Ghost of Tsushima: Heavy Attack

Ghost of Tsushima's Heavy Attack is a mechanic that enables Jin to inflict higher damage to his enemies though at the price of longer wind up and animation. It has an extra stagger impact as well once the meter is filled up.

You can execute a heavy attack by pressing the Triangle button.

Heavy Attack

We can divide the flow of a heavy attack into three stages. First, there is an extra animation where Jin pulls back to give extra force to the attack. While doing this, the enemy can hit you, so time it well.

The moment a heavy attack lands on an enemy, a meter will start gaining a build-up, accumulating based on the attacks you hit him.

You can imagine this as something similar to Sekiro's Posture mechanic as shown below.

With enough number of attacks, the posture will become broken

Similarly, in Ghost, once the meter is filled up, a large impact animation is shown and the meter is broken.