Fang and Blade

Found this on Reddit. It needs to be posted here...

So this one is a quickie, but I have come across multiple people, some of whom have completed multiple playthroughs, that still didnt know about this mechanic so I just wanted to put it out there as its truly a game changer. If you already knew this, awesome. I am not trying to be one of those people that thinks they are hot shit finding out secret pro strats or anything, just trying to help out this community I have grown to love.

When you are fighting in Sekiro, there are two key things you need to look for when deflecting/being deflected:

When deflecting - Typically, when you deflect, the enemy will usually keep attacking you so you have to deflect multiple attacks in a row (unless you break posture of course but I am not talking about that). HOWEVER, when you deflect an attack and you see a GOLDEN flash, it means you have an opening for a perfect counter slash which is a fluid slash that will almost always interrupt or be faster than your opponents next attack (you have to be quick though, if you hesitate, youll end up getting hit before it lands. Also, keep in mind that against enemies with high poise, they wont be interrupted by this slash so youll need to perhaps land it then immediately deflect the next attack coming at you, but I find that most often it will create an opening).


When being deflected - Same situation, if you are launching an assault the enemy will have to deflect multiple attacks from you. HOWEVER, if you are being deflected and see a RED flash, it means the enemy is about to counter slash you (it basically means the enemy just got a gold flash on you, essentially) so you need to switch to the defensive.

This mechanic is prevalent throughout the entirety of the game. If you havent mastered this or didnt know about it, try it out, and hopefully itll really change your game up.

Beat the Owl. He was easy. His attacks were so slow and telegraphed. There were all either easily deflected, or dodged.

The Corrupted Monk was fun. Three DB's to kill her, but the first one goes away via a sneak attack. Her spinning sweep move is easily jumped over once you learn to see it coming. The phantoms are cute, but dodgable, and she's vulnerable once she reappears in the middle of the bridge.

Divine Dragon was also easy. Just grapple to a tree with lightning and toss it back at him.

Did anybody else find these bosses easy, or am I just on a roll?

Also, once I make it back to the Abandoned Dungeon I'll have all three mask pieces, which I hear lets you increase attack to maximum.

The Divine Dragon and True Corrupted Mone were easy.  After facing the corrupted monk in the Mubu village, the one on the bridge doesn't cut the mustard and of course you can cheeze it 2 twice of you want.    Owl gave me trouble for about 10 tries before I got his move set down, He is definitely slow and you can dodge his bigger moves but he still was able to punish me for mistakes and a few 2 hit kills also was a pain.  Most of my trouble I feel stem from the fact that the PS4 controller L1 buttons have way to much travel and blocks I thought I did, did not register.  Also I had to take off the skills because on accident sometimes I would click L1 and R1 and get punish.  

For the mask, I believe you need 5 skill points to use it, I have used so many skill points that it takes about 30K to get one now but then again I almost have all the skills so I have been having fun trying each one and see where they fit.

What makes the True Corrupted Monk really easy is that she doesn't have a standstill sweep attack. So you know if she's right next to you and a Kanji appears she's doing a stab. Also your damage is higher for this fight, and she honestly can't hold onto her posture at all. I think I did 30% damage to her max, and just posture wrecked her the whole time.

Did you have enough prayer bead necklaces when fighting the Owl? He couldn't two hit me if he tried. Luckily I still had the Green Gourd equipped from having to fight the poison using Ninja. So his poison did jack all to me. The item debuff orb hit me once, and then I just dodged it every time. His cloud of smoke was annoying though. He almost hit me a few times, because I couldn't lock onto him, and lost him. 

I haven't had issues with deflecting or blocking at all. But I am using a pretty new controller. 

Yeah, the toughest boss in the game is the XP meter. I've lost so much XP from dying now. :(

So I fought Demon of Hatred down to his first DB today. I still have to finish grinding out the skill points to max out my attack power, but he seems pretty easy so far. Once I get the final two attack points I'll go back and finish him up. The fire umbrella puts an end to his jumping attack, and all his other attacks so far are telegraphed pretty hard. Fang and Blade Skill with the Umbrella wrecks his posture.

Demon of Hatred is hard. Not utter BS hard, but hard enough to annoy me. His charge attack is just nuts. There's almost no dodging it, so you've just gotta make sure your HP is always topped off at max, or else a single charge attack will kill you. I almost had him today. He just needed two more hits and he would have died. Sadly I gotta go to the gym and then to work. Oh well. Will beat him tomorrow.

Wait, Malcontent whistle stuns him? In that case I should have him beat in a couple of tries tomorrow morning!

You have to be in the zone with Demon of Hatred.  It took me a while to get use to his multiple attacks.  Once I stopped looking at health, his health and posture and just concentrated on what he was doing, I finally took him down.  I thought about doing the cheeze many times but knew I could take him.

Okay, I'm just a little annoyed at this game. Apparently I missed out on the 2nd Owl fight because I didn't eavesdrop on friendly NPC's. How the fuck was I supposed to know to do that? As soon as I beat the final boss, I'll have to start over AGAIN!

I really hate cryptic nonsense in games.