Heavy Attack on Live - what is it?

Dusk_Coven

Monster Heavy Attack:

• Player sees: Monster made themselves vulnerable (time, slower, tell) to wind up for a big attack. Attack landed and did a lot of damage. Yup I should have blocked it.
• What actually happened: Monster made themselves vulnerable (time, slower, tell) to wind up for a big attack. Attack landed and did a lot of damage. Yup I should have blocked it.
• Final Score: Result intuitively matched what they saw. Pass.

Player Heavy Attack:

• Player sees: Player makes themselves vulnerable to wind up for a big attack. Attack lands. Hmm. If I spent all that time light attacking I might have done more damage. And my big-effort attack actually revitalized me (restored resources)? Hmm.
• What actually happened: Player rested during that wind up period (got back resources), then landed a not-impressive attack (which didn't match what the attack looked like at all). Completely different from animation.
• Final Score: Result doesn't match what they saw nor did it correlate with what everyone else (monsters) was getting. Fail.
• Exception: Magicka staves, IF you have the correct passives, give you special effects from Heavy Attacks as advertised by the skill.

For a Heavy Attack to be more intuitive, it typically needs to be two types of things:

• An "unskilled" maneuver that's a harder hitting version of a basic Light attack. That's why it's distinguished by the name "Heavy", versus "Light". If it does unimpressive damage it should also do something else. In ESO, that "something else" is to knock someone down who is off balance. But this is typically a rare circumstance that's hard to time; I doubt many new players actively try to look for and exploit that opportunity. So Heavy Attack is relegated to restoring resources -- which feels weird.
• Renamed/reframed as an alternative move, typically with a specific purpose. For example in Dauntless, hammers are combo melee weapon (hammer) and shotgun. The "Heavy Attack" is firing that shotgun.