Quite frankly, yes.

Look, it just makes no sense, logically, for the devs to spend time and energy creating all these animations, only to allow us to skip them almost entirely.

Having said that, I don't think animation canceling is bad in and of itself, it's just poorly implemented. We *should* be able to cancel animations with dodges, blocks, bashes or swapping weapons. BUT the skill that we just interrupted should have NO EFFECT if it was interrupted! WoW does this right. You start casting an ability? You get docked the resource cost for it right away. Spell gets interrupted or canceled? You do not get refunded, and there's no effect from it unless the animation completes.

Doing it this way will not make the combat feel unresponsive, but it will cut out animation canceling as prevalent form of play AND severely hurt macroers. And let's be honest, a LOT of people macro. Yes, yes, I know, macros don't work, blah blah. With respect, that's nonsense. Even a simple mouse macro (using a Razer Naga) that simply does keypress down and keypress up, will speed up your play a little bit. Just because abilities in ESO fire on key release, not keypress. Further, simple macros like light attack->skill->100ms delay->block, made for each skill, will perfectly cleanly do light weaves and animation cancels for each ability. Animation canceling makes this possible.

Further, another positive side-effect of docking the ability cost on cast, and not having an effect until animation completes, is that people SEE the ability, and can react. And it would nerf Sorcs, because currently things like Dark Deal don't get punished for being interrupted - the ability costs nothing unless it finishes casting, so just spam and LOS until you succeed. Whereas if ability cost was upfront, and interrupt (self or enemy) doesn't refund, it would be very punishing to brute force spam it.

But this is just my $0.02 on the topic. I'm sure the white knights and m'lords tipping their fedoras will dogpile all over us any second now.

And I'd say NO to anything that makes bar swapping even more annoying!

dpencil1 wrote: »

You do know there is a 1 second global cooldown on all skills, right? Bar swap cancelling does not make your next skill happen sooner, it just lets you finish the skill you swap from before the animation would have completed. It's a way to get the damage of the first skill to hit slightly sooner.

It's part of a larger problem though. Yes, there's a cooldown for skills. But not for other things, such as bash or light attack. Meaning in the time it would take for the single skill animation to complete you can do light attack, skill, and bash to cancel it (and do additional damage). This creates abnormally damage, which creates a problem for PvE balancing. There's a huge gap between players who do not animation cancel and those who do. And currently PvE is balanced for the latter. Which makes content a tad difficult for the former. Which makes them quit. Which is bad for the game. So not ideal.

It's also not a question of skill. When doing something competitive or group oriented, I do it. But when I'm solo, I prefer to see the animations and enjoy the flow, not have my character jerking and spasming like he's having a seizure. It just looks incredibly amateurish for the uninitiated. And since the uninitiated often check out gameplay videos before purchasing, without knowing what they're seeing, animation canceling can be quite a turnoff. So that's another direct negative from animation canceling right there.

This situation is then further exacerbated by proc sets. Which is to say, where without canceling you would do one skill, with maybe a proc, with canceling you do light attack + skill + bash, each of which can potentially trigger a proc, as well as other effects (Siphoning Strikes used to trigger off bash, for example). So on occasion you just die to stuff you never even saw, because it was animation canceled but still procced several things back to back. Which is, of course, utterly ridiculous.

Finally, from purely aesthetic point of view, it is completely asinine to make animation canceling the norm. Why waste time making animations and special effects on abilities, when it all is meant to be canceled anyhow, and only bads who don't cancel will see them? I've yet to see a cogent argument why the devs spent all those man-hours making and polishing Warden animations and anyone worth their salt is canceling anyway. Can you explain that? Why not just reuse default animations, if cancelling is supposed to be the norm?

Don't you think it is incredibly stupid that people don't even know how mechanics work and create threads wanting nerfs to them ?

dpencil1 wrote: »

You do know there is a 1 second global cooldown on all skills, right? Bar swap cancelling does not make your next skill happen sooner, it just lets you finish the skill you swap from before the animation would have completed. It's a way to get the damage of the first skill to hit slightly sooner.

In ani-cancel nerf threads I always see a few commenters insisting that there is a 1s GCD. I promise you this is not true.

Your main premise is entirely incorrect. Bar swap cancelling only lets you overlap the swap animation with the attack animation, it does not allow you to follow up with a second attack any faster than if you had stayed on the same bar.

When you demonstrate that you have no awareness of how the game currently works, the chances of devs listening for even a second drops from low to nill.

Solariken wrote: »

dpencil1 wrote: »

You do know there is a 1 second global cooldown on all skills, right? Bar swap cancelling does not make your next skill happen sooner, it just lets you finish the skill you swap from before the animation would have completed. It's a way to get the damage of the first skill to hit slightly sooner.

In ani-cancel nerf threads I always see a few commenters insisting that there is a 1s GCD. I promise you this is not true.

...Video evidence or you're sadly mistaken.

No to anything that makes the game more clunky and less responsive.

Nooooooooooooooooooooooo.

The devs tried for a *long* time to make weapon swap quicker and more reliable. If you didn't play the game within the first year, you won't know what I'm talking about. What we have now is really good, and ZOS does not need to change anything.

Sabbathius wrote: »

dpencil1 wrote: »

You do know there is a 1 second global cooldown on all skills, right? Bar swap cancelling does not make your next skill happen sooner, it just lets you finish the skill you swap from before the animation would have completed. It's a way to get the damage of the first skill to hit slightly sooner.

It's part of a larger problem though. Yes, there's a cooldown for skills. But not for other things, such as bash or light attack. Meaning in the time it would take for the single skill animation to complete you can do light attack, skill, and bash to cancel it (and do additional damage). This creates abnormally damage, which creates a problem for PvE balancing. There's a huge gap between players who do not animation cancel and those who do. And currently PvE is balanced for the latter. Which makes content a tad difficult for the former. Which makes them quit. Which is bad for the game. So not ideal.

It's also not a question of skill. When doing something competitive or group oriented, I do it. But when I'm solo, I prefer to see the animations and enjoy the flow, not have my character jerking and spasming like he's having a seizure. It just looks incredibly amateurish for the uninitiated. And since the uninitiated often check out gameplay videos before purchasing, without knowing what they're seeing, animation canceling can be quite a turnoff. So that's another direct negative from animation canceling right there.

This situation is then further exacerbated by proc sets. Which is to say, where without canceling you would do one skill, with maybe a proc, with canceling you do light attack + skill + bash, each of which can potentially trigger a proc, as well as other effects (Siphoning Strikes used to trigger off bash, for example). So on occasion you just die to stuff you never even saw, because it was animation canceled but still procced several things back to back. Which is, of course, utterly ridiculous.

Finally, from purely aesthetic point of view, it is completely asinine to make animation canceling the norm. Why waste time making animations and special effects on abilities, when it all is meant to be canceled anyhow, and only bads who don't cancel will see them? I've yet to see a cogent argument why the devs spent all those man-hours making and polishing Warden animations and anyone worth their salt is canceling anyway. Can you explain that? Why not just reuse default animations, if cancelling is supposed to be the norm?

Nothing you or anyone else has said measures up to the annoyance of being locked into heavy attacks, not having skills fire off, and the game taking over your character that have all been with us ever since ZoS changed "animation canceling" back three patches ago. What was once smooth, fluid, and responsible is a clunky mess.

That is incredibly stupid.

Sabbathius wrote: »

dpencil1 wrote: »

You do know there is a 1 second global cooldown on all skills, right? Bar swap cancelling does not make your next skill happen sooner, it just lets you finish the skill you swap from before the animation would have completed. It's a way to get the damage of the first skill to hit slightly sooner.

It's part of a larger problem though. Yes, there's a cooldown for skills. But not for other things, such as bash or light attack. Meaning in the time it would take for the single skill animation to complete you can do light attack, skill, and bash to cancel it (and do additional damage). This creates abnormally damage, which creates a problem for PvE balancing. There's a huge gap between players who do not animation cancel and those who do. And currently PvE is balanced for the latter. Which makes content a tad difficult for the former. Which makes them quit. Which is bad for the game. So not ideal.

It's also not a question of skill. When doing something competitive or group oriented, I do it. But when I'm solo, I prefer to see the animations and enjoy the flow, not have my character jerking and spasming like he's having a seizure. It just looks incredibly amateurish for the uninitiated. And since the uninitiated often check out gameplay videos before purchasing, without knowing what they're seeing, animation canceling can be quite a turnoff. So that's another direct negative from animation canceling right there.

This situation is then further exacerbated by proc sets. Which is to say, where without canceling you would do one skill, with maybe a proc, with canceling you do light attack + skill + bash, each of which can potentially trigger a proc, as well as other effects (Siphoning Strikes used to trigger off bash, for example). So on occasion you just die to stuff you never even saw, because it was animation canceled but still procced several things back to back. Which is, of course, utterly ridiculous.

Finally, from purely aesthetic point of view, it is completely asinine to make animation canceling the norm. Why waste time making animations and special effects on abilities, when it all is meant to be canceled anyhow, and only bads who don't cancel will see them? I've yet to see a cogent argument why the devs spent all those man-hours making and polishing Warden animations and anyone worth their salt is canceling anyway. Can you explain that? Why not just reuse default animations, if cancelling is supposed to be the norm?

There's a global cooldown for everything in this game including light attacks, bar swaps, roll dodges and bashes. So you're very wrong.

Also once again, the animations of the actual abilities don't just magically "disappear", only the body movements of the character do, the actual colorful skill animation still plays out exactly the same way as it would without animation canceling (for the most part there are a few exceptions).

They already mucked with bar swap timing back in 1.6, I believe. Absolutely no need to change that again.

You have no idea how much what you ask for would throw things off, even your things.

Solariken wrote: »

Merlin13KAGL wrote: »

They already mucked with bar swap timing back in 1.6, I believe. Absolutely no need to change that again.

You have no idea how much what you ask for would throw things off, even your things.

You could be right @Merlin13KAGL, maybe it's a case of "be careful what I wish for" - but man, idk how many more times I can get rekt by Incap/block/SA/swap/SA with Viper and invisible Selene and keep my sanity. I've always enjoyed ESO PvP but it's beyond ridiculous now that such a huge portion of the playerbase has mastered cancels and there is so much free proc damage available. Some nights I spend the majority of my time raging and it starts to seem like maybe it's​ time to give this game a rest.

The balance of proc sets is a seperate issue. The fact is that barswap cancelling has nothing to do with what the burst damage you're encountering.