Animation cancelling

Tanhe

In an attempt to improve my gameplay, I was told about light attack weaving. Some googling and YouTube's later and I'm led to believe that the only path to solid dps is to make it so that I never see my character perform any skill animations and only using instant cast skills.

Is this really true?

At face value it sounds ridiculous. And from my perspective also like why wouldn't I want to watch my character do stuff but instead just sorta contort about.

I just don't understand. This game is so great otherwise, I just can't wrap my head around this.

ZeroXFF

Depending on what kind of build you're playing, yeah, you won't see any skill animations (some stam builds incorporate bash weaving too). But if you only do LA weaving, you will only miss the animations of light attacks and the last skill before you bar swap.

As for it being stupid, yes it is, but people call it "skill", and there is vehement opposition to making the game look good and having sensible controls.

NoodleESO

You can watch your character perform the animation and still pull acceptable dps for 90% of end game content.
For the last 10% the animation of your skills will be your last concern. For speed runs and vet trials you will need to time your weaving accurately to complete those modes, this is the skill gap welcome to eso stop trying to change it

Sanguinor2

You can do all but the hardest Content with heavy attack builds where you will see everything happen and dont have to light attack weave.
If you want to do godslayer then you better start cancelling those animations. For nearly everything else you can do whatever you want as Long as you understand how to make a solid build and a solid Rotation.

NoodleESO

Tanhe wrote: »

In an attempt to improve my gameplay, I was told about light attack weaving. Some googling and YouTube's later and I'm led to believe that the only path to solid dps is to make it so that I never see my character perform any skill animations and only using instant cast skills.

Is this really true?

At face value it sounds ridiculous. And from my perspective also like why wouldn't I want to watch my character do stuff but instead just sorta contort about.

I just don't understand. This game is so great otherwise, I just can't wrap my head around this.

To be fair if your are busy focusing on what your character is doing then you probably are not watching for mechanics. So it sounds like you are pretty far off from worrying about weaving.

Tanhe

NoodleESO wrote: »

To be fair if your are busy focusing on what your character is doing then you probably are not watching for mechanics. So it sounds like you are pretty far off from worrying about weaving.

This is a very fair point. I probably only watch my toon when I'm playing solo anyway where top dps doesn't really matter. In the limited amount of trials experience I have I was more watching the mechanics than anything else you're right.

And then the rotation needs to go on autopilot/muscle memory anyways.

Like I said, I love the game...was mostly just curious about this design decision as it just feels weird compared to other games.

JinMori

Tanhe wrote: »

NoodleESO wrote: »

To be fair if your are busy focusing on what your character is doing then you probably are not watching for mechanics. So it sounds like you are pretty far off from worrying about weaving.

This is a very fair point. I probably only watch my toon when I'm playing solo anyway where top dps doesn't really matter. In the limited amount of trials experience I have I was more watching the mechanics than anything else you're right.

And then the rotation needs to go on autopilot/muscle memory anyways.

Like I said, I love the game...was mostly just curious about this design decision as it just feels weird compared to other games.

Would you say the same about wow animation cancelling?

Afterall you are cancelling your auto attack animation by using abilities, the only difference here is that light attacks are player skill.

Animation cancelling is a thing that exists in pretty much every game, but in eso you hear people complaining about it all the time.

The reason why they complain about it here is not because muh immersion, or, the character looks twitchy or things like that, it's because it's a skill, and like every skill, some are better at doing it, and some are worse. That's about it.

WrathOfInnos

You can Light Attack weave and still see skill animations. It’s when you add bash weaving or block cancelling that things start to look a little off. Luckily you don’t need to block cancel at all, and bash weaving is a pretty minimal DPS gain that is entirely optional (if you wear Maarselok set you’ll want to bash once every 7s).

I’ll agree that it’s best to stick with primarily instant cast skills, since most skills with a cast time don’t deal enough damage to justify the slow windup.

Helgarth

It's also bugging me pretty much, I just weave, I don't animation cancel, we have so few identity right now that at least, the colors is something that make me feel like playing my class... Somehow 😅

I would say it comes from a clunky combat design at start but got so embraced that it won't change. I don't like it, but many do. I doubt much about it to be changed anytime soon, that said, we'll see on how it is going with the light and heavy attack changes.

Juhasow

Tanhe wrote: »

In an attempt to improve my gameplay, I was told about light attack weaving. Some googling and YouTube's later and I'm led to believe that the only path to solid dps is to make it so that I never see my character perform any skill animations and only using instant cast skills.

Is this really true?

At face value it sounds ridiculous. And from my perspective also like why wouldn't I want to watch my character do stuff but instead just sorta contort about.

I just don't understand. This game is so great otherwise, I just can't wrap my head around this.

No it's not true. Either You've misunderstood something or somebody lied to You. You can do both perform good numbers while still seeing animations of attacks and use chanelled/cast time skills in Your rotations (usually as spammable abilities or long duration buffs). Light attack weaving on decent level just clips finishing moves of the animation which is usually showing going back to basic stance so even when light attack weaving You'll be seeing animation of abilities and weapon atacks. Everything will be just happening fast. But if You dont like fast and complicated rotations You can try easy and slow ones. They'll still give You more then enough DPS to compete almost everything game have to offer and since those animations are slower You'll have time to watch all the animations.

idk

It is not true. Animations still occur. They are just slightly truncated but combat looks fine. If you are hearing from someone that you never see animations with AC it sounds like you are listening to someone who does not like AC. I have seen all sorts of false comments from those who are challenged with it.

Iskiab

With how animation canceling works you could do it so you’d see no animation at all if you’re fast enough with bash/block. They’ve changed it so you’ll always see some of the animation now.

For PvE animation cancelling was only important on some skills because the animation was so long it’d interfere with casting the next skill. It wasn’t that big of a deal.

PvP was different, when you cast a skill you do the animation and damage happens at the end of the animation. Cancelling the animation allowed you to really increase your burst, especially when cancelling executes.

I think their thinking in the changes is animations are important so you can see when you need to block hard hitting attacks, so they added the block changes and can always see certain animations now, even if cancelled.

The way the game works is like this:
1. Can use a skill against an opponent? Yes. Player casts skill
2. Animation happens
3. Target still in range? Have line of sight? Then damage happens

Basicly animations turned every ability into a cast time attack and cancelling it removed the cast time.