Highish ping - animation canceling and weaving

malicia · August 2017

My normal in-game ping is between 290 and 350. My problem is that I'm really struggling with animation canceling and weaving. Is there anyone here who's also playing with highish ping and who's managed to get good with animation canceling and weaving? I would love some practical advice. Am on EU.

Example on bow bar: What often happens is that I'll left click for a LA, press 5 for caltrops, right click for ani cancel, left click, see that caltrops is not up, press 5 again.

On my Stamblade I currently top out at 25k DPS using Veli, VO and NMG. Same if I equipped VO and TFS. So I'm confident that my problem is not gear, but the fact that I just can't get animation canceling and weaving to properly work.

MarzAttakz · August 2017

Yip, sounds like my regular day in Tamriel.

I can handle it most of the time but lately it's the spiking that's been getting to me. 220 - 250 weaving feels ok'ish but when it frequently spikes upwards of 1250 all my muscle memory goes out the window. Bar swaps are haphazard lottery draws. Rotations are ... I cannot find an apt term for them.

I look at other players in game, in streams, on youtube and go green with envy. So damn easy with a responsive interface. Majority have no clue how hard those of us with "bad ping" have to play to be marginally competitive.

Morgul667 · August 2017

MarzAttakz wrote: »

Yip, sounds like my regular day in Tamriel.

I can handle it most of the time but lately it's the spiking that's been getting to me. 220 - 250 weaving feels ok'ish but when it frequently spikes upwards of 1250 all my muscle memory goes out the window. Bar swaps are haphazard lottery draws. Rotations are ... I cannot find an apt term for them.

I look at other players in game, in streams, on youtube and go green with envy. So damn easy with a responsive interface. Majority have no clue how hard those of us with "bad ping" have to play to be marginally competitive.

Yeah, this bad pings turns a vet trial or a good pvp fight into a nightmare ^^

malicia · August 2017

My ping spikes occasionally, but my main concern here is to get canceling and weaving working with my standard, run-of-the-mill 290-350 ping. Most of the time my ping is in that range.

Any advice? Those of you in the 200-250 range, what do you do different when it is 250 than what you do when it is 200?

Morgul667 · August 2017

weaving is ok for me until it reaches 450ms+ then it becomes nightmare

I advise you dont rush to cast the skill, and find your pace on simple mobs

practice helped me

ccfeeling · August 2017

Outsource the servers

malicia · August 2017

Morgul667 wrote: »

weaving is ok for me until it reaches 450ms+ then it becomes nightmare

I advise you dont rush to cast the skill, and find your pace on simple mobs

practice helped me

Thanks, that's the kind of discussion I'm looking for!

Could you get a pace where you're each time certain that both LA and skill will trigger each time? Currently that is eluding me. The number of times I find myself on my DW bar without Poison Injection running is just sad.

LordGavus · August 2017

My ping range is about the same and my dps is around 25k too. When ping gets over 400 I struggle bad. When I get my timing good I can get to 30k.
Generally the lower my ping the higher my dps.

Merlin13KAGL · August 2017

I'm guessing it's not related to latency.

Sounds like you're probably block cancelling too soon and actually cancelling your intended skill entirely.

You have to find the point in the animation where you can safely cancel, and they are not all the same.

This takes time and practice, but much of this is still on the client-side.

malicia · August 2017

Merlin13KAGL wrote: »

...
Sounds like you're probably block cancelling too soon and actually cancelling your intended skill entirely.
.. .

I've played around quite a bit and can easily cancel too early. Normally my toon will then block, and after the block do the full skill with animation. If I block too late, it will do the full skill with animation, and then block. There is a sweet spot where it works perfectly, but I can't repeat that dependably. It indeed shift per skill, but seems to do be a function of latency as well.

Dasovaruilos · August 2017

My ping is around 300ms and I have a hard time too, but I found that being patient while weaving is better than becoming frustrated for trying to do it super fast and missing weaves and DPS.

I started playing a MagBlade recently, and with them weaving perfectly is super important due to the need to hit 5/10 in 20 seconds to proc the spectral Bow.

Every time I try to do too fast, trying to cancel light attacks with skills, I miss a couple and only manage one bow per cast.

If I try a little bit slower, to give time for the game to actually register, I can get two and my dps increases.

I don't think a 300 ms will ever be able to get the same DPS as a equally skilled player with 100 or less ping, but I could be proven wrong.

TL;DR: Don't try to cancel light weaves with skills. Try to do your rotation a little bit slower so everything registers.

Vapirko · August 2017

I've played from SE Asia and from the US with respective ping times of 270-350ms and 100-140ms. My dps on a target skeleton didn't change much at all. It's more about timing and not trying to go too fast with button pressing. PvP on the other hand, it does make a huge difference.

malicia · August 2017

Response to @CalmFury's post.

^^I'll try going a bit slower, thanks. I normally only price Spectral once in a rotation, as I can never get in enough LAs for a second time.

malicia · August 2017

Vapirko wrote: »

I've played from SE Asia and from the US with respective ping times of 270-350ms and 100-140ms. My dps on a target skeleton didn't change much at all. It's more about timing and not trying to go too fast with button pressing. PvP on the other hand, it does make a huge difference.

Well, that's heartening to hear, I'll then spend much more time in figuring out the timings.

Do you use animation canceling as well, or mostly weaving?

Thanks, people!

malicia · December 2018

I saw this old thread of mine today and thought that feedback is in order.

A bit more than a year later now, I know that my problem wasn't ping but me just being clueless about the Global Cooldown.

I first realized that some thing's wrong when my DPS increased when I slowed down my rotation.

When I mentioned this to a friend, he explained the GC to me, and suggested that I download the ShowGlobalCooldown add-on.

Using that made weaving makes sense to me for the first time.

I'm still not the best DD ever, my magblade gets about 38 using Master Arch and My WM wearing Stamblade about 45. But I now know that increasing my ping isn't limiting me, if I want my DPS to increase I merely need more dummy time. Sure, ping may have a more significant impact when I sometime reach the 45-50k range, but ping isn't limiting me in the 35-45 range.

Haquor · December 2018

Good to see someone not blaming thier ping for thier bad dps. Who woulda thought.... practice. Now you can be called an elitist for the crime of learning and trying.

seerevaloc · December 2019

My work require me to fly a lot, and usually having bad connections (upon landing, they give me a 4G mobile data & go hotel, enjoy 300ms+ spiking network, etc.) Therefore I've access to both environments.

However, from my perspective:
At home country with 75ms latency, high-quality network, etc. => Doing 65k on Iron.
At away countries with 300-400ms latency, low-quality spiking network => Doing 49-57k on Iron.

I've found too many chances to compare my uptimes, castings, rates, etc. they're pretty much similar.
Point is as OP says => Many times you've bar swap lottery, some skills won't register, etc.

To overcome this I've learned to play a bit slower => And slower play affecting your DPS quite highly. Especially if you're in Trial or Dungeons. Someone else casting 2 or 3 skills while you're still on your 1st or 2nd. Low pingers eventually have access to up to 20%+ more DPS this way. Also while you're doing your start-ups (Wall, Barrage, Orb, etc.) they already pass to main damage dealer skills & melting down earlier than you (which shows up they're reaching 1.5m total Dmg in 15 secs while you're 800k, total mob HP pool is limited, so they can melt down more than you in given period before mobs dead).

That doesn't mean you are bad or unskilled, given chance to same latency you can do +/- 10% similar output if skilled. So don't blame yourself, you can't win/challenge against the city's physical internet infrastructure.

However, it's what I'm experiencing almost every month or two.

Narvuntien · December 2019

I can get up to 30K (solo buffed 3 mill not Atronach). Thats good enough for most content, you should compete against yourself for dps and not others.

I have people claimed they can do 45-50K on 300 ping.

The bar stop freeze and double casting constantly sucks. At one point I was using elemental blockade on my front bar so that I didn't have to bar swap as often and that helped (although in trials I still leave it on the backbar with a shield on the frontbar)

Cirantille · December 2019

This happens to me in Cyrodiil at primetime usually

Dungeons are fine

cyclonus11 · December 2019

Same on my NB - example: LE's would only fire off little more than half the time. I followed all the guides, practiced lots on bosses and target dummies, and could never exceed 22k DPS.

So I shelved him and rolled a tank.

Fiewiel · December 2019

3 year old necro.

MaleAmazon · December 2019

Why are you right clicking to cancel (I assume block cancel) on a bow bar? You just need to go light attack -> skill. I have bash on RMB for faster interrupt, but I don´t really use it to weave unless maybe if I have sword'n'board. Bash doesn´t add much DPS unless you have a shield and even then it is not necessary. Block doesn´t add squat afaik, it just hides your animation.

Some skills, while nominally instant, have a bit of a longer animation and I think they might be less amenable to weaving. Also some stuff gets sort of randomly skipped sometimes, like the final blast of heavy lightning / restoration attacks.

If you have trouble light attack weaving, try heavy attack weaving (hold down LMB constantly and just press skill key when the heavy attack starts to wind up). The game is quite forgiving with the timing.

Also, it sounds like you haven´t reassigned hotkeys. Do that and see if it works.

I have >Z = bar 2, CV = bar 1, which helps with bar switching since I can hammer away on the key if it lags, without having to worry about a double swap.

Then I have RMB for interrupt unless it´s a tank, and shift for dodge roll. Also helps a lot since the reaction is faster with one keypress.

ALT, space, E, R, F for skills. This means they are all immediately reachable with my thumb or index finger.

It helps a lot.

I mean, nothing truly, fundamentally helps with lag but actually fixing the lag, however there are things you can do to minimize the problem.

EDIT:

3 year old necro.

Lolly. I need to pay more attention.