BotW Combat Tips: Perfect Guard, Flurry Rush and Sneakstrike

Combat in The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild looks like button mashing, but a handful of techniques make it far easier: the Perfect Guard (parry), the Perfect Dodge into a Flurry Rush, Sneakstrikes, charged attacks, headshots and midair bullet time. This page covers how to do each one, when to use it and what it is good for. Buttons are the default Switch layout. Early on you can practice the side hop, backflip, Perfect Guard and charged attack in one go at Ta’loh Naeg Shrine next to Kakariko Village (the trial is called Ta’loh Naeg’s Teaching).

Which buttons do you need?

One more from the in-game tips: when there are several things to lock on to, press ZL again to switch targets.

How do you time a Perfect Guard?

With your shield up (hold ZL), press A in the instant before an attack hits you. The game describes it as “Parry at the right time to knock an enemy back.” When it works the shield flashes, the enemy reels back and leaves an opening, and sometimes drops its weapon. Any shield can do it, including the Pot Lid.

The trick to the timing is to watch the attack, not the enemy’s body. For a swing, watch the weapon as it reaches you; for something flying at you, watch the projectile arrive. Too early and you are just blocking; too late and you get hit.

What can it reflect?

• Guardian beams. This is the famous use: Perfect Guard the moment a Guardian fires and the beam flies straight back into it. How many reflections each kind takes, and how to read the warning before a shot, is on the Guardian guide.
• Octorok rocks. The Hyrule Compendium says: “The rocks they spit out can be bounced back with a shield.”
• Calamity Ganon’s second phase. Once it raises its barrier, a Perfect Guard against its attacks drops the barrier for a moment. See Calamity Ganon.

How do Perfect Dodges and Flurry Rushes work?

Hold ZL to lock on and press X just before an attack lands: push the left stick back to backflip, or left or right to side hop. Get the timing right and it is a Perfect Dodge: time slows down and you can mash Y for a Flurry Rush, where Link dashes in and lands a string of hits.

Match the dodge to the attack. The game’s control guide puts it this way:

• Sideways attacks (horizontal swings): backflip.
• Vertical attacks (overhead slams, forward lunges): side hop.

Dodge the wrong way and you still get hit. The number of hits depends on your weapon: 7 with a one-handed weapon, 4 with a two-handed weapon. The rush stops if another enemy hits you or your weapon breaks, so clear out the small fry before you try it in a crowd.

Dodging into Flurry Rushes is the safest damage against strong humanoid enemies, and a Flurry Rush also goes straight through the barrier in Calamity Ganon’s second phase.

How do Sneakstrikes work, and how strong are they?

Come up behind an enemy that has not noticed you, or one that is asleep, and a Sneakstrike prompt appears; press Y. A Sneakstrike deals 8 times your weapon’s damage, so early on a basic sword usually takes out a regular Bokoblin in one hit.

The in-game tips give a few ways to get close unnoticed:

• Crouch. Press the left stick; you move slower but make less noise.
• Use tall grass. Crouching in a grassy field makes you harder to detect.
• Wait for rain. Footsteps are harder to hear when it is raining.
• Wait for night. Some monsters fall asleep at night.
• Come in from above. If a camp has a tall lookout packed with monsters, glide in to the top floor.

The Stealth set or Sheik’s Mask gives you Stealth Up, which makes this much easier. It is said that in the Yiga Clan Hideout a Sneakstrike takes out a Yiga Blademaster in one hit whatever weapon you use.

Charged attacks: what changes between one-handed, two-handed and spears?

Hold Y to charge and release to attack. Charging uses stamina, and the game’s tip is to “time your attack carefully.” Each weapon type does something different:

The two-handed spin is great when you are surrounded, but it burns stamina fast; do not end it with nothing left to run away with. Also, if a monster is hiding behind a shield, hitting the shield with a heavy sword or axe knocks it away.

With Urbosa’s Fury, your charged attack calls down lightning, and anything that survives is stunned.

Where should you aim: headshots and weak points?

An arrow to the head is a Critical Hit and deals double damage. Bokoblins, Moblins, Lizalfos and Wizzrobes all take extra damage to the head, so open a fight with a headshot. Shooting a Lynel in the head makes it kneel, which lets you climb on its back; see Lynel farming.

A few more weak points from the in-game tips:

• Hit an Electric Lizalfos’s horn with an arrow and it lets out a huge electric shock.
• Use fire on an icy enemy, or ice on a fiery enemy, and it may go down in one hit.
• Guardian eyes: one Ancient Arrow to the eye destroys one; see the Guardian guide.

Health and weak points for every monster are on the enemy list.

How do you trigger bullet time?

Hold ZR to draw your bow while you are in the air and time slows down. The game says it lets you “slow down time so that you can aim with greater accuracy”; players call it bullet time. Slow motion keeps draining stamina and ends when the wheel runs out, so more stamina means more aiming time.

Ways to get airborne:

• Jump off a high place and draw.
• Ride an updraft with the paraglider, then draw.
• Leap off a galloping horse and draw in midair.
• Use Revali’s Gale to shoot straight up (three uses; recharge times on champion abilities).

Bullet time plus headshots is the standard way to fight Lynels and several of the Blights; see the Blight guide.

When should you throw your weapon?

Hold R to aim and release to throw. A hit is a Critical Hit and deals double damage, and the game’s tip is to throw a weapon that is about to break. The hit that breaks a weapon is also a double-damage Critical Hit.

• A boomerang flies in a wide arc and comes back to you.
• A burning weapon thrown at a bomb barrel sets it off.

Is shield surfing any use in a fight?

Hold ZL to raise your shield, press X to jump, then press A in the air to hop on and slide downhill. The game notes that it knocks durability off the shield but is “an effective way to travel downhill quickly”; in a fight it is mainly a fast way to get out or charge down a slope. The shield you ride matters: by the game’s parameters the Radiant Shield loses the least speed on the ground, the Ancient Shield comes next and the Shield of the Mind’s Eye third. The Ancient Shield also wears down slowest, and the Royal Guard’s Shield three times as fast as most. Selmie’s Spot has a shield surfing minigame; see minigames.

Related pages

• BotW beginner tips
• Trial of the Sword: you only get the weapons on each floor, so Perfect Guards and Sneakstrikes earn their keep.
• Master Mode: enemies regenerate, so Sneakstrikes and Flurry Rushes matter more.
• TotK combat tips: the same moves, plus Fuse.