First and foremost to those new to the tactic make sure you read the PVP guide stickied on these forums before coming here for further information - it will provide a great baseline for what's involved so that you can understand what's being discussed here.
Seeing as there's only a select few of us venturing into this relatively unexplored tactic and documentation is still a bit limited I figured I'd start a thread for everyone to compare notes on what they've found with parry. What weapons do you find easy/hard/impossible to parry? When in (or how long before) the animation of a particular attack have you found you can reliably "blind parry"? etc.
So, I spose I'll start with some of the things I've found. I'm by no means the most experienced with parrying on these forums, but hopefully I found some things that helps ppl.
Poles are incredibly easy, both 1h and 2h. You'll want to parry immediately after the first block vs 1h, and just a split second later vs 2h. If you're learning to riposte this is where I recommend starting, you should be able to score a parry vs 1h on the second swing of R1 spam 95% of the time. If there's a single biggest justification for adding parry to your build it's this, it absolutely destroys these otherwise OP-sticks.
The timing for spears is, at least as close as I can tell, identical, so treat em exactly the same, just make sure not to block scraping spear too many times ;)
Curved swords (and to a lesser degree small straight swords) are also reasonably easy, but the timing is very strange and lag can make the parry animation do some funny things. I've found it best to block the first swing, then parry just before the second swing lands - you'll end up blocking the second swing as well, and parrying the third swing. Here's where it gets a bit strange - oftentimes the parry animation won't slow down, you'll just see them stagger back and that's your window to riposte. Also I've noticed that rarely you won't even see the stagger animation, the opponent will just stop swinging. I've even seen cases where their swing animation continues as if the riposte fails but I complete the attack anyway and I riposte through their swing. Long story short you need to commit to this parry 100% whether you see the animation or not, but once you get the timing down it's still very reliable.
As for blind parries, still very uncharted territory for me. Katana's rushing attack can be reliably parried a split second before their animation starts, but other than that I haven't found much that works enough to justify the risk. The slower weapons' regular attacks all seem to have a window after the animation begins that you can blind parry, making them a great candidate.. but the timing is so incredibly difficult to pinpoint and a whif can end the duel.
Everything else I have yet to sort out the exact point you can parry, so I'm hoping others can help with that ^^
Cheers
