Basic Information
- Max HP: 1200
- Weight Class: Medium
- Threat Level: High, Very High in groups and with walls present
- Damage Affinity: Normal
- Armor Hits: 2
- Devil Trigger Armor Hits: 7
Overview
The swift and aggressive lizard. This enemy is characterized by its fast attacks, fast movement and how it hunts in packs. It has slightly above average HP and attack damage, but its armor hits, speed and high frequency of attacks makes it very dangerous in groups.
Attacks & Quirks
Riot is one of the fastest enemies in the game. It has two stances: 2 legs mode and 4 legs mode.
While in 2 legs mode, it favors using fast claw attacks at close range. Many of its claw attacks don’t have big tells, and it can feel like just does them instantly. This makes Riot’s attacks hard to react to if you let your guard down. It has heavier claw attacks too where it draws them and does a little taunt before attacking.
The 2 Legs mode also has a big jumping attack. If it starts growling at you, it will try to do this next.
After you have dealt enough damage to the Riot, it will attempt to transition to 4 Legs mode. It seems to have 2 main ways of doing this: It can just crouch down from 2 legs into 4 legs, but the more common way is the rolling jump attack that looks a bit like what those Chaos enemies do.
While in 4 Legs mode, it becomes more aggressive and likes to quickly pounce on you. It can slither back and fourth quickly, trying to bait you into over extending yourself. If it growls at you, it will try to use a tackle with a screwed up hitbox on you next. It can also use the heavy claw attack with the taunt although uncommon.
The Riot can choose to stand up into 2 Legs mode after some time has passed, but it tends to die before this happens.
Both 2 Legs and 4 Legs modes have access to the tail backswing attack it performs when you are behind it. As well as an attack where it clings to a wall before pouncing on you.
Riots also like entering Devil Trigger earlier than other enemies on Dante Must Die difficulty. This typically seems to be around the time they are ready to transition into 4 Legs mode.
Strategy for Fighting Riot
Riot’s attacks are fast and hard to react to. While it is in 4 Legs mode, its tackle attack blows up any attempt to Side Roll so the safest place to be, is in the air. The fact it has a high frequency of fast attacks and armor hits, on top of appearing in groups makes these enemies quite threatening.
The main challenges with this enemy are handling crowd control, reacting to its attacks and killing it in a full combo. All of its claw attacks can be parried to some extent, but the tiny advantage you get for parrying the faster attacks isn’t worth the risk.
While in 2 Legs mode, its big jumping attack with the growl startup, and the heavy claw attack with the short taunt before, are the attacks that yield huge openings for parrying. These are the Riot’s slower attacks in 2 Legs mode. So generally, the slower the attack, the better the reward for parrying it. Just keep in mind that only claw based attacks can be parried.
If you spot the rolling jump attack, take note that the Riot has now transitioned to 4 Legs mode and its attack patterns will change.
In 4 Legs mode, the heavy claw attack which comes after a taunt is the one you want to look for with a parry. But this is an uncommon attack so you’ll end up enduring more danger if you try to wait for it.
Overall, the Riot is an enemy that doesn’t have a fancy bag of tricks or gimmicks. It just battles you with a very solid set of fundamentals that demand you to learn it’s attack patterns, and then read and react. Crowd control becomes a lot harder on groups of Riots because of its above average armor and how it tends to enter Devil Trigger early, too.
The most reliable way of dealing with this enemy is to burn through its armor, launch it and then kill it in a full combo. It doesn’t have any attacks that can hit you above jump height, making the air a safe place to pick them off. Take them into the air with you, using your safest launchers. Then end them without dropping the air combo or else it will land, be in Devil Trigger and be ready to transition into 4 Legs mode.
The Riot is a Medium weight with no damage resistance, so they will respond to all kinds of attacks while juggled. Plus they have big hurtboxes and above average HP making them quite fun to combo. With that being said, performing air combos is skill dependent and will require practice.
For burning armor, the general idea is to hit them with certain attacks while watching for a flinch or a stagger. After you spot this, it means they are in a launchable state and you can take them up into the air, or knock them back with the next move following the flinch.
Below are some safe character specific methods for burning through the Riot’s‘ armor and launching it consistently when it is in DT. The air combo part, is up to you. But if you drop the combo, calm down and focus on burning through its armor again.
Nero Strategy
Use Snatch to pull the Riot up into the air and start an air combo on it. Even works when it is in Devil Trigger. This alone makes Nero have a comparatively easy time with Riots as opposed to other characters. Snatch can be used even if you drop the combo.
Since Snatch can pick up Riots regardless of their super armor, I wouldn’t recommend trying to burn it with other methods.
Since these enemies are fast and aggressive, they also make great meat shields with Hold.
Dante Strategy
Jump into the air and bring them up with you using Kalina Ann’s Blaster or Blaster Twins. If they are in Devil Trigger this can take a few attempts, but is an extremely safe way of starting an air combo on these enemies. After visually confirming the launch, catch them with Cavaliere’s High Side or King Cerberus’ Pole Play.
Trickster’s Mustang can help when navigating the ground while there are many of them slithering around. It sends you to a height they cannot reach. Alternatively you can Block with Royal Guard if you start panicking. Even if you aren’t able to hit the Perfect Blocks yet, paying a small bit of Devil Trigger for safety is good if you can spare it.
If you practice a lot, Royal Releasing these enemies will launch them very consistently regardless of their armor. But this is a high risk, high reward method that is very skill dependent.
To burn armor, you can use King Cerberus’ King Slayer. After a few hits, the Riot should flinch and you can cancel the attack and launch it. This is recommended over Percussion because you can cancel King Slayer fairly easily making it not as much of a dedication.
Another safe way of getting through their armor is to use E&I’s Ebony Shot, punctuated with dodges to stay moving. This is a hitscan projectile so it can use used at any range and typically won’t miss (might get body blocked by another enemy though). Ebony Shot is especially effective when used with Charge Shot. This makes it hits twice. Charge Shot automatically builds up while in Gunslinger with E&I equipped. So if you go into Balrog Blow Mode and use Welter Moves, you can have access to invul dodges while keeping Charged Ebony Shot ready. Might as well strike them with a Bantam Revenge and put them in their place.
You can also use Coyote-A’s Gunstinger Cut-ins to burn though the armor. Cut-in left and right to evade attacks after the Gunstinger, and you will break through its armor and knock it down after roughly 3 close range shots. Not recommended if there are more than 2 Riots left, unless you know what you are doing.
DSD Roundtrips are a decent way of safely burning through some of their armor, when used in tandem with other moves. The downside here is that it ties up your helper swords if you were planning on using them for anything else.
You can also use Cavaliere Gear Attacks to burn through their armor, but with how fast these enemies move around, this is more safer to do on a downed Riot that is lying on the ground.
Vergil Strategy
Vergil’s Concentration level impacts your effectiveness against Riots. They become easier to deal with at Lv2(max) so it is in your favor to not get hit, or else the fight can snowball out of control. But that’s easier said that done.
Use Yamato’s Rapid Slash, along with Side Trick and Trick Dodges to move around relatively safety on the ground, while looking for openings to strike. Be careful with your Air Trick as it’s easy to teleport into an attack and not see it.
Mirage Edge’s Drive is a relatively safe option to launch the Riots. As soon as you see them pop up, lock them down with Mirage Blades and Air Trick to them. The Sheathe animation on Yamato Combo B’s finisher can be used to pop even a DT Riot into the air in 1 action. Likewise, if you have access to Sin Devil Trigger, Yamato Rapid Slash in SDT can be chained and it’s sheathe animation pops all enemies up into the air, which makes for solid crowd control on non-targets.
If you have resources to spend, you can crowd control some Riots with Heavy Rain Blades. This costs 1 block of DT, but will make their movements come to a standstill for a short while. Very useful for controlling the battle, or starting your offense.
If you can keep Lv2 Concentration, All Mirage Edge attacks can heavy stun the Riots fairly easily. In particular, Million Stab and High Time work well here.
Using Void Slash at Concentration Lv2 and letting the sheathing animation play out, will crumple them and burn all their armor in one go. This is a bit risky to land when their are multiple Riots, but worth it. You could also repeatedly use Yamato’s Rapid Slash to burn through their armor.
If you get hit or make a mistake that causes you to lose Concentration, you can chain Perfect Judgment Cuts while in the air to make it back quick. This will also make the Riots flinch as well as deal a lot of damage. If you do this while in SDT, you can control the whole room.
V Strategy
V’s combat approach unsurprisingly doesn’t really change for these enemies, even though they are dangerous. You will need to dote on both Shadow and Griffon more because they will most likely be getting hit by these fast attacks more often.
Keeping the Devil Trigger gauge up is the real challenge here. Use it as a lifeblood to keep your familiars alive as well as dealing damage.
Danger Case: How This Demon Can Kill You
This demon can kill you extremely easily. Especially if it has nearby walls to jump off of. It’s got incredibly fast attacks with little to no tells, and it enters Devil Trigger very early. Riot is definitely one of the most underrated enemies in DMC5 in terms of difficulty and threat level.
Faced with a pack of DT Riots, they attack relentlessly, and can even combo you to make your whole HP bar disappear in an instant. The one heavy claw attack that causes you to kneel and keel over also adds to the pain they cause, because no other basic enemy in the game can inflict hitstun on you like that.
Part of the Riot’s difficulty is that they already have some armor hits normally, and then they enter DT early and the armor gets buffed even more. Then it quickly feels like you are fighting a group of super fast enemies, that don’t want to flinch to damage. It becomes easy to panic, easy to make mistakes, and easy to not see/predict/react to a fast attack, which can eventually result in you getting mauled.
To be honest, I consider this demon in packs + enclosed spaces to be more dangerous than multiple Fury. Similar to Antenora, it’s one of those cases where a Riot can still kill you even if you know strategies and are aware of danger cases. This is because its gameplan is simple, but incredibly effective. Really difficult enemy on DMD.
The only thing that might make a Fury more dangerous if you know strategies for it, is that the Fury can hit you really high up in the air while you combo another enemy. Whereas the Riot cannot reach above jump height.
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