what does animation canceling even do

Sergykid · February 2018

i've tried it, with blocking, bar-swapping, but i don't see the effect. Even if i cancel an ability, and press the next button, my character stands still for 0.5 sec until it starts going. The only cancel i do well is when i weave a light attack between the abilities.

Draxys · February 2018

There's a global cooldown, so you can't just cancel something and cram 12 other casts into a second or two. But canceling works because damage and effects of skills happen immediately unless there's a cast time. So, for example, you could use the bow skill endless hail, but swap right after you hit it. The skill still goes off even though you canceled the animation, and you don't have to wait to swap bars to get to a different skill.

Asardes · February 2018

Never block-cancel, especially if you are stamina, since you will cancel your recovery for 2s. Instead try to weave either a light attack or heavy attack with your skills, and cast skills with lengthy animations right before you bar swap; as you swap part of the animation will not be played and you'll speed up your rotation by 0.5-0.8s. Light attack weaving is basically free damage since those don't consume a global cool-down (GCD = 0.8s) and heavy attacks restore resources, which is important for characters regardless of role and rotation. To weave light attacks press the LMB right before you press the skill button, to weave heavy attacks press the skill button when you're about halfway through your heavy attack animation. Some passives and skills will boost damage or offer bonus damage from heavy or light attacks. Also there are class skills and gear sets that empower light and/or heavy attacks or proc off them.

magictucktuck · February 2018

Sergykid wrote: »

i've tried it, with blocking, bar-swapping, but i don't see the effect. Even if i cancel an ability, and press the next button, my character stands still for 0.5 sec until it starts going. The only cancel i do well is when i weave a light attack between the abilities.

hopefully all those animation canceling hater see this lol. its not what they think

LiquidPony · February 2018

magictucktuck wrote: »

Sergykid wrote: »

i've tried it, with blocking, bar-swapping, but i don't see the effect. Even if i cancel an ability, and press the next button, my character stands still for 0.5 sec until it starts going. The only cancel i do well is when i weave a light attack between the abilities.

hopefully all those animation canceling hater see this lol. its not what they think

That old quote often attributed to Johnathan Swift comes to mind:

You cannot reason someone out of something he or she was not reasoned into.

People who whine and complain about animation canceling did not arrive at that conclusion via rational thought process. They got there because they were butthurt about getting wrecked in PvP and need something to blame.

The anti-animation canceling crowd is driven by pure stupid emotion.

Ermiq · February 2018

What does it do? It makes your character twitching and jerking with convulsions. It's the best gameplay "feature" I've ever seen.

cmetzger93 · February 2018

Makes the game less fun.

temjiu · February 2018

Eremith wrote: »

What does it do? It makes your character twitching and jerking with convulsions. It's the best gameplay "feature" I've ever seen.

Only if you really wish to do maximum damage over everything else in the game. I Personally use it to counteract the need to weave in heavy attacks now on my stam builds. I don't always do the light attack spaz because it simply looks stupid. Of course, I think hopping up and down and twitching back and forth while you fight a PvE mob looks incredibly stupid, but I guess PvP players want every edge they can get.

RazorCaltrops · February 2018

Triggers people with L2P issues.

zaria · February 2018

Asardes wrote: »

Never block-cancel, especially if you are stamina, since you will cancel your recovery for 2s. Instead try to weave either a light attack or heavy attack with your skills, and cast skills with lengthy animations right before you bar swap; as you swap part of the animation will not be played and you'll speed up your rotation by 0.5-0.8s. Light attack weaving is basically free damage since those don't consume a global cool-down (GCD = 0.8s) and heavy attacks restore resources, which is important for characters regardless of role and rotation. To weave light attacks press the LMB right before you press the skill button, to weave heavy attacks press the skill button when you're about halfway through your heavy attack animation. Some passives and skills will boost damage or offer bonus damage from heavy or light attacks. Also there are class skills and gear sets that empower light and/or heavy attacks or proc off them.

This, block cancel is for canceling an channeled ability like sweep on healer so I can do an emergency heal faster.
Cancel an snipe they you notice that the other guy has friends.
Also to dismount your horse

vyndral13preub18_ESO · February 2018

It makes you ‘gud’ and one of the best players ever. Or so I have read.

LordSemaj · February 2018

Sergykid wrote: »

i've tried it, with blocking, bar-swapping, but i don't see the effect. Even if i cancel an ability, and press the next button, my character stands still for 0.5 sec until it starts going. The only cancel i do well is when i weave a light attack between the abilities.

That's pretty much what it's for, light or heavy attack weaving. You're getting free attacks in. Those light attacks add up, those heavy attacks don't make you sit there for 3 seconds charging like this is Dragonball Z. It's basically adding the damage of a light attack to every skill attack you make.

Asardes · February 2018

zaria wrote: »

Asardes wrote: »

Never block-cancel, especially if you are stamina, since you will cancel your recovery for 2s. Instead try to weave either a light attack or heavy attack with your skills, and cast skills with lengthy animations right before you bar swap; as you swap part of the animation will not be played and you'll speed up your rotation by 0.5-0.8s. Light attack weaving is basically free damage since those don't consume a global cool-down (GCD = 0.8s) and heavy attacks restore resources, which is important for characters regardless of role and rotation. To weave light attacks press the LMB right before you press the skill button, to weave heavy attacks press the skill button when you're about halfway through your heavy attack animation. Some passives and skills will boost damage or offer bonus damage from heavy or light attacks. Also there are class skills and gear sets that empower light and/or heavy attacks or proc off them.

This, block cancel is for canceling an channeled ability like sweep on healer so I can do an emergency heal faster.
Cancel an snipe they you notice that the other guy has friends.
Also to dismount your horse

Yes, but that's not part of a normal rotation.

klowdy1 · February 2018

Sergykid wrote: »

i've tried it, with blocking, bar-swapping, but i don't see the effect. Even if i cancel an ability, and press the next button, my character stands still for 0.5 sec until it starts going. The only cancel i do well is when i weave a light attack between the abilities.

Work on light attacking, followed by a skill, like rending slashes, but try to hit it right before the light attack hits. If you need, just rapidly spam the abilities until you figure out when you need to use each ability without spamming them.

DoonerSeraph · February 2018

Its the action of cutting the animation of one action using another action of higher priority.

So you can cancel a LA or HA with a skill and you can cancel a skill with either Block, Bash, Bar swap or doing a barrel ro... I mean, roll dodge.

Trimming the animation allows you to weave a LA or HA into a skill or casting a skill using the same GCD of a bar swap.

jaschacasadiob16_ESO · February 2018

As a healer, canceling the animation allows you to shield and/or heal in scenarios where you wouldn't have time to, mainly vet content. Having said this, the game does not provide a tutorial about canceling animations, suggesting it is not supposed to be a feature. Still, it is fun that some content of the game can be beaten by DPS values achievable only through animation canceling.

Seriously broken.

Sergykid · February 2018

well the obvious solution is to make all animations one second long, with the current one second invisible global cooldown on abilities. This way, even if you cancel your ongoing animation, your character will sit still 0.5 seconds until next ability.

dsalter · February 2018

jaschacasadiob16_ESO wrote: »

As a healer, canceling the animation allows you to shield and/or heal in scenarios where you wouldn't have time to, mainly vet content. Having said this, the game does not provide a tutorial about canceling animations, suggesting it is not supposed to be a feature. Still, it is fun that some content of the game can be beaten by DPS values achievable only through animation canceling.

Seriously broken.

thats the sad thing about the game. its balanced around a bug.

Aurielle · February 2018

Animation cancelling merely triggers people who can't do it and think that being able to do it will add 10-15k DPS to their rotation (hint: it won't).

coop500 · February 2018

It's a bug that ZOS couldn't fix so now it's a feature that we all gotta learn if we don't want to be hated on by the community.

Jarryzzt · February 2018

I don't even know if it is a bug necessarily. Well, it sort of is, but it looks like one that was built in deliberately at the time, for whatever reason.

What I mean is - part of the problem is you have GCD at X and skill animation at Y > X. So you can queue up skills at intervals of X interrupting the longer animation - the Rain of Arrows skill set (including morphs) is a particularly egregious example to me because I can launch it and launch the next skill with my character barely even taking the bow in their hands (indicating a very, very slow animation). But why, why did they make the animation time different to begin with? I can think of reasons such as aesthetics (longer, slower animations), or programming convenience or whatever, but all of these are a conscious choice to engage in stupidity re-enact key scenes from "Idiocracy" separate the two times and create the "gap" that we now exploit via animation cancelling.

Surely, surely one can find examples of MMORPGs where animation time and GCD time is more or less identical...but the combat flow there is a lot different, of course.

So even if we are using an unintended consequence, I wouldn't call it a "bug" in the sense of "I forgot to put a semicolon at the end of a line and so the code breaks" type of a bug.

CyrusArya · February 2018

Sergykid wrote: »

well the obvious solution is to make all animations one second long, with the current one second invisible global cooldown on abilities. This way, even if you cancel your ongoing animation, your character will sit still 0.5 seconds until next ability.

Sounds like a great way to ruin the fluidity of the game and ruin the combat system. The arguements on this topic have been had and rehashed too many times. Let me tell you young bucks and opposers the only thing that matters. ZOS has reviewed and passed over cancelling, adjusted it in the code, and it has the devs blessing. End of story.

A_G_G_R_O · February 2018

CyrusArya wrote: »

Sergykid wrote: »

well the obvious solution is to make all animations one second long, with the current one second invisible global cooldown on abilities. This way, even if you cancel your ongoing animation, your character will sit still 0.5 seconds until next ability.

Sounds like a great way to ruin the fluidity of the game and ruin the combat system. The arguements on this topic have been had and rehashed too many times. Let me tell you young bucks and opposers the only thing that matters. ZOS has reviewed and passed over cancelling, adjusted it in the code, and it has the devs blessing. End of story.

Yup, and plz no cooldowns. Combat is all eso has.

exeeter702 · February 2018

coop500 wrote: »

It's a bug that ZOS couldn't fix so now it's a feature that we all gotta learn if we don't want to be hated on by the community.

False

coop500 · February 2018

exeeter702 wrote: »

coop500 wrote: »

It's a bug that ZOS couldn't fix so now it's a feature that we all gotta learn if we don't want to be hated on by the community.

False

Mind enlightening me on why it's false? Not that i'll believe you but at least try

exeeter702 · February 2018

coop500 wrote: »

exeeter702 wrote: »

coop500 wrote: »

It's a bug that ZOS couldn't fix so now it's a feature that we all gotta learn if we don't want to be hated on by the community.

False

Mind enlightening me on why it's false? Not that i'll believe you but at least try

There are countless explanations that i personally have provided over many threads going into great detail.

I dont care to do it again. It is objectively not a bug.

Milvan · February 2018

Basically there is three kinds of animation cancelling:

weaving = light/heavy atacking with a skill;

bar swapping = you cancel the skill animation swaping your skill bar;

Blocking = you quickly press block to cancel the skill animation, really hard to master.

xenowarrior92eb17_ESO · February 2018

@Sergykid
Animation Canceling is the way to increase your dps if you want to be competitive...and whatever other people said...a good dps is the one who can go over 30k on a 6mil dummy self buffed...how to achieve that? keep training 1 hour per day on that dummy and practice ur rotation...dull at 1st but after a while it gets in to ur system once u got it right and it can only go higher...every1 else who complains about high numbers but they never want to put any effort in it should just leave this alone and never return.
also I avoided to give the actual meaning since @Milvan did it already

Sergykid · February 2018

Milvan wrote: »

weaving = light/heavy atacking with a skill;

this is really easy, you just press a click while the ability animation is about to end and then another ability

Milvan wrote: »

bar swapping = you cancel the skill animation swaping your skill bar;

this is not working for me, if i use caltrops then i switch bar to volley my character just stands still for 0.5 sec until he casts the ability

Milvan wrote: »

Blocking = you quickly press block to cancel the skill animation, really hard to master.

same as with bar swap, it doesn't use the next ability even if i cancel the animation, it waits the queued spell anyway.

coop500 · February 2018

exeeter702 wrote: »

coop500 wrote: »

exeeter702 wrote: »

coop500 wrote: »

It's a bug that ZOS couldn't fix so now it's a feature that we all gotta learn if we don't want to be hated on by the community.

False

Mind enlightening me on why it's false? Not that i'll believe you but at least try

There are countless explanations that i personally have provided over many threads going into great detail.

I dont care to do it again. It is objectively not a bug.

"Objectively' meaning my words are not actually false, we just have differing opinions, okay, good to know.

LordSemaj · February 2018

Sergykid wrote: »

Milvan wrote: »

weaving = light/heavy atacking with a skill;

this is really easy, you just press a click while the ability animation is about to end and then another ability

Milvan wrote: »

bar swapping = you cancel the skill animation swaping your skill bar;

this is not working for me, if i use caltrops then i switch bar to volley my character just stands still for 0.5 sec until he casts the ability

Milvan wrote: »

Blocking = you quickly press block to cancel the skill animation, really hard to master.

same as with bar swap, it doesn't use the next ability even if i cancel the animation, it waits the queued spell anyway.

Animation cancelling only cancels the animation. It doesn't make the global cooldown any faster. You can't chain cast abilities by doing it but you can cancel long ability animations, channeled effects, or get yourself mobile after using a skill instead of locked into the animation (which is essentially what roll dodge cancelling is good for).