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What is going on with the Dual Wield Heavy Attack?

Avran_Sylt
Avran_Sylt
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The Wiki says it's a 0.85s cast time, but after casting Traveling Knife with the Ruffian Signature Affix (6s duration -1s for GCD = 5s uptime), I can only ever get 4 Heavy Attacks in, seemingly on the dot, which seems like it's actually around a 1.2s cast time.
Edited by Avran_Sylt on 22 July 2025 07:33
  • Avran_Sylt
    Avran_Sylt
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    Hmm, probably because you can't anim-cancel the follow-through animation...

    But... You can swap-cancel the follow-through animation, and if DW double-barred while holding HA you effectively speed up your DW Heavy attacks by 50%.

    Voidmantle, Ambush, Storm Master and Sergent, possibly 2 daggers of either on each bar (you'll swap after every ~0.85s) leaving 3 spots open for Agility on Jewelry.
  • dark_hunterxmg
    dark_hunterxmg
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    We can add this to the list of problems with heavy attacks.
  • Credible_Joe
    Credible_Joe
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    DW Heavy attack should be a channel with lots of fast hits. Fill the aesthetic niche that the old Flurry animation used to occupy, and make it distinct from 2H and sword-n-board.
    Thank you for coming to my T E D talk
  • loosej
    loosej
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    Currently not playing, so can't test it out myself. Just wanted to add that dw heavy attacks have been broken for a long time, their damage doesn't go up (or not enough) compared to light attacks. Unless that got fixed, but I haven't seen anything in recent patch notes. So you might want to check that as well, and not bother using them at all if that's still the case. Unless it's to do a medium attack against an off balance target.
    Consistency: It's only a virtue if you're not a screwup (source: despair.com)
  • Avran_Sylt
    Avran_Sylt
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    loosej wrote: »
    Currently not playing, so can't test it out myself. Just wanted to add that dw heavy attacks have been broken for a long time, their damage doesn't go up (or not enough) compared to light attacks. Unless that got fixed, but I haven't seen anything in recent patch notes. So you might want to check that as well, and not bother using them at all if that's still the case. Unless it's to do a medium attack against an off balance target.

    In every other game that I have played, Heavy Attack meant "More damage". That is not the case in ESO.

    LA is the "Damage" attack given the nature of it being used in conjunction with abilities while weaving thanks to animation cancelling and Light attacks not being part of the ability GCD. Heavy Attacks are the attacks that have been relegated to resource return given their cast-time prevents casting abilities during them, effectively being the "Penalty" for not minding your resources in terms of damage output.

    Bit odd, I know. It's more like an "Exhausted Attack"
    Edited by Avran_Sylt on 22 July 2025 21:29
  • Avran_Sylt
    Avran_Sylt
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    loosej wrote: »
    Currently not playing, so can't test it out myself. Just wanted to add that dw heavy attacks have been broken for a long time, their damage doesn't go up (or not enough) compared to light attacks. Unless that got fixed, but I haven't seen anything in recent patch notes. So you might want to check that as well, and not bother using them at all if that's still the case. Unless it's to do a medium attack against an off balance target.

    In this case what most Heavy attack builds are going to be looking for is number of unique hits per second to trigger the effects of Storm Calling/Sergents as many times as possible. 0.85s seems like you should be outputting more hits per second than a lightning staff, but that apparently isn't the case, for some reason, probably because Lightning staff has less of a follow-through animation or the length of the cast and total number of hits during means it's not quite as impacted while just holding HA compared to something like DW.
  • CameraBeardThePirate
    CameraBeardThePirate
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    Avran_Sylt wrote: »
    loosej wrote: »
    Currently not playing, so can't test it out myself. Just wanted to add that dw heavy attacks have been broken for a long time, their damage doesn't go up (or not enough) compared to light attacks. Unless that got fixed, but I haven't seen anything in recent patch notes. So you might want to check that as well, and not bother using them at all if that's still the case. Unless it's to do a medium attack against an off balance target.

    In every other game that I have played, Heavy Attack meant "More damage". That is not the case in ESO.

    LA is the "Damage" attack given the nature of it being used in conjunction with abilities while weaving thanks to animation cancelling and Light attacks not being part of the ability GCD. Heavy Attacks are the attacks that have been relegated to resource return given their cast-time prevents casting abilities during them, effectively being the "Penalty" for not minding your resources in terms of damage output.

    Bit odd, I know. It's more like an "Exhausted Attack"

    Heavy attacks are more damage though... for everything except Dual Wield. Both Dual Wield heavies combined (last i tested) deal about 99% of a single Dual Wield light attack.

    Thats either a bug, or extremely poor design when every other heavy attack deals significantly more than a light attack. At minimum it should at least be dealing 1.3x a single light attack or more.
  • Avran_Sylt
    Avran_Sylt
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    Avran_Sylt wrote: »
    loosej wrote: »
    Currently not playing, so can't test it out myself. Just wanted to add that dw heavy attacks have been broken for a long time, their damage doesn't go up (or not enough) compared to light attacks. Unless that got fixed, but I haven't seen anything in recent patch notes. So you might want to check that as well, and not bother using them at all if that's still the case. Unless it's to do a medium attack against an off balance target.

    In every other game that I have played, Heavy Attack meant "More damage". That is not the case in ESO.

    LA is the "Damage" attack given the nature of it being used in conjunction with abilities while weaving thanks to animation cancelling and Light attacks not being part of the ability GCD. Heavy Attacks are the attacks that have been relegated to resource return given their cast-time prevents casting abilities during them, effectively being the "Penalty" for not minding your resources in terms of damage output.

    Bit odd, I know. It's more like an "Exhausted Attack"

    Heavy attacks are more damage though... for everything except Dual Wield. Both Dual Wield heavies combined (last i tested) deal about 99% of a single Dual Wield light attack.

    Thats either a bug, or extremely poor design when every other heavy attack deals significantly more than a light attack. At minimum it should at least be dealing 1.3x a single light attack or more.

    Hmm, at 4470 WD 30.6K stam (Plus champion passives) my DW light attacks are hitting for 4388 and a Heavy Attack in total is hitting for a total of 7,510 (which is x1.71) on a Target Skeleton.

    When you experimented were you using low stats? Perhaps the scaling is different.

    EDI: Completely forgot I was using Oakensoul

    At 2932 WD/30.6k Stam (+Champion stuff)
    LA = 3381
    HA = (1610x2) = 3220 (x0.95)

    Huh yeah that is really odd.

    Using 1H At 2554 WD/30.6k stam (+Champion stuff)
    LA = 3173
    HA = 4231 (x1.33)
    Edited by Avran_Sylt on 23 July 2025 19:56
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