Great Shinobi Owl | Sekiro Shadows Die Twice Wiki

Owl: wait, wait please

Me: nice try, I know you have two life bars.

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NOW I FIGHT AS ABUSIVE FATHER, WARRIOR!

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F*ck my life. After fighting this guy like 50 times and FINALLY winning, i noticed that I'd had the demon bell active the whole time...........

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this guy is legit harder than saint isshin. he has ton of hp in ng+, has fast posture recovery till low hp, doesn't do perilous attacks so you can't punish him, doesn't give much openings for attacks, doesn't have any weaknesses aside of mortal draw. shinobi firecracker only allows you to do 1 free hit i don't know who put there as his weakness but i would rather use mortal draw and take a significant chunk of his hp which also stuns him from time to time.

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Dodge more, deflect more, that's not really where the difference is - the key to every human boss in the game is staying on the offensive until they get to counter, or you're just wasting time watching their posture reset over and over again while letting them choose their moves. Being aggressive chips away at their health while already building some posture damage, and often also reduces the amount of eligible moves they can do, forces them into predictable patterns, etc. From there you just deflect what you're comfortable with deflecting, dodge what you're comfortable with dodging, and block what you're not sure about. Again, this all applies not just to Owl, but to every human boss.

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This guy was an actual skill check, something about him really threw me off. Took me an hour of attempts. "Dodge instead of deflecting" is awful advice IMO, when his swings (and chasing slice in particular) deal massive damage while being so easy to deflect. Dodge selectively instead, keep close to him, and punish the one-two-shuriken into overhead jump and the gas deployment animations. The latter is susceptible to a dodge attack, or to a simple move to the right and to his back followed by attacking. There are single- or double-swing openings throughout his moveset too. Be wary of his firecrackers, they deal a ****ton of damage,

Somehow, whirlwind slash ended up my most useful combat art for this, better than mortal draw and ichi. Comes out fast and deals almost as much health damage as one mortal blow swing. You can also trigger whirlwind slash from dodges, which helped quite a bit. This let me use my emblems on firecrackers in phase 2, which create a solid opening for health damage. In phase 2 I also found it useful to keep him in a corner in case he deploys poison, to try and "partition" the field so that it's not all covered in **** if he follows up.

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Mohg the Owl

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Most evil Sekiro character

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it's much easier to fight either owl if you focus on dodging, rather than deflecting. For Great Shinobi Owl, I usually beat him without seeing the poison attack even once in the second phase. This is because he only throws it after he deflects you. And I never swing at him while he's in front of me. I deflect sometimes, but mostly I dodge through his sword attacks behind him (the best is when he swings from *his* right side, your left), and then do a charged attack, followed by a normal attack (he won't mikiri when you're behind him). His posture bar is monstrous, but his vitality is very low, even Charmless with Demon Bell rung. Anyway, I think FromSoft intended him to be fought this way. But regardless, it's satisfying to chew his health bar down really fast, it feels like you're out-tricking the trickster :p ... if you try this, good luck!

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awesome fight but his poison attack is annoying tbh

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Is it just me and my luck but is the second phase easier? First phase was constant barrage of combos but the second phase gave enough time to be composed and not to panic.

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-Wolf, you missed your iron code class yesterday. Beg for kuro's mercy in japanese!

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I've noticed that occasionally he attacks faster than expected, but it usually happened after I deflected an attack or he blocked one of mine so it was difficult to see exactly what's going on. (This basically meant that punishing normally punishable moves has a ~10% of getting hit. Since I was playing Charmless + Demon's Bell + base vitality these hits meant death.)

But now I caught him in the act! He was doing his basic attack combo from neutral (which uses the same animations as Sekiro's), and after the second hit he *canceled his own animation* and restarted the combo immediately with the first attack, which came about a good 0.5s faster this way than it was supposed to.

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If you are fighting this boss in NG, it's pretty easy. Your posture recovery is great, his attacks don't do a lot of damage, and you can tank some of his attacks in both phase 1 and phase 2. Now after revisiting this dude in NG++ with charmless, HOLY mother of god was this dude painful. He literally went through a mega evolution. If you aren't perfectly deflecting, he's going to absolutely annihilate you. Your posture will break in three hits, and you then proceed to die in two hits with his combos. Don't even get me started on the chip damage. I finally managed to beat him by doing "cheeses" which is really just... skill. After his slam attack, just circle around him and spam double ichimonji. In general, always be aggressive and hit with two hit combos. Hit, deflect, hit, deflect, you get it. Back him to a wall, and he won't be able to jump backwards, letting you get more hits. Second phase, use a counter agent and just brave through his poison. If you are near him during the smoke bomb, you can get a free hit.

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cringe fight

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"My father died that night"
"No,wolf. I am your father"

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fun fight

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Owl is easy if you just dodge and immediately punish with double immortal blade, then at about ¼ vitality his posture can be broken like any other enemy

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To whoever said try jump attacks - screw you.

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I'm a lot more pissed by the fact that his Mikiri Counter doesn't actually break your posture bar despite being able to immediately pull off a shinobi execution on you than the fact that he performs a Mikiri Counter.

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Sparking axe was a lifesaver for me. You have 2 really good opportunities to use it, during the anti-healing bomb and if you strafe his fronflip. Deals really good vitality damage and really slows his posture recovey down a lot, if you can manage to land a few. Flame vent would probably also work really well, although it takes more spirit emblems

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For other bosses you deflect to fill their posture,but for owl you only deflect to survive

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The only bad thing about this boss fight is when he throws his shinobi charm it has lingering hitbox. The amount of times I got it by hit when it has less of a second left on the edge of the hitbox was too much.

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Pro tip: I never got mikiri countered by owl because I don’t know how to do thrust attacks. 100% success rate.

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Lady Butterfly Kunai are VERY good against him. They eat right through his HP.

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Best fight in the game

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Is there a closer idol than the one at the gates? ****ing annoying grappling on the roofs when sometimes you can and the next time you're in the exact same position and the grapple point just won't turn green

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just want to say he sounds like a chain smoker in the english version

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Avoid the debuff at all costs once you have it he won't do it again until it falls off. Not only is that like 90% of your chances at punishing him but he WILL eat your posture bar for breakfast even with good deflects. You can get him in a loop where hell run at you and either kick or swipe by walking backwards, dodging when he gets close and holding l2 to restore your posture if you need to. This is a risky tip but if he breaks your posture on the last swipe of a combo he'll try to stomp forward on you for a deathblow, you can punish this by rolling diagonal towards his side and swiping if that's too risky roll back after he breaks your posture and it won't hit you

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Unironically the hardest boss in the entire game

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This boss isn’t as hard or fun as his Hirata variant. This one’s just incredibly annoying and takes way too long

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I will admit that his firecracker attack is a massive pain, and in my experience, the most reliable way to avoid and punish it is to dodge directly away, then immediately back for a counter slash. By the time you start your counter slash his chasing slice from the firecrackers will have already whiffed

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Some tips:

1. I see a lot of people complaining the Firecracker attack in both fights. Solution: Mist Raven. When he throws the crackers at you, wait about half a second or slightly less, and then cast. You will avoid the damage, jump in the air (if you didn't click any direction) and land an attack. In the first fight, this is a 100% guaranteed hit. In the second fight, this is still the case in the first phase, but it's less likely in the second phase because he usually vanishes after using it, but this is still a guaranteed way to avoid this attack.

2. In the second phase of the first phase, ALWAYS bum rush him the moment he jumps away. He will either try to recover posture or try to follow up, but either way, he will always be open the moment he lands on the ground. You can do this in the first phase as well as the second fight too, but dodging the shurikens is tricky. It's safer to deflect and it is very easy, but this leaves you without a good attack.

3. Combat art skills where you jump are good against him because he has no anti airs at all (As long as he's in the ground - The attack where he jumps and tries to crush you with the sword can hit you). Sakura Dance and Senpou Kicks are both potential ways to dodge an attack as well as hit him, such as when he rushes at you.

4. This fight has the same basic premise as Genichiro. It is a skill check for deflecting. If you can do okay vs Genichiro but think you suck at this fight, look at it the same way you do Genichiro - Focus on deflecting. ALL of his attacks are deflectable, including the phoenix owl in the second fight as well as the thrust following it (since a lot of people seem to not be aware that thrusts are deflectable).

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Hardest boss yet for me, (didn't beat bosses after him) , however using fire axe made the 1st phase a lot faster , you just have to execute it when he's doing that little green ball thing or after the double shuriken jump.

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The unwarned grab attack (the one where he steps on you and stabs you) is usually performed when you get posture broken. Safety roll if he tries to approach while you are on the ground.

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Abuse Aged Feather Mist Raven. Profit.

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How this man 10' tall yet fight like an utter gremlin

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Dude really did a artorias jump attack for 0 ****ing reason. Respect it tbh

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Gaunlet version of him will just attack and jump away rinse repeat until your posture is broken and you die and get to redo the guardian ape.

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i was stuck on this fight NG+ charmless for a while and i tried using oil pots and flame vent and that was how i finally beat him

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Much much better fight than retarded emma +old isshin fight for shura ending.

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i love this fight, but him being able to anti heal u is so stupid. it just removes a core mechanic of the game for like a minute

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AH HAH THIS FIGHT IS EASY I CAN WIN TH-*gets mikiri countered*- uh oh

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From what i can tell is he is far more likely to use the devasting firecracker slash if you manage to land a full combo on him(blocked or not), he used it about 4 times in my first successful fight against him. my counter to it is the same as the much later(and easier) second fight with genichiro, when you spot the signs he's going for it back the hell away.

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Ironically, spears are very good VS Owl, slightly more so for his Great Shinobi than Father.

Owl's Mikiri is design to only 'catch' you at a certain distance, and you can use spears to reach and hit him from beyond the range. I recommend using Spiral Spear for this one, because it seems to have an extra long hitbox the others don't, and also deals more damage for its cost when attacking Owl during vulnerable frames. For example, when he tosses 2 shuriken at you, you can jump back and use the spear; or when he kicks and jumps back from you, you can immediately use the spear to punish him for retreating.

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He has great feet

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The worst think about this fight is that it sort of punishes aggressive playstyles. When you deflect certain attacks, immediately attack after those ones will make Sekiro loop his sword behind him, making your counter attack slightly longer and leave you open for the next hit in his combo. This quirk isn't present in Father Owl or Inner Owl.

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You can abuse Mist Raven + Fang and Blade if he poisons you in phase 2 to deal easy damage

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Be elusive at the start of both phases and whenever he goes for the 2 shurikens & jumping attack, deflect both shurikens and then step up to counter the jumping attack with Phoenix Lilic Umbrella, it does plenty of damage to his health if you have projected force. Once his health is lower and his posture doesn't recover fast, you can go fight one on one and show your skills to erradicate him.

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This guide is wrong, thrust attack works wonders in this fight. It demolishes vitality and posture bars and causes a guaranteed "stagger" animation. This poor guide is very much unexpected from a consistently great site like fextralife

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I honestly can't tell whether he's a bad person or not. Part of me thinks when you fight him he's still teaching you how to be stronger. It's just strange for someone as smart as Owl to be corrupted by immortality. Guess age will do that to you.

(Spoilers)
That second fight really feels real bittersweet, in a cold shinobi father kind of way.

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I can't even get past his first deathblow even with the advice on this page, does anyone have any advice?

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May be worth noting that the first time you make it to phase 2, he'll do what I assume is a fake surrender. I of course just attacked him and carried on, but I noticed that he doesn't repeat the move on future attempts. So, I'm not sure what all the surrender entails, but I sort of wish I let myself get tricked by it, just to see what it did.

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Mortal Draw made this fight a lot easier for me. Save it for the 2nd phase though. For the first phase, I just got good at timing the deflects, waited for the jump attack, and chipped away at his vitality. The 2nd phase I found to be a lot harder to manage with everything else going on (poison for instance), so saving all the spirit emblems for the 2nd phase makes it go much faster with mortal draw. It only takes about three double mortal draws to get his posture bar close to full.

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>know he can mikiri you to outright one shot you
>i still go for a thrust attack to squeeze out any damage i can
>get mikiri'd and die
am i just retarded?

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It's worth noting that he won't use the green debuff ball if you already have the debuff and won't create as many openings,and will be generally more dangerous.

If you don't have it,he'll use it practically during every combo,giving you a huge window for vitality damage. Avoiding the green ball consistently and getting a vitality hit everytime he does it is a great way to chip his vitality down relatively easily

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His english VA is Darin De Paul, who voices Reinhardt from Overwatch and Samuel Hayden from DOOM

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When Sekiro kills Owl, he says "Death of a shadow". Owl has an optional second bossfight.

In other words, shadows die twice.

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The most boring boss in the game. Absolutely predictable, yet doesn't allow you to hit him much, controlling battle. The battle itself consists of one-hit, wait till boss does his thing a couple of times, a couple of deflects and you're allowed to hit him again.
As I said, absolutely boring and can be hard to deal with for novices.

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Andre got tired of pounding his anvil and decided to pound the player into the floorboards

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This is the boss I have the hardest time with. I'm currently on new game plus three. Is there a trick to beating him. I've gotten to the point in which I wait for him to use his shurikin jump attack to get two hits. If anyone has any trick I would be very greatful.

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The only story boss without any perilous attacks. What was from thinking.

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does he have different attacks without kuro's charm? for me he just did the firecracker slash that owl father does

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even i didnt encounter this boss i ranked this the most worst dad in the world do you know why 1st after you beat a supa fast old lady you will be stabbed on the back do you know who the one who stab your back its UR DAD 2nd his fighting his own son see WHAT A STUPOID FATHER

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Fromsoft needs a quick retry feature. If you're grinding this boss you have to let it load, run out avoiding the purple ninja, talk to owl, let the cutscene load, skip the cutscene... it's just tedious.

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What do you say when you get hit by Owl? Ow!

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One of the easiest boss fights.

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daddy chill

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the first phase firecrackers only seem to come out when he responds to combat arts, or at least floating passage

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I like how he's "symbolically" taller during the fight because of Sekiro's view of his father. He really isn't as huge, you can tell during parts away from the fight.

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Really cool how a lot of his moves are versions of what we can do as Sekiro, you can really see he was his master.

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what's the symbol you get when you run into the charms mist?

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i beat him only using the lilac umbrella. lmao. https://youtu.be/O0JqvQdHemk

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his grand plan was break **** at hirata kill his son do all this convoluted crap than ask nicely for immortality

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Empowered Mortal Draw. Even if your spirit emblems are zilch this skill makes the boss easy. I killed him with the third attempt (I died the second times because of my stupidity!). It’s my first walkthrough. My attack is 8 and vitality is 18. Yep it takes much time to get empowered mortal draw but it’s worth it. You just run around the boss provoking him to throw 2 blades and do his spin attack and hit him with this skill (there are two attacks in your skill and sometimes you shouldn’t do your second swing of empowered mortal draw). It was easy. Lady butterfly I killed after, well, it wasn’t easy, guarding ape wasn’t easy too (in the cave, however, I killed him in one go), so I’m telling you I’m not a super master but this skill makes the fight really easy:)

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I was having the toughest time with this boss tries over and over I was having some success with other strategies and then I thought fire that's all you need to use with this boss fire fire fire his health will drain so fast get the skill living Force and use it to enhance your Katana with fire this will cut through him like butter I thought it looked kind of on looking at that big head of hair no wonder he burns right down to the ground in minutes

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Has anyone else ever had him do two flips after the double shuriken throw?
He just did it to me and it completely threw me off XD

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Shame that the opening line to his 2nd phase is skipped over once you get passed it the 1st time. I really like what he says and it adds a lot to the sentiment of the fight and the story behind it IMO. If I were From, there should be a switch that lets us turn them on and off.

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for some reason this one boss feels like riot games programmed his hitboxes, none of the other bosses are this janky

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"Stray dog" damn, this is hell of a dark insult

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Got a little misty eyed when I killed him and he said. "That's my boy."

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Damn father has a really long... sword

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I was wonder about OWL, he´s too giant man and he could stealth and deadly. Other thing its that he might be from Ainu people in japan, they have a very specific visual and culture and maybe its the place that him could came from.

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He gives less XP than the folding screen monkeys (?!) WHY

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Suzaku's Umbrella is really useful in NG+ upwards, forget about Mortal Draw. I find that the Mortal Draw strategy doesn't do enough damage to justify the amount of Spirit Emblems it uses (3). Even with using Tanto first, you have only 8 attacks with it. Compare that to Projected Force Suzaku Umbrella (1) and you have a clear winner. The Projected Force following the Umbrella animation damages Owl through his guard. I didn't think of dousing him in oil beforehand, but by doing that, you can even burn him with it, dealing even more damage.

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I think they should have interchanged the names of the 2 boss fights of the Owl. In Hirata, he deploys all his "great shinobi" technique. In his first encounter, he just "daddies" you, with mikiri counter, crackers, and a daddy speech. As your adoptive father, he makes you the Lesson : "First..." " Second…" "Third…". Dad, Im not a child anymore! I dont like his fighting style but the devs captured the point of the "father" figure in it.

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That firecracker move is kicking my butt. I can keep him on lock just pressuring him into a corner with well-timed deflections and dodges, but that one move and its guard-piercing damage, even on a deflect, is ripping me a new one. Half my vit, a chunk of posture, staggered, and knocked across the arena. Turns a good run into death. Anybody got any tips for countering it? Will I finally have to actually use the umbrella for its intended purpose?

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Keeping your distance, Gokan's spiritfall, deflections, firecracker and well-timed shadowfall are your best friends. Second phase, backing him into a corner and staying extremely agressive works well. Otherwise, be patient and chip away at his health. He doesn't actually have any perilous attacks. Only heal / Gokan when he throws down his little green smoke bomb.

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At the dojo idol use the ceremonial tango once, then deathblow the purple shinobi on the left when leaving the idol room. Use a pellet to fully heal if you want. Then go to owl and abuse his long recoveries with mortal draw. His health melts so quickly this way.

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weakness: mortal draw and ceremonial tanto

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Ok, so I beat Owl in a straight fight after about 6 or 7 tries. First & foremost, the Mist Raven cheese technique doesn't work anymore. I tried that route about 10 times and Owl either fights his way out of the corner between the statue and the door by knocking you back, or jumps off your head to get past you. You just can't interrupt his attacks like the videos show. My method for both phases was the Vitality route. I would deflect everything he threw at me, and only attack during the opening after his two shuriken & flip slam (Shuriken Throw & Flip). Deflect the shuriken and then side step about 0.5 seconds after he's airborne (right as he starts downward). Once he lands, hit him with the charged thrust attack. Then, eiither backstep or jump to the right immediately after your attack lands because he will use a slash or stop attack right after and it's hard as hell to block effectively that quickly behind an attack. This method doesn't really fill his posture gauge well enough to score a death blow, but the thrust attack will whittle his Vitality down fairly quickly. Also, the Mortal Draw technique will take roughly 1/8th to 1/10th of his health off with each strike and scores you decent posture build up, so it's good to have it on hand either to finish filling his posture gauge or to get a chunk of his health knocked off. I used it towards the end of the fight when I was down to one gourd charge and no other health items because I sure as hell wasn't gonna lose that close to the end of the fight. Just be forewarned that the openings he leaves to use Mortal Draw are few and will most likely get you hit with a Shinobi Charm. Do what must be done, Loyal Wolves.

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What about that f*cking smoke cloud attack?? How do you counter???

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GG ez

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Just defeated owl, my stratagy was to stay at a mean distance to him and being aggressive, 2 deflect hit 4 deflect hit and sometimes keep even keep deflecting then sit out. Had to put my brain into this one, his shuriken are helpful, first phase i did ichimonji and in the second mortal draw. But deflection is the way my friends as his posture may recover but he is also a aggressive dude

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Everytime I corner him like a little ***** and then he uses his firecracker and recovers all his posture, this is bull*****

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Just a little tidbit I discovered. When you fight Owl and get into his 2nd phase for the 1st time, it is possible to attack him with Nightjar Slash and not trigger his 2nd phase. There is a timer though, and the fight will automatically start again if you don't do anything.

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Imagine Sekiro and Genichiro cheering in the background as Isshin and Owl fight

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I feel kind of weird for beating this guy on my first try. I psyched myself up so much after being told about him and braced for a third form only to win shockingly easily.

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yeah ***** this guy

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fun boss honestly. i accidentally had the bell demon on when i beat him

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