First, try not worrying about animation cancelling. Just stick a light attack in between every single ability. You DPS will probably go up by 5-10k with that alone.

Practice it in a smooth motion, not super, super fast like you're trying to break the controller (or keyboard/mouse? I don't know how computers work..).

I don't animation cancel on my Stamden and can hit 47k on the 3 mil. And I'm not a sweaty PvE trials player. (I mean that with respect to sweaty PvE trials players).

But to animation cancel its usually light attack, ability, block or bar swap. I don't think all skill can be cancelled though.

What's your CP?
Is all your gear yellow?
What traits are you gear?
What runes?
What are your attribute points in?
What food/drink are you using?

Getting the rotation down takes practice, lots and lots and lots of practice

Did I mention lots and lots?

I suggest getting these two addons:
https://www.esoui.com/downloads/info2048-LightAttackHelper.html
https://www.esoui.com/downloads/info2322-GlobalCooldownGCDBar.html

The first will give you a counter for your light attacks so you can see if they land. If you do LA followed by a Skill and you don't see the counter go up then you know you did it too fast. If your LAs per second is low (under 0.8 per second) then you are allowing too much time between LA and Skill.

GCD gives you a timer for when you can cast another skill, it helps you get into the rhythm for when you should be light attacking next.

And then as the others have said, its all down to practice after that. I would practice with weaving a single skill only until you get your LA per second up high. Then move onto practicing your full rotation trying to maintain that same high LA per second.

Maybe start around 50 bpm and try to work your way up gradually. I believe the theoretical max is 60 (1 skill + 1 light attack every second), but the best I've actually seen done was about 0.98 light attacks per second, or just under 59 bpm.

lukasrapsb16_ESO wrote: »

Hello guys,
I have been playing ESO casually for about 500 hours now and have just recently started to get into the whole Trials and Maelstrom thing and I have noticed that most guilds have a really high DPS requirement. So, curious about my DPS since I can clear overland content without breaking a sweat I looked up builds and found Alcasthq and Combat Metrics and I found I only deal 18k DPS, 20k if I try really hard.
I have copied the build "Rampage" on my Stamblade as best as I could, I have all gold Hundings Rage, 5 Briarheart and Velidreth, but I am missing the Maelstrom Bow (Can't clear the Arena for the life of me). I know for a fact that I am doing something wrong in the rotation, since I have of course looked up the topic on google and that certainly is where I am lacking.
Now for my question is: How do I light attack weave? How do I cancel the animations properly (as in, what keys do I press exactly and when do I press them?) Do I need to: "Endless Hail > Block > Light Attack > Caltrops > Block" or how do I do it? If the guide says light attack weave, is that what is meant? Or is it: "Endless Hail > Light Attack > Caltrops > Light Attack"?
I would really appreciate some guidance on this since it's been bothering me for the better part of the week and all practice on the dummy seems to not help at all. I would also love it if you could add me on PC/EU and help me out.
Thanks in advance and have a great day

I feel your pain, you are where I was around a year or so ago. I was struggling to break 20k dps, now my main dps has pulled over 52k.

For now, forget animation cancelling with regards to blocking and heavy attacks, concentrate on your light attack weaving.

Also, the maelstrom weapon can add several thousand dps, but this is not your main issue, light attack weaving is. You need an almost completely new build/gear to tackle vMA, so Id consider putting that on hold until you crack light attack weaving.

I am a very long way from being an expert or even particularly good at weaving, but through research and practice, I've more than doubled my dps, so here are my tips and thoughts on how I improved. I'll assume you are using a tried and tested rotation of skills, so this is not the main area for improvement.

*** What Championship level are you? Moving from mid CP levels to high CP is worth several thousand dps, if you are distributing the points correctly. So bare this in mind in relation to your dps.

*** Are the traits in your gear all optimised? Finally transmuting all my gear definitely had a noticeable uplift in my dps. More than this, finally golding my weapons, added a few thousand dps to my parse alone.

*** none of the above would have had as big or noticeable impact as it has, unless I had learned to light attack weave properly. The aim is to execute a light attack, but cancel its animation by using a skill, long before the light attacks animation completes. When done correctly, the light attacks are barely noticeable. I think you are already doing the right things, researching online, watching guides etc, so this will probably be more effective than our comments here, but there are a few things you can do to help, in my experience.

First, find someone with a target dummy you can practice on, in their main residence, most guilds will have people with this facility. The 3m health target dummy is the standard dps parse one. Then practice. Practice more. Then do more practice. It can be boring and tedious. Its also the only way you will nail it. Some folks need more practice, some folks need less.

To start with, dont worry too much about the animation cancelling, simply add in a light attack before every single skill and see if you can maintain this rhythm for the whole parse. Gradually, you can start to speed up. Note that it is possible to try and do it too fast to the point your light attack doesnt actually hit the target! This is why building up the speed gradually and maintaining rhythm is most important.

I would also only practice "Light attack > spammable skill > light attack > spammable skill > repeat etc"... as you start to speed up, try clicking the skill almost immediately after you have clicked to light attack, the timing involved is what counts. Note that the timing can be different for different weapons. When you are ready, add in other skills and move towards a full rotation.

One key thing which helped me, was thinking about every single skill as being accompanied by a light attack. I dont use skills, I use (LA>skill). Thinking of it like this may sound simple, but it really helped me with my approach to the whole thing and with my timing. It made the process become more natural. Through practice, I gradually cancelled more and more of the light attack animation, this is to do with the timing of when you hit the skill and it will just kind of click for you eventually.

A bit of a ramble but I hope my insight helps, as I say I was literally exactly where you are dps wise not so long ago. You can do it, it can feel unachievable at times, but you can do it.

xWarbrain wrote: »

First, try not worrying about animation cancelling. Just stick a light attack in between every single ability. You DPS will probably go up by 5-10k with that alone.

Practice it in a smooth motion, not super, super fast like you're trying to break the controller (or keyboard/mouse? I don't know how computers work..).

I don't animation cancel on my Stamden and can hit 47k on the 3 mil. And I'm not a sweaty PvE trials player. (I mean that with respect to sweaty PvE trials players).

But to animation cancel its usually light attack, ability, block or bar swap. I don't think all skill can be cancelled though.

That's what I did, just hit light attack, then a spell, light attack then another spell and finally formed a rotation which included bar swapping eventually. I went from around 18k to 40k after I got it down.

I don't know if it works the same on pc im assuming it does but it may help to remember skills fire on button release not button press, might help with finding a rhythm.

Camb0Sl1ce wrote: »

I don't know if it works the same on pc im assuming it does but it may help to remember skills fire on button release not button press, might help with finding a rhythm.

Correct. Although Heavy Attacks will fire once they are "built up" as it were.

But, Light Attacks and Skills only fire on release of the key on PC

Oreyn_Bearclaw wrote: »

There is no reason to ever press block in a PVE rotation unless you actually need to block to mitigate damage. There are really only two types of animation canceling you need to worry about.

The first, a light attack weave, barely qualifies as AC, but you technically miss a bit of the follow-through of the light attack. Simply put, every skill gets a light attack in front of it. LA>Sklll, LA<Skill. You need to practice it. There is no subsitute for beating on a dummy for a while.

The second is swap canceling. This only applies when you bar swap and you are cancelling the annimation of the skill prior to the swap. Here once the skill begins to activate, you can bar swap and the rest of the animation gets canceled. This way, you dont miss a GCD when you bar swap.

The easiest way to think about any of this is with GCD (Global Cooldowns). Practically speaking, skills have a GCD of about 1 second. That means that even if you press the skill 50 times in a second, it will only fire once. Things like bar swap, light attack, block, etc, arent subject to the same rules, only skills.

What that means is that you basically need to make sure you are pressing a skill button every second (use a metronome to practice if you want), and between, you can sprinkle in your bar swaps and light attacks, but you should never miss the skill every second. So instead of Skill Skill Skill Skill Skill over five seconds, you could have LA>Skill, LA>Skill>Bar Swap, LA>skill, LA>skill>Bar Swap, LA >Skill, again, all in 5 seconds. The difference is in the second one, you added in 5 light attacks, and you swapped bars twice for example.

Some skills act funny after a bar swap, mainly ground AOEs like Caltops, endless hail, etc. So on those, you can actually go one step further and light attack from your front bar before you swap. So for example on a NB LA>Surprise Attack>LA>Bar Swap>Hail>light Attack>Poison Injection>Bar Swap>Light attack>Surprise Attack. Here we have 4 skills, 2 Bar swaps, and 4 light attacks in 4 seconds, but you will notice that the light attack for Endless hail, actually came from our front bar. Not only does it make the animation smoother, but the front bar light attack also hits harder. As long as the skills fire on the second, you can use LAs and Bar swaps as you need in between.

Two places you can really screw that up. One is you miss light attacks, which is simply a DPS loss. The second is that in an effort to do all this, your rotation slows so instead of doing all that in 5 seconds, it takes 6 or 7. Result is the same, it's a DPS loss. If you have combat metrics, calculate your LA/Second from a dummy parse. If the ratio is below about .9, one of those two things (or both) is happening. On a NB specifically, you can also look at how many seconds pass between your spectral bow procs. If its more than about 7 (even that's perhaps a bit high), you have work to do on that as well.


TLDR: Anyone can follow a build, but a good rotation takes practice. Rotation is WAY more important than your build.

this sounds god awful
about as fun as having a leg cramp

Oreyn_Bearclaw wrote: »

ESO takes some skill and PRACTICE at the highest levels. It is what it is.

In my experience, it requires patience, because it's annoying, and srendarr, because you need to see your uptimes.