SOLVED- Which weapon swap set applies 5-piece buff when you weapon swap-cancel an animation

Lewandowsky · February 2017

Does that make sense? Wouldn't to me.
I open with Heavy attack with bow, animation cancel to gap closer (ambush) with a 2H weapon. Everyone does it for burst.
Now my combat log lists that 2H-based ambush as dealing damage JUST BEFORE the bow heavy opener that was animation cancelled, and then the 3rd item is the disease-enchant from the BOW opener.
My dilemma: I am using clever alchemist for my 2H weapon because if I'm using a bow opener, want the clever alchemist 5-piece buff not to be the one that is active when I'm opening. But if the damage from the opener and gap-closing-animation-cancelling-follow-up-attack are BOTH based on the 2H 5-piece bonus, as the FTC combat log seems to indicate, I've got it backwards, i.e. seems I should have clever alchemist be the bow-opener that I'm using because when the bow-opener attack lands, using my technique, the bow-opener is not landing using the bow set 5-piece buff.

Anyone?

acw37162 · February 2017

Your explanation is clear as mud.

If you activate a potion on the opposite bar from you CA set you will not get the CA buff at all.

If you activate a potion on your CA bar you hold the buff for 15 seconds no matter what bar you switch to or how many times you switch.

STEVIL · February 2017

You want the clever 5th to NOT be on the bar you stay on for the main part of the fight.
So if you have it on 2h, use bow once then swap to 2h and close you are getting the worse of clever.

Lewandowsky · February 2017

acw37162 wrote: »

Your explanation is clear as mud.

If you activate a potion on the opposite bar from you CA set you will not get the CA buff at all.

If you activate a potion on your CA bar you hold the buff for 15 seconds no matter what bar you switch to or how many times you switch.

Yeah let me try a different way:

Equipment: Bow makes 5th piece of clever Spriggan's, 2H wpn makes 5th piece of Clever alchemist
My opening moves in combat: Heavy attack with bow, animation cancelled by swap to 2H then ambush for gap closer
My combat log, in order: Ambush damage, heavy bow damage, bow enchant damage

See the problem? For my first opening attack with the bow, if it actually is landing SECOND like the FTC combat log indicates, I'm not getting the Spriggan's 5-piece bonus on my super-charged and buffed heavy attack opener with bow. If that's accurate my weapon equipment is backwards (and I wasted 100k plus making them both gold)

br0steen · February 2017

You're doing it wrong, let me try to explain.

CA gives you a buff for a period of time, regardless of the bar you're on. So in your setup if you pop a potion on your 2H and switch to your bow bar all attacks on your bow bar will be buffed by the extra weapon damage from CA and spriggans.

So what you're looking for, you need to swap weapons setup, in other words find a spriggans 2H and craft a CA bow.

Hope that's clear.

STEVIL · February 2017

Lewandowsky wrote: »

acw37162 wrote: »

Your explanation is clear as mud.

If you activate a potion on the opposite bar from you CA set you will not get the CA buff at all.

If you activate a potion on your CA bar you hold the buff for 15 seconds no matter what bar you switch to or how many times you switch.

Yeah let me try a different way:

Equipment: Bow makes 5th piece of clever Spriggan's, 2H wpn makes 5th piece of Clever alchemist
My opening moves in combat: Heavy attack with bow, animation cancelled by swap to 2H then ambush for gap closer
My combat log, in order: Ambush damage, heavy bow damage, bow enchant damage

See the problem? For my first opening attack with the bow, if it actually is landing SECOND like the FTC combat log indicates, I'm not getting the Spriggan's 5-piece bonus on my super-charged and buffed heavy attack opener with bow. If that's accurate my weapon equipment is backwards (and I wasted 100k plus making them both gold)

You never mention a potion drink in here.
Clever triggers on potion, nothing else.
if there is no potion involved, what is the problem?

Bow projectiles do have a time to target. i suppose it is concievable you could swap off the bow too quick and lose the bonus.

but it should be obvious using FTC or even other recaps to see the damage differences - given the bow passives - with a few ogre one-offs. Forget the charge for test just bow and see the damage, then bow-quick swap and see the damage - repeat until conclusive.

but for clever the norm is to back/buff-bar the clever, buff, drink, swap-fight... obviously you could add bow shots back/buff too - then swap but only if the bow was your alchemist. (if you are testing clever - the cropped white health pots are great.)

Lewandowsky · February 2017

STEVIL wrote: »

You never mention a potion drink in here.
Clever triggers on potion, nothing else.
if there is no potion involved, what is the problem?

Bow projectiles do have a time to target. i suppose it is concievable you could swap off the bow too quick and lose the bonus.

but it should be obvious using FTC or even other recaps to see the damage differences - given the bow passives - with a few ogre one-offs. Forget the charge for test just bow and see the damage, then bow-quick swap and see the damage - repeat until conclusive.

but for clever the norm is to back/buff-bar the clever, buff, drink, swap-fight... obviously you could add bow shots back/buff too - then swap but only if the bow was your alchemist. (if you are testing clever - the cropped white health pots are great.)

Yes I forgot to mention I do chug a pot before engaging to activate alchemist.
Testing is what I will try to do - I'm not 100% sure I can test correctly though, because I'm not sure what world enemies have armor -

I will use charged heavy bow opener without swap, and charged heavy opener with swap and see if I can tell whether Spriggan's on the bow is still active at bow impact after I've used the swap. It will be complicated by the bow passives like you mentioned-
But I guess what ultimately matters is just trying to measure the opening combo DPS, not so much the specific passives. I'll try to do some testing on a world boss and post my results; hope the world bosses have armor.

Lewandowsky · February 2017

OK tested on Thodundor, an orgre-looking world boss so i'd think if anyone had physical resistance with which I could test my Spriggan's buff it's him.

Bow 2H without swap: 16871, 31496 (critical), 16753, 16753, 16753
Bow 2H with swap: 17152, 32246 (critical), 32246 (critical), 17152

This is so backwards, and I think this is important. The bow has Spriggan's remember, the 2H has clever alchemist. If the bow is striking with bow stats and bow set when I swap weapons, the damage CANNOT be higher when I swap weapons, it just doesn't make sense - when I swap weapons I should be losing Spriggan buff, but the damage with swap is HIGHER.

All I can figure is that by animation canceling a heavy bow attack with weapon swap you actually land the bow damage using the NEW WEAPONS STATS. I don't know how else I got those numbers, where I ended up with higher damage after a swap where I shouldn't have Spriggans. I think the damage is higher on tests with the swap because 2H gold vs bow gold base damage is higher.

This is a big deal isn't it? Lots of people open from steal with a swap animation cancel. If you swap a bow heavy the bow's stats don't matter? Is that what this means?

Lexxypwns · February 2017

Lewandowsky wrote: »

OK tested on Thodundor, an orgre-looking world boss so i'd think if anyone had physical resistance with which I could test my Spriggan's buff it's him.

Bow 2H without swap: 16871, 31496 (critical), 16753, 16753, 16753
Bow 2H with swap: 17152, 32246 (critical), 32246 (critical), 17152

This is so backwards, and I think this is important. The bow has Spriggan's remember, the 2H has clever alchemist. If the bow is striking with bow stats and bow set when I swap weapons, the damage CANNOT be higher when I swap weapons, it just doesn't make sense - when I swap weapons I should be losing Spriggan buff, but the damage with swap is HIGHER.

All I can figure is that by animation canceling a heavy bow attack with weapon swap you actually land the bow damage using the NEW WEAPONS STATS. I don't know how else I got those numbers, where I ended up with higher damage after a swap where I shouldn't have Spriggans. I think the damage is higher on tests with the swap because 2H gold vs bow gold base damage is higher.

This is a big deal isn't it? Lots of people open from steal with a swap animation cancel. If you swap a bow heavy the bow's stats don't matter? Is that what this means?

There has long been issues in eso with not using the proper set bonus or passives and it seems to apply to your situation as well. For a while you could animation cancel steel tornado with a bar swap to a 2h axe and proc the 2h axe bleed on everyone hit with the tornado, for example.

I believe the damage is being calculated based on your weapon damage using 2h on the bar swap, which is why the heavy attacks hit higher. They still use the same calculation as non-bar swapped bow heavy(bow heavy attacks have a very high damage coefficient compared to other stam based heavy attacks), but the 2h weapon is giving you more overall weapon damage so when you bar swap and the arrow connects it uses the formula for bow heavies while factoring in your current weapon damage(on the 2h bar, which will be higher). This is supported by the amount the damage changes between the two bars.

As such, you'll optimize your damage by running alchemist on bow bar and spriggans on 2h bar

Edit: http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Special:EsoBuildEditor

You can use this and plug in your stats and see a direct mathematical representation of this by viewing the different heavy attack damages depending which bar you're on.

Lewandowsky · February 2017

Follow up, with different gear:

With CleverAlch bow and Spriggan bow:

CleverAlch Bow opener without swap to Spriggan's: 14705, 27838 (crit), 27838 (crit), 14705
CleverAlch bow opener with animation cancel swap to Spriggan's bow: 14307, 14408, 14207, 27087, 26897
Spriggan's bow opener: 14307, 26897

So I don't know why exactly the Spriggan's without swap is lower than the clever alch without swap, but I suspect because not all my gear is gold and my weapons are gold, having one item set of higher quality equipped is having downstream effects on the stats of other items of the set. But the point is, based on consistency:

Opening with CleverAlch bow and AnimationCancel/swapping to Spriggan's seems to give same stats as opening with Spriggan's alone.

So from this test it seems: Swapping weapons in animation cancel of heavy attacks gives SET BONUSES of the weapon you SWAPPED TO
From the prior test: Swapping weapons in animation cancel of heavy attacks gives BASE DAMAGE based on the weapon you SWAPPED TO

So you could have sub-par equipment in a bow and if you open with a bow heavy, animation cancel to your gold sword you'd get all the perks of having used the sword. So the only correct answer seems to be that clever alchemist needs to be my bow, since using it as my opener the stats of the bow don't seem to matter in my rotation.

Very interesting. Thank you for helping me figure this out. Will change subject to include SOLVED

Waffennacht · February 2017

I get it, the game calculations damage upon hit rather than cast.

So if I were to fire frags and swap cancel into DW prior to hit, the Frags (cast say from staff bar) will be calculated using DW bar.

I can see this being very useful, esp with SnB abilities.

Hrm, Frost staff Reach switch into Fire Staff, get the dmg boost and the roots.

Possibilities are endless.

Lewandowsky · February 2017

Maybe... not sure if the sam rules apply to all projectiles or if they have slight differences to them. Might work