Proper weapon swap in rotation

Vostorn

Hello,

I wonder how I should do a proper weapon swap to cast a spell on the off bar with animation cancelling. Considering MB = Main Bar and OB = Off Bar, is this

1. There is no problem while swapping. Just LA with your main weapon.
   → MB LA - MB skill - MB LA - swap - OB skill - swap - MB LA - MB skill
2. You need to swap before LA and after previous skill
   → MB LA - MB skill - swap - OB LA - OB skill - swap - MB LA - MB skill
3. You need to swap after LA and before next skill
   → MB LA - MB skill - MB LA - swap - OB skill - OB LA - swap - MB skill
4. Well, wouldn't make much sense to me...
   → MB LA - MB skill - swap - OB LA - OB skill - OB LA - swap - MB skill

Also, how would it go with Heavy Attacks ?

Checkmath

normally you dont change bars to do heavy or light attacks only because one bar provides better damage. a rotation actually is called rotation, because you follow a certain sequence of skills, while a light attack always is casted before a skill to animation cancel it. a heavy attack rotation is pretty similar (example is a bow/dual wield setup on a stamdk), again you have the specific sequence, while on the bow bar you have light attacks between skills and on the dual wield bar you use heavy attacks. if there is only one heavy attack included in the rotation, its mostly on the frontbar and is used between the last two skills on that bar (in the case of two times inferno staves or stamina setups). on a magicka setup with one lightning staff, you mostly start on the lightning staff putting down aoe dots, then proceed the rota on the flame staff. as soon as the last skill on the inferno staff is used, the skill will be bar swap cancelled and we start the rota with a heavy lightning staff attack.
so the right approach from your original post is the number 2, just with more skills between bar swaps

Checkmath

normally people cancel the animations of skills with a weapon swap but not heavy or light attacks, since you can immediatelly start casting a LA or HA just after swapping and cancel the LA's animation with a skill. so i am pretty confused why you would animation cancel light and heavy attacks....

Septimus_Magna

Try to cast a skill with a relative long animation like Blockade or Caltrops and immediately press bar swap. The skill will go off but instead of showing the full animation you swapped bars. After the bar swap you can continue the rotation with light attack > skill etc.

Vostorn

Well, so it seems that it would be the case 2.

I'm asking question because you may want to use your main weapon (which deals more damage on light attacks) more often. In this case, if case 1 and 2 take exact same time, case 1 would be better.

It's even more important if you have a bow in main bar and a melee weapon in off bar as the off bar light attack will be useless.


With heavy attacks, it also has its importance.

Heavy attacks are very different between fire, light and resto staves. You might one to use lighting staff heavy attacks more if there are many monsters. If it is possible to do a heavy attack with the main hand and cast a skill on the off bar right after that (as if you press a skill on your main bar while the heavy attack is weaving), then it might be a good idea doing so.