Actions Per Minute

kylewwefan · March 2020

[*] When playing our game, do you play at a Low (Under 100), Medium (100-200), or High (200+) Actions Per Minute? (Note this includes movement and other non-combat actions, not just ability presses). Do you ever feel penalized for playing as one of these with the new paradigm? Do you enjoy playing at your experienced APM?

This question in the PTS feedback thread has me wondering a little bit. I play with a controller, not keyboard mouse so can’t really figure it out. It about makes my brain explode trying to move about Tamriel with “WASD” and panning the camera with mouse. I don’t even know what buttons to press to jump, or block, or dodge roll, use a potion, and most sadly what fires abilities off.

It took me some good time just to get my controller set up right where I can use it good. On ps4 I change some button assignments around to better suit me. You can do that on PC, but it didn’t want to work right for some time til someone told me how to do it. And that’s because controller support is not so great. It’s getting better, but not quite right yet.

(If devs read this, it’s because you have to set controller to on rather than automatic to assign or bind buttons. Automatic just kicks you back out for some reason)

So anyways, if you’re using left and right thumb sticks to move around and pan the camera, how would you figure your actions per minute(apm) out?

I’d figure all attacks and dots and weaves alone would have you likely around 100+ You add in movement and camera jerk you’re probably getting close to 150 or 200. But over 200 seems like that would be a lot. Even for some squirrely dude that likes to move around a lot.

I realize pc gamers are most likely also utilizing binded buttons on their mouse for attacks rather than something on the keyboard. Just the small little things that could make some difference. Like one button to fire off an ultimate instead of lb1+rb1 together. Or synergies bound to single button to work more reliably. (Know how many times I accidentally streaked off the edge as a runner in VMoL trying to hit a synergy)

So, who’s over 200?

naturebased · March 2020

Probably alcast and xynode and fengrush and players like that, maybe top 1 or 2%

Also, APM is kind if irrelevant. I could spam abilities and clicks for over 9000 APM but only about 10 of those would register due to lag and desyncs.

barney2525 · March 2020

I'm sure I can do at least one action in a minute ... if I'm not distracted ... and not chewing gum

precambria · March 2020

It takes up to 10 inputs for a skill to fire and if you don't keep pressing it the thing never registers, needless to say the APM is no longer an issue when the lag is this bad.

FierceSam · March 2020

I’m really puzzled by this

Skills have a 1 second cooldown, so you can only fire off 1 skill a second. One route to higher dps is actually reducing your button mashing to 1 mash/second

Similarly Light Attacks have a 1 second cooldown, although it’s a different cooldown.

So ideally you are playing 1 skill and 1 light attack every second, like a slow bah-dum heartbeat. If you’ve got that rhythm right you’re likely doing decent damage and you cannot go any faster.

You might mash faster than that, but it will have no additional benefit.

So are ZOS essentially saying they want to increase these cooldowns so players have to play slower or what?

carlos424 · March 2020

FierceSam wrote: »

I’m really puzzled by this

Skills have a 1 second cooldown, so you can only fire off 1 skill a second. One route to higher dps is actually reducing your button mashing to 1 mash/second

Similarly Light Attacks have a 1 second cooldown, although it’s a different cooldown.

So ideally you are playing 1 skill and 1 light attack every second, like a slow bah-dum heartbeat. If you’ve got that rhythm right you’re likely doing decent damage and you cannot go any faster.

You might mash faster than that, but it will have no additional benefit.

So are ZOS essentially saying they want to increase these cooldowns so players have to play slower or what?

Haven’t you heard? We’re all mashing buttons as fast as we can, like the world is coming to an end, and doing elite dps. Lol

RefLiberty · March 2020

What is the point of this mashing when, as already mentioned above, there is a global cool down on skills of 1 second.
If you want to run around like squirrel on meth, while casting, well you can tho.

ArchMikem · March 2020

kylewwefan wrote: »

[*] When playing our game, do you play at a Low (Under 100), Medium (100-200), or High (200+) Actions Per Minute? (Note this includes movement and other non-combat actions, not just ability presses). Do you ever feel penalized for playing as one of these with the new paradigm? Do you enjoy playing at your experienced APM?

What is this, Starcraft?

daemonios · March 2020

FierceSam wrote: »

I’m really puzzled by this

Skills have a 1 second cooldown, so you can only fire off 1 skill a second. One route to higher dps is actually reducing your button mashing to 1 mash/second

Similarly Light Attacks have a 1 second cooldown, although it’s a different cooldown.

So ideally you are playing 1 skill and 1 light attack every second, like a slow bah-dum heartbeat. If you’ve got that rhythm right you’re likely doing decent damage and you cannot go any faster.

You might mash faster than that, but it will have no additional benefit.

So are ZOS essentially saying they want to increase these cooldowns so players have to play slower or what?

You light attack, then use a skill. You can cancel (should cancel) some skill animations with block or bash so you can get another light attack off instead of waiting for the animation to display fully. That's 3 actions per second right there, 180 per minute. It doesn't take much moving around to cross 200, plus ultimates and synergies...

Scion_of_Yggdrasil · March 2020

FierceSam wrote: »

I’m really puzzled by this

Skills have a 1 second cooldown, so you can only fire off 1 skill a second. One route to higher dps is actually reducing your button mashing to 1 mash/second

Similarly Light Attacks have a 1 second cooldown, although it’s a different cooldown.

So ideally you are playing 1 skill and 1 light attack every second, like a slow bah-dum heartbeat. If you’ve got that rhythm right you’re likely doing decent damage and you cannot go any faster.

You might mash faster than that, but it will have no additional benefit.

So are ZOS essentially saying they want to increase these cooldowns so players have to play slower or what?

More like, they reduced how much dmg you can plug into that 1 second cool down by reducing the dmg of LA, but you can still fit in 1 LA and 1 skill within the cooldown, like usual. Now the difference would be how long you can keep up any given rotation, as opposed to how much DPS you can push out in a short burst. For example, lets compare input from 3 hypothetical players in a 4 second window...

Good Weaver: 1 skill +1 LA every second = 4 LA and 4 skills
... compared to...
Bad Weaver: 1 skill every second + 1 LA every other second =2 LA and 4 skills
... compared to...
Non Weaver: 1 skill every second + 1 LA = 1 LA and 4 skills

Assuming these 3 players are the same lvl, have same gear, use same skill....

Lets talk dmg from LA... If the PTS changes go live, the good weaver will have only increased his DPS marginally, compared to the other players who didn't weave in as many LA. The only real benefit of weaving after the change is sustain, because in the 4 seconds this data was hypothetically pulled from, all players performed very comparably.

technohic · March 2020

Acording to the server in Cyrodiil last night; may APM (and yes, action per MINUTE) was....

1

FakeFox · March 2020

I really don't understand the focus on APM in ESO. It's not a micromanagement focused game where it is really a deciding factor.

ZarkingFrued · March 2020

FakeFox wrote: »

I really don't understand the focus on APM in ESO. It's not a micromanagement focused game where it is really a deciding factor.

This, TEN THOUSAND TIMES OVER.

ZoS mentions APM in a nerf thread and now everyone has obsessed about it. Literally sounds like something people use to self assure themselves someone is not much better at a video game. You can't explain away the fact that someone reacts faster

darthgummibear_ESO · March 2020

If you are factoring in things like movement, bar-swapping, potions etc, I'd bet that a lot of the community is in the 100-200 range.

FENGRUSH · March 2020

As someone who's played starcraft and dota at a competitive level in the past, these are ridiculous questions here and likely brought in from hires coming in from riot games (league of legends). The end of times is near. You don't even need 200+ amp in eso lol.

Everest_Lionheart · March 2020

I have a question, maybe you can help me with it seeing how it may relate to APM. I am still a noob to this game and play pretty much only solo right now but have noticed that sometimes I kill the same enemies much more efficiently than other times. Would this be related to crits or is it a possible input issue?

I’m admittedly not good at bar switching yet so I stick to mainly 1 bar when I’m out there. So anyway I feel like I am furiously button mashing at times. I’m on XB1 so with the standard controller I can get 4 button in per second. Basically I do HA-skill1-LA-skill2-LA-skill3-LA-skill4 to open every fight, that’s about 2-2.5 seconds for essentially 8 clicks. My 5th clock is a heal (warden class) for when I need it and would sub in place of my 4th atk skill.

I dodge, block or bash as needed and keep in constant motion forward/back side/side or strafe depending on environment.

Now sometimes I see a skill won’t always cast, is that because I’m mashing too fast. Usually it’s my animal summon skills which appear to have a slight delay to them. Would slowing down the buttons while throwing a block after a skill help my overall efficiency like say LA-skill-block every second instead of all offensive all the time?

Trying to learn something here, it’s why I come to the forums!

**edited, obviously the HA open takes a little longer but after that initial HA I alternate LA-skill the rest of the way.

leepalmer95 · March 2020

Apm has -0 relevnace in this game.

Basically one of the clueless combat devs looked at a pro Star craft 2 game and decided thats the problem with the barely existant skill gap. Not the fact they've dumbed the game down so much theres no incentive for new players to improve.

haploeb14_ESO · March 2020

How do you Know what your APM is?

leepalmer95 · March 2020

haploeb14_ESO wrote: »

How do you Know what your APM is?

They expect you to randomly count I guess.

haploeb14_ESO · March 2020

leepalmer95 wrote: »

haploeb14_ESO wrote: »

How do you Know what your APM is?

They expect you to randomly count I guess.

That was my thought. LOL in an intense fight. 1, 2, 3, ......... darn where was I, LOL

idk · March 2020

naturebased wrote: »

Probably alcast and xynode and fengrush and players like that, maybe top 1 or 2%

Also, APM is kind if irrelevant. I could spam abilities and clicks for over 9000 APM but only about 10 of those would register due to lag and desyncs.

When talking APM it is only the actions that register. That is all that matters so the example of doing 9000 clicks per minute is not 9000 APM.

And yes, top players like Alcast raiding on top teams do have the higher APM. Players that raid with groups clearing the hardest content in an MMORPG tend to have the highest APM. This is not something specific to ESO. It is just that ESO requires a much higher skill level to play at the top levels of the game.

leepalmer95 · March 2020

idk wrote: »

naturebased wrote: »

Probably alcast and xynode and fengrush and players like that, maybe top 1 or 2%

Also, APM is kind if irrelevant. I could spam abilities and clicks for over 9000 APM but only about 10 of those would register due to lag and desyncs.

When talking APM it is only the actions that register. That is all that matters so the example of doing 9000 clicks per minute is not 9000 APM.

And yes, top players like Alcast raiding on top teams do have the higher APM. Players that raid with groups clearing the hardest content in an MMORPG tend to have the highest APM. This is not something specific to ESO. It is just that ESO requires a much higher skill level to play at the top levels of the game.

what about pvp? Or it depends on your class, build etc...

A snipeblade is gonna have low apm, a magplar will hold block and occasionally heal or someone will use mistform for 4s. Apm isn't a useful.

But yeah people who are good at the game will atleast use a skill and light attack, so 120 apm atleast. But its not hard.

kylewwefan · March 2020

daemonios wrote: »

FierceSam wrote: »

I’m really puzzled by this

Skills have a 1 second cooldown, so you can only fire off 1 skill a second. One route to higher dps is actually reducing your button mashing to 1 mash/second

Similarly Light Attacks have a 1 second cooldown, although it’s a different cooldown.

So ideally you are playing 1 skill and 1 light attack every second, like a slow bah-dum heartbeat. If you’ve got that rhythm right you’re likely doing decent damage and you cannot go any faster.

You might mash faster than that, but it will have no additional benefit.

So are ZOS essentially saying they want to increase these cooldowns so players have to play slower or what?

You light attack, then use a skill. You can cancel (should cancel) some skill animations with block or bash so you can get another light attack off instead of waiting for the animation to display fully. That's 3 actions per second right there, 180 per minute. It doesn't take much moving around to cross 200, plus ultimates and synergies...

Who even does that? Isn’t it enough you light attack then follow it immediately with a skill?

When it goes fast enough to cut off the la animation, that’s animation canceling.

No need to block cancel.

Bash cancelling? What the heck even is that?

I’m having a hard enough time wrapping my head around getting over 100. I’d surely be breaking a sweat. Up it to 200? I’ve no idea.

Stebarnz · March 2020

kylewwefan wrote: »

daemonios wrote: »

FierceSam wrote: »

I’m really puzzled by this

Skills have a 1 second cooldown, so you can only fire off 1 skill a second. One route to higher dps is actually reducing your button mashing to 1 mash/second

Similarly Light Attacks have a 1 second cooldown, although it’s a different cooldown.

So ideally you are playing 1 skill and 1 light attack every second, like a slow bah-dum heartbeat. If you’ve got that rhythm right you’re likely doing decent damage and you cannot go any faster.

You might mash faster than that, but it will have no additional benefit.

So are ZOS essentially saying they want to increase these cooldowns so players have to play slower or what?

You light attack, then use a skill. You can cancel (should cancel) some skill animations with block or bash so you can get another light attack off instead of waiting for the animation to display fully. That's 3 actions per second right there, 180 per minute. It doesn't take much moving around to cross 200, plus ultimates and synergies...

Who even does that? Isn’t it enough you light attack then follow it immediately with a skill?

When it goes fast enough to cut off the la animation, that’s animation canceling.

No need to block cancel.

Bash cancelling? What the heck even is that?

I’m having a hard enough time wrapping my head around getting over 100. I’d surely be breaking a sweat. Up it to 200? I’ve no idea.

You are getting confused with weaving and ani cancel. You should LA-skill-A/C, however with the game in this state it doesnt matter.

A/C is cancelling the animation of the skill whether by block, barswap or dodge roll.

Sylosi · March 2020

Go watch whichever Korean is currently best at Starcraft 2 to see something where APM actually meaningfully matters. (and as an added bonus for those who laughably bang on about "skilled" play in many threads recently, to see what a game with actual skilled play looks like)

Ratzkifal · March 2020

People are saying APM doesn't matter because of global cooldowns, but it's not just one skill per second.
You can do one skill per second, one light attack per second, a bar swap, drink a potion and activate a synergy all in the same second.
If you are using weapon swap to cancel animations, then you are doing a lot of barswapping in your rotation in addition to skills and light attacks. Low APM people don't cancel their animations and thus cast less than 1 ability per second because they wait for the ability's animation to finish.

Don't pretend like this is not part of the issue.

leepalmer95 · March 2020

Ratzkifal wrote: »

People are saying APM doesn't matter because of global cooldowns, but it's not just one skill per second.
You can do one skill per second, one light attack per second, a bar swap, drink a potion and activate a synergy all in the same second.
If you are using weapon swap to cancel animations, then you are doing a lot of barswapping in your rotation in addition to skills and light attacks. Low APM people don't cancel their animations and thus cast less than 1 ability per second because they wait for the ability's animation to finish.

Don't pretend like this is not part of the issue.

What issue? People can learn to do the exact same things like everyone else does.

daemonios · March 2020

kylewwefan wrote: »

daemonios wrote: »

FierceSam wrote: »

I’m really puzzled by this

Skills have a 1 second cooldown, so you can only fire off 1 skill a second. One route to higher dps is actually reducing your button mashing to 1 mash/second

Similarly Light Attacks have a 1 second cooldown, although it’s a different cooldown.

So ideally you are playing 1 skill and 1 light attack every second, like a slow bah-dum heartbeat. If you’ve got that rhythm right you’re likely doing decent damage and you cannot go any faster.

You might mash faster than that, but it will have no additional benefit.

So are ZOS essentially saying they want to increase these cooldowns so players have to play slower or what?

You light attack, then use a skill. You can cancel (should cancel) some skill animations with block or bash so you can get another light attack off instead of waiting for the animation to display fully. That's 3 actions per second right there, 180 per minute. It doesn't take much moving around to cross 200, plus ultimates and synergies...

Who even does that? Isn’t it enough you light attack then follow it immediately with a skill?

When it goes fast enough to cut off the la animation, that’s animation canceling.

No need to block cancel.

Bash cancelling? What the heck even is that?

I’m having a hard enough time wrapping my head around getting over 100. I’d surely be breaking a sweat. Up it to 200? I’ve no idea.

You cancel your light attack's animation with a skill. Some skills have rather long animations, though their effect can register immediately. In order to get another LA as soon as possible, you need to cancel THAT animation. But you can't LA in the middle of a skill animation, so you need to cancel it differently; block, bash, weapon swap, dodge, all cancel skill animations. If you don't, depending on the skill you used, you can miss several LA+skill sequences. It's trickier than simply LA weaving because different skills register at different times in their animation, and if you cancel too soon they won't register. Who does that? I do. I know other people do. If you don't, that's OK. But it doesn't mean it doesn't exist.

Ratzkifal · March 2020

leepalmer95 wrote: »

Ratzkifal wrote: »

People are saying APM doesn't matter because of global cooldowns, but it's not just one skill per second.
You can do one skill per second, one light attack per second, a bar swap, drink a potion and activate a synergy all in the same second.
If you are using weapon swap to cancel animations, then you are doing a lot of barswapping in your rotation in addition to skills and light attacks. Low APM people don't cancel their animations and thus cast less than 1 ability per second because they wait for the ability's animation to finish.

Don't pretend like this is not part of the issue.

What issue? People can learn to do the exact same things like everyone else does.

No. They can't. That's the whole issue. Not everyone can move their fingers that fast. There are extreme cases of people with disabilities who are physically unable to move fast enough but there are also less extreme cases of people having their hands start hurting from moving any faster.

Rukia541 · March 2020

Ratzkifal wrote: »

leepalmer95 wrote: »

Ratzkifal wrote: »

People are saying APM doesn't matter because of global cooldowns, but it's not just one skill per second.
You can do one skill per second, one light attack per second, a bar swap, drink a potion and activate a synergy all in the same second.
If you are using weapon swap to cancel animations, then you are doing a lot of barswapping in your rotation in addition to skills and light attacks. Low APM people don't cancel their animations and thus cast less than 1 ability per second because they wait for the ability's animation to finish.

Don't pretend like this is not part of the issue.

What issue? People can learn to do the exact same things like everyone else does.

No. They can't. That's the whole issue. Not everyone can move their fingers that fast. There are extreme cases of people with disabilities who are physically unable to move fast enough but there are also less extreme cases of people having their hands start hurting from moving any faster.

The example of ani cancel is extreme case too. All you need is LA weaving, nothing more is required for anything even top tier content until this patch hits and you need to bash weave, unless they nerf that too in which case you'll just hold down left click. Who the *** bar swaps to ani cancel.. hahahahaha that's rich.

naturebased · March 2020

Ratzkifal wrote: »

leepalmer95 wrote: »

Ratzkifal wrote: »

People are saying APM doesn't matter because of global cooldowns, but it's not just one skill per second.
You can do one skill per second, one light attack per second, a bar swap, drink a potion and activate a synergy all in the same second.
If you are using weapon swap to cancel animations, then you are doing a lot of barswapping in your rotation in addition to skills and light attacks. Low APM people don't cancel their animations and thus cast less than 1 ability per second because they wait for the ability's animation to finish.

Don't pretend like this is not part of the issue.

What issue? People can learn to do the exact same things like everyone else does.

No. They can't. That's the whole issue. Not everyone can move their fingers that fast. There are extreme cases of people with disabilities who are physically unable to move fast enough but there are also less extreme cases of people having their hands start hurting from moving any faster.

It would be more effective for ESO to have a built-in macro for those struggling with rotations or the disabled than to just uproot the whole combat system. There are alternatives.