Combat Mechanics

Mordhau's combat looks like button mashing for about your first ten hours and then suddenly does not. This page explains what is actually happening underneath, in roughly the order it is worth learning.

WARNING

Exact numbers — stamina costs, timing windows — get adjusted in patches. Treat the specific figures here as approximate and the concepts as reliable. If you spot one that is out of date, correct it.

The three attacks

Everything you throw is one of three things:

Strike — a horizontal swing. Which side it comes from depends on which way you move the mouse as you start it.

Overhead — comes down from above. Shorter arc, harder to drag, awkward in tight spaces because it catches on ceilings and teammates.

Stab — a thrust. Narrow, fast, and it goes through gaps where a swing would hit a wall.

Every attack runs through three phases: windup while the weapon is drawn back, release while it can actually hurt someone, and recovery while you are stuck putting it away. Almost every mechanic below is about manipulating one of those three windows.

Defence

Parry

Right click. A shield icon flashes on your crosshair, and for that brief window nearly anything that hits your weapon is deflected — swings, stabs, arrows.

Parrying is not free. It costs you stamina, and it costs the attacker stamina too. Two players who do nothing but swing and parry are both draining, and whoever runs out first is in serious trouble.

WARNING

The parry window is much shorter than the swing that is coming at you. This is the single most important fact about Mordhau combat, and it is the reason drags and accels work at all. You cannot parry when you see the swing start, you have to parry when it is about to land.

Chamber

Instead of parrying, you throw your own attack along the same angle as the incoming one, just before it connects. Your weapon deflects theirs and rolls straight into your own strike.

Chambering does what a parry does and gives you the initiative back at the same time, which is why good players do it constantly. It is also unforgiving — get the angle or the timing wrong and you have simply eaten the hit.

Riposte

The fast attack you get immediately after a successful parry. It comes out quicker than a normal swing, which is what makes parrying worth doing rather than just backing off.

Two things to know: a riposte cannot be feinted or morphed, so it is committed the moment you throw it. In exchange it carries hyper armour, meaning you will not be flinched out of it by someone else's hit — useful when you are outnumbered, since you can trade rather than being interrupted forever.

Kick

Kick beats a held parry. Against someone who is turtling — sitting behind their block waiting — a kick opens them up and buys you a free hit.

It is slow, and if you throw it at someone who is not blocking you will be punished for it.

Offence

Feint

Cancel your attack during the windup. They committed to a parry against a swing that never arrived, and now they are in recovery with nothing in front of them.

The feint window stays open until roughly the last 50 milliseconds of the windup, so you can leave it very late. It costs stamina every time.

Morph

Start one attack and turn it into a different one mid-windup — a strike becomes a stab, or the other way round. Around 7 stamina.

Where a feint makes them parry nothing, a morph makes them parry the wrong thing. Their timing was right for a swing and a stab arrived instead.

Accel

Turn your body into the swing as it releases. The weapon connects earlier in its arc, so the hit lands sooner than the animation suggests and their parry comes down too late.

Drag

The opposite. Turn away from the swing, stretching it out so it lands at the very end of its release window. They parried when it looked like it should hit, the parry expired, and the weapon arrives afterwards.

Accel and drag together are why Mordhau's combat has the reputation it does. The animation is not a reliable clock — the attacker controls when the hit lands by moving their mouse, and reading that is most of the skill.

Stamina

Stamina is the resource behind all of it. It drains when you:

• parry
• get parried
• feint or morph
• miss a swing entirely
• jump

At zero you are disarmed — your weapon is knocked out of your hands and you are defenceless for long enough to be killed. Losing a fight in Mordhau is usually a stamina loss before it is a health loss.

The practical consequence is that swinging constantly loses to swinging deliberately. Every miss is stamina you paid for nothing.

Footwork

Distance does more work than any technique on this page.

Different weapons have different reach, and standing at the edge of theirs while inside your own is worth more than any feint. Backing out of a swing is often better than parrying it, because it costs you no stamina at all.

Moving while you attack changes the attack. Stepping in shortens the effective windup, stepping back lengthens it. Combine that with accels and drags and the same swing can arrive at noticeably different times.

Order to learn this in

Do not try to absorb all of it at once. Roughly:

1. Parry reliably. Nothing else matters until you can consistently block a straightforward attack.
2. Riposte. Parry, hit back. That alone is a working game plan.
3. Watch your stamina. Stop swinging at air.
4. Feint. One tool to beat people who parry on reflex.
5. Accel and drag. Start playing with when your hits land.
6. Chamber. Last, because it is the hardest and you can win plenty of fights without it.
7. Footwork. Except you should have been working on this the whole time.

Going deeper

If a term here was unfamiliar, the glossary covers the vocabulary.