ok well enough of this whinny thread. Yall have a nice day ya hear

Playing MMOs for as far back as I can remember, players have constantly been finding/taking advantage of bugs, glitches or mechanics that either give them a sharper edge in PvE/PvP or to make sure they're always on top.

I've seen others Animation Cancelling, allowing themselves to still throw out their spells, their heavy hitting melee attacks. I've tried it myself. After several hours of it, however, I found it clunky, visually displeasing and made light/heavy attack weaving cumbersome. What didn't feel right about it is initiating a "Wrecking Blow", animation cancel, charge up a Heavy Attack, only o see the attack visual from Wrecking Blow still apply to the enemy, while my sword is still winding back behind my character. No where does that or should that make any sense and, in my opinion, is a bug. Using Animation Cancelling to get out of red zones or to block an attack (instead of attacking yourself) is perfectly fine.

In the end, someone else doing this doesn't effect my overall game play, nor does it ruin the game for me. The more passionate players that want to crucify others that do this need to lighten up. This isn't breaking your game nor the way you play. Just have fun and let others do the same.

Weaving in this game is brilliant. Animation canceling is not. If you push block to interrupt a ability it should hold block for 1 second, even if you cancel that one abilitys animation in that 1 second it will be less worth it to cancel animations with block.

Doing this by hand is a pain and letting people do it with macros is where I get irritated, when people show their top end dps in fights where they are stacked I always wonder if they use macros, some people don't but I know some do and it's the only advantage in this game that I dislike.

Skwor wrote: »

Dymence wrote: »

Animation cancelling does absolutely nothing.

Yes, you can cancel your animations by blocking and what not, but the ONLY thing this does, is make the animation invisible.

It does in no way, shape, or form decrease the actual animation duration; it merely makes it invisible.

Medium attack weaving is an integral part of the game when it comes to maximizing your dps output, and the key to this is learning the animation times to execute your rotation as fast as possible.

You are wrong in the entirity, BOL can be nearly instant cast by canceling the animation. Canceling the animation does allow the skill to trigger sooner and the casting of another skill faster.

No, cancelling the animation for BOL doesn't do anything either. I tested it after reading just to be sure.

Any increase in speed you notice is purely your imagination because it looks 'different'.

Animation cancelling is not the problem. Macros are the problem.

Dymence wrote: »

Skwor wrote: »

Dymence wrote: »

Animation cancelling does absolutely nothing.

Yes, you can cancel your animations by blocking and what not, but the ONLY thing this does, is make the animation invisible.

It does in no way, shape, or form decrease the actual animation duration; it merely makes it invisible.

Medium attack weaving is an integral part of the game when it comes to maximizing your dps output, and the key to this is learning the animation times to execute your rotation as fast as possible.

You are wrong in the entirity, BOL can be nearly instant cast by canceling the animation. Canceling the animation does allow the skill to trigger sooner and the casting of another skill faster.

No, cancelling the animation for BOL doesn't do anything either. I tested it after reading just to be sure.

Any increase in speed you notice is purely your imagination because it looks 'different'.

Animation cancelling is not the problem. Macros are the problem.

Question is where are macros the problem? Most times the macros by themselves are less responsive than a person, and few times they affect others outside of PVP. This isn't to say I like them though.


The bigger issues I see is the lagsploiting with the send it and forget it that is coupled with the macroing. Someone lags in Cyrodiil & does a ton of heavy attacks we on the receiving end shouldn't have them all rain down on us in a single burst.

Either way I don't think its that big of a deal. It is something everyone can learn and takes timing just like in sparring in any sort of ther martial art and the better your timing the better the counter. I can animation cancel like a boss but it's honestly one of the easiest things to do its just timing with your fingers like timing a counter . Although i can see how people don't want this because my surprise attack hits a light attack and the ability and I have it down to where you honestly don't even see the light attack but it's there . But this sometimes messes up my ambush surprise attack bonus so I try not to cancel after my first surprise attack. Just seems like a game mechanic to me at this point. Not weaving would be weird...

OP, I haven't had this issue on PC or the Box concerning animation cancelling. Even block canceling along with dodging is working on both systems.

The only issue I have had is with the Box, Interrupt/Bash doesn't respond if you pull both triggers at the same time. Only works if I stagger the two by holding the block trigger before pulling the attack trigger. Same with dodge rolling although it's 50/50 on whether it will correctly respond. Synergies work fine though, so I don't know. Slight inconvenience.

I don't know why everyone is still pointing fingers around claiming people are 'defending the exploit' while, in reality, animation cancelling really brings nothing.

Seriously guys, animation cancelling makes the animation invisible. That's it. No faster casting, no more damage, just invisible animations. The animation time persists while it's 'cancelled' aka invisible.

I would like to see animation canceling fixed. I dont care if they speed up the animations or have the mix of heavy attacks and the skill attack combine into one more powerful attack using the same timing process. But the whole messing with the animation thing just kind of detracts from the combat for me. i think one attack should equal one animation in a perfect 1 to 1 ratio. no invisible attacks no half animations nothing buggy or weird.

So remove it all the way or work it into the game system properly and add a tutorial in the noob tutorial guide explaining how to do it. If it is added in all the way then have it so those light/heavy attacks you use just add to the damage of the skill attack. Not a totally different attack. The way it is now just sort of feels messed up and broken.

That being said i would prefer it totally gone for the sake of the casual players. Dont like stuff like this putting them even farther behind. They already have to deal with getting gear and thats hard for the true casual players. But now the champ system that puts them endlessly farther behind.

Between not having the best gear not having the champ points the hard core players have and often never even hearing of animation canceling the casual players are so far behind the hardcore players its almost hopeless.

So yeah if it is left in fix it so its really part of the system and not a fluke. Then make a tutorial on how to do it. Make the animations work with it instead of it breaking the animations. Or if it is removed get rid of it all the way. But leaving it like it is just seems broken.

thomas.k.grayb14_ESO wrote: »

Every time one of these posts pop-up, it's readily apparent that many of the people commenting have no idea how animation canceling works, that animation canceling and weaving are different things, or even why it is possible in this game. I'll try to help those people out with this post.

WEAVING VS ANIMATION CANCELING

• Weaving
  • Light weaving is simply using a light attack between each skill use.
  • Medium weaving is begin to charge a Heavy attack while a skill's animation is playing and releasing that medium attack as soon as the skill's animation has finished.
  • Heavy weaving is similar to medium weaving except that you wait for the attack to fully charge.
  Animation Canceling
  • Animation canceling is using the built in priority system to increase DPS.
  • The most common usage of animation canceling you will see is skill animations overriding the animation of normal attacks. Almost every has done this or does do it, even by accident. Spamming your 1 button along with your right mouse button will guarantee you are doing it.
  • Others take advantage of the priority system by using block to cancel skill/ultimate animations. It should be noted that this does not let them cast another skill any faster than intended, it only allows the animation of their normal attacks to start quicker.

ABILITY PRIORITY

• There is a built in priority system that makes the combat feel more fluid and responsive.
  • Block/Dodge Roll > Skill/Ultimate > Light/Medium/Heavy Attack
• It is this priority system that makes animation canceling possible.
• Without the priority system you could no longer block/dodge roll out of attacks to protect yourself.

GLOBAL COOLDOWN

• Guess what, it exists and animation canceling does not allow you to bypass it.
  1. All class, weapon, guild, world, armor, and alliance skills share a global cooldown (a little over 1 second). It doesn't matter how fast you are, or how good you are at animation canceling, or even if you use macros; you can't bypass this mechanic. You can test this easily by casting an instant cast ability, immediately canceling the animation, and attempting to cast the ability again. You won't be able to unless the global cooldown has passed.
  2. All light, medium, and heavy attacks share a global cooldown as well (again, a little over 1 second). Again this can't be circumvented. Can be tested by simply pressing your light attack button as fast as possible. You will notice that nothing happens unless that cooldown has been reached.

MACROS

• Using a macro does not allow anyone to bypass the games global cooldowns.
• In many cases (lag, latency), using a macro will actually net you a DPS loss when specific timing is important.

OTHER THINGS TO NOTE

• In most PVP scenarios that macros and animation canceling are blamed the cause is actually lag/latency between the server and the 2 clients.
• Animations do not line up with cast times, which is why animation canceling is required to maximize DPS.
  • Instant cast abilities have their damage frontloaded (the damage happens the moment the attack is registered), however the animation in most cases is far from instant.
  • Animation canceling does not allow you to ignore the cast times of skills. So wrecking blow, dark flare, crystal fragments, and other skill with cast times still have to be charged for the allotted cast time before clipping the rest of the animation.
  • It should be noted that global cooldowns start when the skill begins charging, so any skill with a cast time longer than the global cooldown will essentially have no global cooldown.

Now for my thoughts on the subject:
Animation canceling, regardless of whether you believe it's an exploit or not, is part of the game. With that being said, it's not detrimental to completing content or PVP that you use it or you don't. Animation canceling and medium weaving are two things that min/max players will use to squeeze every last bit of DPS out of their characters. That doesn't mean that you have to.

The difference in DPS between a player animation canceling vs one that is not is marginal at best. If anyone thinks that someone is doing double their DPS because of things like animation canceling or medium weaving I would advise them to look at gear/build/skill first, because more often than not that is where the problem lies.

Exceptionally well put.

One other thing people might not realize is that ZOS has completely designed the combat system and skills almost ENTIRELY around resource management. There generally there are two schools of thought:

Because ESO has combat regeneration of resources the problem is even more complicated. If X skill is given a GCD, it has a deeply impact side effect on core resource management (since during that GCD you are regaining resources)

I'm not 100% against animation cancelling.

I'm 100% having a hidden game.mechanic that the vast majority of the population is unaware of and will never understand why they are underperforming against others.

If it was explicitly shown in the game, it may be a different story.

Skwor wrote: »

Dymence wrote: »

I don't know why everyone is still pointing fingers around claiming people are 'defending the exploit' while, in reality, animation cancelling really brings nothing.

Seriously guys, animation cancelling makes the animation invisible. That's it. No faster casting, no more damage, just invisible animations. The animation time persists while it's 'cancelled' aka invisible.

You do know even the dev's acknowledge that animation casting does indeed result in reducing skill casts right?

Source?

Failure to telegraph is the real issue. Which, again, starting at 3:16 on the Challenging vs. Punishing Games episode of Extra Credits... if you can't see an action coming, it's not a choice.

They can keep a.c. and weaving in the game. They just need to program some sort of visual effect to indicate it's happening. That way in PVP you can make a split-second decision about what to do about it, and in PVE you know for sure you're doing it.