The fight against Zhang Liao is one of the most challenging boss fights in Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty. He has several strong attacks, and his lightning-infused strikes can effectively one-shot you if you get caught in a combo.
Zhang Liao uses a ton of lightning-based magic, to the point where nearly all of his physical attacks will deal electricity damage one way or another. Not only does he have multi-hit attacks, but his range and spell capabilities are also dangerous. To this end, you want to ensure your lightning resistance is high through gear or your Virtue levels.
Zhang Liao Boss Fight Strategy
As soon as the fight starts, he will summon lightning that creates a large AoE. This move will also enchant his weapon with electricity. Because of this, you must not rush in immediately. Instead, you can stand your ground until the lightning clears but be prepared for his next attack.
Using Followers in this fight is recommended, even if they're there to act as bait. Deflecting his attacks will always be the best way to win this fight, but you should try and stay close to him to deal damage. If Zhang Jiao is distracted by a Follower, always try and attack him from behind.
More often than not, when the lightning clears, Zhang Liao will go straight into one of his two Critical Strikes. He will decide which strike to use based on how far away you are from him.
If he is close or in a medium range, he will leap back and hold a pose before lunging forward with a stab. If you are far from him, he will jump into the air and begin swinging wildly towards you, slowly descending as he swipes midair.
Both Critical Strikes we have mentioned above are the only two he has, and they are both easy enough to deflect.
The most important thing to know for this battle is Zhang Liao will chain two Critical Strikes together if you deflect the first.
For example, if you deflect his lunge attack, he will recover and use his spinning slash.
Only after you have deflected the second Critical Strike should you try to attack.
The key to deflecting his Critical Strikes is to wait. He has small pauses in both of them that are designed to catch you out.
Don’t be baited and deflect too early. He makes his way down, spinning as he goes, meaning you have a few opportunities to time the deflection. Deflect as soon as you see him start the swings towards you, which will be about one second after his initial leap.
Because he performs several swings in this critical, it is easy to deflect due to there being several instances through his attack that provide a lenient window to deflect one of his strikes.
His second critical, the lunging stab, is also easy to deflect. He will jump backwards and hold a pose for a second. After this, he will run towards you, performing a small jump ending in a nasty stab attack. When you see him jump while charging at you, this is the time to press the deflect button. More often than not, you will hit the deflection.
The game will try to catch you out in this fight when deflecting Zhang Liao's critical hits.
Reflexively, you will probably want to trigger a Spirit attack to damage him while he's thrown off balance from the first deflection.
Since he will ready a second critical, you will get hit by it if you try and hit him after deflecting the first one.
Only attack Zhang Liao after you deflect his next critical in the chain. Use a Spirit attack or martial arts to deal damage and push for a stance break.
Outside of his Critical Strikes, you have to be constantly vigilant for his lightning-imbued swings. He has a standard combo that is a flurry of swipes. After the final swing, he will summon lightning with it that will strike a second after the initial hit. Deflect it to negate the damage.
His attacks will get stronger as the fight goes on, with some of his final hits in a combo causing a large AoE explosion of lightning to splash out when he delivers the attack.
On rare occasions, Zhang Liao might use an ability that lets him charge up his Spirit gauge into the blue section.
If he does this, you should immediately get close and put pressure on him. Attack, and don't stop until you see him move again.
This ability is telegraphed by him standing still and the gauge at the top of the screen will flash blue.
He has a ton of flurry hits you have to watch out for. Spamming the deflect button won’t help you due to the tiny gaps between strikes that are designed to catch you out. If you have trouble deflecting, try not to rely on your guard.
Your best bet is to try and back off or move to the side away from his strikes. As ever, guarding elemental attacks will do significant chip damage through your guard, and it will cause a debuff to build up. This is where it’s good to have followers as bait.
When you get Zhang Liao to half HP, he will power himself up and use new moves. He will use two incredibly strong attacks, both of which will have a short period that shows him charging them up.
One is a lunge, and the other is a sweep. Both of these will have a second attack in the form of lightning being called down.
While enraged, Zhang Liao will use a particularly devastating attack combo. Using what looks like a spear made out of lighting, he will perform a series of hits, all of which have incredibly large and deceptive ranges.
He will stab several times and swing wide afterwards. The range on this is huge, so keep your guard up, and don’t drop it until he’s done. To give you an idea of how much damage this attack does, know that any of these hits could kill you if you have less than half HP.
If you can master deflection, you can stance-break Zhang Liao several times. This is because he uses two Critical Strikes in a row, both of which will deal substantial spirit gauge damage to him if you deflect them.
Stay close to him and heal when needed. You should never try and use ranged attacks, but you could use Metal-based magic to either help you mitigate his lightning damage.
Don't worry about dying, the Battle Flag is directly outside his arena, which means you can level up if you need to get stronger.