Instead of animation cancelling.....

idk · December 2017

Minno wrote: »

idk wrote: »

Knootewoot wrote: »

Blanco wrote: »

Animation cancelling adds to combat and increases the overall fluidity and enjoyment factor.

The problem is... it requires skill. So you end up with threads like this.

It does take skill, but it does not make the game more fluid or enjoyable. Instead the opposite. Combat feels like a clunky chore each time you attack something. I rather no use it and don't do it while questing. But I have to if I do trials or PvP to get my dps in the right area. Also the barswapping and cancelling so you cannot see what others use as skill in PvP is dumb because how can you react to something you don't see.

This is my opinion though and I know a lot don't agree. But weaving is good imho but cancelling entire animations is bad coding.

1. Animation canceling is enjoyable to a great many players. Those interested in doing max damage enjoy it since it's part of it. Yes, I understand it's your oppinions.

The most basic part of animation canceling gas received a strong buff this year so Zos is promoting it.

2. every instant skill has the same cool down (actually it's a GCD) before it ca be canceled. It's merely the animations are longer than the cool down. It's not bad coding and could easily be fixed though Zos isn't interested in shortening the animations.

Best part of AC is that you can bypass those animations and each one can be different. Makes it feel like you are changing a spell.

Bad part of AC, the game was originally intended to use animations+sounds to given how you react to attacks. Sneaking in a quick LA+spell and bar swapping to hit a defensive spell leaves no time to react aside from doing AC yourself. I'd be willing to bet that tank builds grew in popularity because a majority of players couldn't AC fast enough to react to other AC users, so they decided it was more fun to take DMG and wait for players to run out of resources lol.

Not saying it's fluid or right or wrong. Just pointing out how it doesn't really fit in the design intent for the game's animation system. It would be cool to see threads suggesting how to make AC fiy with this intent, instead of removing it. Till then, we will always have these threads.

Not exactly on all points.

A GCD has been programed into the game from beta. It cannot be bypassed by any means. It is merely the animation prevents the next attack from being started longer than intended since it is longer than the GCD. I am sure you have played other games where the GCD held up the next attack.

This is really no different, though Zos could unlock the issue with the animation and make it easier for those that do not take the time to learn AC.

Also, it is a huge assumption that AC has anything to do with tank builds in PvP. Especially in light of the damage reduction available to tank builds with some of them having high survival. The lack of a desire to die would seem to be a stronger motivator. That coupled with the freedom of creating builds where one can be tanky and still be able to do DPS for those wanting a little of both.

We know AC was an unintended consequence of the games design but it was also not something that Zos had intended to not have.

Besides, it is irrelevant what their original intent was since it know has the full blessing.

So, yes, AC is here to stay. Zos has not only blessed it but has made changes to increase the importance of the most basic part of AC, even as recently as this past year. Argue however you want, it is not going away.

and I forgot the most important part of why we have AC. @Izaki mentioned it on the previous page. Blocking. Really would be a horid idea to be stuck waiting for an animation to finish in order to block an attack even though the 1 second GCD programed into all instant skills had passed. Oops, not your character is dead.

Izaki · December 2017

Blanco wrote: »

Izaki wrote: »

Blanco wrote: »

ak_pvp wrote: »

Blanco wrote: »

Izaki wrote: »

Blanco wrote: »

Izaki wrote: »

SirAndy wrote: »

Or they could just make the animations match the actual cast/cooldown/whatever timer and get rid of animation canceling ...

And then while you're doing your Dizzy Swing or literally any of your abilities which have a 1 second global cooldown and a Sorc decides to send a Frag in your face, you wouldn't be able to block in time! Great gameplay, right?

Without animation canceling (which is a pretty stupid term for it) you wouldn't be able to bar swap until the global cooldown is over, light attacks would be completely useless (since without animation canceling they would be on the same GCD as abilities), you wouldn't be able to bash until the 1 second global cooldown is over. Yeah. The game's combat system wouldn't even work for the most part.

You are 100% correct here, and the fact that other people aren't coming into this thread and saying the exact same thing or very similar, shows just how many people playing PVP don't even understand the game they're playing. They may never develop an understanding of it. And I have no idea why

Most people don't know how animation canceling works, they don't understand the whole system of different global cooldowns and how the overlap with each other. They also don't understand prioritization of different actions, like weapon attacks, abilities, bash and roll dodge. It is very easy to understand however, and once you do understand it, well... you'd know that its basically essential to the combat system.

And another myth is the fact that animations actually get canceled. No. Animations don't get canceled. You're never going to make the animation of Force Pulse disappear for example, you'll always have the sort of beam. The only thing that animation canceling cancels, is the body movement of the character. There are of course exceptions to the rule, specifically melee abilities like Surprise Attack or Reverse Slice or Lava Whip, where sometimes the animation will totally disappear when you roll dodge.

Yes, absolutely.

The way I look at it, usually I just don't have time to wait for the stupid animation to complete itself, combat is very fast paced. Certain abilities you can block cancel and it will save you fractions of seconds here and there... say instead of waiting for your toon to bring his arm back in etc after casting an ability you can block cancel it and then transition into the next move much faster. You've just saved valuable fractions of seconds.

Maybe the most well known example of this is vigor, dodge roll cancelling vigor will cut off that last part of the animation where your toon sort of extends his chest upward. That last phase of the animation takes a lot of time, would much rather roll dodge cancel it, or use another form of animation cancelling, so I can move on with using subsequent abilities or actions faster. And then of course there is LA weaving.

Any type of bar swap cancel is also animation cancelling, and I'd argue the game isn't even playable without utilizing bar swap cancels. So you can cast a poison injection, resto staff light attack, etc and then bar swap thus saving you valuable time.

Animation cancelling is the entire reason why combat in this game is enjoyable (because it makes it fast paced), which is why I sincerely believe the people who are against it either don't have an understanding of it, or the combat system in general. If one hates fast paced and exciting gameplay so much, maybe they should look into turn based games or card games.

I see no difference personally in the landing/usage of next ability when block cancelling. Due to way GCDs work it does really nothing. The only ones that work is melding one thing with skill GCD with something with alt GCD.

Was waiting for someone to say this, whenever someone talks of the merits of block cancelling, someone else always comes into the thread and says that it doesn't actually do anything due to the GCD. So I was expecting this response.

The first thing to mention is you can't get around the GCD, so that is not what you are attempting to do with block cancelling. What you are doing is cutting off excess animation time in the skill that exceeds the GCD.

The global cooldown for instant cast skills is relatively low (0.6), and a lot of these skills have animations that exceed that window, so for those skills that is where block cancelling comes in handy. Sometimes it doesn't help, but there are certain skills where it does help. If there are any skills in your bar setup that seem to take way more time then you would prefer during fast paced combat, a perfectly time right click to block (and it does have to be perfectly timed and a very quick click), will increase the pace of your ability casting. The time saved is less than one second, but that is a lot of time.

It's something I have personally noticed the difference with and received benefit from. If you can detect the small amount of time it saves it is absolutely worth it IMHO. again that is only for certain skills and at certain times

Its mostly for abilities that have that circle thing when you cast them: Eruption, Liquid Lightning, Endless Hail, Caltrops, Shards, etc.

For the other abilities, block canceling isn't effective at all, first of all because it looks terribly stupid and second because weaving light attacks achieves the same goal of shortening thee back end of animations. And I'm pretty certain that the GCD on instant cast abilities is closer to 0.9 seconds, but I could be wrong.

Try block cancelling:

Surge (you can make it so you cast this ability with your toon barely moving at all if the block cancel is perfectly timed, usually he will take forever to bring his arms back down after raising them)
Liquid lightning
Curse (especially, huge difference here)
elemental blockade

With those 4 I'm pretty much 100% convinced that block cancelling helps. And if it's placebo, then it's not like I'm losing time again due to GCD. But I would urge people to try it with those 4 skills- things seem snappier and faster. Also, if it is placebo it still may even be beneficial to do. Placebos actually work.

So I'm not on board with the block cancelling hate. I really think it does help in select situations.

I'm sure there are more examples than what I've listed above.

And it is true, most of the time it's better to do a LA weave, no denying that.

With Blockade and Liquid Lightning, you do speed up the moment of impact of the ability when you block cancel, so yes for those abilities it could be good to block cancel the animations. For Surge and Curse however, even if there was a difference, I barely noticed it ^^ Either way, it just looks really stupid when block canceling skills, especially on a ranged character.

On stamina builds however, its a different matter entirely. Your sustain suffers when you block cancel, because you might just eat up a recovery tick. With say 2K recovery, you've lost not only the amount of stamina that the skill cost, but also 2K extra stamina. So even if there is a slight speed increase, is it worth gutting your sustain in the long run? In raids for example, I can immediately tell the difference when I'm block canceling things by precaution that I might take damage in terms of sustain.

So yeah. If there is a speed increase, which I highly doubt given the mechanics of the game and the fact that light attacks will take care of cutting the back end of longer animations 99% of the time, just makes block canceling completely useless imho.

Betsararie · December 2017

I really think it comes down to personal preference, if you just don't want to watch the animations you do it, that's what I do. No matter what you will always be subject to the GCD. At best it seems like it saves fractions of seconds here and there, I maintain it most likely does.

But mainly, if you don't want to see a bunch of movement with your toon when he's casting skills, you do it. Again that is personal preference primarily, I believe time saved is minimal at best and somewhat infrequent. But there are some skills that I just don't want to watch the animation for so I block cancel it, despite the GCD. Makes the game seem smoother to me. The surge animation, curse etc is very irritating.

Also if you jump, cast a skill, block cancel it, and then turn your camera around before landing, your toon will not be moving by the time he lands which makes viewing your surroundings much easier, at least for me. So yeah, I'm happy to have it, but would chalk it up to preference primarily. I would personally not be happy if it wasn't in the game.

theWul · December 2017

Just my humble opinion:

* keep AC for defensiv purposes as it is
* cancel the damage of the canceled skill

so that canceling is no source of extra dps anymore.

Couldnt be more simple and intuitive.

lao · December 2017

LittlePinkDot wrote: »

I had an idea thats less annoying and less boring than animation cancelling. How about they just make % attack speed a trait for armour and weapons. And % faster cast rate for magicka skills. Allow 2 traits per piece.
Speed should be determined by stats.
Diablo 2 had it right.

yea lets remove an actual playerskill element and replace it with a mechanic that is entirely stats based.

/facepalm

lao · December 2017

Blanco wrote: »

Animation cancelling adds to combat and increases the overall fluidity and enjoyment factor.

The problem is... it requires skill. So you end up with threads like this.

QFMFT

Uviryth · January 2018

How is animation canceling still a thing in 2018? Does ZOS really dont know how to animate Characters that dont spazz out in combat like a 70s-Rockstar on Heroin?

sharquez · January 2018

ITT people who cannot click then cast a skill with loose timing. How many years are we going to keep having these thread about something that takes minimal effort to implement into your playstyle? Same thread year after year. It's more than likely not going anywhere. Spend your gaming activism efforts more wisely on issues that require more attention, like loot box transparency for instance.

Eirella · January 2018

Can we please stop with these anti-AC threads, Zenimax already screwed up combat in the DB update, I don't want them to mess it up any more.

Rohamad_Ali · January 2018

Posting in a animation canceling thread in 2018 .