Ultima Online Parry - shield and weapon block chance, and what Bushido changes

A parry is a complete miss

Two things follow from that, and both are published:

• The attack does no damage at all. Not reduced damage — none. That is uo.com’s wording.
• A parried special move costs the attacker no mana. So Parry does not only eat their damage, it eats the 15–35 mana they spent on the move — except where the move is one requiring Bushido or Ninjitsu, which is charged either way.

The deflating part: if the parry fails, the shield does nothing inherent for you — which shield you carry makes no difference unless it has extra properties such as Defense Chance Increase [!].

The three published block formulas

uo.com publishes all three. Which one applies depends only on what is in your hands.

What you are holding	Published block chance
A shield	( Parrying − Bushido ) ÷ 4 — minimum 0. Then add 5% if Parrying or Bushido is 100 or more.
A one-handed weapon, no shield	New branch ( Parrying × 10 ) × ( Bushido × 10 ) ÷ 48000, legacy branch ( Parrying × 10 ) ÷ 80 — use whichever is higher, then add 5% if Parrying or Bushido is 100 or more.
A two-handed weapon	New branch ( Parrying × 10 ) × ( Bushido × 10 ) ÷ 41140, legacy branch ( Parrying × 10 ) ÷ 80 — use whichever is higher, then add 5% if Parrying or Bushido is 100 or more.
Any of the three, under 80 Dex	Dex Modifier = ( 80 − Dexterity ) ÷ 100 below 80 Dex, and 0 at 80 or above. Final chance = Base Chance × ( 1 − Dex Modifier )

80 Dexterity is the number to build around. At 80 the modifier is zero; below it, every point you are short scales the whole result down.

Two-handed weapons parry better. The only published difference between the one-handed and two-handed cases is the divisor — 48000 against 41140 — and the smaller divisor makes the larger number. At the same Parrying and Bushido, the two-hander blocks more. The Legacy branch is identical for both.

What Bushido does to it - in both directions

This is what catches people out: Bushido pulls the two cases opposite ways.

• With a shield, Bushido is subtracted. ( Parrying − Bushido ) ÷ 4. uo.com says it in as many words: “The Bushido skill will actually lessen the chance to block with a shield.” At 120 Parrying and 120 Bushido the main term floors at zero and only the +5% is left.
• Without a shield, Bushido is multiplied in, and it is the whole reason weapon parrying works. With Bushido at 0 the New branch evaluates to zero and the legacy branch ( Parrying × 10 ) ÷ 80 governs on its own.

Put without the arithmetic: as Parrying and Bushido both rise, your chance to block with a shield drops and you gain the ability to parry with a weapon instead, with an extra bonus for two-handed weapons [!]. In practice that is the fork in the road: shield and no Bushido, or two-handed weapon and Bushido. Half of each is the worst of both.

So what percentage do you actually block?

[!] No per-skill block chance table is published anywhere. uo.com gives the formulas and no worked values. The only concrete figures are unpublished and specific to the Sampire template — Bushido plus a weapon, no shield: 115 Parry gives a 32% [!] chance to parry, and 120 gives 35% [!]. Those two numbers are not a general table and should not be read as one.

[!] No cap on final block percentage is published either, so none is given here.

The Bushido stances that pay a parry off

Three Bushido abilities turn a parry from an avoided hit into an actual gain. All three are published on uo.com’s Bushido page.

• Confidence — 10 mana, 25 Bushido. Every successful parry returns 1 to (Bushido ÷ 12) hit points and 1 to (Bushido ÷ 5) stamina. Activating it alone regenerates (Bushido × Bushido) ÷ 576 + 15 hit points over 4 seconds.
• Counter Attack — 5 mana, 40 Bushido. Automatically counter attacks the next time you successfully parry.
• Evasion — 10 mana, 60 Bushido. Lets you parry magical attacks “like dragon breath and energy bolt”. The parry modifier scales with Bushido across a range of 16–40%, with a 10% bonus if Bushido is above Grandmaster and both Tactics and Anatomy are Grandmaster or better. Chance to parry is penalised below 80 Dex here too. The duration, which uo.com does not give: 3 to 6 seconds [!], with a 2 second bonus [!] under the same Bushido / Tactics / Anatomy condition.

Separately, the Block special move (20 mana, needs 50+ Ninjitsu or Bushido) raises your defences for 6 seconds after a hit, and its damage reduction scales with Parrying skill above 70 [!] — so 70 Parry is a real threshold even on a character who never carries a shield.

The Deflector - the Parrying mastery

Parry is the exception among the weapon-side masteries. uo.com: “Most skills feature two active and one passive mastery, except Parry, which has three active abilities.” The title is The Deflector, and it needs above 90 real Parrying — item bonuses do not count — plus a primer for each of the three tiers.

Ability	Mana	Upkeep	What uo.com says it does
Shield Bash	40	—	A shield bash on a successful hit or parry, causing physical damage and paralysing the opponent, scaled on parry skill, best weapon skill and mastery level. Damage is capped at 35 in PvP.
Body Guard	40	—	Choose a protectee and absorb a percentage of the damage done to them, scaled on parry skill, best weapon skill and mastery level.
Heightened Senses	10	10	Toggle giving an increased chance to parry, scaled on parry skill, best weapon skill and mastery level, burning mana while active.

Parry does not get Warrior’s Gifts. That shared passive belongs to the Archery, Fencing, Mace Fighting, Swordsmanship and Throwing masteries only — Parry’s three actives are all it has.

[!] None of the three has published per-level numbers: no Shield Bash damage or paralyse duration by tier, no Body Guard absorption percentage, no figure for how much Heightened Senses adds. uo.com says only “based on … mastery level”.

[!] How often a mastery can be switched is not fully settled: uo.com says a 10 minute cooldown, which is the documented figure; an unpublished figure of 15 minutes [!] differs.

In PvP

• It costs them mana, not just damage. A parried special is free for you and wasted for them, which drains an aggressor’s tempo as well as their output.
• The Parry Mage. A common template [!] runs Magery, Evaluating Intelligence, Resisting Spells and Parrying at 120 each, plus Alchemy, Anatomy and Inscription at 100 — 780 points against a 720 cap, so it needs +60 skill from items. Shield in the left hand, 80 Dexterity, and Defense Chance Increase of 45% as a required minimum [!], with 70 [!] suggested to counter Hit Lower Defense.
• Evasion is throttled against players. It is subject to diminishing returns in PvP, up to a 70% [!] reduction in evasion. It is a PvM tool that happens to work in PvP, not the other way round.
• Shield Bash paralyses, but its damage is capped at 35 against players.
• Throwers specifically. uo.com’s Throwing page says a shield costs a gargoyle Defense and Hit Chance, and that “these penalties can be offset by investing skill points into Parrying”.

In PvM

• It is load-bearing on a Sampire. The usual Sampire build [!] wants Parry at 120, with 115 acceptable, alongside 120 weapon skill, Bushido, 99+ Necromancy and Chivalry — with Bushido there specifically so the character can parry without a shield.
• Confidence turns defence into sustain. Every parry is 1 to (Bushido ÷ 12) hit points and 1 to (Bushido ÷ 5) stamina back, so the more incoming attacks there are, the better it gets.
• Evasion is the answer to breath weapons. It extends parrying to dragon breath and direct-damage spells, with none of the PvP throttling.

What is not published

None of the following is stated on uo.com, so none of it is asserted here:

• [!] Any hard cap on final block percentage.
• [!] Any stamina cost or stamina loss for a successful parry.
• [!] Any shield durability loss from parrying.
• [!] Whether a shield’s own physical resist contributes to a blocked or an unblocked hit.
• [!] Any interaction between parrying and spellcasting — whether a parry interrupts your cast, or whether you can parry while casting.
• [!] Whether Throwing attacks can be parried at all. uo.com’s Parry page says “melee and archery”; Throwing is not named either way.
• [!] Per-mastery-level numbers for any of the three Parrying mastery abilities.

Caps, and how to train it

Parrying is on the Power Scroll list: 105 / 110 / 115 / 120 with a Wondrous, Exalted, Mythical or Legendary scroll, counting against the 720 total skill cap. Primary stat Dexterity, secondary Strength — which is convenient, because Dexterity is also what the block formula wants at 80 or better.

Training is unlike a weapon skill, because Parry only checks when you are attacked. uo.com’s advice follows: “when choosing opponents to train against quantity is preferable to quality” — a crowd of weak things, not one strong one — and bucklers are preferable to heater shields for training. One unpublished route [!] goes 0–120 in cat or beast form with shields against sheep in Yew, and takes hours.

The Guaranteed Gain System backstops all of it with a mandatory 0.1 when nothing has been gained inside your bracket’s window, and a Scroll of Alacrity raises each check from 0.1 to 0.2–0.5 for 15 minutes.

Where these come from

uo.com Parry · uo.com Bushido · uo.com Skill Masteries · uo.com Special Moves · uo.com Throwing · uo.com Skills, Stats & Attributes · uo.com Skill Titles · uo.com Skill Gain Systems. Everything here is from uo.com or the game itself; anything uo.com does not publish is marked [!] as unpublished where it appears.