Why does it feel like I can't attack as often as my opponent?

Zama666

Hello,

When I get into 1v1 Situations, it seems like i am clicking my attack buttons and nothing happens, until after they get 5 attacks on me.

I know there is a cool down, and I guess that is on skills.

So am I supposed to use a skill, then LA LA LA then skill again?

Should I get a metronome?

Hey what do you call a stout bearded subway commuter with a steady cadence? a METRO GNOME....
(ok, I will stick to pvp)

What is the secret?

OBJnoob

Nope! So... You can perform 1 light attack every second and you can also perform 1 skill every second... And you can also perform 1 "action" every second. Maybe more for the actions... And to be clear, what I mean by "actions" is like block, roll, bash, whatever.

The cooldowns are separate. I don't even think there is a cooldown on "actions" but there is on light attacks and skills.

An action will cut short the animation of a skill BUT, if timed right, the skill will still happen. You won't see it but you will see the numbers, in other words. Similarly, a skill will cut short the animation of a light attack.

So ideally what you want to do is LA-skill-bash, in that order, every second. You will hit the target 3 times every second. Or maybe more than 3 if we take into account DoTs, enchants, and procs-- but let's ignore that for now to keep it simple.

Now bash isn't the only "action" you can do that is just what I used as an example. Bash-weaving, as it's called, it very rough on the stamina and I only really do it if a) I'm sure I'm about to kill someone and just pouring as much damage as I can b) I think they're about to cast an interruptible ability and I'm trying to stop it c) I'm being a jerk and stopping someone from escaping through a door in cyrodiil.

Block-canceling a skill is a more all-around useful tactic. Or barswapping. Or rolldodging.

It does have to be in that order. LA - Skill - Action. This is what's known as animation canceling.

Also know that you can do this too quickly and it won't work because of the cooldown. So that's where the metronome jokingly comes into play. But for most people I think we just practice and call it good enough.

Zama666

@OBJnoob yer Saint!

I bash like a crazy person, then try to puncture, and power slam.

Just feels like I get 12 attack for my every 1. Guess I have to learn the timing

OBJnoob

It could also be DoTs that are eating you up "stealing" your heals. In my experience it's normally that. Or of course well timed delayed burst can seem like they're doing more.

But practice the animation canceling thing it helps you do more for real.

Zama666

Thanks @OBJnoob ...it always seem to go to that...practice...

loosej

When it comes to timing, the game actually has a built-in animation to show the global cooldown, no metronome needed.

Unfortunately, zos has decided to not make it available as a setting. You can enable it using the following script:

/script ZO_ActionButtons_ToggleShowGlobalCooldown()

This will only work for your current session though. There's an add-on (conveniently named "Built-in Global Cooldown") which will run it for you whenever you log in.

katorga

loosej wrote: »

When it comes to timing, the game actually has a built-in animation to show the global cooldown, no metronome needed.

Unfortunately, zos has decided to not make it available as a setting. You can enable it using the following script:

/script ZO_ActionButtons_ToggleShowGlobalCooldown()

This will only work for your current session though. There's an add-on (conveniently named "Built-in Global Cooldown") which will run it for you whenever you log in.

Thanks. 10 years on and I never knew that was there. wow.

Theignson

In PvP people want "burst" damage, which means, everything hits at once.

This is why the Vateshran staff/ master's dual wield is so popular now (and so hated).

Warden is easiest class to do this, let's illustrate with a warden in Vate staff, master dual wield, maarselok monster set, and Fire set.

Warden puts elemental susceptibility on you, then switches bars, casts shalk, then winds up dual wield heavy attack. How many things could hit you at one?

Vate: dot plus 3 status effect, shalks, heavy attack from both bars (2 hits) weapon enchants from both dual wield weapons (make them proc a different status effect than Vate= two more status effects from the weapon enchants), Maarselok hits 4 times, fire procs.

Lesse: that is potentially 13 things hitting you. They cancel it into a dawnbreaker and you are dead.

Of course usually not all those things go off, but it is easy to get 9 things hitting someone at once.

Sorcs, Necros etc have other ways to do this as do most classes with a delayed hit ability.

In this case ez to avoid, as soon as you see the Vate tether, you could stun/root them. Move aside from the shalk, block the heavy attack, etc

Janni

There's a lot of factors to take into consideration. The first is are your opponents getting more attacks than makes sense? Like are they hitting you with 5 or 6 *skills* in a single global cooldown? If so that it probably because of your internet. Sometimes the secret really is just... have better internet. If you watch a lot of good players that stream you'll notice that their ping is usually in the low double digits, like around 30 to 60. That's not all of it either. Having *stable* internet is arguably even more important. It might be that your ISP isn't sending you a constant stream of data all the time or it could be that they aren't maintaining a solid connection to the servers. If this is the case you will often see those fights where you just plop over dead and never even see or hear what happened! It could also be that your home network isn't optimally configured. Setting up your router correctly can be important too other wise it might be buffering up data and blasting it to your game in large chunks but at much lower frequencies. Look into something called bufferbloat and MTU and see that you are set up right here.

Finally, the other thing is that maybe they are simply not attacking you as much as you think but instead using a combination of effects that all go off at once that overwhelm you. I know my warden is capable of opening up with 9 unique sources of damage from a cold start with my very first volley... that's not 9 attacks mind you, that's just a single heavy weave into a skill. And if they fight has been going and I have some dots and effects ticking I can get even more damage to land in a single attack.

CameraBeardThePirate

OBJnoob wrote: »

Nope! So... You can perform 1 light attack every second and you can also perform 1 skill every second... And you can also perform 1 "action" every second. Maybe more for the actions... And to be clear, what I mean by "actions" is like block, roll, bash, whatever.

The cooldowns are separate. I don't even think there is a cooldown on "actions" but there is on light attacks and skills.

An action will cut short the animation of a skill BUT, if timed right, the skill will still happen. You won't see it but you will see the numbers, in other words. Similarly, a skill will cut short the animation of a light attack.

So ideally what you want to do is LA-skill-bash, in that order, every second. You will hit the target 3 times every second. Or maybe more than 3 if we take into account DoTs, enchants, and procs-- but let's ignore that for now to keep it simple.

Now bash isn't the only "action" you can do that is just what I used as an example. Bash-weaving, as it's called, it very rough on the stamina and I only really do it if a) I'm sure I'm about to kill someone and just pouring as much damage as I can b) I think they're about to cast an interruptible ability and I'm trying to stop it c) I'm being a jerk and stopping someone from escaping through a door in cyrodiil.

Block-canceling a skill is a more all-around useful tactic. Or barswapping. Or rolldodging.

It does have to be in that order. LA - Skill - Action. This is what's known as animation canceling.

Also know that you can do this too quickly and it won't work because of the cooldown. So that's where the metronome jokingly comes into play. But for most people I think we just practice and call it good enough.

Adding to this - bashes do have a cooldown of 0.33333 seconds. This means you can fit 3 bashes into a single global. Weaving 3 bashes is a little more finicky, and you'll usually only manage to get 2 off during each global, but I did want to point out the bash global.

For bash builds, being able to bash 3 times a second is pretty huge for proccing sets/enchants/poisons etc. and should be considered when making a bash build.

Necrotech_Master

the 2 reasons i could see are:

1. lag
2. procs

ive seen some cases of lag where animations failed to appear and i was hit out of the blue with a bunch of dmg

ive also seen where i had a bunch of dot procs on me and they all happened to tick at the same time while they were doing an attack, so it looked like i was getting hit by 5 things at once

a simple example (that might be pretty common due to the meta)

you get hit by blood craze

in 2 seconds, you will potentially see several things

blood craze (non dot portion)
blood craze (dot portion, at least 1 tick)
weapon enchantment or poison
gear proc 1 (on initial hit)
gear proc 2 (1 second later due to burst proc rules)
status effect for hemorrhaging (from the bleed dmg type on blood craze)
up to 2 additional status effects (due to user dual wielding, if they are using enchantments and have 2 different enchantments, does not apply if user is using a poison)

and all of that is literally from just using 1 attack

Starlight_Knight

I have played PVP since launch as my main activity and this gets me as well. Its a PVP issue, (Ping vs Ping)
Sometimes you just get days where stuff is slow to work and de-syncs are big.
Its infuriating for sure, when break free takes 2 seconds to cast etc etc etc.

That usually means that you've taken about 2 seconds worth of damage before you even know about it.

A good way to tell is with things like death recaps. if you can visually see what killed you on the screen but your death recaps says something else. usually means you're out of sync.

I've been whispered and accused of cheating before because people have died to my abilities though walls and such, investigating this shows them dead at my feet on my screen but they can be as far as 30 meters away. the De-syncs, input and skill delays as well as the hard CC breaks in this game are why it will never have competitive pvp.
I'm pretty sure this is why zos just fill it with op broken proc sets, just keeping us busy trying out the next thing.

Don't take it to hard, it's probably not a skill issue.

Janni

Starlight_Knight wrote: »

I have played PVP since launch as my main activity and this gets me as well. Its a PVP issue, (Ping vs Ping)
Sometimes you just get days where stuff is slow to work and de-syncs are big.
Its infuriating for sure, when break free takes 2 seconds to cast etc etc etc.

That usually means that you've taken about 2 seconds worth of damage before you even know about it.

A good way to tell is with things like death recaps. if you can visually see what killed you on the screen but your death recaps says something else. usually means you're out of sync.

I've been whispered and accused of cheating before because people have died to my abilities though walls and such, investigating this shows them dead at my feet on my screen but they can be as far as 30 meters away. the De-syncs, input and skill delays as well as the hard CC breaks in this game are why it will never have competitive pvp.
I'm pretty sure this is why zos just fill it with op broken proc sets, just keeping us busy trying out the next thing.

Don't take it to hard, it's probably not a skill issue.

Omg this so much lol. I cannot count the number of times I haven't been able to attack my opponent when they are right in front of me but when I run into a building and up the stairs their melee attack still managed to land even though I have a whole friggin building between me and them! You really do just have to give up the notion of skill sometimes and chalk it up to technology or just plain luck. It happens against you and for you all the time.

TankHealz2015

This thread is very helpful.

rauyran

On Linux+Proton there are sometimes noticeable input delays of several hundred ms to contend with too.

Starlight_Knight

Indeed, remember that all movement is client side, so thats happening on your game, thats why movement isnt laggy, but your game dose have to tell the server where you are...
if you ever try to get out of the way of a ball group for instance, you might on your end think, ill wait till they get here then move out the way, but when you try you cant move and nothing works,
Thats because on their screen they're already on top of you and you're dead lol.

People have often said zergs gets priority on the server and it can sure feel like that at times but the reality of it is they've just all hit their buttons before you even know about it.

Another thing to note is your internet as well, if there is anyone watching a TV on the net while you're playing ESO it can be a killer on your upload times, even with good internet, TV's have something called TV priority that you can disable on some routers, but, its something to keep in mind for those moments in 1v1s where nothing you press is working and your opponent is hammering you left right and centre,
Things like this is why sometimes even in PVE dps can drop a lot, light attacks can become hard to weave etc.

SandandStars

if you have a wireless router you actually are slower than everyone who doesn’t

Zama666

So here is an example of what I mean

A much more skill player laid the boots to me.... and I want to play like that.
It just seems they get twice as much damage/attaches as me

So this is my damage on them:

Note the number of attacks:



And this is the beating they lay on me



I am not saying we are equal blow for blow, but they were much more capable of protecting and dealing damage on me.

There was not even enough time to flip weapons, heal or Aurora Javelin them to get some distance.

The opponent seems to have a lot of things triggering per attack where I seem to just do one thing.

Thoughts?

Tankz

Z

i11ionward

Zama666 wrote: »

So here is an example of what I mean

A much more skill player laid the boots to me.... and I want to play like that.
It just seems they get twice as much damage/attaches as me

So this is my damage on them:

Note the number of attacks:



And this is the beating they lay on me



I am not saying we are equal blow for blow, but they were much more capable of protecting and dealing damage on me.

There was not even enough time to flip weapons, heal or Aurora Javelin them to get some distance.

The opponent seems to have a lot of things triggering per attack where I seem to just do one thing.

Thoughts?

Tankz

Z

It would be much more informative if you sent the battle log from CMX. From the damage numbers, I see that the enemy beat you, and you didn’t even press the block.

Janni

Yeah, it's really hard to tell with that alone what happened and when. There should be a tab called Combat Log that lists the the timestamps that everything happened. There's a handy addon called 'Recount' that does the same thing but seems to be much lighter so it used by a lot of folks when in Cyrodiil, IC, and BGs. Just keep in mind that those timestamps are based on when your client received the updates. So lag can affect them and sometimes you'll see very weird stuff that doesn't entirely make sense. That just means you had a lag spike at that time.

A good nightblade and a tiny little bit of lag can do some surprising things, though. For example, Incap has a cast time. During that cast time they can also hold down their attack button which means their next regular attack will actually be a heavy attack. It also means their next skill will come out only 0.6 seconds later rather than a full second later. Yeah, casts times on ultimates is a dumb idea. this is one of a hundred reasons why lol. Then the enchantment from the weapon and any status effects it can proc goes off too. So in that first half second you've already been hit with four or five sources of damage. Merciless is also weird because it has a minimum travel time of about half a second which if not dodged or blocked means they can have another attack ready only half a second after it lands. I'm not saying this is exactly how it all went down but def there are ways to manipulate the odd cooldowns after certain skills to make more damage land at strange intervals.

All the other things in there are just the result of enchantments and secondary status effects which have been chosen to maximize their potential damage output. Combine that with several crits in a row and maybe a bit of lag (which happens when lots of stuff happens all at once) and you've got a big burst of damage in a very short period of time.

CameraBeardThePirate

Zama666 wrote: »

So here is an example of what I mean

A much more skill player laid the boots to me.... and I want to play like that.
It just seems they get twice as much damage/attaches as me

So this is my damage on them:

Note the number of attacks:



And this is the beating they lay on me



I am not saying we are equal blow for blow, but they were much more capable of protecting and dealing damage on me.

There was not even enough time to flip weapons, heal or Aurora Javelin them to get some distance.

The opponent seems to have a lot of things triggering per attack where I seem to just do one thing.

Thoughts?

Tankz

Z

Right off the bat I can tell you aren't bashing nearly fast enough. You landed only 2 bashes on them - but you can bash up to 3 times a second.

Running a bash build complicates things a little bit, but outside of bash builds, you should be casting a skill every second. If you werent playing a bash build, I'd tell you that you also need to be light attacking every second - you can fit 1 light attack and 1 skill into every global. The global cooldown is 1s, and if you aren't using every global to its full potential, you're going to be at a disadvantage against someone who is.

Since you're on a bash build, it's a little more forgivable to not cast every global, but you should still be weaving power bash and regular bashes every second. As I said, you can fit 3 bashes into a single global - weaving a skill will make it closer to 2 bashes per second, but that's still far more than your combat metrics show.

ESO pvp is fast. You should rarely have "downtime" where you aren't casting a skill.

Zama666

@CameraBeardThePirate
Thank you for that tip!!!!!
Will work on bashing more!

When you say "can fit 1 light attack and 1 skill into every global"
That means bash the jab (in the case of Templar) or power bash?
Is bash and LA the same?

Tankz!

Janni

One other weird thing about power bash - it actually has a hidden cast time. You'll notice that the damage comes out at a slight delay. You can in fact do a regular bash once before the skill hits and then again right after. It takes some practice to get used to this but its something to keep in mind.

My friend also has a word for gap closers like charging shield. He calls them 'self stuns' lol. They can really lock you into state for a long time depending on the distance being traveled. But you can actually block during this time so make good use of that to protect yourself otherwise you could be at a complete disadvantage because your opponent can land attacks while you are still traveling to them.

Zama666

Janni wrote: »

One other weird thing about power bash - it actually has a hidden cast time. You'll notice that the damage comes out at a slight delay. You can in fact do a regular bash once before the skill hits and then again right after. It takes some practice to get used to this but its something to keep in mind.

My friend also has a word for gap closers like charging shield. He calls them 'self stuns' lol. They can really lock you into state for a long time depending on the distance being traveled. But you can actually block during this time so make good use of that to protect yourself otherwise you could be at a complete disadvantage because your opponent can land attacks while you are still traveling to them.

Wow! Did not know that...So I should charge and then hold block???

Janni

Zama666 wrote: »

Wow! Did not know that...So I should charge and then hold block???

So uh, I was actually just testing it out myself. I'm not entirely sure if it works anymore lol It seems you might have to already be blocking when you cast the charge. But don't quote me on that one. You might want to test it out with a friend.

CameraBeardThePirate

Zama666 wrote: »

@CameraBeardThePirate
Thank you for that tip!!!!!
Will work on bashing more!

When you say "can fit 1 light attack and 1 skill into every global"
That means bash the jab (in the case of Templar) or power bash?
Is bash and LA the same?

Tankz!

Light attack = 1/s, can be used in the same global as a skill
Skills = 1/s
Bash = 3/s however you'll only really be able to fit 2 within a global if you cast a skill because of how the timing works. This means that you can generally get ability > bash > bash > ability >bash > bash > ability.

You can also replace a bash with a light attack. Light > ability > bash.

StaticWave

Zama666 wrote: »

So here is an example of what I mean

A much more skill player laid the boots to me.... and I want to play like that.
It just seems they get twice as much damage/attaches as me

So this is my damage on them:

Note the number of attacks:



And this is the beating they lay on me



I am not saying we are equal blow for blow, but they were much more capable of protecting and dealing damage on me.

There was not even enough time to flip weapons, heal or Aurora Javelin them to get some distance.

The opponent seems to have a lot of things triggering per attack where I seem to just do one thing.

Thoughts?

Tankz

Z

You didn't include the duration of the fight but I'm going to assume that these CMX screenshots were of the same fight. I'll make my best attempt at analyzing the fight from what's given.

Let's ignore all the status effects and DoTs, we can see that your opponent had 4 light attacks, 1 heavy attack, and 1 bash. He also casted 5 abilities ( Powered Extraction, Incap, Surprise Attack, Assassin's Will, and Executioner). This means his entire combo looked like this:

Light attack or heavy attack + Powered Extraction ==> light attack or heavy attack + Incap ==> light attack + Assassin's Will ==> light attack + Surprise Attack + bash ==> light attack + Executioner

Looking at your CMX, we can see that you casted 2 abilities and 2 bashes. Assuming that you Shield Charged right at the start of the duel, then my best guess is:

1) He blocked your shield charge, casted a light attack + Powered Extraction, roll dodged away, then heavy weaved into an Incap stun and followed up with the combo I described above.

2) He blocked your shield charge, casted a light attack + Powered Extraction, roll dodged away, went into Cloak, then heavy weaved into an Incap stun and followed up with the combo I described above.

You managed to land a Power slam + 2 bashes either before the Incap stun or after the Incap stun. Either way, he didn't necessarily land more attacks. Assuming you're bashing as much as possible and casting as many abilities as possible within the GCD limit, then he probably avoided a large chunk of your attacks by dodge cancelling or Cloaking.

DinoZavr

Zama, there are two useful addons (for PC players)
the first is Combat Metronome - it estimates the lag and suggests when to use a light attack and then immediately the skill
the second is Light Attack Helper - it indicated if you have actually succeeded in weaving or not, displaying counter
(there is also a huge third one, showing not only weaving results, but your rotation as well, though, personally, i don't use it because it eats some of the display space - it is WeaveDelays)

Zama666

@DinoZavr let me give that a try!!!!!!!!!!!!
Thanks!
Had no idea!

Zama666

So here is me in a group fustercluck of a situation

My damage:


My Healz:



My Death



I guess in this is situation it is difficult for anyone to track who is who....

Iriidius

Theignson wrote: »

In PvP people want "burst" damage, which means, everything hits at once.

This is why the Vateshran staff/ master's dual wield is so popular now (and so hated).

Warden is easiest class to do this, let's illustrate with a warden in Vate staff, master dual wield, maarselok monster set, and Fire set.

Warden puts elemental susceptibility on you, then switches bars, casts shalk, then winds up dual wield heavy attack. How many things could hit you at one?

Vate: dot plus 3 status effect, shalks, heavy attack from both bars (2 hits) weapon enchants from both dual wield weapons (make them proc a different status effect than Vate= two more status effects from the weapon enchants), Maarselok hits 4 times, fire procs.

Lesse: that is potentially 13 things hitting you. They cancel it into a dawnbreaker and you are dead.

Of course usually not all those things go off, but it is easy to get 9 things hitting someone at once.

Sorcs, Necros etc have other ways to do this as do most classes with a delayed hit ability.

In this case ez to avoid, as soon as you see the Vate tether, you could stun/root them. Move aside from the shalk, block the heavy attack, etc

Burst is not why/what people use master dw and vateshran destro(for)! Maybe they hit 8-10 times when applying them, but they hit 8-10 for low dmg.
8-10*1k dmg is not what oneshots players/more useful than 1*10k dmg for a oneshot. But the DoTs and statuseffects hit every (2) second(s). Multiple unblockable undodgeable low dmg Hits every second melting threw corrosive deal more dmg than you can‘t outheal or force you to spam burstheal and cast heals so much you run out of ressoursses. Vateshran destro and master dw are not used for burst but for pressure.