are a bit easier to use since you just need to Sprint and press R1 you can repeat any of these skills to close larger gaps I think a lot of players myself included forget to use the quick turn function to spin around and face enemies coming up from the sides or behind unfortunately the default button combo of L1 and down on the d-pad makes this difficult to use because you'll often end up pulling out your Shield instead of executing the quick turn so I mapped it to swipe down on my touchpad which feels pretty natural and snappy I think we also often forget about verticality you'll often find platforms and Ledges you can grapple to during a fight enemies can climb up and down as well but they're pretty slow to do this so take advantage of this to gain the upper hand or temporarily disengage to reposition or find a health stone even when you don't have grapple points small Ledges can serve the same Purpose By the way guys if you find videos like this one helpful leaving a like lets me know you'd like to see more content like this and really does help out the channel so it would be much appreciated if you feel I've earned it let's dive a little deeper on R3 stun grabs which are the whole point of building up stun not only do these deal a large amount of damage but you'll also have invincibility frames during the entire animation additionally certain gear can give nice bonuses for using Sun grabs such as the knit of layer chess piece that will heal you while performing one check out my early game build guide if you're interested in that the most effective ways to build up stun quickly are by using kratos's fists the shield and atreus's Sonic arrows combine these by sheathing your weapons and using R1 for the fifths L1 for the shield bash and square for the arrows once you get an R3 stun grab it will glow either yellow or red yellow means you'll deal a bunch of damage but you won't kill the enemy keep in mind you can continue hitting them while they're down with regular attacks until the prompt turns red indicating you can finish them with the R3 attack you'll also deal additional stun damage by hitting enemies in the back or pinning them against a wall so take advantage of that when you can getting small enemies Airborne is another way to incapacitate them and deal easy damage one of the easiest ways to do this is use the Hyperion pull skill we mentioned earlier by holding L2 to aim and tapping R1 to grab them with a chain once they're in the air you can repeat this skill to smack them into the ground over and over again or you can switch to Blazing surge or blazing explosion to apply burn by continuing to hold L2 and either tapping or holding R2 now the skill menu doesn't tell you this but you can actually hold R1 to do a double chain slam as well another great way to get enemies up is to use Frost descent on the ax this requires you apply permafrost by holding triangle down first or using one of the more advanced permafrost skills and then hitting R2 to perform a heavy attack you should also know that a regular R2 heavy attack from the ax or the chaos slam running heavy attack from the blades can get enemies Airborne as well the ax is a little easier so that's generally what I use okay let's talk elements as you know Frost from the ax slows enemies down and fire from the blades will build up the burn state which deals damage over time on their own both of these are useful but using them in combination with the vaporized Frost and extinguished flame skills is where the real power is with these skills unlocked you can deal bonus damage by first supplying one of the elemental States and then using melee attacks with the opposite weapon I have a slight preference for applying Frost with the ax and then doing melee damage with the blades since many of the blade attacks are faster but it works well the other way around too however for these to be useful you need to be able to apply those Elemental States quickly and easily building up Elemental States becomes easier later on but for most of the game the easiest way to apply burn is with the Flaming Whiplash skill in combination with either the R1 scorched sweep or R2 scorched Earth follow-up tap triangle repeatedly to get the blade spinning and then use either skill repeatedly to build up burn it takes six Taps of triangle to fully charge flaming Whiplash but even if you have to use it early it will still apply some burn so don't over commit to doing six Taps no matter what you can also hold triangle to get flaming Whiplash going but tapping charges it much faster as for applying Frost with the ax we have a few options the easiest method is to unlock the glacial rake skill and hold R1 to do it repeatedly you can do infinite glacial rakes this way just be careful you don't get carried away and ignore other enemies to do this even faster you can dodge cancel between each glacial rig to shorten the animation making its application of frost even faster as mentioned earlier using Frost Ascent is another good way to apply a nice chunk of frost damage and that actually brings us to the first combo I want to break down for you guys I'll probably do a whole video on combos at some point but for now let's check out a few basic ones I think are worth mastering for the first Frost the ax by holding triangle now execute a frost descent by simply hitting an enemy with R2 this will apply some Frost and launch them into the air follow this up by holding L1 for repeated glacial rakes until you've built up the full Frost State finally switch to the blades to deal a bunch of damage to the Frozen enemy with some basic R1 and R2 hits so that full combo is triangle to frost the ax R2 Frost descent hold R1 for glacial rakes until frosted then switch to the blades for damage and remember you can speed up those glacial rakes by Dodge canceling between each this is a great way to both deal damage safely since the enemy will be either Airborne or staggered most of the time and apply Frost buildup it's also a good way to build up permafrost which will cause every ax hit to apply Frost damage but only activates after a series of hits without taking any damage yourself similarly immolation does the same thing with burn on the blades and it's worth noting that the charge for permafrost and immolation will transfer between the weapons so don't worry about losing progress by swapping for the blades I have a couple of hidden mini combos as you guys know the last part of the basic R1 combo is a more powerful hit to get this early you can do two R2 Heavies and then two r1s this will get you the first two heavy hits of the normal R2 combo and the last two hits of the R1 combo perhaps slightly less useful is doing it the other way around R1 R1 R2 R2 will give you the first two hits of the normal R1 light combo and the final two hits of the R2 heavy combo alright guys those are all my Essential combat tips for God of War Ragnarok I hope this guide helps you improve your skills and enjoy the game more if you enjoyed the video or learned something new leaving a like would be much appreciated and if you have a tip to share definitely leave a comment down below also for those of you that want to discuss Ragnarok in more depth use the link in the description to come join us over on my Discord server as always thanks for watching and I'll catch you in the next one

Channel: Arktix

Views: 507,034

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Id: v87pdsNP4Ps

Length: 14min 41sec (881 seconds)

Published: Sun Dec 04 2022