For Honor Defense Guide to help you learn everything you need to know about mastering defense with blocking, parrying, & breaking.
For Honor Defense is the part and parcel of the entire experience. Without a sound defensive strategy, you simply can’t hope to beat your opponents – especially the skilled ones.
For more help on For Honor, read out our Best Heroes Guide, Feints Guide, and Faction War Guide.
For Honor Defense Guide
In our For Honor Defense Guide, we’ve detailed everything you need to know about mastering the technique of defense in the game.
For Honor Defense – Guard Mode
If you’ve played SoulsBorne games, you should be familiar with the concept of locking onto an opponent. This is exactly what the Guard Mode does – it lets you lock onto an opponent.
While you’re in the Guard Mode, your entire focus shifts to the opponent you’re locked onto. In the Guard Mode, you can freely strafe around an opponent and switch your guard in left, right, or top stances.
Tip: It’s important to note that you can only lock onto an enemy hero and not on minions.
As mentioned earlier, there are three stances in the total i.e. top, right, and left. You can cycle through these For Honor stances using the right-analogue-stick. Stances can be changed on the go and are directly tied to your attacks and blocks.
For Honor Defense – Blocking
Blocking in For Honor is as easy as it can get. Like I said before, your stances are directly tied to your attacks and blocks. For example, if you’re in right-stance; all your attacks will come from your right-hand side.
In order to block your right attacks successfully, your opponent must switch his stance to right and enter the Guard Mode. It goes without saying that stances can also be changed while you’re in the Guard Mode.
As you might’ve guessed, in order to pull off a successful block, you need to have a good understanding of timing and spacing. You can also feint (fake) attacks to force your enemies into blocking an attack from one side while attack while attacking from another side.
It’s a slightly advanced concept which we’ve discussed in detail in our For Honor Feints Guide.
I highly recommend firing up the Practice Mode and practicing blocking against AI or other online friends. Continue to do so until you get a hang of it and then take the fight to other online players.
Also, don’t be afraid to mess up! Remember that you won’t be able to do it if you don’t practice it. Another thing you need to know is that some attacks can’t be blocked and must be dodge or parried.
For Honor Defense – Parrying
Parrying in For Honor is a slightly advanced technique as compared to blocking, but when learned, it should definitely help you win more match-ups. This section of the guide details everything you need to know about pulling off successful parries.
Parrying is basically the technique which involves denying an opponent’s attack by landing an attack of your own at exactly the same time when your opponent’s attack connects. Yes, it’s a tad difficult to execute, but put in the effort and you should be good to go.
Here’s how you can do it:
The first thing you need to do is to change your Guard Mode to the direction of an incoming attack. For instance, if an opponent is attacking from the right-hand side, change the Guard Mode to right stance.
The second thing you need to do is to wait for your opponent to attack and look for a flashing red arrow. As soon as you see this icon, hit the attack button – either light attack button or heavy attack button – to land a successful parry.
If done correctly, you should be able to see your opponent stagger for a second which is enough time for you to land 1-2 hits of your own. It’s important that you press the attack button at the perfect time. Mess it up and you’ll get hit by your opponent’s attack.
As mentioned earlier, parrying is a slightly advanced concept which requires patience and practice. However, once learned, you should be able to deal with spammers and unblockable attacks in a much efficient manner.
For Honor Defense – Guard Breaks
If your opponents are always blocking and not letting your attacks go through, you can always surprise them with a well-timed Guard Break. This basic maneuver forces enemy to drop his/her guard.
Once done, you can either go in with an attack or land another Guard Break. As the name suggests, Guard Break only works against opponents who are blocking. If your opponent is in the middle of an attack and you land a Guard Break, you’ll get hit 100% of the times.
In such scenarios, it’s a good idea to either dodge away from the attack or try your luck at pulling off a parry. As you might’ve guessed by now, using Guard Break is highly situational and shouldn’t be spammed.
For Honor Defense – Guard Break Counters
Similar to parrying, icon flashes whenever an opponent is about to land a Guard Break. Whenever you see this icon, you can attack, dodge away, or preferably land a Guard Break of your own.
This is called Counter Guard Break which lets you stagger your opponent and land in a couple of your attacks. Similar to parrying, you need to be accurate with your timing or you’ll get heavily punished.
This is one of the ways you can transform your defense into the offense which what separates average players from the good ones. I, once again, recommend practicing against AI or your friends to get a hang of things.
For Honor Defense – Throws
This is another important concept that you need to be familiar with. If you manage to land a successful Guard Break, you can press the Guard Break button again to execute a throw which varies from hero to hero.
For instance, if you execute a throw with a Raider, you’ll carry your opponent on your shoulder and cover a small distance followed by pounding the opposing hero on the ground. If you’re near a ledge or an environmental trap, you’ll throw the opposing hero over, netting you an instant victory.
Orochi, on the other hand, kicks the opponent which can be transitioned into other attacks. Depending on your positioning and hero, throws can easily win your games, but remember; you need to land a successful Guard Break in order to execute them.
For Honor Defense – Dodging
Dodging shouldn’t require much explanation. It’s basically like a speed burst in the direction of your choice. However, there are some things that you should learn about dodging.
Firstly, you always need to dodge into the swing which should allow you to dodge the attack. If you dodge away from the attack, you’re most like to get hit by the follow-up attack.
Secondly, some heroes are better at dodging as compared to others. For example, I highly recommend dodging on more mobile heroes such as Peacekeeper. In addition to this, heroes like Peacekeeper can also feint dodges into counter-attacks which is something you need to practice to get used to.
This is all we’ve on our For Honor Defense Guide. If you’d like to add something, don’t forget to let us know in the comments section!
