Animation cancelling

Elfhunter194

I've been trying to get use to animation cancelling but I just cannot click with it for some reason. Same goes for doing an attack and switching weapons fast enough so I don't get caught off guard but the weapon switching fast during combat is far to slow. Timing is a big issue for me and trying to figure out which combination in skills would be best. I've learnt that I've got to figure out what works best for me and that's the hard part. Only if I had a dummy to practice on would make things a whole lot easier.

SirAndy

Weapon swap can be a pain if you have any sort of server lag.

As for animation canceling, you need to get into the rhythm. Find a friend/guildie that has a dummy in their house and start slow with a simple rotation. Space out your key strokes first to let the animation run completely, then adjust your key hits to register while the animations are still running. It will take a while to get used to it but once you have it down, you don't even have to think about the timing anymore.

VaranisArano

If you own Clockwork City, you can do a quest to construct a target dummy that has about as much health as a public dungeon boss. It'll be free in-game, as long as you don't mind exploring a lot. The lower health might also be nice for practicing rotations as it won't take forever to kill and reset the dummy even though it won't be a sustained DPS test. http://en.uesp.net/wiki/Online:The_Precursor

If you are a member of guilds, you might look to see if your guild has a guild house with a training dummy. If not, you can probably ask in zone chat if anyone will let you visit their house to practice on a training dummy.

A lot of rotation practice really is just figuring out what works for you and then practicing the rhythms of it, so finding a practice dummy, buying one, or questing for the Precursor will the very helpful.

Thogard

whats your ping?

Also remember that what matters isn't when you press a button, what matters is when you release a button...

Elfhunter194

VaranisArano wrote: »

If you own Clockwork City, you can do a quest to construct a target dummy that has about as much health as a public dungeon boss. It'll be free in-game, as long as you don't mind exploring a lot. The lower health might also be nice for practicing rotations as it won't take forever to kill and reset the dummy even though it won't be a sustained DPS test. http://en.uesp.net/wiki/Online:The_Precursor

If you are a member of guilds, you might look to see if your guild has a guild house with a training dummy. If not, you can probably ask in zone chat if anyone will let you visit their house to practice on a training dummy.

A lot of rotation practice really is just figuring out what works for you and then practicing the rhythms of it, so finding a practice dummy, buying one, or questing for the Precursor will the very helpful.

How long does the quest take? I'm not a fan of questing in this game that much

Elfhunter194

Thogard wrote: »

whats your ping?

Also remember that what matters isn't when you press a button, what matters is when you release a button...

I'm on console man so don't have a clue

Sixty5

Start out with some basic exercises to get the hang of timing windows.

Start out with light attack into bash, then move onto bar swapping.

Honestly get those basics down first, because that will give you a rough idea of the timings you need, given your ping. After that you can move onto target dummies and such.

Belegnole

I found that watching some of the videos on it helped me. After I did that I just use it on everything I fight for the practice. After a bit you start getting the feel for it. At this point I can tell when I'm slipping up and when I'm doing good.

Wifeaggro13

Elfhunter194 wrote: »

I've been trying to get use to animation cancelling but I just cannot click with it for some reason. Same goes for doing an attack and switching weapons fast enough so I don't get caught off guard but the weapon switching fast during combat is far to slow. Timing is a big issue for me and trying to figure out which combination in skills would be best. I've learnt that I've got to figure out what works best for me and that's the hard part. Only if I had a dummy to practice on would make things a whole lot easier.

When a bug becomes a feature touted by a developer.

lynog85

Duel, duel, duel some more. Watch other duellers with your class. Persist and then all of a sudden you will be good. Fast track way to learning your class is duelling.

Zypheran

I have given up on this 'feature'. My ping is just too high. I accept the hit on my DPS

Banana

If ya have a terrible and variable ping like me its in the to hard basket.

CiliPadi

I don't bother. This has to be the clunkiest game mechanic ever.

deepseamk20b14_ESO

Elfhunter194 wrote: »

VaranisArano wrote: »

If you own Clockwork City, you can do a quest to construct a target dummy that has about as much health as a public dungeon boss. It'll be free in-game, as long as you don't mind exploring a lot. The lower health might also be nice for practicing rotations as it won't take forever to kill and reset the dummy even though it won't be a sustained DPS test. http://en.uesp.net/wiki/Online:The_Precursor

If you are a member of guilds, you might look to see if your guild has a guild house with a training dummy. If not, you can probably ask in zone chat if anyone will let you visit their house to practice on a training dummy.

A lot of rotation practice really is just figuring out what works for you and then practicing the rhythms of it, so finding a practice dummy, buying one, or questing for the Precursor will the very helpful.

How long does the quest take? I'm not a fan of questing in this game that much

The quest doesn't take to long, maybe an hour or two. I cheated and had another window open that told me exactly where to go lol.

mikemacon

When a bug becomes a feature touted by a developer.

This.

I love ESO - but I was immensely disappointed when I discovered that animation cancelling had been embraced by ZOS devs and that as a result the high-tier endgame content just about requires it to get adequate DPS on bosses.

Ability animations in other games are there for a reason - to help with game balance.

I'll give you an example: In Destiny, there is an exotic sniper known as the No Land Beyond. Because snipers are OHK weapons, Destiny placed them in the "special weapon" slot and restricted the ammo available during PVP. No Land Beyond was an "exotic" (a semi-rare technically overpowered gold-tier weapon) which was equipped in the Primary slot (so it used Primary ammo which was plentiful). Because of that, the devs designed the gun as a bolt-action: It had one round in the camber and the reload animation was comparatively long.

High-end players discovered that they could "reload cancel" the animation by sprinting right after clicking the reload button, which removed the pain point of the long reload time and made the gun unbalanced.

Bungie issued a patch so that while you could still cancel the animation, the actual reload time remain unchanged. Hence, balance was restored.

ZOS's decision to embrace the exploit and incorporate it into the game means that people who suck at animation cancelling (like myself and my potato internet) are effectively excluded from high-end endgame.

It is what it is. Now that it's a part of the game, it's not going away.

But I was and remain very disappointed with that decision.

Hecker777

mikemacon wrote: »

When a bug becomes a feature touted by a developer.

This.

I love ESO - but I was immensely disappointed when I discovered that animation cancelling had been embraced by ZOS devs and that as a result the high-tier endgame content just about requires it to get adequate DPS on bosses.

Ability animations in other games are there for a reason - to help with game balance.

I'll give you an example: In Destiny, there is an exotic sniper known as the No Land Beyond. Because snipers are OHK weapons, Destiny placed them in the "special weapon" slot and restricted the ammo available during PVP. No Land Beyond was an "exotic" (a semi-rare technically overpowered gold-tier weapon) which was equipped in the Primary slot (so it used Primary ammo which was plentiful). Because of that, the devs designed the gun as a bolt-action: It had one round in the camber and the reload animation was comparatively long.

High-end players discovered that they could "reload cancel" the animation by sprinting right after clicking the reload button, which removed the pain point of the long reload time and made the gun unbalanced.

Bungie issued a patch so that while you could still cancel the animation, the actual reload time remain unchanged. Hence, balance was restored.

ZOS's decision to embrace the exploit and incorporate it into the game means that people who suck at animation cancelling (like myself and my potato internet) are effectively excluded from high-end endgame.

It is what it is. Now that it's a part of the game, it's not going away.

But I was and remain very disappointed with that decision.

Interestingly enough though, in a PvP context, some of your most powerful and hard hitting stuff can't be canceled. Dizzying Swing and Crystal Frags come to mind. I don't claim to be an expert but the only offensive skills that I use that make sense to cancel are Reverse Slice and Sub Assault. And a simple block tap/bar swap will do that. Pretty easy to get down with about an hours practice.

At the end of the day though I think weaving>animation cancel

Izaki

Remember that the only useful animation canceling things are the light/heavy attack weaving and weapon swap canceling. That's really all you need to learn to get high DPS. The rest is absolutely useless and just makes your character look stupid.

altemriel

in case you need some guides, these two are good:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ZYoEztDilE


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BLZzGoPp9Ug


also this:
https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/comment/3457257/#Comment_3457257

and this too:
https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/comment/3376450/#Comment_3376450

any yes, it is kind of hard and takes time to learn
good luck!

Barbaran

lots of it is timing. if you cancel too quick something will not register and you will not preform the move you were trying to make.
and ive found different skills have a different reaction and cancel time.
nightblade skills being the quickest.... of corse.

Drummerx04

mikemacon wrote: »

When a bug becomes a feature touted by a developer.

This.

I love ESO - but I was immensely disappointed when I discovered that animation cancelling had been embraced by ZOS devs and that as a result the high-tier endgame content just about requires it to get adequate DPS on bosses.

Ability animations in other games are there for a reason - to help with game balance.

I'll give you an example: In Destiny, there is an exotic sniper known as the No Land Beyond. Because snipers are OHK weapons, Destiny placed them in the "special weapon" slot and restricted the ammo available during PVP. No Land Beyond was an "exotic" (a semi-rare technically overpowered gold-tier weapon) which was equipped in the Primary slot (so it used Primary ammo which was plentiful). Because of that, the devs designed the gun as a bolt-action: It had one round in the camber and the reload animation was comparatively long.

High-end players discovered that they could "reload cancel" the animation by sprinting right after clicking the reload button, which removed the pain point of the long reload time and made the gun unbalanced.

Bungie issued a patch so that while you could still cancel the animation, the actual reload time remain unchanged. Hence, balance was restored.

ZOS's decision to embrace the exploit and incorporate it into the game means that people who suck at animation cancelling (like myself and my potato internet) are effectively excluded from high-end endgame.

It is what it is. Now that it's a part of the game, it's not going away.

But I was and remain very disappointed with that decision.

This sort of argument comes up a lot against animation cancelling, but there are actually game mechanics in place that put limits on what AC can actually get you. It's also worth noting that the game combat feels smooth (with good ping) pretty much exclusively because of animation cancelling.

• Global Cooldowns - The cooldowns for skills/bashing/light attacks are related and I won't go in to detail here, but essentially you are limited to casting 1 light attack and 1 skill in a ~0.8 second window. There is no way to get around this without some hardcore CE usage or a currently unknown exploit. This places a limit on cast rate, so the animations themselves are just visual fluff.
• Resource Limits - This really puts a limit more on which skills are worth using in a rotation. Daedric Tomb may deal a lot of damage for instance, but it's 5k+ cost means you won't normally put it in a rotation even with animation cancelling.

Kalante

If there was no animation cancelling so many people would quit because the combat will become so slow. It already is with all of the heavy attack nonsense.

idk

^^^
Yes. Combat in this game would be worse than that of SWTOR and WoW if AC was removed.

Besides, Zos has pushed the light attack weave, which is AC even more with the last two updates. It's required for decent dps. AC is not going anywhere.

vovus69

you need ping less than 100 and at least 30 fps for animation cancelling to work. I cannot do this at 10-15 fps, but can at 30-35 on another machine. So if you have slow machine (or old , or with low RAM) and far away from the server - you are at disadvantage.

-vovus

ToRelax

Izaki wrote: »

Remember that the only useful animation canceling things are the light/heavy attack weaving and weapon swap canceling. That's really all you need to learn to get high DPS. The rest is absolutely useless and just makes your character look stupid.

Most things have use in PvP, from using potions mid dodge roll over bash cancelling to weaving in OL exit...

kaiage

or you make a macro timed to .0666 seconds and press one button, then go to hell.

Pink_E_808

Thogard wrote: »

Also remember that what matters isn't when you press a button, what matters is when you release a button...

Except for heavy attack bow shots, lol. A little off the subject, I know but I wish they would change it back to how it used to be when I could loose my arrow when I wanted.

Runefang

Animation cancelling can be harder on some weapons than others, personally I find it easy when dual wielding and with bows. LA cancelling into funnel health on the other hand I seem to get wrong more often than most other weaves.

khele23eb17_ESO

And this is why ESO combat looks like ***.

exeeter702

khele23eb17_ESO wrote: »

And this is why ESO combat looks like ***.

Well pick your poison. I for one am glad i dont have to be locked out of actions, forced to watch my character follow through with the 2h weighted animation after successfully completing and resolving an uppercut on a target.

Would you rather players be punished via being forced out of player input during recovery animations when successfully meeting the resolve criteria for abilities on targets?

Would you place the resolution point at the end of recovery animations for skills? and thus REALLY *** up combat visuals and responsiveness.

Would you reanimate the skills so their visual queues are hilariously fast forwarded in order to fit within the GCD? Alternatively, would you increase the GCD 2 fold instead resulting in terribly slow combat?

Half the people [snip] about animations and the relationship between their recovery animations, player agency/input, the GCD dont have the faintest clue what is actually going on and why it isnt a damn bug that zos embraces. It is a natural effect that is a byproduct of the system if which intentional decisions were made to assure that combat remained responsive and rewarding for those that play.

[Edited to remove profanity]

Gilvoth

khele23eb17_ESO wrote: »

And this is why ESO combat looks like ***.

animation canceling should have never been allowed to exist and fixed immediately when found out was possible in eso.
it has ruined PvP and added some serious lagg. do i have proof of it in video form? yes i do. will i put this video here as proof? no, because that would break forum rules of naming and shaming and also strengthen the belief that if someone makes a statement here on this forum that they Must show proof or their claim is false.

fact of the matter is that eso animation canceling is poison to its combat system.

Gilvoth

kaiage wrote: »

or you make a macro timed to .0666 seconds and press one button, then go to hell.

well said, and it might sound like a joke but that is honestly what is happening in PvP.