Thank you to the duelist that taught me animation cancelling

EttinTheBreton

At the time I was about CP 180 on my magplar. My personal goal is to get the Duelist achievement for winning 25 duels against players. So, I'm challenging tons of people just outside of the Undaunted Outpost on the West side of Wayrest (DC).

I was not afraid to challenge people who were max CP at the time because I knew I could do a little bit of damage, and learn from their tactics. I've sunk over 300 hours into this game, but I still have much to learn about PvP content. Usually I would lose, but I am determined to get better. I could win about half the duels when the opponent was around CP 200.

Anyways, this guy starts talking to me after he smashes me into the ground in about 20 seconds. He was impressed that I was low CP but still trying to fight back, so he pulls me to the side, a bit farther West from the other duelists. We'll call him Tinker (not the actual character's name). I can tell Tinker has been playing the game for ages, his rotation is perfect, and he's a real tough guy.

No joke, he spends a half hour teaching me about animation cancelling, stun durations, positioning behind the player when dodge-rolling out of sight, and managing stamina. Tinker also gave me the advice to study the meta, even though I was so set on making a unique build.

I found all of Tinker's advice helpful. Right now I'm leveling alt characters while practicing animation cancelling and studying the skill lines of other classes. Thank you, Tinker.

Quick re-cap of what I learned:

1. Animation cancelling: cast your skill, and as soon as the projectile or movement sends out the damage, tap the right mouse button (RMB) to block. The current animation stops, damage goes through, and you can more quickly move onto your next active ability. This allows you to move through your rotation faster. Edit: that is not entirely true, see Lefty Lucy's Guide to AC
2. Dodge rolling: preferably when you are stunned or immobilized, dodge-roll into the person to move out of their sight. Many abilities require a target, and that second it takes the person to look around to find you can save yourself health and time to get off a heavy attack to replenish resources.
3. Stamina: magplar builds usually have limited stamina, which means you can only dodge-roll or break free a limited number of times in a fight. Pay attention to this and make the most of each move.
4. Stun: every player can be stunned every 5 seconds. The swirling gray circles around your feet mean you have been stunned recently, and you cannot be CC'd (Crowd Controlled = stunned. Maybe you can't be Fear'd or otherwise controlled as well?) until those swirling gray circles go away. If you have a stun, make sure those gray circles go away on your target before you send another.
5. Meta builds: study what the best builds are, the best sets, the best tactics, but take everything with a grain of salt. Make your own build however you want to play, but knowing what your enemies have on them greatly helps you develop your own strategy. Don't feel bad about using a meta, and ignore those who complain when they lose because your build is "so cheese/easy mode."

What are your thoughts? I think we need to have more people like Tinker who are willing to help those players like me who are devoted to ESO and are looking to learn. I also think more new players need to have my mindset of wanting to learn, instead of grinding to max CP and quitting.

Liofa

What you said Animation Cancelling , ''you can more quickly move onto your next active ability.'' This is not true . Each ability has a global cooldown . All skills (except channeled ones) have 1 second of cooldown and whatever you do , you cannot reduce this . You can block , dodge , whatever . It doesn't matter . Animation cancelling doesn't allow you to do that . Look for Lefty Lucy's Animation Cancelling Guide . It is an old video but it still applies . You will learn so much from that video , believe me .

About dodge rolling behind your enemy . This is mostly good to do but there are few exceptions . You cannot dodge AOE attacks . For example , if you are fighting a player who uses a 2 Hander . They mostly will try to burst you down with a Fully charged heavy attack (to get the 10% damage bonus on next hit) into a Dawnbreaker or Incap . You will see that experienced players will just take few steps back before pressing their Ultimate to catch you on roll in case you roll towards them . Sometimes , it is better to just block or roll away from your opponent . But mostly , yea , it is a good idea to roll through your enemy .

I believe CC immunity is 7 or 8 seconds . I will check later to see but I am 90% sure that it is not 5 seconds .

It is so nice to see a player wanting to learn the game to be better and better . Keep going and you will find yourself to be much stronger in no time

Waffennacht

He taught you a block cancel.

It's usually better to weave (light attack in place of the block) or to weapon swap cancel (swap instead of light attack)

Immunity use to be 5, was changed to 8 I'm pretty sure

olsborg

Yea animation canceling is nice, just be a bit cautious doing block-cancel on a stamina build in medium armor where you have high stamina regen stat, you will shut the regen down while you block and you quite often will loose a regen tick doing so (regen ticks every 2 seconds)

Micah_Bayer

Liofa wrote: »

What you said Animation Cancelling , ''you can more quickly move onto your next active ability.'' This is not true . Each ability has a global cooldown . All skills (except channeled ones) have 1 second of cooldown and whatever you do , you cannot reduce this . You can block , dodge , whatever . It doesn't matter . Animation cancelling doesn't allow you to do that . Look for Lefty Lucy's Animation Cancelling Guide . It is an old video but it still applies . You will learn so much from that video , believe me .

About dodge rolling behind your enemy . This is mostly good to do but there are few exceptions . You cannot dodge AOE attacks . For example , if you are fighting a player who uses a 2 Hander . They mostly will try to burst you down with a Fully charged heavy attack (to get the 10% damage bonus on next hit) into a Dawnbreaker or Incap . You will see that experienced players will just take few steps back before pressing their Ultimate to catch you on roll in case you roll towards them . Sometimes , it is better to just block or roll away from your opponent . But mostly , yea , it is a good idea to roll through your enemy .

I believe CC immunity is 7 or 8 seconds . I will check later to see but I am 90% sure that it is not 5 seconds .

It is so nice to see a player wanting to learn the game to be better and better . Keep going and you will find yourself to be much stronger in no time

You can animation cancel force pulse. Click skill and switch bars all 3 effects are instantly applied it is in fact faster. If you don't believe me ask the people I duel. Unexpected deaths usually mean you did not see my moves coming.

Xvorg

Micah_Bayer wrote: »

Liofa wrote: »

What you said Animation Cancelling , ''you can more quickly move onto your next active ability.'' This is not true . Each ability has a global cooldown . All skills (except channeled ones) have 1 second of cooldown and whatever you do , you cannot reduce this . You can block , dodge , whatever . It doesn't matter . Animation cancelling doesn't allow you to do that . Look for Lefty Lucy's Animation Cancelling Guide . It is an old video but it still applies . You will learn so much from that video , believe me .

About dodge rolling behind your enemy . This is mostly good to do but there are few exceptions . You cannot dodge AOE attacks . For example , if you are fighting a player who uses a 2 Hander . They mostly will try to burst you down with a Fully charged heavy attack (to get the 10% damage bonus on next hit) into a Dawnbreaker or Incap . You will see that experienced players will just take few steps back before pressing their Ultimate to catch you on roll in case you roll towards them . Sometimes , it is better to just block or roll away from your opponent . But mostly , yea , it is a good idea to roll through your enemy .

I believe CC immunity is 7 or 8 seconds . I will check later to see but I am 90% sure that it is not 5 seconds .

It is so nice to see a player wanting to learn the game to be better and better . Keep going and you will find yourself to be much stronger in no time

You can animation cancel force pulse. Click skill and switch bars all 3 effects are instantly applied it is in fact faster. If you don't believe me ask the people I duel. Unexpected deaths usually mean you did not see my moves coming.

Force pulse is quick by itself, in fact the combo Full heavy + destro reach + LA + force pulse is bread and butter for most ranged magicka builds (except NBs, who use strife due to its cost)

Liofa

Micah_Bayer wrote: »

Liofa wrote: »

What you said Animation Cancelling , ''you can more quickly move onto your next active ability.'' This is not true . Each ability has a global cooldown . All skills (except channeled ones) have 1 second of cooldown and whatever you do , you cannot reduce this . You can block , dodge , whatever . It doesn't matter . Animation cancelling doesn't allow you to do that . Look for Lefty Lucy's Animation Cancelling Guide . It is an old video but it still applies . You will learn so much from that video , believe me .

About dodge rolling behind your enemy . This is mostly good to do but there are few exceptions . You cannot dodge AOE attacks . For example , if you are fighting a player who uses a 2 Hander . They mostly will try to burst you down with a Fully charged heavy attack (to get the 10% damage bonus on next hit) into a Dawnbreaker or Incap . You will see that experienced players will just take few steps back before pressing their Ultimate to catch you on roll in case you roll towards them . Sometimes , it is better to just block or roll away from your opponent . But mostly , yea , it is a good idea to roll through your enemy .

I believe CC immunity is 7 or 8 seconds . I will check later to see but I am 90% sure that it is not 5 seconds .

It is so nice to see a player wanting to learn the game to be better and better . Keep going and you will find yourself to be much stronger in no time

You can animation cancel force pulse. Click skill and switch bars all 3 effects are instantly applied it is in fact faster. If you don't believe me ask the people I duel. Unexpected deaths usually mean you did not see my moves coming.

You can animation cancel everything of course . What we are talking about are different things . What you say is swap cancelling . What OP says is impossible . OP says block cancelling makes you use your next skill faster which is not true .

Swap cancelling is not a special thing btw . Everyone who has a general idea of the game does it already . No need to ask people you duel .

FloppyTouch

Dueling is a lot of fun and helps a ton in open world. Knowing how other classes fight and how to deal with it makes ur survivability go way up in open world pvp.

I also recommend you lvl up each class and pvp a little bit on each one even if it's in low lvl pvp or duel with them. This will help you understand each classes skills there strengths and weaknesses.

EttinTheBreton

Thanks for all the insightful comments everybody! @Liofa I found Lefty Lucy's guide, watched it, and linked it in my original post. AC makes much more sense now! And I didn't realize there were different types, like block AC, bar-swap AC, dodge-roll AC, and so on. Very neat!

Any word on the length of immunity? I'll research this and check the latest patch notes too.

olsborg wrote: »

Yea animation canceling is nice, just be a bit cautious doing block-cancel on a stamina build in medium armor where you have high stamina regen stat, you will shut the regen down while you block and you quite often will loose a regen tick doing so (regen ticks every 2 seconds)

This is a great point, I forgot that blocking stops stam regen.

FloppyTouch wrote: »

Dueling is a lot of fun and helps a ton in open world. Knowing how other classes fight and how to deal with it makes ur survivability go way up in open world pvp.

I also recommend you lvl up each class and pvp a little bit on each one even if it's in low lvl pvp or duel with them. This will help you understand each classes skills there strengths and weaknesses.

This is a great idea. I just made a bunch of alts, so it will be fun to participate in the under 50 Cyro campaigns again.