Animation Canceling Advice

WiseSky

Pretty new to the game and I just learned about Animation Canceling.

I see there is Animation Canceling with Weapon Swap, do people use swap to Weapon set 1 and Swap to weapon set 2 or just the Weapon swap ?

Skill animation canceling, block, dodge roll and bash, which one of all of these is most important to learn ?

TBois

You just use weapon swap. In order to answer what is most important to learn first, it depends on the content you will be focusing on. Ultimately you will need to lean it all if you would like to be good at combat in this game. I would start with light attack cancels first. These might help (from pvp perspective but would probably help in pve too).

https://youtu.be/wWHMCNFC4F0

https://youtu.be/luvtKotfGPQ

AcadianPaladin

Animation canceling is important to the game because, let's say you are winding up a cast time attack and all of a sudden the enemy winds up a heavy attack. You need to block immediately so you hit block. The animation for your cast time attack is canceled and you instantly block. If that cast time attack was far enough along, it will actually still happen.

So the game prioritizes your actions and will wisely cancel your current action animation if you activate a higher priority action. Actions like block, dodge-roll and bar swap take priority over skills.

So far, this all has fairly limited applications for boosting your dps. I mean, if you finish off on one bar with a cast time skill then bar swap, you can cancel that animation, still have the skill go off and be on your other bar ready to go. There are similar strategies for using block etc although the efficacy of those tactics is questionable.

Where you CAN boost your dps is by the fact that skills take priority over light attacks. That is, you can tap a light attack and almost instantly select a skill. The light attack animation is canceled but the light attack still goes and you are right into your skill. This is called weaving. You basically train yourself to tap a light attack before each skill. With practice, you can boost your dps from these almost 'free' light attacks noticeably. It sounds daunting at first but if interested, look up something like 'ESO weaving' and find a solid guide and/or you tube to explain it.

I'm no expert and welcome more/better input from others but I think you now have some of the basics to start from.

Edit: I was composing my post as @TBois was posting. I'll bet the vids provided above will help.

VaranisArano

Weapon swap canceling is typically used with skills that have a long animation. You still respect the Global Cooldown, but the weapon swap let's you be ready to go once the GCD is over.

I found it easy to practice with the bow skill Volley. If you fire it, then get impatient and swap too soon, the skill won't fire off properly and you get no damage. Done properly, you fire the skill, wait long enough for it to pass enough of the animation to count, then swap and are ready to go. Its more a matter of feel to get used to how long you have to wait for the skill to go off properly.

Kalixte

Ordered by importance:

1. Light attack weave, smoothing and adding a ton of damage to your rotation;
2. Bash cancel (depends of your class, the weapons and the skills you play), adds a bit of damage and speed up animations;
3. Swap cancel, to bypass last skill animation before... bar swaping, yes! Makes the process faster;
4. Roll cancel, with Executioner for example helps finishing someone while avoiding damage, and bypass as well the skill animation.

I didn't mention block cancel because I don't think it is really useful most of the time, especially since the cast times on several ultimates (basically the ones that I mainly play). It drains your stamina for not much.

There are more forms of animation cancels and more complex but also more situational. The ones listed are the first to learn imo. Kristofer's video linked before is a good tutorial.

Vahrokh

AcadianPaladin wrote: »

That is, you can tap a light attack and almost instantly select a skill. The light attack animation is canceled but the light attack still goes and you are right into your skill. This is called weaving. You basically train yourself to tap a light attack before each skill.

This description is a bit deceiving. "Tap and almost instantly select a skill" tends to make the light attack not to register at all.

Plenty of people who does this, yet gets like 2k DPS (and not 15k) out of it, because 90% of their LA get aborted because of waiting too little before hitting the skill.

JumpmanLane

Kalixte wrote: »

Ordered by importance:

1. Light attack weave, smoothing and adding a ton of damage to your rotation;
2. Bash cancel (depends of your class, the weapons and the skills you play), adds a bit of damage and speed up animations;
3. Swap cancel, to bypass last skill animation before... bar swaping, yes! Makes the process faster;
4. Roll cancel, with Executioner for example helps finishing someone while avoiding damage, and bypass as well the skill animation.

I didn't mention block cancel because I don't think it is really useful most of the time, especially since the cast times on several ultimates (basically the ones that I mainly play). It drains your stamina for not much.

There are more forms of animation cancels and more complex but also more situational. The ones listed are the first to learn imo. Kristofer's video linked before is a good tutorial.

Block cancelling whips is great on a MagDk after you’ve Fossilized a fool and you’re gonna leap him right after.

UntilValhalla13

You mainly just have to find the rhythm of weaving for yourself. It's kind of like a heartbeat, with Light Attack/Skill timing.

DUNdun *half second pause*, DUNdun *pause*, etc.

Once you get a decent feel of the timing, you can start to work on fancier techniques.

An easy skill to practice with is force pulse. Do a light attack, then the skill. Repeat that for a bit. Then, do a light attack when force pulse's animation is at the part where it looks like you're stabbing with the staff; the very end of the animation. Follow that immediately with another force pulse. The light attack eventually will cancel the animation out when you do it fluidly enough.

It's the same with swap canceling. Shards are a good skill for an example, because of the long cast time. Light attack, hit shards, then IMMEDIATELY hit barswap. The skill goes off, and your swapping cancels the animation. Different skills have different timings with their animations too, and may take some practice getting the feel for them.

Bobby_V_Rockit

That embued weapon is a good trainer for it, so is relequen. I’m still getting used to it, but actively seeing light attacks stack up to 20 on an enemy (with a skill in between) has helped me immensely

BNOC

Kalixte wrote: »

Ordered by importance:

1. Light attack weave, smoothing and adding a ton of damage to your rotation;
2. Bash cancel (depends of your class, the weapons and the skills you play), adds a bit of damage and speed up animations;
3. Swap cancel, to bypass last skill animation before... bar swaping, yes! Makes the process faster;
4. Roll cancel, with Executioner for example helps finishing someone while avoiding damage, and bypass as well the skill animation.

I didn't mention block cancel because I don't think it is really useful most of the time, especially since the cast times on several ultimates (basically the ones that I mainly play). It drains your stamina for not much.

There are more forms of animation cancels and more complex but also more situational. The ones listed are the first to learn imo. Kristofer's video linked before is a good tutorial.

Go for this, except skip bash weaving, that's definitely a tricky one to learn for a new player, depletes resources you probably need and as Kalixte suggested, depends on various factors to decide if it's even worth it in the first place.

SidraWillowsky

I refuse to use bash/block cancelling, at least as a set part of a rotation (you're probably already doing bash and block cancelling in fights without even realizing it; it's just a reaction sometimes). You should get comfortable with the basics of LA canceling first and then move to swap canceling, at least IMO. Or do both concurrently, though for me that was too much to take in.

I learned on a stamblade, so this is how I ended up doing things. FYI my rotation at the time was hail -> caltrops (RIP) -> poison injection -> bar swap -> rearming trap (renamed barbed trap now) -> rending slashes -> surprise attack x4 -> swap -> repeat. I did not worry about LAs right before or immediately after bar-swapping early on; I went straight from surprise attack into a bar swap and then straight into hail after that.

• I practiced it skill by skill. Stamblades' spammable is Surprise Attack, so I worked extensively on the LA -> SA first. Then LA -> rending slashes. I weave backwards on the bow bar (skill -> LA; maybe this is incorrect but it works for me), so I spent a lot of time working on hail -> LA and caltrops (RIP) -> LA
• Next, I worked on putting skills together. So, for example, rending slashes -> LA -> surprise attack -> LA, and hail -> LA -> caltrops -> LA, then eventually all skills on each bar together
• At this point I had the basics down but was trying to go way too fast, getting jumpy as a result (I was legit jumping a little bit IRL when I was trying to do LA -> surprise attack, and in-game I moved my character a LOT), and missing light attacks like crazy. I was watching videos of seasoned animation cancelers and thinking that I needed to go that fast for an effective rotation. When I slowed things down and worked on hitting all of my LAs, my DPS increased dramatically. This is actually a cardinal rule that I've established; one that I impress the important of unto others but that no one seems to listen to until they begrudgingly acquiesce and realize that yes, it's absolutely key: a slower rotation where you're hitting every light attack is ALWAYS better and will produce better DPS than a fast rotation where you're missing light attacks left and right. You NEED to feel in control of your rotation. Go more slowly. Keep your character planted in front of the dummy, and if you're getting jumpy and missing LAs, you're doing something wrong.
• THEN, once I got the hang of that, I worked on bar swapping and how to deal with it. That tends to be more dependent on what sets you're using and whether you're breaking a set when you swap to your back bar because you've got a vMA/master/whatever weapon back there. I was actually never able to get the uptime to the point where the set was worth using with the vMA bow over two five-piece sets, but at the time the meta was Relequen/Advancing Yokeda/vMA bow. To maximize AY uptime, it's critical that you get a light attack in on your DW bar before swapping to bow, so I worked a lot on surprise attack -> LA -> swap cancel. This was surprisingly difficult; I find that light attacks on dual wield weapons are clunky and slow. Anyway, I worked on that. Then for the bow bar, I go right into hail after a bar swap. Since it's key to get off of the bow bar quickly to pick the AY stacks back up, I swap-cancelled either poison injection or, if it was ready, Incapacitating Strike (ultimate). Incap has a stupid cast time now so swap-canceling it isn't really a thing, but yeah.... swap-cancel poison injection to get back to the DW bar. Even more difficult was getting the hang of the light attack that I got in after swapping from the bow bar and before casting trap. There's a very brief period after bar swapping where you can't actually get any instant skills in, so it took me ages to get the hang of the rhythm that's needed to get the LA -> trap combo right. For a long time I went straight into trap after a bar swap, but that hurts the AY uptime too.
• The barswap -> LA combo is what took me the longest to get the hang of

Also, practice often- you'll come out of dummy training sessions feeling like you've got the hang of something then go into a dungeon and find that it's much harder when you're not in front of one stationary boss. That's normal, but to really get the hang of it you need to go back to the dummy and keep working. It becomes muscle memory after a while, but you need to keep doing the dummy session -> go out and fight enemies that actually move and fights back -> dummy session -> repeat process many times. People who parse twice per week are going to have a much better time than those who parse maybe once a month.

Slightly off-topic from what you asked, but this is how I learned.

Ragnarock41

I would not recommend block/bash cancelling outside of melee PvP builds. Its very strong when used in the right condition but comes with a very big sustain hit.

mocap

exeeter702

You dont practice animation canceling. You fully engage with the combat systems various rules and systems and as a result you will begin to cancel animations organically without even thinking. People don't like hearing this and like to pretend it is some advanced mechanic / some broken bug that cant be fixed. It is neither of these things.

Listen up, acknowledge the following TRUTHS about eso combat and everything else will come into place.

-There is a global cooldown that governs ability use frequency. There is nothing you as a player can do to circumvent this timer in anyway whatsoever. Full stop.

-Light attacks do NOT initiated the GCD, but they obey it, meaning you cannot use a light attack while the gcd is refreshing. This means you light attack before every ability you use. If you have played a more traditional mmo before, you can consider this your auto or white attacks, it was built into the game since day zero and is not any type of trickery. Light attack weaving is by design.

-Defensive actions, such as block and roll dodge are technically off the GCD. This is the case so that players maintain 100 percent agency and control of their character without any arbitrary restrictions like recovery animations on abilities that have already resolved.

-Cast time and channel abilites exist in this game, and as in all skills, the GCD is initiated the moment you press the ability button. With channels, any action taken while channeling, will cancel the channel. Any action taken before a hard cast completes, will yeild no results and will not cost resource.

-Instant cast abilities will resolve instantly when their criteria to land is met ie being in range of an applicable target and having resource to use the skill. Any actions by the user after this fact have NO bearing on the skills effect with the recipient. Any defensive action taken or dice rolled by the system is outside the ability users control. This is important because most instant cast skills have a recovery animation that players out during the GCD refresh. Cutting this animation off with a bash, roll, block or bar swap, does nothing for the skills effect since said skill resolves instantly and being forced to view the follow through animation of an ability you already successfully landed and being unable to block an incoming telegraphed meteor would feel extraordinarily terrible.

-Being proactive is a key contributor to effectiveness in combat. This means that as a player you should always be on the right bar at the right time ready to use the skill that is required for the scenario at the moment. Often this skill in question is on another bar, naturally, you want to swap to the right bar every time as soon as you are able to. This just so happens to cut off recovery animations of skill for the obvious reason that player control is more important that locking you out of practical actions so a superfluous recovery animation can play out during a time window that you cant cast abilities anyways thanks to the GCD. Always bar swap to the necessary bar during the GCD to be ready for every next action required.

These rules above are absolute. And obeying and understanding them will result in you achieving the coveted "animation canceling" execution you so desperately want to learn. And you are wasting your time trying to learn about animation canceling in more specific ways. Learn the combat system through and through and only then will you simply understand why your question in general is a silly one.

MentalxHammer

JumpmanLane wrote: »

Kalixte wrote: »

Ordered by importance:

1. Light attack weave, smoothing and adding a ton of damage to your rotation;
2. Bash cancel (depends of your class, the weapons and the skills you play), adds a bit of damage and speed up animations;
3. Swap cancel, to bypass last skill animation before... bar swaping, yes! Makes the process faster;
4. Roll cancel, with Executioner for example helps finishing someone while avoiding damage, and bypass as well the skill animation.

I didn't mention block cancel because I don't think it is really useful most of the time, especially since the cast times on several ultimates (basically the ones that I mainly play). It drains your stamina for not much.

There are more forms of animation cancels and more complex but also more situational. The ones listed are the first to learn imo. Kristofer's video linked before is a good tutorial.

Block cancelling whips is great on a MagDk after you’ve Fossilized a fool and you’re gonna leap him right after.

I would argue that block cancelling is the most important to learn outside of light weaving. It speeds up your gameplay tremendously, and it is the most applicable ani cancel that can be used in any situation, if you block cancel quickly it has negligible effects on your sustain. Block cancelling your cc is very important to land guaranteed damage before the target breaks free and dodges.

exeeter702

MentalxHammer wrote: »

JumpmanLane wrote: »

Kalixte wrote: »

Ordered by importance:

1. Light attack weave, smoothing and adding a ton of damage to your rotation;
2. Bash cancel (depends of your class, the weapons and the skills you play), adds a bit of damage and speed up animations;
3. Swap cancel, to bypass last skill animation before... bar swaping, yes! Makes the process faster;
4. Roll cancel, with Executioner for example helps finishing someone while avoiding damage, and bypass as well the skill animation.

I didn't mention block cancel because I don't think it is really useful most of the time, especially since the cast times on several ultimates (basically the ones that I mainly play). It drains your stamina for not much.

There are more forms of animation cancels and more complex but also more situational. The ones listed are the first to learn imo. Kristofer's video linked before is a good tutorial.

Block cancelling whips is great on a MagDk after you’ve Fossilized a fool and you’re gonna leap him right after.

I would argue that block cancelling is the most important to learn outside of light weaving. It speeds up your gameplay tremendously, and it is the most applicable ani cancel that can be used in any situation, if you block cancel quickly it has negligible effects on your sustain. Block cancelling your cc is very important to land guaranteed damage before the target breaks free and dodges.

This is entirely untrue. When you land a CC via ability use, you can not execute another skill until the GCD refreshes, of which block canceling does absolutely nothing for you. You could hit a CC, then hammer on your next ability or you could hit your CC then immediately hit block to cut off the recovery animation and THEN hammer on your next ability - in both scenarios the follow up action bar ability fires at the exact same time.

MentalxHammer

exeeter702 wrote: »

MentalxHammer wrote: »

JumpmanLane wrote: »

Kalixte wrote: »

Ordered by importance:

1. Light attack weave, smoothing and adding a ton of damage to your rotation;
2. Bash cancel (depends of your class, the weapons and the skills you play), adds a bit of damage and speed up animations;
3. Swap cancel, to bypass last skill animation before... bar swaping, yes! Makes the process faster;
4. Roll cancel, with Executioner for example helps finishing someone while avoiding damage, and bypass as well the skill animation.

I didn't mention block cancel because I don't think it is really useful most of the time, especially since the cast times on several ultimates (basically the ones that I mainly play). It drains your stamina for not much.

There are more forms of animation cancels and more complex but also more situational. The ones listed are the first to learn imo. Kristofer's video linked before is a good tutorial.

Block cancelling whips is great on a MagDk after you’ve Fossilized a fool and you’re gonna leap him right after.

I would argue that block cancelling is the most important to learn outside of light weaving. It speeds up your gameplay tremendously, and it is the most applicable ani cancel that can be used in any situation, if you block cancel quickly it has negligible effects on your sustain. Block cancelling your cc is very important to land guaranteed damage before the target breaks free and dodges.

This is entirely untrue. When you land a CC via ability use, you can not execute another skill until the GCD refreshes, of which block canceling does absolutely nothing for you. You could hit a CC, then hammer on your next ability or you could hit your CC then immediately hit block to cut off the recovery animation and THEN hammer on your next ability - in both scenarios the follow up action bar ability fires at the exact same time.

I understand your point about the 1s gcd but there are many stuns with long animations such as binding javelin, if you want to land a light attack before you land another skill you must cancel the javelin, especially if you are moving into a cast time ulti.

exeeter702

MentalxHammer wrote: »

exeeter702 wrote: »

MentalxHammer wrote: »

JumpmanLane wrote: »

Kalixte wrote: »

Ordered by importance:

1. Light attack weave, smoothing and adding a ton of damage to your rotation;
2. Bash cancel (depends of your class, the weapons and the skills you play), adds a bit of damage and speed up animations;
3. Swap cancel, to bypass last skill animation before... bar swaping, yes! Makes the process faster;
4. Roll cancel, with Executioner for example helps finishing someone while avoiding damage, and bypass as well the skill animation.

I didn't mention block cancel because I don't think it is really useful most of the time, especially since the cast times on several ultimates (basically the ones that I mainly play). It drains your stamina for not much.

There are more forms of animation cancels and more complex but also more situational. The ones listed are the first to learn imo. Kristofer's video linked before is a good tutorial.

Block cancelling whips is great on a MagDk after you’ve Fossilized a fool and you’re gonna leap him right after.

I would argue that block cancelling is the most important to learn outside of light weaving. It speeds up your gameplay tremendously, and it is the most applicable ani cancel that can be used in any situation, if you block cancel quickly it has negligible effects on your sustain. Block cancelling your cc is very important to land guaranteed damage before the target breaks free and dodges.

This is entirely untrue. When you land a CC via ability use, you can not execute another skill until the GCD refreshes, of which block canceling does absolutely nothing for you. You could hit a CC, then hammer on your next ability or you could hit your CC then immediately hit block to cut off the recovery animation and THEN hammer on your next ability - in both scenarios the follow up action bar ability fires at the exact same time.

I understand your point about the 1s gcd but there are many stuns with long animations such as binding javelin, if you want to land a light attack before you land another skill you must cancel the javelin, especially if you are moving into a cast time ulti.

There are in fact skills that have recovery animations that creep past the GCD time but they are very minor in the 2ms / 2 frames range and a light attack will cut them off regardless.

MentalxHammer

exeeter702 wrote: »

MentalxHammer wrote: »

exeeter702 wrote: »

MentalxHammer wrote: »

JumpmanLane wrote: »

Kalixte wrote: »

Ordered by importance:

1. Light attack weave, smoothing and adding a ton of damage to your rotation;
2. Bash cancel (depends of your class, the weapons and the skills you play), adds a bit of damage and speed up animations;
3. Swap cancel, to bypass last skill animation before... bar swaping, yes! Makes the process faster;
4. Roll cancel, with Executioner for example helps finishing someone while avoiding damage, and bypass as well the skill animation.

I didn't mention block cancel because I don't think it is really useful most of the time, especially since the cast times on several ultimates (basically the ones that I mainly play). It drains your stamina for not much.

There are more forms of animation cancels and more complex but also more situational. The ones listed are the first to learn imo. Kristofer's video linked before is a good tutorial.

Block cancelling whips is great on a MagDk after you’ve Fossilized a fool and you’re gonna leap him right after.

I would argue that block cancelling is the most important to learn outside of light weaving. It speeds up your gameplay tremendously, and it is the most applicable ani cancel that can be used in any situation, if you block cancel quickly it has negligible effects on your sustain. Block cancelling your cc is very important to land guaranteed damage before the target breaks free and dodges.

This is entirely untrue. When you land a CC via ability use, you can not execute another skill until the GCD refreshes, of which block canceling does absolutely nothing for you. You could hit a CC, then hammer on your next ability or you could hit your CC then immediately hit block to cut off the recovery animation and THEN hammer on your next ability - in both scenarios the follow up action bar ability fires at the exact same time.

I understand your point about the 1s gcd but there are many stuns with long animations such as binding javelin, if you want to land a light attack before you land another skill you must cancel the javelin, especially if you are moving into a cast time ulti.

There are in fact skills that have recovery animations that creep past the GCD time but they are very minor in the 2ms / 2 frames range and a light attack will cut them off regardless.

Light attacks will never cut anything off.

exeeter702

MentalxHammer wrote: »

exeeter702 wrote: »

MentalxHammer wrote: »

exeeter702 wrote: »

MentalxHammer wrote: »

JumpmanLane wrote: »

Kalixte wrote: »

Ordered by importance:

1. Light attack weave, smoothing and adding a ton of damage to your rotation;
2. Bash cancel (depends of your class, the weapons and the skills you play), adds a bit of damage and speed up animations;
3. Swap cancel, to bypass last skill animation before... bar swaping, yes! Makes the process faster;
4. Roll cancel, with Executioner for example helps finishing someone while avoiding damage, and bypass as well the skill animation.

I didn't mention block cancel because I don't think it is really useful most of the time, especially since the cast times on several ultimates (basically the ones that I mainly play). It drains your stamina for not much.

There are more forms of animation cancels and more complex but also more situational. The ones listed are the first to learn imo. Kristofer's video linked before is a good tutorial.

Block cancelling whips is great on a MagDk after you’ve Fossilized a fool and you’re gonna leap him right after.

I would argue that block cancelling is the most important to learn outside of light weaving. It speeds up your gameplay tremendously, and it is the most applicable ani cancel that can be used in any situation, if you block cancel quickly it has negligible effects on your sustain. Block cancelling your cc is very important to land guaranteed damage before the target breaks free and dodges.

This is entirely untrue. When you land a CC via ability use, you can not execute another skill until the GCD refreshes, of which block canceling does absolutely nothing for you. You could hit a CC, then hammer on your next ability or you could hit your CC then immediately hit block to cut off the recovery animation and THEN hammer on your next ability - in both scenarios the follow up action bar ability fires at the exact same time.

I understand your point about the 1s gcd but there are many stuns with long animations such as binding javelin, if you want to land a light attack before you land another skill you must cancel the javelin, especially if you are moving into a cast time ulti.

There are in fact skills that have recovery animations that creep past the GCD time but they are very minor in the 2ms / 2 frames range and a light attack will cut them off regardless.

Light attacks will never cut anything off.

Yes they do.... when the GCD is up they will clip the very tail end of a recovery animation off. We are talking about a few frames here. Go in game and test it. If you insist I can make vid demonstrating this.

Block canceling will do nothing for you but potentially eat into your stamina. It does not expedite any delivery of a following skill in any meaningful way.

ShadowKyuubi

You also need to know what the game prioritizes when it comes to animations. There are basically four important animation that you can use to cancel. I am going to rate them from 1 to 4, with 1 being the least important and 4 taking top priority. This means that 2 can override the animation for 1. However, 1 cannot override the animation for 2. Let me know if it doesn't make sense.

1: Light attack animation. This is lowest priority animation, anything you do will cancel this animation. This is also the simplest thing to learn when it comes to animation cancelling. All you have to do is cast a light attack and immediately use any of the following actions (2 - 4).

2: Skill animations. Skill animations can override light attack animations. Usually people cancel light attack animations with a skill, called weaving light attacks, unless they are preparing to swap bars. You animation cancel a light attack with a skill, by using the light attack and then immediately pressing the skill button afterwards.

3: Block animation. The block animation is actually the most useful thing to take advantage when learning to animation cancel, however it is also the hardest thing to get right. The animation for blocking can cancel both a light attack and skill animation. For the most part, you will only use block to cancel skill animation. Each skill is different in terms of when you want to cancel the animation with a block. It takes a lot of practice and is very easy to screw up. Start to early and you actually end up introducing an awkward delay before you can light attack again. Start to late and what is the point of even trying? This also introduces block casting. You can cast skills while holding the block button and it will not drop your block. (Except channeled or abilities with cast times, blocking will cancel not only the animation but the skill in these cases)

4: Bar swapping. This animation overrides any of the previous actions. This is the cause for many tanks going down randomly. If you swap bars while blocking, there is a fraction of a second that you a vulnerable. Time it incorrectly and your block goes down right as the boss's heavy attack hits. Perfecting bar swap cancelling is important as a dps. If done incorrectly, you will end up with a 1 second "cooldown" after a bar swap. Done correctly, you not only get a light attack right before the barswap, you can go into your next skill immediately. This was very important for stamina dps when AY only lasted 5 seconds. If you didn't have this down, you could only cast two skills before having to go back to your front bar. With this perfected, you could cast three.

I could add a fifth for roll dodging, but it isn't that important in my opinion.

In summary, everything can cancel the animation for a light attack. The best way to do it is with a skill, unless you are getting ready to barswap, then cancel a light attack with a bar swap. Most skill animations are cancelled with a block. All you do is quickly press the block and release. Remember, each skill has it "optimal time" for cancelling. You will end up bashing a lot while practicing this. Last, bar swapping can cancel all relevant animation above, but is most effective if a light attack is done right before bar swapping and a skill is done right after.

ShadowKyuubi

If you want to practice light attack weaving, put on the Monster set Maw of the Infernal. I name him Fluffy. While practicing, if Fluffy does not come out for a while, you are not light attacking enough. When I practiced, I had Fluffy out most of the time. Sometimes he would immediately spawn after despawning, part of it is luck, but he should be down for more than a few seconds. This doesn't mean cheat and only use light attacks. It means make sure that light attacks are going off between skills, if they are, then fluffy will be out quite a bit.

A less fun way...just use a light attack tracker. You want to be at 0.8 light attacks per second. That is a reasonable number to aim for