Animation Cancling and Rotation advice?

Mikeash609

Are there certain abilities that animation cancelling doesn't work on? I'm just trying it out and getting to grips with it so I don't know if I'm doing it wrong or it just doesn't work with the abilities I'm using. I can't cancel Endless Hail, Trapping webs, Noxious Breath or Rapid Strikes. Is there a way of doing it or am I just not getting it? I'm also getting low dps. Im only cp40 so I'm not using any particular gear just stuff I find from questing and stuff but I'm only getting about 5000 dps. Im seeing videos on youtube of people getting 30000 dps. I'm playing a stam dk dual wield/bow. My rotation typically goes...

Endless hail, L, Trapping webs, L, Draining shot, L, igneous weapons
Switch
Igneous Shield, H, Noxious Breath, H, Venomous claw, H, Deadly Cloak, H, Rapid Strikes, H

Is there anything I should change?

HuawaSepp

Why do you wanna cancel rapid strikes?
I know some magplars also swear on shock staff medium weaves + jabs block cancel rotation but well their dps are not noticeable.

Do only cancel instant cast abilities if you have to bar swap for dps testing.

VaranisArano

Rapid Strikes is easy to weave a heavy attack with.
Endless hail works well for bar swap canceling, though with my current rotation, I'm bar swap canceling caltrops instead.

Mikeash609

So with rapid strikes the damage is applied throughout the animation every time your weapon strikes your target so there's no way of Cancling is there? And with AoE abilities like Endless hail, the animation of the arrows coming down is fine obviously because it doesn't stop me using other abilities but is there a way of making it so I only have to push the one key to set it off? At the moment I'm pushing it once for the circle to come up to chose where I want it then having to push it a second time to set it off. Then next in the rotation is trapping webs which is another AoE and has to be pushed twice again. It just seems really slow. Is 5000dps bad because I feel like it is.

VaranisArano

Mikeash609 wrote: »

So with rapid strikes the damage is applied throughout the animation every time your weapon strikes your target so there's no way of Cancling is there? And with AoE abilities like Endless hail, the animation of the arrows coming down is fine obviously because it doesn't stop me using other abilities but is there a way of making it so I only have to push the one key to set it off? At the moment I'm pushing it once for the circle to come up to chose where I want it then having to push it a second time to set it off. Then next in the rotation is trapping webs which is another AoE and has to be pushed twice again. It just seems really slow. Is 5000dps bad because I feel like it is.

Change your settings for the option to quick-cast your ground-based abilities. You have to make sure your crosshair is where you want it to go, but it makes casting endless hail or caltrops into a single-tap cast instead of a double tap.

Again, I don't cancel Rapid Strikes, but it weaves very well with heavy attacks.

Aurielle

Mikeash609 wrote: »

So with rapid strikes the damage is applied throughout the animation every time your weapon strikes your target so there's no way of Cancling is there? And with AoE abilities like Endless hail, the animation of the arrows coming down is fine obviously because it doesn't stop me using other abilities but is there a way of making it so I only have to push the one key to set it off? At the moment I'm pushing it once for the circle to come up to chose where I want it then having to push it a second time to set it off. Then next in the rotation is trapping webs which is another AoE and has to be pushed twice again. It just seems really slow. Is 5000dps bad because I feel like it is.

5000 DPS is VERY bad for a damage dealer. My mDK tank gets more DPS in Ebon/Seducer/Illambris with CP set up for tanking.

You don't need to animation cancel all your skills. Just make sure that you're using a rotation, that you're weaving in light attacks, and that you have good gear. Check out Alcast's stam DK build or something, and follow the rotation exactly.

Mikeash609

I don't understand why it's so bad. I'm only cp40 so I didn't think there was any point in me trying to get decent gear yet so I just deconstruct it or use it for research. I'm trying to use abilities that people have suggested to me and weave light and heavy attacks in between. I don't know what I'm not getting. I was in a dungeon the other day on a boss and I felt like I was tickling it rather than damaging.

Aurielle

Also, I only just saw in your OP (sorry, recovering from a night shift) that you're only CP 50 using dropped gear. That's the biggest problem right there. Animation cancelling is not an instant 30k DPS button. Bar swap animation cancelling (in which you cancel the recovery animations of two skills in your rotation) and light attack weaving results in a 5k DPS increase on a well-geared character with max or close to max CP. It's barely going to make a difference in your case.

Don't focus too much on getting good gear drops until CP 160 (which you should reach in less than a day), but you could have at least used crafted gear with agility jewellery before then. Also, get trapping webs off your bar: it's utter garbage. You want Rearming Trap from the Fighters Guild line. Just grind a bunch of dolmens (preferably in a zone that will drop useful gear sets for you) and you'll level up FG in no time. Also, you need to accept that your DPS will be mediocre at best until around CP 300 or so.

Aurielle

Mikeash609 wrote: »

I don't understand why it's so bad. I'm only cp40 so I didn't think there was any point in me trying to get decent gear yet so I just deconstruct it or use it for research. I'm trying to use abilities that people have suggested to me and weave light and heavy attacks in between. I don't know what I'm not getting. I was in a dungeon the other day on a boss and I felt like I was tickling it rather than damaging.

Gear and CP are a HUGE part of the equation. Fortunately, CP is front-loaded, so you'll see most of the benefits of CP around CP 300 or so.

Those 30k DPS parses you see are made by people on max level characters with BIS gear that is either completely or mostly golded out. Of COURSE you won't hit those numbers at CP 40 in random quest drops.

yttoks

Someone already mentioned setting single click for ground cast abilities. Do that, and practice block cancelling endless hail. Eventually you want caltrops in your rotation, and only one of those can be bar swap cancelled. So, practice block cancelling, and you can get something like :

swap>endless hail [block cancel] caltrops > bar swap. You can get those AoE's down very quickly if you practice that. On my baby DK, who also doesn't have caltrops yet, it's more like:

swap>endless hail [block cancel] nox breath > bar swap. Also works, so put nox breath and endless on the same bar, practice the cancels, and see if that doesn't help.

Aurielle

yttoks wrote: »

Someone already mentioned setting single click for ground cast abilities. Do that, and practice block cancelling endless hail. Eventually you want caltrops in your rotation, and only one of those can be bar swap cancelled. So, practice block cancelling, and you can get something like :

swap>endless hail [block cancel] caltrops > bar swap. You can get those AoE's down very quickly if you practice that. On my baby DK, who also doesn't have caltrops yet, it's more like:

swap>endless hail [block cancel] nox breath > bar swap. Also works, so put nox breath and endless on the same bar, practice the cancels, and see if that doesn't help.

Those are very helpful suggestions for the long term, but I doubt they'll help him much right now. He's CP 40 in dropped quest gear... Following that advice might net him a 2-3k DPS increase -- if that.

Sorry, OP. You just have to grind, and grind, and grind... The payoff will be great, though. I can't tell you how satisfying it is to see a low or no CP character struggling with a group of 5 overland mobs, and then helping them out by lazily casting a single AOE and seeing everything melt in under a second. It's also really satisfying to run vet dungeons with multiple damage dealers each dealing 25k+ DPS, and watching everything evaporate before your eyes.

exeeter702

Mikeash609 wrote: »

Are there certain abilities that animation cancelling doesn't work on? I'm just trying it out and getting to grips with it so I don't know if I'm doing it wrong or it just doesn't work with the abilities I'm using. I can't cancel Endless Hail, Trapping webs, Noxious Breath or Rapid Strikes. Is there a way of doing it or am I just not getting it? I'm also getting low dps. Im only cp40 so I'm not using any particular gear just stuff I find from questing and stuff but I'm only getting about 5000 dps. Im seeing videos on youtube of people getting 30000 dps. I'm playing a stam dk dual wield/bow. My rotation typically goes...

Endless hail, L, Trapping webs, L, Draining shot, L, igneous weapons
Switch
Igneous Shield, H, Noxious Breath, H, Venomous claw, H, Deadly Cloak, H, Rapid Strikes, H

Is there anything I should change?

I think you need to learn the combat system fully fiest, before asking a question like this. Understand what the global cd is, what cast time abilities and channel time abilities are and how weaving affects a rotation.

The question you are asking is pointless as animation canceling serves very little if any purpose in pve on an intentional level. Once you understand the GCD, light attack weaving and making sure you have high uptime on dots and buffs, you will begin to naturally "bar swap cancel".

You are getting way to hung up on animation canceling instead of learning the systems that naturally result in canceling animations. Also you are low cp and low gear, that plays a significant part.

Mikeash609

Thank you very much for the advice. I'm at least feeling a bit better knowing my dps will probably improve as I level and get gear. I think you're defiantly right about me learning the combat system properly because I have no idea what you're talking about. I just googled global CD. It came up with an album by Paul Van Dyk called Global. I'm taking a wild guess that that's not what you're talking about lol.

Aurielle

Mikeash609 wrote: »

Thank you very much for the advice. I'm at least feeling a bit better knowing my dps will probably improve as I level and get gear. I think you're defiantly right about me learning the combat system properly because I have no idea what you're talking about. I just googled global CD. It came up with an album by Paul Van Dyk called Global. I'm taking a wild guess that that's not what you're talking about lol.

GCD means global cooldown. Do a google search on "GCD MMORPG" and that will return some better results, heh.

boombazookajd

VaranisArano wrote: »

Rapid Strikes is easy to weave a heavy attack with.
Endless hail works well for bar swap canceling, though with my current rotation, I'm bar swap canceling caltrops instead.

The question is why are you even use rapid strikes? It takes forever and does little damage. Swap that trash ability for Rending Slashes or Blood Craze if you do a lot of solo content, asap.

Your DPS will get better, CP 40 is a minnow still. You'll also naturally get better at your rotation.

Also drop ingenious shield, idk what you'd use it for? Get Flames of Oblivion as well. Pick up beast trap and then rearming trap, that will add some crit. Drop drain and put in poison injection. These are all meta skills and they are meta skills for a reason. Also, you need to cast venomous claw early as it does more damage the longer it sinks into the target.

Swap Ingenious Weapons for Molten Weapons as that boosts your heavy attack damage, of which you do a lot due to the heavy attack weaving.

If you are a dps build then there really is not other choice than to run the most damage you can. As a pure DPS player, I can forgive a partner who comes in with the right dps skills but doesn't have the CP's or experience do to a great rotation. That's fine at least you have the proper tools to work with. But showing up in group content with those skills only hurts what is already a rough spot to be in, low cp's.

Go do a weekend worth of PVP. It's a pain, trust me, but group up with guildies or find the emp group during the day and run with them. Caltrops will be yours in a weekend. 5k is terrible. I apologize if this sounds really harsh but I was doing 8k pre CP's; before I even had a real build. Again, if this is solo content only, disregard but if you do any group content, you are being completely carried.

For CP distribution: https://alcasthq.com/eso-stamina-dragonknight-build-pve/

VaranisArano

I personally don't use Rapid Strikes anymore and use shrouded daggers as my spammable instead.

Mikeash609

If I got rid of Rapid Strikes and replaced it with shrouded daggers instead that would also give me major brutality so I wouldn't need igneous weapons anyway. I don't do any group content at the moment or PVP just solo stuff. I wanna get into group and PVP but I want to get better first.

boombazookajd

Mikeash609 wrote: »

If I got rid of Rapid Strikes and replaced it with shrouded daggers instead that would also give me major brutality so I wouldn't need igneous weapons anyway. I don't do any group content at the moment or PVP just solo stuff. I wanna get into group and PVP but I want to get better first.

If you've done that, you'll need to swap to molten arms as ingenious weapons already grants you major brutality. @Mikeash609

Honestly, you don't need a spammable as a stamDK and you'll be better served by Rending slashes. You are already lowering the enemies movement speed with trapping web so you don't need shrouded daggers for that.

Slice an enemy with both weapons to cause deep lacerations, dealing [549 / 555 / 561 / 568] Physical Damage with each weapon and causing them to bleed for an additional 2355 Physical Damage over 9 seconds. You also reduce their Movement Speed by 50% for the duration. This is buffed by at least thaumaturge in the CP tree.

Bottom line is your skills are hurting your DPS just as much as your rotation is. You have skills that are overlapping effects and aren't using the best of what's available. I run a hybrid build and I only run it because I can do 20k on a 6mil. That's not 12 man worthy but its good enough to clear pretty much all group dungeon content that I play and I melt overland with just my AOE's but I use meta skills.

P.S. Once you have a basic DPS build together like Hundings+Spriggans you'll see a decent increase there, as well as the proper weapon damage glyphs. Your build is trash for DPS right now, and that's not bad but you will see an increase by running a solid beginner DPS build. Once your there, having the meta bar setup is where you'll see those last bits of DPS increase.

Mister_DMC

Mikeash609 wrote: »

If I got rid of Rapid Strikes and replaced it with shrouded daggers instead that would also give me major brutality so I wouldn't need igneous weapons anyway. I don't do any group content at the moment or PVP just solo stuff. I wanna get into group and PVP but I want to get better first.

You want the molten armaments morph instead of igneous weapons for 40% more heavy attack damage

Sparr0w

Damage is based on weapon damage, max stam & penetration primarily. Just swapping for spriggans gear (extra 3k pen & a bit of crit) saw my dps jump up considerably.

Also being a low cp you've probably not got the CP perk that ups crit 12% that will also up dps quite a lot.

Just try to pick up a fairly easy set for now (sword singers is alright from alik'r desert and is easy to get) and put a couple cp into penetration & to get the crit bonus.

Once you hit cp160 & get proper gear sets you'll see your dps jump up, between cp10 & cp160 my dps went up around 10k with a sloppy rotation so hang in there