Animation Canceling Question?

gothickaiserub17_ESO

So I learned about light weaving and animation canceling a while ago and light weaving was pretty easy (I am shocked how much of a difference it made, I played for quite a while just assuming i couldn't spam attacks while using my skills.) But I failed to grasp how to fully animation cancel.

Am I right in assuming the key to it is some skills have a "Cast time" (mentioned on the tooltip) and an "animation time" and they are not in sync.

Thus the skill que is waiting for the animation to finish, but if the cast time is cleared then you could use a priority action (Block/Dodge/Bar Swap) to break off the rest of the animation and enter a new skill?

The ability to interrupt your own actions to make twitch maneuvers is pretty important to a fluid feel, so it's just a matter of not doing it during the actual cast time.

If that is all there is to it though i have one simple question. If ZOS is concerned with raising the skill floor, why not just make the skill que fire off the next skill when the "Cast time" and global cooldown is up instead of waiting for the animation to finish?

Sure the full animations are nice-ish (and yeah they could adjust all the animations, but that would take a lot of effort) or just make the above change and if you wanna see the full animation just wait till it's finished the use a new skill. I mean who is actually watching their animations play out in a dungeon?

But since they most likely won't make the change that would be in line with their stated goals, is there anything i can watch for to let me know exactly when the real cast time is done, or it simply a matter of testing and practising it til you get it down?

Edit: Does this apply to instant casts? Blazing spears feels like it holds me up way longer then it should.

F7sus4

No video will improve your own muscle memory. The best you can do is to try everything you're casting with either light attacking/bar-swappng/block cancel and see how far you can get on improving your timings. Please remember that even if you "cancel" the animation of one skill with e.g. light attack, the next skill will not fire faster due to its internal GCD.

idk

^^^^

And muscle memory works the best. I expect there is a small % of the population that ussss macros but they can only mess you up. Doing it yourself is always better.

theamazingx

The only cancelling to really be concerned about is light weaving and barswapping. For light weaving, you can start by just doing a full light attack between every skill and gradually reduce the time between the light and the skill until its just a double tap - make sure your lights are actually hitting when you get faster, as people will sometimes cancel the light before the hit even registers. Barswap cancelling is basically just planning ahead. If you know you're going to swap after the next skill, swap the moment you initiate the skill, and the downtime from the swap will overlap with the global cooldown from the skill.

The "cast time" as you describe it is essentially nill for anything other than a channeled ability. In one frame the skill has been cast and the cost taken, the next frame you can block/roll/whatever. All that matters is the global cooldown on skills, which I believe is about .9 seconds.
Some people will block cancel after every skill use to make sure they hit everything on the global cooldown, but in practice it isn't all that reliable or helpful. I'm not sure what the potential performance increase it can provide totals to, but even players at the highest level generally down bother with this in an actual fight. From a pvp perspective, it can be used in conjunction with a bash to increase burst, that's about it.

Rainwhisper

I think my chances of ever getting this down are virtually none. I am the opposite of a twitch/FPS gamer.

gothickaiserub17_ESO

I got light weaving down pretty good (Although I have heard people mention medium weaving or something, half charged heavy attacks I'm guessing?)

So is there not really many skills that can be shortened that noticeably exceed the global cooldown then? Cause people make it seem like i really need to be chopping off any extended animations.

I know some people do light weaving and block casting roughly at the same time, and that seems rather tricky (and often unnecessary). Blocking any time they are not moving around and letting up just for a split second to start the light attack.

Trashkan

It's easy you press a 1 button macro and a 2 handed swings as fast as rapid strikes and then you die. This is just stupid.

Avran_Sylt

Light attacks, Instant Cast abilities, Dodge-Roll and Block, all have their own Global Cooldown period. All of these GCD's can overlap with one another. So you can Light attack, cast an ability, and Roll-Dodge or Block (Shield bash as well) all at the same time and the damage will always be applied to the target as long as you are withing range at the time of cast.

Instant Cast abilities have a GCD of 0.6 seconds.
Light Attacks have a GCD that is weapon dependent.
Dodge-Roll has a longer GCD
Block has No GCD but Shield bash has a Short GCD between uses.

Dodge-Roll and block share the same GCD space.

Any instant cast ability, once pressed, will deal damage regardless of what action you perform, but you cannot cast another damage ability until the 0.6 seconds is up, not even a light attack. The exception to this is the Shield Bash.

During this period you can block (which cancels the animation of the attack, but you'll still deal damage) or roll-dodge (the same).

Channeled abilities are a different beast entirely. The Damage is only applied (or projectile fired) if you reach a certain point in the animation. So you cannot block, roll-dodge, light attack, shield bash until the projectile leaves you, or you hit the enemy.

So for instant cast abilities the animation is completely irrelevant. You're just limited to one per 0.6 seconds.

Channeled abilities you've got to wait for the melee attack to hit, or for the projectile to leave you before you can do anything.

gothickaiserub17_ESO

From a lot of peoples descriptions as long as you Light attack directly into a skill, the rest sounds like you're just breaking the animation, but for no particular reason. I was under the heavy impression some skills were too long and needed to be broken or it would slow you down by a lot.

theamazingx

Trashkan wrote: »

It's easy you press a 1 button macro and a 2 handed swings as fast as rapid strikes and then you die. This is just stupid.

That's not how the game engine works, sooo no

gothickaiserub17_ESO wrote: »

From a lot of peoples descriptions as long as you Light attack directly into a skill, the rest sounds like you're just breaking the animation, but for no particular reason. I was under the heavy impression some skills were too long and needed to be broken or it would slow you down by a lot.

Some longer animations are worth interrupting, Warden's new Netch being a strong example, or DK's flames of oblivion, but the worst ones are often just placed in a rotation such that they're always swapcancelled. Block cancelling is so tedious for most skills that even attempts at macros often fail to capitalize on it.

Avran_Sylt

Also, if you can get a cheap mouse that has two side thumb buttons, you can map the spammable to your thumb, ability 2 to the other button, ability 3 to middle mousewheel click, ability 4 to mousescroll up, and ability 5 to mouse scroll down. makes it a hell of a lot easier to get muscle memory since it's all on one hand.

itsfatbass

gothickaiserub17_ESO wrote: »

I got light weaving down pretty good (Although I have heard people mention medium weaving or something, half charged heavy attacks I'm guessing?)

So is there not really many skills that can be shortened that noticeably exceed the global cooldown then? Cause people make it seem like i really need to be chopping off any extended animations.

I know some people do light weaving and block casting roughly at the same time, and that seems rather tricky (and often unnecessary). Blocking any time they are not moving around and letting up just for a split second to start the light attack.

Depends on the skill but in my experience, most have an animation that doesn't even last the full 1 second GCD. So while u can block cancel to your hearts content, the skill animation would still likely be done before the GCD. That being said, block or bar canceling is still effective for preparing yourself for the next skill usage. Light attack weaving is the more effective means to bump dps although I still have issues with the clunkiness of combat and light attacks can be affected by that.

F7sus4

Giles.floydub17_ESO wrote: »

^^^^

And muscle memory works the best. I expect there is a small % of the population that ussss macros but they can only mess you up. Doing it yourself is always better.

Naturally. Doing macro is pointless and will wreck any "perfect" DPS rotation outside of laboratory skeleton DPS test.

In raid situation you're interrupting your rota more than often (to avoid 1-shots/dodge/do mechanics) and resume it as though you were playing it in the meantime to properfly hop into your DoT timings that were already ticking. Restarting rotation from scratch would be a DPS loss.