Grievous Strikes in Lords of the Fallen are very similar to Ripostes in the Dark Souls games, Visceral Attacks in Bloodborne, or Fatal Attacks in Lies of P. Essentially, the player counters or drains a resource of the enemy's in some way, and when they're fully vulnerable as a result, the player is locked into a unique attack animation that deals an absurd amount of damage all at once.

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In Lords of the Fallen, the way that players build up to a Grievous Strike is similar to any Soulslike game with a Posture system, but it can be especially confusing to newer players, so let's go over exactly how it works.

Grievous Strikes Overview

To break down the Grievous Strikes mechanic, once players get enemies into a Staggered state, they'll have a relatively small window to actually unleash press their Light Attack input and use a Grievous Strike. Not to compare the two games too much, but this isn't like Lies of P where players could get a whole attack combo in before locking themselves into their Fatal Attack. Granted, they can still get one or two attacks in if they're feeling confident in Lords of the Fallen, but it's pretty easy to accidentally miss the Grievous Strike window in that instance.

As far as the damage is concerned with Grievous Strikes, there's a very wide range of potential damage output and this is part of why Parrying feels a bit less rewarding in this game. On a lot of basic weapons, a Grievous Strike ends up only dealing the amount of damage two or three basic attacks would have dealt, independent of the player's stats. However, this damage does seem to range from weapon to weapon with some players reporting Daggers and Shortswords being better overall in DPS with Grievous Strikes.

Also, the most important part of Grievous Strikes is that they'll typically heal most of the player's Withered Health. To reiterate, while Parrying the enemy's attacks, players will unavoidably end up with a lot of Withered Health, and as long as they don't make a mistake and get hit before the enemy is Staggered, they'll be able to regain the majority of this health through the Grievous Strike damage. The actual amount of health recovered seems to be linked to the amount of damage the Grievous Strike dealt (typically around the same as a Sanguinatrix charge), so that's also worth keeping in mind. However, for players who 'know of' about Lords of the Fallen's Parrying and Posture systems, but don't know all the necessary details, let's break down those two systems as well.

Posture System Overview

The Posture System in Lords of the Fallen is relatively simple, even if the number of ways players can interact with this system (and the sheer amount of difficult enemies) can make it seem more complex. Essentially, all enemies will have this white circle surrounding the lock-on icon in their center of gravity which denotes their current Posture.

As players deal damage to the enemy or Parry their attacks, they'll notice that the white circle 'meter' is quickly draining. Once it's empty, enemies can be 'knocked' into the Staggered state with a Charged Heavy Attack, a Kick, or a Parry. Typically, players will unknowingly drain that last bit of Posture with a Parry, which will automatically cause the enemy to fall to their knees, Staggered.

Parrying Overview

Parrying in Lords of the Fallen, at least at the time of writing this (October 2023) is a bit of a high-risk medium-reward situation. While the Parry window in this game is assuredly much wider than in something like Lies of P, players will still often take a fair bit of Wither Damage when they successfully Parry attacks, which can make the online aspect of the game feel a bit unfair at times, even when it's not. That said Parrying is likely still the highest source of Posture Damage players have, outside of some Charged Heavy Attacks (which are riskier).

So, players will need to decide for themselves if Lords of the Fallen feels more like a Parry playstyle game for them or the more standard Dodge-centric playstyle game. It's also worth mentioning (since the game doesn't really point it out) that different weapons and shields have different Parry windows. Heavier weapons and Shields, for example, reduce more incoming damage when blocking, but seem to have the smallest window for Parrying. Meanwhile, Daggers (especially Dual Daggers) have a noticeably larger Parry Window but if players miss the Parry they'll be taking a whole lot of damage.