It's a well-known bug.

1. You can animation cancel the skill, so of course players won't show you their attack.
2. If you animation cancel, the first tick of the dot comes instantly with the cast.
3. If it's from stamina users, they can ignore all your armor. And if the crit like that, the damage numbers will be huge.

Basically, it's a combination of several bugs, and it will be mostly fixed with 2.1

Didnt hit that hard though. Ive pulled off 22k+ INSTANT hits followed by 3k+ instant dots making it 25k+ dawnbreakers. And there are people with higher spelldamage/magicka pool than i am.

I do get tells from bowt**** who 1 shot people with snipe complaining about getting 1 shot by dawnbreaker. They make me smile and wonder if ret***** or not.

Shinra wrote: »

It's a well-known bug.

1. You can animation cancel the skill, so of course players won't show you their attack.
2. If you animation cancel, the first tick of the dot comes instantly with the cast.
3. If it's from stamina users, they can ignore all your armor. And if the crit like that, the damage numbers will be huge.

Basically, it's a combination of several bugs, and it will be mostly fixed with 2.1

Sigh, I read the same stuff on every thread it's like players don't test or play the same game or something.

1. The skill is instant. Any attack that is animation canceled with block still plays fully. Like lava whip from block. The only way to animation cancel the attack is with a bash. Considering stamina players are the ones that incorporate bash and not magicka ones, and that stamina players pick the other morph (Flawless Dawnbreaker) for the passive weapon damage increase, I have never seen Dawnbreaker of Smiting animation cancelled, ever. The animation ALWAYS plays fully, but the skill is instant so the damage is delivered when you press the button not when the sword is slammed on the ground. You cannot react to it. You either hold block all the time or if you see the animation start playing you have already been hit.

2. No, wrong. It has nothing to do with animation cancelling the skill. The first dot is always instant in this skill, that's a bug. If you animation cancel it with bash or not, makes 0 difference.

3. Considering stamina users hardly ever pick this morph that's not a major issue. Though penetration is ofc bugged with sharpened maces/mauls

s7732425ub17_ESO wrote: »

Shinra wrote: »

It's a well-known bug.

1. You can animation cancel the skill, so of course players won't show you their attack.
2. If you animation cancel, the first tick of the dot comes instantly with the cast.
3. If it's from stamina users, they can ignore all your armor. And if the crit like that, the damage numbers will be huge.

Basically, it's a combination of several bugs, and it will be mostly fixed with 2.1

Sigh, another clueless poster that shows up as the first post on the thread and spreads a bunch of misinformation.

0. Nothing about this skill is bugged, and it's not going to change in the next patch.
1. You can clip the animation just like you can clip the animation of every other skill in the game. Nothing about this is different than anything else.
2. The damage is instant. So even though there is an animation to the skill, both the initial hit and first DOT hit instantly before the animation is played. And this has nothing to do with animation cancelling.
3. Even magicka users can get numbers like these. It's pretty much the same as meteor except instant cast.

Btw every other DOT work like this : initial hit (at time 0), THEN one second after (time 1), one tick hits at each period (each second or two second, time 2, 3 etc). Dawnbreaker works differently now : initial hit and the tics begin at time 0.

It is a bug indeed. But the damage is not. Remember that if you are a vampire, you take +60% damage from DB+the slayer passive (+9% damage). On a non vampire toon, it don't hit that hard.

Last, the anim cancel is just like others in this game, not a bug.

MmmmTofu wrote: »

Ran into quite a few dawnbreaker tonight, noticed that the skill never had any animation played out so no way to counter it at all. But when I test the skill later, there was clearly a 1 second raising-hand-with-shiny-sword animation. So is this bugged or what? @ZOS_GinaBruno

And why does it hit for 25k AT CAST on this toon with neither Hircine's gift nor Lamae's blessing?

No gift nor blessing:


One of the encounter. Insta-death. No visual cue. Not sure what happened


Another insta-death. Never seen any animation either


Notice the 2k absorption, 14k, 6k damage all hit at the same time

Well for one that 2k shield screwed you because of the overflow.

When you have a shield up it has 0 armour. So if you have a 2k shield and take a lot of dmg from a 1 e.g. dawnbreaker, your shield will take the 2k off then the rest of the dmg is still applied like you have 0 armour.

mike.gaziotisb16_ESO wrote: »

Shinra wrote: »

It's a well-known bug.

1. You can animation cancel the skill, so of course players won't show you their attack.
2. If you animation cancel, the first tick of the dot comes instantly with the cast.
3. If it's from stamina users, they can ignore all your armor. And if the crit like that, the damage numbers will be huge.

Basically, it's a combination of several bugs, and it will be mostly fixed with 2.1

Sigh, I read the same stuff on every thread it's like players don't test or play the same game or something.

1. The skill is instant. Any attack that is animation canceled with block still plays fully. Like lava whip from block. The only way to animation cancel the attack is with a bash. Considering stamina players are the ones that incorporate bash and not magicka ones, and that stamina players pick the other morph (Flawless Dawnbreaker) for the passive weapon damage increase, I have never seen Dawnbreaker of Smiting animation cancelled, ever. The animation ALWAYS plays fully, but the skill is instant so the damage is delivered when you press the button not when the sword is slammed on the ground. You cannot react to it. You either hold block all the time or if you see the animation start playing you have already been hit.

2. No, wrong. It has nothing to do with animation cancelling the skill. The first dot is always instant in this skill, that's a bug. If you animation cancel it with bash or not, makes 0 difference.

3. Considering stamina users hardly ever pick this morph that's not a major issue. Though penetration is ofc bugged with sharpened maces/mauls

s7732425ub17_ESO wrote: »

Shinra wrote: »

It's a well-known bug.

1. You can animation cancel the skill, so of course players won't show you their attack.
2. If you animation cancel, the first tick of the dot comes instantly with the cast.
3. If it's from stamina users, they can ignore all your armor. And if the crit like that, the damage numbers will be huge.

Basically, it's a combination of several bugs, and it will be mostly fixed with 2.1

Sigh, another clueless poster that shows up as the first post on the thread and spreads a bunch of misinformation.

0. Nothing about this skill is bugged, and it's not going to change in the next patch.
1. You can clip the animation just like you can clip the animation of every other skill in the game. Nothing about this is different than anything else.
2. The damage is instant. So even though there is an animation to the skill, both the initial hit and first DOT hit instantly before the animation is played. And this has nothing to do with animation cancelling.
3. Even magicka users can get numbers like these. It's pretty much the same as meteor except instant cast.

I love how people who know the game so perfectly still say different stuff

Preyfar wrote: »

s7732425ub17_ESO wrote: »

1. You can clip the animation just like you can clip the animation of every other skill in the game. Nothing about this is different than anything else.

Why even have animations in the game at all then? The dawnbreaker cancelling has become rampant, and is driving a lot of regular pvpers away who can't defend against an attack that has zero animation or warning and knocks off almost 50% of their health.

50%? I get oneshotted.

leepalmer95 wrote: »

well zos chose to leave animation cancelling in. So you either learn how to yourself on continue dying to people that do.

But I find that a cop out excuse. Not to you, but players shouldn't be expected to exploit a loophole that lets you bypass the animation completely. If Wrecking Blow let you bypass the entire animation and drop that damage that forums would be ablaze, but that's kind of what this is. People drop Dawnbreaker, cancel it, then immediately follow up with another attack. So you can potentially take 15-20K from what you see on a single attack before you even get a chance to respond to it.

I don't think this is a "learn to play" issue. Animation cancelling is part of the game, but cancelling the entire animation before it starts is something completely different.