Light attack "weaving" - light attack>skill>light attack>skill>repeat
Medium attack "weaving" - med attack>skill>med attack>skill>repeat

so on and so forth....the idea is that when done correctly the skill cancels the end of the light attack animation and the light attack cancels the end of the skill animation allowing you to do two attacks in what would normally be the time it takes to do one.

Edit: think of a medium attack as a "not fully charged" heavy attack. That is, hold the mouse button down and the second you see your character's elbows begin to animate backwards, release the button. I find this most easily apparent when using a destro staff where light attacks are a single ball of flame and medium attacks are two balls of flame.

Thanks, @Cuyler
But I'm still puzzled by the concept of medium attack. You either click the mouse button to effect a light attack or hold the left mouse button for heavy. How does one do a medium attack?

Got it! Thanks @Daveheart

Oh yeah, we should also note that medium weaving is not really practical on resto and lightning staves.

Cuyler wrote: »

Caroloces wrote: »

Thanks, @Cuyler
But I'm still puzzled by the concept of medium attack. You either click the mouse button to effect a light attack or hold the left mouse button for heavy. How does one do a medium attack?

Got it! Thanks @Daveheart

Updated my orginal post and what Dave said

Gratz on the 150k SO btw.

Caroloces wrote: »

But I'm still puzzled by the concept of medium attack. You either click the mouse button to effect a light attack or hold the left mouse button for heavy. How does one do a medium attack?

If your in the game tonight look me up in the guild list and I can show you exactly what the differences are. Ohh, wait, my GF has this evening off, Friday Night.

So . . . to complicate things a bit further (tho' they're really not that complicated), how does animation canceling factor into this, or is weaving just another name for animation canceling?

Darn it, @Nestor, wouldn't you rather spend time showing me this stuff than spending time with your GF? I'll send a whisper your way when I see you logged in at another time. Thanks!

Caroloces wrote: »

So . . . to complicate things a bit further (tho' they're really not that complicated), how does animation canceling factor into this, or is weaving just another name for animation canceling?

Weaving is a thing because we can cancel animations.

If you want to see what Animation Canceling really looks like, don't try to weave in a weapon attack, use block instead after firing the skill. You will see that you do the same amount of damage, but you don't have to see the entire animation. Some skills like Force Pulse don't really have that much an animation to cancel. Wrecking Blow? That has a huge animation to cancel.

Above people mentioned starting out with a skill, then a L/M/H attack. Me, I start with a Heavy Attack then a skill. If you press and hold the left mouse button until the weapon fires, that is a fully charged Heavy Attack. Takes about 2 to 3 seconds for this. You can still get a Heavy Attack with less of a button hold. I find it's like a One Thousa... to get a Med/Heavy attack, not quite a full one one thousand. Anyway, I que up the Heavy attack, then fire the skill as soon as I think I can by releasing the mouse and hitting skill key on the keyboard. As soon as I release the skill key, I press and hold the mouse button again for the Light/Medium Attack. It can also help to use a Block after firing the skill to cancel that animation before you que up the next Medium/Heavy attack. All depends on how long the animation is for the skill.

Now, the biggest benefit to Weaving is not so much the DPS (although it does help increase that), but instead the preservation of resources. I find I can keep my magic or stamina pool going longer by weaving. I don't think it's super important to have Med/Heavy attacks in between skills, in fact, learn to do this with Light Attacks to get the timing down. Then once you have that, just extend the length of time you spend holding down the mouse button to get that Medium Heavy Attack before you fire the skill. An addon helps with this, like the Combat Log to see your results.

That's a great video! When I play tonight, I'll run it on my ipad and practice.
Thanks, @DeusAres

Actually weaving and animation cancelling are different. Not by much. But they are.

For example a move like dark conversion cannot be animation cancelled but it can be weaved with hardened ward (which can be animation cancelled.

Weaving, more or less cuts the current animation short, while cancelling completely skips the animation process.

So, continuing with my example (fyi blocking is the easiest way to accomplish an animation cancel) you could use dark conversion (which can't be cancelled) before the animation is done, hit hardened ward which cuts conversion short a bit, then press block to cancel the hardened ward animation, and then immediately cast something else.

Weaving and cancelling becomes a bit more complex when using light and heavy attacks, but follow the above posts

Tankqull wrote: »

Cuyler wrote: »

Light attack "weaving" - Skill>light attack>skill>light attack>skill>repeat
Medium attack "weaving" - Skill>med attack>skill>med attack>skill>repeat

so on and so forth....the idea is that when done correctly the skill cancels the end of the light attack animation and the light attack cancels the end of the skill animation allowing you to do two attacks in what would normally be the time it takes to do one.

Edit: think of a medium attack as a "not fully charged" heavy attack. That is, hold the mouse button down and the second you see your character's elbows begin to animate backwards, release the button. I find this most easily apparent when using a destro staff where light attacks are a single ball of flame and medium attacks are two balls of flame.

actually it is light attack -> skill -> light attack -> skill -> light attack -> skill
and skill -> medium -> skill -> medium -> ...

the idea is to minimize the time spend to animate an attack as abilities have different animation priorities you can combine several attacks.
priority order (lowest priority left highest right)
light attack < ability < ulti < bash
so the perfect rotation would be in case of a NB
light attack followed by surprise attack followed by soul harvest followed by a bash wich perfectly timed will only animate the final bash within a fraction of a second(you can than bash 2 more times untill the light attack CD is over as bash behaves wonky)

medium/partly heavy charged weaving on the other hand is a different story there are two different situations
1. an ability with casting time or channeling time is used than you execute your ability and push and keep you heavy attack key pushed antill the moment the ability is finished and release it to create a "BAMbam[....]BAMbam" effect creating bigger spikes than having "bam[...]BAM[....]""
2. option is to maximize your dmg while you wait for an instant ability to finish its CD (for all abilities even non instants and light/heavy attacks its roughly 0.6-0.8sec after innitiating that ability) by charging a heavy attack executed by activating your instant ability when ready -> [...]bambam[...]bambam
with [....] being ramp up times and [BAM] being an ability with casting or channeling time, [bam] is a medium attack and i]bam[/i is an instant ability

Technically you are correct. My response was a quick one to answer the question "what is meant by weaving?", not "how exactly do I weave?" which is a much longer response as evidenced in your post and the myriad of videos available on the topic. I beleive the point was still conveyed.....anyways I'll revise it to avoid any confusion.

Weaving is when a magic user channeling the one power (Saidin or Saidar) pull and combine separate elements to combine them and overlap them in a way to trigger the effects of a spell. This is referred to as "Weaving the one power".

Oh wait....this is about ESO???