It's pretty horrible that you have to break the game to compete. I hate animation canceling. I can do it easily but seriously where's the skill? My opponent either does the same thing and we dps race or they have no time to react and just die. No skill involved just higher numbers matter

According to some friends, the animations canceling will only add a very little percentage of additional DPS anyway. So you should not worry too much about it.
There is also build that exclude completely animation canceling.


I totaly feel for you. I'm not DPSer though, so I'm not the best person to speak about that, and I can't give you much suggestion to help you.

however, seems to me that you major problem is community-related. Don't you have a nice and understanding guild? Some friends that would enjoy to play with you?
I'm guild leader of my little community, and I can assure you that we are doing all kind of content and we don't impose build, minimum DPS, animation cancelation, good gear or whatever. We often group with players that are too low level or are unexperimented, and we just enjoy the adventure together, sharing a nice evening, and chatting on TeamSpeak.

That's the kind of persons you need to meet. They exist. And that will make your experience of the game 100x better!

JD2013 wrote: »

Actually in one of the more recent ESO Live episodes, they said they're trying some things out to discourage it.

i really do enjoy the sound of this tyvm for the insight, i havnt watched the last few episodes.

Catblade wrote: »

It's not about the dps it adds it's about not having the time to react. And i can tell you weaving medium attacks adds a huge amount of dps on my stamblade. Start to charge it then cancel with surprise attack and it's like hitting them twice. On my magika characters it's not so big of a deal but it does add some decent dps

Exactly as a dw sorc (or even 2h) weaving or cancelling has limited uses (with heavy or light attack)

You can use abilities to weave others. Example: CF can be weaved by hardened ward or webs, which can weave with curse which can weave with CF etc...

Fyi the block can play havok with a low stam magicka build sometimes you just wanna dodge roll.

Really surprised you get kicked, I wouldn't kick you

Maybe it's ineffective keybinds, or maybe you're greatly exaggerating how much effort you've actually put forth to learning, but asking them to make the game less responsive isn't going to help anyone. Without animation canceling they'll have to throw out the priority system and let the "GCD" that already exists apply to all abilities every time you perform any action. That means you hit a light attack or an ability, and half a second later you need to block or dodge... tough luck. You're locked out. Maybe they could make it so using another ability during that GCD still allows you to use it, but cancels all benefits/damage from whatever action you cancelled... but that's going to drive people crazy also. Think if you did a full heavy attack on an enemy then went to block or dodge or press an attack ability, only to realize you pressed it a split second too soon and lost your whole heavy attack.

The reason I'm making these points is because it's too late to realistically expect a complete overhaul of the combat system to be more like WoW with cooldowns, a normal GCD, and ability queue with "off GCD" abilities. The off GCD thing doesn't work in a game with no cooldowns, or else you're using off GCD abilities during every GCD cycle in order to maximize damage... and there you go back to it being "too hard" to get max DPS. So for a normal GCD to be implemented, but still have abilities be off GCD so they are still responsive (dodge/block/weaponswap/bash/etc), you need cooldowns too. Cooldowns don't work so well with the limited set of abilities in this game, so again you're talking a very serious overhaul.

Your average person can pick up light/medium canceling muscle memory in a couple hours of grinding mobs. From there you can develop block or bash canceling the active skills if you want... but simple medium cancelling is plenty enough to do 95% of your max potential in PVE on most classes.

One of the simplest ways to pick up medium attack weaving is to stand around doing heavy attacks a bit and get accustomed to the animation your character does when it FIRST pulls the weapon back for the wind up. Once you have that down, the rest is simple. Hold down your light/heavy attack button. Yep just keep it held down and never let it go. When you see your character wind back for a heavy attack, begin rapidly pressing your DPS ability keybind, whatever that might be. Pretty early in the heavy attack animation, you will perform your DPS ability, then your character will start to wind up for another heavy attack. Rinse and repeat. Eventually you'll get a feel for WHEN you can interrupt the heavy attack with your DPS ability so you don't have to spam the button much at all. So with the medium attack weave, you're simply holding down the light/heavy attack button the entire time, and pressing your DPS ability key at regular intervals. This requires very little coordination and the visual cue is very obvious.

With light attack weaving, it's just tapping a couple of buttons quickly. First tap your light attack, then immediately press your DPS ability keybind. Wait roughly 1 second and do it again. Over time you'll get a feel for how fast you can do this.

I wonder how many people play ESO and do not even know of animation canceling or find out at higher levels, if animation canceling is going to be a permanent part of the game, there should be a Tutorial explaining it when you start as a new player.

gimpdrb14_ESO wrote: »

i feel like im being punished

Don't complain, some people pay good money for that

I animation cancel w/o even meaning to most of the time. I have a habit of spamming light attacks AND my various skills. I don't cancel on purpose and have no desire to learn how to effectively. I always run with Guildies > PUGs, which means I never need to deal with elitist players who demand best gear, enchants, specific CPs, etc.

Find yourself a good Guild or two, OP, and you won't need to worry about grouping with people who kick you for stupid reasons like not doing animation cancelling.

Kutsuu wrote: »

Without animation canceling they'll have to throw out the priority system and let the "GCD" that already exists apply to all abilities every time you perform any action. That means you hit a light attack or an ability, and half a second later you need to block or dodge... tough luck. You're locked out. Maybe they could make it so using another ability during that GCD still allows you to use it, but cancels all benefits/damage from whatever action you cancelled... but that's going to drive people crazy also. Think if you did a full heavy attack on an enemy then went to block or dodge or press an attack ability, only to realize you pressed it a split second too soon and lost your whole heavy attack.

Isn't that sort of how "real life" works anyway..? I mean, if I'm throwing a punch at a boxing opponent, at some point I've "committed" to the punch and no matter what I do, I'm not going to be able to pull it back and turn it into a block or a jump or something instead.

Being able to cancel an attack animation and replace a two-handed-sword swing with a block midway through the arc.... that's just silly.

Kutsuu wrote: »

The reason I'm making these points is because it's too late to realistically expect a complete overhaul of the combat system to be more like WoW with cooldowns, a normal GCD, and ability queue with "off GCD" abilities. The off GCD thing doesn't work in a game with no cooldowns, or else you're using off GCD abilities during every GCD cycle in order to maximize damage... and there you go back to it being "too hard" to get max DPS. So for a normal GCD to be implemented, but still have abilities be off GCD so they are still responsive (dodge/block/weaponswap/bash/etc), you need cooldowns too. Cooldowns don't work so well with the limited set of abilities in this game, so again you're talking a very serious overhaul.

It doesn't need a global cooldown... it just needs to allow a committed action to play out in a way that makes sense.

Kutsuu wrote: »

Your average person can pick up light/medium canceling muscle memory in a couple hours of grinding mobs. From there you can develop block or bash canceling the active skills if you want... but simple medium cancelling is plenty enough to do 95% of your max potential in PVE on most classes.

One of the simplest ways to pick up medium attack weaving is to stand around doing heavy attacks a bit and get accustomed to the animation your character does when it FIRST pulls the weapon back for the wind up. Once you have that down, the rest is simple. Hold down your light/heavy attack button. Yep just keep it held down and never let it go. When you see your character wind back for a heavy attack, begin rapidly pressing your DPS ability keybind, whatever that might be. Pretty early in the heavy attack animation, you will perform your DPS ability, then your character will start to wind up for another heavy attack. Rinse and repeat. Eventually you'll get a feel for WHEN you can interrupt the heavy attack with your DPS ability so you don't have to spam the button much at all. So with the medium attack weave, you're simply holding down the light/heavy attack button the entire time, and pressing your DPS ability key at regular intervals. This requires very little coordination and the visual cue is very obvious.

With light attack weaving, it's just tapping a couple of buttons quickly. First tap your light attack, then immediately press your DPS ability keybind. Wait roughly 1 second and do it again. Over time you'll get a feel for how fast you can do this.

This whole explanation - while detailed and very informative - comes off as nothing more than "how to" guide on exploiting combat mechanics. No offense to you for explaining it, but I have to raise an eyebrow to everyone that believes this is a legitimate way to play.

OP dont worry about it
You can complete almost all content without it, just by knowing the mechanics

IF you want to run dungeons i will tank them for you anytime you need.

PC NA add me and have fun again.

gimpdrb14_ESO wrote: »

i know its a dead horse but......

Animation cancelling, i simply just cant get it down. i have tried and tried for hours on end practicing it over and over again, iv watched videos, read guides and i still cant get it down. so my dps suffers form it, i miss out on content because of it. iv gotten ridiculed in 4 man dungeons for not doing it, so i stopped doing them, i havnt done any trails, since i cant do it(iv gotten kicked out out of pug groups, so i stopped doing trails). i get owned in PvP all the time since i cant do it.

i know ZOS has said they like and will not be doing anything about it, to me this sounds like they just dont have any clues on how to stop it.

i know im not the only out there like this.

so what i am supposed to do? i really do enjoy/love this game but if i cant simply do the content whats the point?

and before anyone says it ill say it first
"if you cant animation cancel then you just suck and should find a different game"

Is this a real post? Sorry for the doubts, but feeling punished.. Isn't that extreme?

Do you know what punishment is? Getting shot in real life.. That's punishment

Im actually in your boat too.

I couldnt figure out a build with my night blade to get a dps to the levels others wanted and when i did figure it out it wasnt good enough.

So i said F#C% YOU and started tanking with my NB instead. I can still DPS just fine i just dont with tool bags.

My advice is to join a sizable guild or two and be friendly as hell even if you hate people and just want to watch the world burn. That way theyll enjoy your company and wont really care about your DPS as long as its good enough to pull your own weight and not drag the group down.

Social guilds are win-win. PvE centric endgame guilds are cancer.

KoshkaMurka wrote: »

Zhoyzu wrote: »

PvE centric endgame guilds are cancer.

Nobody forces you to join these guilds.

and as such im not in them.