Get 100% MORE damage by animation cancelling

etchedpixels · April 2021

zvavi wrote: »

Anything you suggested is dumbing down the game, you are asking for:
1. Slower combat.
2. Gear to not matter. (It doesn't even balance stam Vs mag correctly, since stamina gets bonus weapon damage from armor).
3. Buffs to not matter (heck, people will be forced to NOT bring buffs, to ensure only the strongest one exists).
4. Ultimates to not matter (since during ultimate time your damage spikes up above your usual damage)
5. Gear to not matter, again.

You may enjoy such a game, I wouldn't. As I mentioned the previous list of what zos should really do, there are ways to help floor without dumbing down the game.

I think it's called minecraft 8)

Not to be flippant but the basis of ESO is a complex interplay of skills, gear and strategies.

As it stands today almost any player with a bit of practice should be able to happily complete all the quests and delves solo, the world bosses in a group and the normal non DLC dungeons in a four. No weaving, no magic skill and rare gear needed.

Everest_Lionheart · April 2021

Yikes, this conversation has gone off into the weeds a bit. Let me offer some insight into set stacking though as a DD that runs a buff Zen MagDK and Catalyst Cro. I’m one of those players in the upper mid tier damage wise (83k DK, 82K cro.) My 2 core teams are currently progging vAS2 and vCR3. I wear the buff sets to push my group damage higher at the expense of my own DPS. My DK drops from 83k to 75k in Zen, my Cro from 82k down to 75k.

Honesty it’s nice to have some set variation depending on your role otherwise every DD would be wearing the exact same sets and running the same skills. If we were to cap damage or cap buffs that’s exactly what going to happen. If they get rid of AC everyone will revert to heavy attack build wearing the same sets and the same thing will happen.

The more they nerf anything in this game the more vanilla it becomes. Take a look at CP 2.0. As a DD you can slot any combination of the relevant damage slotables and they all hit within about 2k of one another. The next patch despite adding additional slotable skills I suspect the overall result will remain the same.

Let’s pump the brakes on the nerf wagon please because even my fully optimized group all hitting north of 80k are still having trouble on 2 of the hardest trials in the game where a single mistake by one player against unforgiving mechs leads to a fast wipe.

Oreyn_Bearclaw · April 2021

Ippokrates wrote: »

show previous quotes

milesrodneymcneely2_ESO wrote: »

If I were to watch a movie where the heroes raise their weapons to fire, then something blows up on the other end without them actually firing the weapon, I'd want my money back.

show previous quotes

Oreyn_Bearclaw wrote: »

Everest_Lionheart wrote: »

Oreyn_Bearclaw wrote: »

Everest_Lionheart wrote: »

Oreyn_Bearclaw wrote: »

milesrodneymcneely2_ESO wrote: »

Oreyn_Bearclaw wrote: »

2. Absolutely not. This would gut combat and LAs would become useless. Why would I ever light attack if I could cast a skill with the same opportunity cost. The answer is that you would not. The game would need completely rebalanced and would be a massive undertaking.

That is the beauty of combat in this game. There are many layers to a min/maxed damage rotation and it requires player skill, developed through practice, to juggle them all. Nothing requires you to attempt any of it other than Veteran HMs and Trifectas, or high end PVP. PVP without AC would be a nightmare. Your ability to react to your opponent would be all but eliminated.

Look, I get that animation cancelling and weaving aren't going anywhere.

But, I'm STILL galled by the fact that they didn't intend for it to be this way. And I'm DEEPLY repulsed by the idea that a fundamental mechanic (the standard Light Attack) is going to be completely invisible, for the most part.

If I were to watch a movie where the heroes raise their weapons to fire, then something blows up on the other end without them actually firing the weapon, I'd want my money back.

It's here. It's part of the zeitgeist. I get it.

But we don't have to like it, and we don't have to pretend it's polished, streamlined, and intentionally complex.

Not coming at you, though. You're awesome, and I get a lot out of reading your posts. I've even taken that advice into the game, with DANG good results. BEARHUGS!!!

First glad, you have found my many rantings over the years to be helpful. First and foremost, that is what I try to do on these forums. Admittedly, sometimes I break from that.

I will, however, push back just a bit. You actually do see the light attacks. When you watch a good weave with low ping, it actually looks very fluid to me. Certainly it gets choppy with higher ping, which I admit could be counter to immersion, but very little of the LA animation is clipped, and its really just the end of the follow through. On a staff you still see it go forward and shoot the elemental damage, on DW for example, you still see the weapon strike the target. If you use the movie example, well, you don't just attack and hold a pose, you move immediately into the next attack. This allows you to do that. You are a powerful being with unique abilities, but you also wield a basic weapon. LA weaving allows you to blend those two together, which is what I assume our heroes would attempt to do.

Ironically, the one type of AC useful to damage that really does clip the animation is swap canceling, and NOBODY talks about it. Probably because most people do this without realizing it. You cast an animation, and then you swap to a different bar. The game allows it because it makes combat feel more fluid. And similar to block, you need to be able to do it, especially in PVP to react to your opponent (certainly why it was coded with a higher priority). If you want to know what it would be like if you couldn't do this, play sorc with Hardcasting frags as a spammable, because it wont let you swap until the animation completely resolves. It is really clunky to play with and frankly feels awful to use.

In fact, the hardest part about doing the parse I showed was trying NOT to swap cancel. Similar to block canceling, people do it all the time and have no idea they are technically animation canceling.

Swap cancelled or not, GCD still applies. Not such a big deal with light attacks because the cooldown is shorter, but with skills if you happen to get ahead of yourself it won’t cast.

Nowhere is this lore prevalent than a Necro rotation casing BB every third skill where BB will be physically greyed out until it is available when you split your backbar in this manner. Now BB is 3 seconds but if you are doing your 2 LA-skill than swap cancel you’ll see it right away. A good Necro user trusts the skill to be up the second he/she hits the button/key, many Necro users will spam the hell out of BB until it casts.

The irony here is that what I just mentioned above is part of the skill gap of why some people can barely break 60k on a Necro and others can break 90k. One skill cast that many times perfectly over the rotation makes all the difference from mid to upper tier DPS.

Other skills/procs have a similar skill gap. And that’s the real difference between floor and ceiling.

Of course the GCD still applies. But swap cancelling is what allows you to maintain your pace when you swap between bars i your rotation. If swapping was on the same GCD as skills, you would lose pace when you swapped. The bigger point is that 1, it chops the animation way more than a LA weave (some skills more than others) and 2 everyone does it too some degree without even realizing they are doing (of course like anything, it can be perfected). 3 almost nobody knows talks about it.

As to Necro, yes the skills can be buggy. That said, blastbones has a travel time. If you are in melee you can cast it every third skill, whether you need to swap between casts or not. If at range you cannot cast every third skill.

On a dummy, I never have issues with blastbones going off. In actual content, you have to be sure it actually goes off before you cast again anytime your don’t have your nose on the boss. Hardest part I think for Necros is being sure you have corpses up for some skills. Siphon is probably the skill I try to cast and have issues with the most.

Necro can be played with a very static rotation, but it does take a lot of bar swapping compared to other classes, which certainly causes some people issues. If you are having issues with BB firing on a target dummy, you are trying to go to fast or not casting 2 skills in between.

Yeah I know the feeling regarding Necro for sure for corpses and siphon. I had to slow up slightly (full disclosure I do parse with a metronome, was a music student in a former life.) Other classes I can play at 57bpm though I set it for 114 and alternate LA-skill on the beats and it works fine (console plus input lag, needs a different cadence between skills and hitting them evenly seems to make the difference. Necro on the other hand I am at 55 (set to 110) and that hits the sweet spot. That amounts to .91 LA ratio versus .95 ratio which for console is pretty good. Full static rotations because console is not user friendly either and it’s hard to read the buff/debuff timers plus some just don’t exists so you need a rotation you can trust.

Regarding AC I generally swap on certain skills. My MagDK swaps on whip and eruption, both my nightblades swap on trap/degen or shade/siphon, magplar on purifying light and trap/rune, Stamden on SA and poison injection. Necro swaps on everything 🤣. On stam toons with bows I also bash cancel endless hail. I like to bash weave engulfing flames on MagDK as well. I’m debating bash canceling swallow soul on Magblade, but at 4x per rotation it gets expensive fast, could just block cancel I suppose.

For sure AC is an acquired skill and a necessity to maintain rhythm. And the way I run my practice tempos that means the AC, pots and synergies fall between the beats. For the musician in me that’s simple subdivision.

I use music analogies all the time when I am helping people 1 on 1 to work on their rotation. I also used to parse with a metronome. It's a great way to make the timing second nature.

Me too, but I cannot shot in proper tempo. How many ticks you are using? I was trying somewhat between 60-67.

Agree with @Everest_Lionheart. Cant go above 60 as its a theoretical limit. I used to set at 55. Havent done it in a while, but that will get you about .91-.92, which is usually what I am for. I tend to always speed up a bit in actual content, so I want just a bit of head room.

The other way I use music is to think of certain rotations as being on a given count. If I am playing Necro or Warden, its a 3 count with Sub Assualt/Blastbones always on the 1. With my sorc, its on a 6 count with Daedric Prey always on the 1, etc. Most classes have a class defining damage skill that needs to be at the center of your rotation.

Merforum wrote: »

show previous quotes

zvavi wrote: »

Merforum wrote: »

Thanks for all the comments and info. Looks like If ZOS wants to close the gap between high DPS and mid level there are a few good suggestion on the table:

1. Fix LA/AC, either make LA in same GCD, remove LA/make medium light, or widen window for it to register to make it much easier to do (something like 1 skill per second or 1 skill plus LA every 1.5 sec with correct animation)

2. Cap Crit chance and damage at 50% each

3. Reduce # of Buffs on 1 player at a time, and don't let major/minor of same thing stack but maybe keep a few class passive buffs outside of that for build/class diversity, ALTHOUGH PVPer will NOT like that part so SEPARATE PVE and PVP

4. CAP DPS per boss per area, for instance don't allow more than 40K group DPS to normal dungeon bosses, not more than 80K group DPS to Vet dungeon, maybe cap individual DPS to 40K per DD in normal trial and 70K for Vet, (super easy fix in PVE but not for PVP, unless you cap individual DPS to maybe 10K in PVP that could work and cap healing at 5K)

5.Use CAPs on various stats that are being stacked and overpowered
a. mag/stam/health 40K max/ recovery also 2K max
b. w/s dmag 4-6K max (4K in normal/PVP, 6K in vet content)
c. see #2 crit cap
d. whatever else is being overly stacked

Meh mate. If zos wants to higher floor, they should do 2 things.
1. Fix their game (bugs, lags, optimize it more, etc etc)
2. Create in-game proper tutorials and training grounds.

Anything you suggested is dumbing down the game, you are asking for:
1. Slower combat.
2. Gear to not matter. (It doesn't even balance stam Vs mag correctly, since stamina gets bonus weapon damage from armor).
3. Buffs to not matter (heck, people will be forced to NOT bring buffs, to ensure only the strongest one exists).
4. Ultimates to not matter (since during ultimate time your damage spikes up above your usual damage)
5. Gear to not matter, again.

You may enjoy such a game, I wouldn't. As I mentioned the previous list of what zos should really do, there are ways to help floor without dumbing down the game.

1. Yes everyone wants bug/lag fixes, new hardware.
2. On PTS right now they have 'combat tips' which tells people when to block/roll/interrupt which is really great and wish I had from beginning, also the have companions which will help the 'floor', which is not the issue at all

But none of that or anything many people say on this forum addresses the insane power creep, which ZOS knows is a big problem and should address directly with any of my suggestions. The fact that you personally benefit from such overtuning is why you are constantly going on threads trying to convince people that anything that could fix that is bad idea. ZOS will either fix it or they won't.

Power creep is present in every MMO. There is no way to completely avoid it but there are certainly things that you can do to manage it. Removing AC is not a long term solution to power creep. Would it reduce the ceiling in the short term? Sure it would, but it would also lower the floor. Bad players AC more than they even realize, and if you removed AC from the game, there would be a lot of Dead DPS because they couldn't react in time. Its also a nuclear approach that you can only do one time, and then power would just start creeping up again.

Power creep is much better addressed with things like adjustments to gear, base stats, CP passives, skills, or even NPC health. You are trying to address power creep by fundamentally changing combat mechanics that have been in the game since launch. It's a bad solution any way you slice it.

Merforum · April 2021

Oreyn_Bearclaw wrote: »

show previous quotes

Ippokrates wrote: »

milesrodneymcneely2_ESO wrote: »

If I were to watch a movie where the heroes raise their weapons to fire, then something blows up on the other end without them actually firing the weapon, I'd want my money back.

Oreyn_Bearclaw wrote: »

Everest_Lionheart wrote: »

Oreyn_Bearclaw wrote: »

Everest_Lionheart wrote: »

Oreyn_Bearclaw wrote: »

milesrodneymcneely2_ESO wrote: »

Oreyn_Bearclaw wrote: »

2. Absolutely not. This would gut combat and LAs would become useless. Why would I ever light attack if I could cast a skill with the same opportunity cost. The answer is that you would not. The game would need completely rebalanced and would be a massive undertaking.

That is the beauty of combat in this game. There are many layers to a min/maxed damage rotation and it requires player skill, developed through practice, to juggle them all. Nothing requires you to attempt any of it other than Veteran HMs and Trifectas, or high end PVP. PVP without AC would be a nightmare. Your ability to react to your opponent would be all but eliminated.

Look, I get that animation cancelling and weaving aren't going anywhere.

But, I'm STILL galled by the fact that they didn't intend for it to be this way. And I'm DEEPLY repulsed by the idea that a fundamental mechanic (the standard Light Attack) is going to be completely invisible, for the most part.

If I were to watch a movie where the heroes raise their weapons to fire, then something blows up on the other end without them actually firing the weapon, I'd want my money back.

It's here. It's part of the zeitgeist. I get it.

But we don't have to like it, and we don't have to pretend it's polished, streamlined, and intentionally complex.

Not coming at you, though. You're awesome, and I get a lot out of reading your posts. I've even taken that advice into the game, with DANG good results. BEARHUGS!!!

First glad, you have found my many rantings over the years to be helpful. First and foremost, that is what I try to do on these forums. Admittedly, sometimes I break from that.

I will, however, push back just a bit. You actually do see the light attacks. When you watch a good weave with low ping, it actually looks very fluid to me. Certainly it gets choppy with higher ping, which I admit could be counter to immersion, but very little of the LA animation is clipped, and its really just the end of the follow through. On a staff you still see it go forward and shoot the elemental damage, on DW for example, you still see the weapon strike the target. If you use the movie example, well, you don't just attack and hold a pose, you move immediately into the next attack. This allows you to do that. You are a powerful being with unique abilities, but you also wield a basic weapon. LA weaving allows you to blend those two together, which is what I assume our heroes would attempt to do.

Ironically, the one type of AC useful to damage that really does clip the animation is swap canceling, and NOBODY talks about it. Probably because most people do this without realizing it. You cast an animation, and then you swap to a different bar. The game allows it because it makes combat feel more fluid. And similar to block, you need to be able to do it, especially in PVP to react to your opponent (certainly why it was coded with a higher priority). If you want to know what it would be like if you couldn't do this, play sorc with Hardcasting frags as a spammable, because it wont let you swap until the animation completely resolves. It is really clunky to play with and frankly feels awful to use.

In fact, the hardest part about doing the parse I showed was trying NOT to swap cancel. Similar to block canceling, people do it all the time and have no idea they are technically animation canceling.

Swap cancelled or not, GCD still applies. Not such a big deal with light attacks because the cooldown is shorter, but with skills if you happen to get ahead of yourself it won’t cast.

Nowhere is this lore prevalent than a Necro rotation casing BB every third skill where BB will be physically greyed out until it is available when you split your backbar in this manner. Now BB is 3 seconds but if you are doing your 2 LA-skill than swap cancel you’ll see it right away. A good Necro user trusts the skill to be up the second he/she hits the button/key, many Necro users will spam the hell out of BB until it casts.

The irony here is that what I just mentioned above is part of the skill gap of why some people can barely break 60k on a Necro and others can break 90k. One skill cast that many times perfectly over the rotation makes all the difference from mid to upper tier DPS.

Other skills/procs have a similar skill gap. And that’s the real difference between floor and ceiling.

Of course the GCD still applies. But swap cancelling is what allows you to maintain your pace when you swap between bars i your rotation. If swapping was on the same GCD as skills, you would lose pace when you swapped. The bigger point is that 1, it chops the animation way more than a LA weave (some skills more than others) and 2 everyone does it too some degree without even realizing they are doing (of course like anything, it can be perfected). 3 almost nobody knows talks about it.

As to Necro, yes the skills can be buggy. That said, blastbones has a travel time. If you are in melee you can cast it every third skill, whether you need to swap between casts or not. If at range you cannot cast every third skill.

On a dummy, I never have issues with blastbones going off. In actual content, you have to be sure it actually goes off before you cast again anytime your don’t have your nose on the boss. Hardest part I think for Necros is being sure you have corpses up for some skills. Siphon is probably the skill I try to cast and have issues with the most.

Necro can be played with a very static rotation, but it does take a lot of bar swapping compared to other classes, which certainly causes some people issues. If you are having issues with BB firing on a target dummy, you are trying to go to fast or not casting 2 skills in between.

Yeah I know the feeling regarding Necro for sure for corpses and siphon. I had to slow up slightly (full disclosure I do parse with a metronome, was a music student in a former life.) Other classes I can play at 57bpm though I set it for 114 and alternate LA-skill on the beats and it works fine (console plus input lag, needs a different cadence between skills and hitting them evenly seems to make the difference. Necro on the other hand I am at 55 (set to 110) and that hits the sweet spot. That amounts to .91 LA ratio versus .95 ratio which for console is pretty good. Full static rotations because console is not user friendly either and it’s hard to read the buff/debuff timers plus some just don’t exists so you need a rotation you can trust.

Regarding AC I generally swap on certain skills. My MagDK swaps on whip and eruption, both my nightblades swap on trap/degen or shade/siphon, magplar on purifying light and trap/rune, Stamden on SA and poison injection. Necro swaps on everything 🤣. On stam toons with bows I also bash cancel endless hail. I like to bash weave engulfing flames on MagDK as well. I’m debating bash canceling swallow soul on Magblade, but at 4x per rotation it gets expensive fast, could just block cancel I suppose.

For sure AC is an acquired skill and a necessity to maintain rhythm. And the way I run my practice tempos that means the AC, pots and synergies fall between the beats. For the musician in me that’s simple subdivision.

I use music analogies all the time when I am helping people 1 on 1 to work on their rotation. I also used to parse with a metronome. It's a great way to make the timing second nature.

Me too, but I cannot shot in proper tempo. How many ticks you are using? I was trying somewhat between 60-67.

Agree with @Everest_Lionheart. Cant go above 60 as its a theoretical limit. I used to set at 55. Havent done it in a while, but that will get you about .91-.92, which is usually what I am for. I tend to always speed up a bit in actual content, so I want just a bit of head room.

The other way I use music is to think of certain rotations as being on a given count. If I am playing Necro or Warden, its a 3 count with Sub Assualt/Blastbones always on the 1. With my sorc, its on a 6 count with Daedric Prey always on the 1, etc. Most classes have a class defining damage skill that needs to be at the center of your rotation.
show previous quotes

Merforum wrote: »

zvavi wrote: »

Merforum wrote: »

Thanks for all the comments and info. Looks like If ZOS wants to close the gap between high DPS and mid level there are a few good suggestion on the table:

1. Fix LA/AC, either make LA in same GCD, remove LA/make medium light, or widen window for it to register to make it much easier to do (something like 1 skill per second or 1 skill plus LA every 1.5 sec with correct animation)

2. Cap Crit chance and damage at 50% each

3. Reduce # of Buffs on 1 player at a time, and don't let major/minor of same thing stack but maybe keep a few class passive buffs outside of that for build/class diversity, ALTHOUGH PVPer will NOT like that part so SEPARATE PVE and PVP

4. CAP DPS per boss per area, for instance don't allow more than 40K group DPS to normal dungeon bosses, not more than 80K group DPS to Vet dungeon, maybe cap individual DPS to 40K per DD in normal trial and 70K for Vet, (super easy fix in PVE but not for PVP, unless you cap individual DPS to maybe 10K in PVP that could work and cap healing at 5K)

5.Use CAPs on various stats that are being stacked and overpowered
a. mag/stam/health 40K max/ recovery also 2K max
b. w/s dmag 4-6K max (4K in normal/PVP, 6K in vet content)
c. see #2 crit cap
d. whatever else is being overly stacked

Meh mate. If zos wants to higher floor, they should do 2 things.
1. Fix their game (bugs, lags, optimize it more, etc etc)
2. Create in-game proper tutorials and training grounds.

Anything you suggested is dumbing down the game, you are asking for:
1. Slower combat.
2. Gear to not matter. (It doesn't even balance stam Vs mag correctly, since stamina gets bonus weapon damage from armor).
3. Buffs to not matter (heck, people will be forced to NOT bring buffs, to ensure only the strongest one exists).
4. Ultimates to not matter (since during ultimate time your damage spikes up above your usual damage)
5. Gear to not matter, again.

You may enjoy such a game, I wouldn't. As I mentioned the previous list of what zos should really do, there are ways to help floor without dumbing down the game.

1. Yes everyone wants bug/lag fixes, new hardware.
2. On PTS right now they have 'combat tips' which tells people when to block/roll/interrupt which is really great and wish I had from beginning, also the have companions which will help the 'floor', which is not the issue at all

But none of that or anything many people say on this forum addresses the insane power creep, which ZOS knows is a big problem and should address directly with any of my suggestions. The fact that you personally benefit from such overtuning is why you are constantly going on threads trying to convince people that anything that could fix that is bad idea. ZOS will either fix it or they won't.

Power creep is present in every MMO. There is no way to completely avoid it but there are certainly things that you can do to manage it. Removing AC is not a long term solution to power creep. Would it reduce the ceiling in the short term? Sure it would, but it would also lower the floor. Bad players AC more than they even realize, and if you removed AC from the game, there would be a lot of Dead DPS because they couldn't react in time. Its also a nuclear approach that you can only do one time, and then power would just start creeping up again.

Power creep is much better addressed with things like adjustments to gear, base stats, CP passives, skills, or even NPC health. You are trying to address power creep by fundamentally changing combat mechanics that have been in the game since launch. It's a bad solution any way you slice it.

I have heard all the doom and gloom predictions from the same people over and over and how they will quit game, then the changes go through and everyone adapts. Removing the terrible LA/AC will have no long term negative effects, but you are right that wouldn't be the only thing to eliminate power creep.

They have been doing the tweaking around the edges of gear, stats, skills, buffs, and it will NEVER work because it is not a holistic approach. The problem is and always will be allowing any one thing to be overtuned/abused and the only way combat that permanently is to put a cap on it. It is so simple and obvious. For instance, if people stack into crit too much instead of tweaking different sets, passives etc. just put cap, I say 50% but it could be 100%, I don't care which cap they figure out but it is a no brainer that if you want any type of control or consistency this is the only way to do it successfully.

BTW I have another suggestion with skipping boss mechanics, if you don't cap DPS directly then just make the boss immune to damage throughout any mechanic phase, that way you can still get them to 75% fast but until the mechanics are over you can't get them to 50% and skip that round of mechanics.

Merforum · April 2021

lolo_01b16_ESO wrote: »

show previous quotes

Merforum wrote: »

Thanks for all the comments and info. Looks like If ZOS wants to close the gap between high DPS and mid level there are a few good suggestion on the table:

1. Fix LA/AC, either make LA in same GCD, remove LA/make medium light, or widen window for it to register to make it much easier to do (something like 1 skill per second or 1 skill plus LA every 1.5 sec with correct animation)

2. Cap Crit chance and damage at 50% each

3. Reduce # of Buffs on 1 player at a time, and don't let major/minor of same thing stack but maybe keep a few class passive buffs outside of that for build/class diversity, ALTHOUGH PVPer will NOT like that part so SEPARATE PVE and PVP

4. CAP DPS per boss per area, for instance don't allow more than 40K group DPS to normal dungeon bosses, not more than 80K group DPS to Vet dungeon, maybe cap individual DPS to 40K per DD in normal trial and 70K for Vet, (super easy fix in PVE but not for PVP, unless you cap individual DPS to maybe 10K in PVP that could work and cap healing at 5K)

5.Use CAPs on various stats that are being stacked and overpowered
a. mag/stam/health 40K max/ recovery also 2K max
b. w/s dmag 4-6K max (4K in normal/PVP, 6K in vet content)
c. see #2 crit cap
d. whatever else is being overly stacked

While your suggestions would reduce top dps, I honestly doubt it would reduce the gap. Instead it would increase the need to have a perfect group composition for the boss you fight.
Right now most buff sets are relatively well balanced, so it doesn't matter much which set you wear as a tank or healer, as long as you get a good uptime on the sets you use. But if you put caps on stats you can get a situation where the "mid level" healer wearing spell power cure adds nothing to the group because everyone is already at the weapon damage cap, while the healer in the "high level" group checked everyones weapon damage and the available buffs before the fight and decided to use e.g. martial knowledge instead of spell power cure.
Capping dps will have a huge impact on balance between classes or builds. Keep in mind, that there are some classes that have very consistant damage, while others have high damage spikes with phases of lower damage inbetween. So if you put a cap, the consistant build will easiely manage, while the "spiky" build will suffer loosing its damage spikes.

In my opinion a better way to address this would be to design fights in a way, so they become mechanically more difficult when you have higher dps. Have adds and mini bosses spawn based on boss hp and not on a timer, don't allow us to skip mechanics with high dps and instead make multiple mechanics happen in rapid succession if we have too high dps.
Maybe even let the boss enrage more and more when he takes too much damage.

The good thing about caps is it is super easy to change instantly for instance, start with max 4K damage, if it is too low, change to 5K, etc. It is instantaneous. And how easy it would be to do different caps for different areas, overland 3K, normal dungeon/trial 4K, vet 5K, etc. BTW mid teir damage dealers are not lazy or stupid as you all think, it is because they want to use fun sets and play for fun, NOT min max so 1 guy losing a SPC buff is not even remotely a concern (these scenarios you guys come up with are actually quite ridiculous in that they aren't true and you wouldn't care if they were true).

Also they could introduce sets that bypass the cap, like they do with some shield skills that go to 60% of health rather than 50%. And just so it is clear, shields is a perfect example of where they tried tweaking but failed, they made most shield spells up to 50% of max health but allowed people to STACK multiple shields, defeating most of the purpose. If they use a GLOBAL cap instead, it wouldn't matter how many shields you stack you'd only get up to cap.

BTW anything that goes over caps would NOT be lost necessarily, just like they do with OVERhealing and some other things, let's say in your example a healer is wearing SPC and 1 team mate is already at the cap, well they could change that set to say if someone is at cap already give them minor berserk for 5 secs. They could become very creative, while still maintaining control.

I do like your idea of making sure no mechanics are skipped, if you get boss down to 50% faster than the 75% mechanic can kick off you have to deal with BOTH mechanics happening simultaneously (so you might even choose to tone down the DPS to make it easier/faster), that is much better than just giving insane amounts of health to bosses. BUT that type of change might a lot of dev work, whereas a cap should be simple to implement. There are many good ways to fix the issue of skipping mechs, but that doesn't necessarily fix power creep which is also a problem in PVP. My only concern is 90% of the changes they have been making keeps effecting the mid tier way more than top so my suggestions are to address the issue in most direct way.

Oreyn_Bearclaw · April 2021

Merforum wrote: »

show previous quotes

Oreyn_Bearclaw wrote: »

Ippokrates wrote: »

milesrodneymcneely2_ESO wrote: »

If I were to watch a movie where the heroes raise their weapons to fire, then something blows up on the other end without them actually firing the weapon, I'd want my money back.

Oreyn_Bearclaw wrote: »

Everest_Lionheart wrote: »

Oreyn_Bearclaw wrote: »

Everest_Lionheart wrote: »

Oreyn_Bearclaw wrote: »

milesrodneymcneely2_ESO wrote: »

Oreyn_Bearclaw wrote: »

2. Absolutely not. This would gut combat and LAs would become useless. Why would I ever light attack if I could cast a skill with the same opportunity cost. The answer is that you would not. The game would need completely rebalanced and would be a massive undertaking.

That is the beauty of combat in this game. There are many layers to a min/maxed damage rotation and it requires player skill, developed through practice, to juggle them all. Nothing requires you to attempt any of it other than Veteran HMs and Trifectas, or high end PVP. PVP without AC would be a nightmare. Your ability to react to your opponent would be all but eliminated.

Look, I get that animation cancelling and weaving aren't going anywhere.

But, I'm STILL galled by the fact that they didn't intend for it to be this way. And I'm DEEPLY repulsed by the idea that a fundamental mechanic (the standard Light Attack) is going to be completely invisible, for the most part.

If I were to watch a movie where the heroes raise their weapons to fire, then something blows up on the other end without them actually firing the weapon, I'd want my money back.

It's here. It's part of the zeitgeist. I get it.

But we don't have to like it, and we don't have to pretend it's polished, streamlined, and intentionally complex.

Not coming at you, though. You're awesome, and I get a lot out of reading your posts. I've even taken that advice into the game, with DANG good results. BEARHUGS!!!

First glad, you have found my many rantings over the years to be helpful. First and foremost, that is what I try to do on these forums. Admittedly, sometimes I break from that.

I will, however, push back just a bit. You actually do see the light attacks. When you watch a good weave with low ping, it actually looks very fluid to me. Certainly it gets choppy with higher ping, which I admit could be counter to immersion, but very little of the LA animation is clipped, and its really just the end of the follow through. On a staff you still see it go forward and shoot the elemental damage, on DW for example, you still see the weapon strike the target. If you use the movie example, well, you don't just attack and hold a pose, you move immediately into the next attack. This allows you to do that. You are a powerful being with unique abilities, but you also wield a basic weapon. LA weaving allows you to blend those two together, which is what I assume our heroes would attempt to do.

Ironically, the one type of AC useful to damage that really does clip the animation is swap canceling, and NOBODY talks about it. Probably because most people do this without realizing it. You cast an animation, and then you swap to a different bar. The game allows it because it makes combat feel more fluid. And similar to block, you need to be able to do it, especially in PVP to react to your opponent (certainly why it was coded with a higher priority). If you want to know what it would be like if you couldn't do this, play sorc with Hardcasting frags as a spammable, because it wont let you swap until the animation completely resolves. It is really clunky to play with and frankly feels awful to use.

In fact, the hardest part about doing the parse I showed was trying NOT to swap cancel. Similar to block canceling, people do it all the time and have no idea they are technically animation canceling.

Swap cancelled or not, GCD still applies. Not such a big deal with light attacks because the cooldown is shorter, but with skills if you happen to get ahead of yourself it won’t cast.

Nowhere is this lore prevalent than a Necro rotation casing BB every third skill where BB will be physically greyed out until it is available when you split your backbar in this manner. Now BB is 3 seconds but if you are doing your 2 LA-skill than swap cancel you’ll see it right away. A good Necro user trusts the skill to be up the second he/she hits the button/key, many Necro users will spam the hell out of BB until it casts.

The irony here is that what I just mentioned above is part of the skill gap of why some people can barely break 60k on a Necro and others can break 90k. One skill cast that many times perfectly over the rotation makes all the difference from mid to upper tier DPS.

Other skills/procs have a similar skill gap. And that’s the real difference between floor and ceiling.

Of course the GCD still applies. But swap cancelling is what allows you to maintain your pace when you swap between bars i your rotation. If swapping was on the same GCD as skills, you would lose pace when you swapped. The bigger point is that 1, it chops the animation way more than a LA weave (some skills more than others) and 2 everyone does it too some degree without even realizing they are doing (of course like anything, it can be perfected). 3 almost nobody knows talks about it.

As to Necro, yes the skills can be buggy. That said, blastbones has a travel time. If you are in melee you can cast it every third skill, whether you need to swap between casts or not. If at range you cannot cast every third skill.

On a dummy, I never have issues with blastbones going off. In actual content, you have to be sure it actually goes off before you cast again anytime your don’t have your nose on the boss. Hardest part I think for Necros is being sure you have corpses up for some skills. Siphon is probably the skill I try to cast and have issues with the most.

Necro can be played with a very static rotation, but it does take a lot of bar swapping compared to other classes, which certainly causes some people issues. If you are having issues with BB firing on a target dummy, you are trying to go to fast or not casting 2 skills in between.

Yeah I know the feeling regarding Necro for sure for corpses and siphon. I had to slow up slightly (full disclosure I do parse with a metronome, was a music student in a former life.) Other classes I can play at 57bpm though I set it for 114 and alternate LA-skill on the beats and it works fine (console plus input lag, needs a different cadence between skills and hitting them evenly seems to make the difference. Necro on the other hand I am at 55 (set to 110) and that hits the sweet spot. That amounts to .91 LA ratio versus .95 ratio which for console is pretty good. Full static rotations because console is not user friendly either and it’s hard to read the buff/debuff timers plus some just don’t exists so you need a rotation you can trust.

Regarding AC I generally swap on certain skills. My MagDK swaps on whip and eruption, both my nightblades swap on trap/degen or shade/siphon, magplar on purifying light and trap/rune, Stamden on SA and poison injection. Necro swaps on everything 🤣. On stam toons with bows I also bash cancel endless hail. I like to bash weave engulfing flames on MagDK as well. I’m debating bash canceling swallow soul on Magblade, but at 4x per rotation it gets expensive fast, could just block cancel I suppose.

For sure AC is an acquired skill and a necessity to maintain rhythm. And the way I run my practice tempos that means the AC, pots and synergies fall between the beats. For the musician in me that’s simple subdivision.

I use music analogies all the time when I am helping people 1 on 1 to work on their rotation. I also used to parse with a metronome. It's a great way to make the timing second nature.

Me too, but I cannot shot in proper tempo. How many ticks you are using? I was trying somewhat between 60-67.

Agree with @Everest_Lionheart. Cant go above 60 as its a theoretical limit. I used to set at 55. Havent done it in a while, but that will get you about .91-.92, which is usually what I am for. I tend to always speed up a bit in actual content, so I want just a bit of head room.

The other way I use music is to think of certain rotations as being on a given count. If I am playing Necro or Warden, its a 3 count with Sub Assualt/Blastbones always on the 1. With my sorc, its on a 6 count with Daedric Prey always on the 1, etc. Most classes have a class defining damage skill that needs to be at the center of your rotation.

Merforum wrote: »

zvavi wrote: »

Merforum wrote: »

Thanks for all the comments and info. Looks like If ZOS wants to close the gap between high DPS and mid level there are a few good suggestion on the table:

1. Fix LA/AC, either make LA in same GCD, remove LA/make medium light, or widen window for it to register to make it much easier to do (something like 1 skill per second or 1 skill plus LA every 1.5 sec with correct animation)

2. Cap Crit chance and damage at 50% each

3. Reduce # of Buffs on 1 player at a time, and don't let major/minor of same thing stack but maybe keep a few class passive buffs outside of that for build/class diversity, ALTHOUGH PVPer will NOT like that part so SEPARATE PVE and PVP

4. CAP DPS per boss per area, for instance don't allow more than 40K group DPS to normal dungeon bosses, not more than 80K group DPS to Vet dungeon, maybe cap individual DPS to 40K per DD in normal trial and 70K for Vet, (super easy fix in PVE but not for PVP, unless you cap individual DPS to maybe 10K in PVP that could work and cap healing at 5K)

5.Use CAPs on various stats that are being stacked and overpowered
a. mag/stam/health 40K max/ recovery also 2K max
b. w/s dmag 4-6K max (4K in normal/PVP, 6K in vet content)
c. see #2 crit cap
d. whatever else is being overly stacked

Meh mate. If zos wants to higher floor, they should do 2 things.
1. Fix their game (bugs, lags, optimize it more, etc etc)
2. Create in-game proper tutorials and training grounds.

Anything you suggested is dumbing down the game, you are asking for:
1. Slower combat.
2. Gear to not matter. (It doesn't even balance stam Vs mag correctly, since stamina gets bonus weapon damage from armor).
3. Buffs to not matter (heck, people will be forced to NOT bring buffs, to ensure only the strongest one exists).
4. Ultimates to not matter (since during ultimate time your damage spikes up above your usual damage)
5. Gear to not matter, again.

You may enjoy such a game, I wouldn't. As I mentioned the previous list of what zos should really do, there are ways to help floor without dumbing down the game.

1. Yes everyone wants bug/lag fixes, new hardware.
2. On PTS right now they have 'combat tips' which tells people when to block/roll/interrupt which is really great and wish I had from beginning, also the have companions which will help the 'floor', which is not the issue at all

But none of that or anything many people say on this forum addresses the insane power creep, which ZOS knows is a big problem and should address directly with any of my suggestions. The fact that you personally benefit from such overtuning is why you are constantly going on threads trying to convince people that anything that could fix that is bad idea. ZOS will either fix it or they won't.

Power creep is present in every MMO. There is no way to completely avoid it but there are certainly things that you can do to manage it. Removing AC is not a long term solution to power creep. Would it reduce the ceiling in the short term? Sure it would, but it would also lower the floor. Bad players AC more than they even realize, and if you removed AC from the game, there would be a lot of Dead DPS because they couldn't react in time. Its also a nuclear approach that you can only do one time, and then power would just start creeping up again.

Power creep is much better addressed with things like adjustments to gear, base stats, CP passives, skills, or even NPC health. You are trying to address power creep by fundamentally changing combat mechanics that have been in the game since launch. It's a bad solution any way you slice it.

I have heard all the doom and gloom predictions from the same people over and over and how they will quit game, then the changes go through and everyone adapts. Removing the terrible LA/AC will have no long term negative effects, but you are right that wouldn't be the only thing to eliminate power creep.

They have been doing the tweaking around the edges of gear, stats, skills, buffs, and it will NEVER work because it is not a holistic approach. The problem is and always will be allowing any one thing to be overtuned/abused and the only way combat that permanently is to put a cap on it. It is so simple and obvious. For instance, if people stack into crit too much instead of tweaking different sets, passives etc. just put cap, I say 50% but it could be 100%, I don't care which cap they figure out but it is a no brainer that if you want any type of control or consistency this is the only way to do it successfully.

BTW I have another suggestion with skipping boss mechanics, if you don't cap DPS directly then just make the boss immune to damage throughout any mechanic phase, that way you can still get them to 75% fast but until the mechanics are over you can't get them to 50% and skip that round of mechanics.

Clearly we are not going to agree on this, but to be candid, [snip]

"if you don't cap DPS directly then just make the boss immune to damage throughout any mechanic phase, that way you can still get them to 75% fast but until the mechanics are over you can't get them to 50% and skip that round of mechanics."

Tons of fights in this game work EXACTLY like that.

"I have heard all the doom and gloom predictions from the same people over and over and how they will quit game, then the changes go through and everyone adapts. "

We aren't talking about your favorite class getting a nerf or the new gear you just farmed being worthless in an update. It has happened to all of us at one time or another, and sure, it is often met with rage quit threads and the like.

What you are suggesting a fundamental redesign of combat in this game to vastly remove skill and effort from the damage equation. Most of the end game community is not going to be on board with that, sorry to say. The combat system is why most of us are here. It is better than any other MMO I have experienced, but admittedly, the learning curve is higher than most games and certainly not for everyone. The good news, you dont need to be a master to clear 95% of content.

My advice: Rather than try to redesign the game to fit your abilities, work on improving your abilities to fit the game, or perhaps find another one to play. Do some research on builds, spend some time on a dummy, find a decent trial progression group, play through VMA a few times, etc. All will make you a better player and you might actually realize just how good combat actually is in this game along the way. Or maybe, you will realize that end game ESO is just not your cup of tea, which is perfectly okay.

Bear Out.

[Edited to remove Baiting]

Merforum · April 2021

Oreyn_Bearclaw wrote: »

show previous quotes

Merforum wrote: »

Oreyn_Bearclaw wrote: »

Ippokrates wrote: »

milesrodneymcneely2_ESO wrote: »

If I were to watch a movie where the heroes raise their weapons to fire, then something blows up on the other end without them actually firing the weapon, I'd want my money back.

Oreyn_Bearclaw wrote: »

Everest_Lionheart wrote: »

Oreyn_Bearclaw wrote: »

Everest_Lionheart wrote: »

Oreyn_Bearclaw wrote: »

milesrodneymcneely2_ESO wrote: »

Oreyn_Bearclaw wrote: »

2. Absolutely not. This would gut combat and LAs would become useless. Why would I ever light attack if I could cast a skill with the same opportunity cost. The answer is that you would not. The game would need completely rebalanced and would be a massive undertaking.

That is the beauty of combat in this game. There are many layers to a min/maxed damage rotation and it requires player skill, developed through practice, to juggle them all. Nothing requires you to attempt any of it other than Veteran HMs and Trifectas, or high end PVP. PVP without AC would be a nightmare. Your ability to react to your opponent would be all but eliminated.

Look, I get that animation cancelling and weaving aren't going anywhere.

But, I'm STILL galled by the fact that they didn't intend for it to be this way. And I'm DEEPLY repulsed by the idea that a fundamental mechanic (the standard Light Attack) is going to be completely invisible, for the most part.

If I were to watch a movie where the heroes raise their weapons to fire, then something blows up on the other end without them actually firing the weapon, I'd want my money back.

It's here. It's part of the zeitgeist. I get it.

But we don't have to like it, and we don't have to pretend it's polished, streamlined, and intentionally complex.

Not coming at you, though. You're awesome, and I get a lot out of reading your posts. I've even taken that advice into the game, with DANG good results. BEARHUGS!!!

First glad, you have found my many rantings over the years to be helpful. First and foremost, that is what I try to do on these forums. Admittedly, sometimes I break from that.

I will, however, push back just a bit. You actually do see the light attacks. When you watch a good weave with low ping, it actually looks very fluid to me. Certainly it gets choppy with higher ping, which I admit could be counter to immersion, but very little of the LA animation is clipped, and its really just the end of the follow through. On a staff you still see it go forward and shoot the elemental damage, on DW for example, you still see the weapon strike the target. If you use the movie example, well, you don't just attack and hold a pose, you move immediately into the next attack. This allows you to do that. You are a powerful being with unique abilities, but you also wield a basic weapon. LA weaving allows you to blend those two together, which is what I assume our heroes would attempt to do.

Ironically, the one type of AC useful to damage that really does clip the animation is swap canceling, and NOBODY talks about it. Probably because most people do this without realizing it. You cast an animation, and then you swap to a different bar. The game allows it because it makes combat feel more fluid. And similar to block, you need to be able to do it, especially in PVP to react to your opponent (certainly why it was coded with a higher priority). If you want to know what it would be like if you couldn't do this, play sorc with Hardcasting frags as a spammable, because it wont let you swap until the animation completely resolves. It is really clunky to play with and frankly feels awful to use.

In fact, the hardest part about doing the parse I showed was trying NOT to swap cancel. Similar to block canceling, people do it all the time and have no idea they are technically animation canceling.

Swap cancelled or not, GCD still applies. Not such a big deal with light attacks because the cooldown is shorter, but with skills if you happen to get ahead of yourself it won’t cast.

Nowhere is this lore prevalent than a Necro rotation casing BB every third skill where BB will be physically greyed out until it is available when you split your backbar in this manner. Now BB is 3 seconds but if you are doing your 2 LA-skill than swap cancel you’ll see it right away. A good Necro user trusts the skill to be up the second he/she hits the button/key, many Necro users will spam the hell out of BB until it casts.

The irony here is that what I just mentioned above is part of the skill gap of why some people can barely break 60k on a Necro and others can break 90k. One skill cast that many times perfectly over the rotation makes all the difference from mid to upper tier DPS.

Other skills/procs have a similar skill gap. And that’s the real difference between floor and ceiling.

Of course the GCD still applies. But swap cancelling is what allows you to maintain your pace when you swap between bars i your rotation. If swapping was on the same GCD as skills, you would lose pace when you swapped. The bigger point is that 1, it chops the animation way more than a LA weave (some skills more than others) and 2 everyone does it too some degree without even realizing they are doing (of course like anything, it can be perfected). 3 almost nobody knows talks about it.

As to Necro, yes the skills can be buggy. That said, blastbones has a travel time. If you are in melee you can cast it every third skill, whether you need to swap between casts or not. If at range you cannot cast every third skill.

On a dummy, I never have issues with blastbones going off. In actual content, you have to be sure it actually goes off before you cast again anytime your don’t have your nose on the boss. Hardest part I think for Necros is being sure you have corpses up for some skills. Siphon is probably the skill I try to cast and have issues with the most.

Necro can be played with a very static rotation, but it does take a lot of bar swapping compared to other classes, which certainly causes some people issues. If you are having issues with BB firing on a target dummy, you are trying to go to fast or not casting 2 skills in between.

Yeah I know the feeling regarding Necro for sure for corpses and siphon. I had to slow up slightly (full disclosure I do parse with a metronome, was a music student in a former life.) Other classes I can play at 57bpm though I set it for 114 and alternate LA-skill on the beats and it works fine (console plus input lag, needs a different cadence between skills and hitting them evenly seems to make the difference. Necro on the other hand I am at 55 (set to 110) and that hits the sweet spot. That amounts to .91 LA ratio versus .95 ratio which for console is pretty good. Full static rotations because console is not user friendly either and it’s hard to read the buff/debuff timers plus some just don’t exists so you need a rotation you can trust.

Regarding AC I generally swap on certain skills. My MagDK swaps on whip and eruption, both my nightblades swap on trap/degen or shade/siphon, magplar on purifying light and trap/rune, Stamden on SA and poison injection. Necro swaps on everything 🤣. On stam toons with bows I also bash cancel endless hail. I like to bash weave engulfing flames on MagDK as well. I’m debating bash canceling swallow soul on Magblade, but at 4x per rotation it gets expensive fast, could just block cancel I suppose.

For sure AC is an acquired skill and a necessity to maintain rhythm. And the way I run my practice tempos that means the AC, pots and synergies fall between the beats. For the musician in me that’s simple subdivision.

I use music analogies all the time when I am helping people 1 on 1 to work on their rotation. I also used to parse with a metronome. It's a great way to make the timing second nature.

Me too, but I cannot shot in proper tempo. How many ticks you are using? I was trying somewhat between 60-67.

Agree with @Everest_Lionheart. Cant go above 60 as its a theoretical limit. I used to set at 55. Havent done it in a while, but that will get you about .91-.92, which is usually what I am for. I tend to always speed up a bit in actual content, so I want just a bit of head room.

The other way I use music is to think of certain rotations as being on a given count. If I am playing Necro or Warden, its a 3 count with Sub Assualt/Blastbones always on the 1. With my sorc, its on a 6 count with Daedric Prey always on the 1, etc. Most classes have a class defining damage skill that needs to be at the center of your rotation.

Merforum wrote: »

zvavi wrote: »

Merforum wrote: »

Thanks for all the comments and info. Looks like If ZOS wants to close the gap between high DPS and mid level there are a few good suggestion on the table:

1. Fix LA/AC, either make LA in same GCD, remove LA/make medium light, or widen window for it to register to make it much easier to do (something like 1 skill per second or 1 skill plus LA every 1.5 sec with correct animation)

2. Cap Crit chance and damage at 50% each

3. Reduce # of Buffs on 1 player at a time, and don't let major/minor of same thing stack but maybe keep a few class passive buffs outside of that for build/class diversity, ALTHOUGH PVPer will NOT like that part so SEPARATE PVE and PVP

4. CAP DPS per boss per area, for instance don't allow more than 40K group DPS to normal dungeon bosses, not more than 80K group DPS to Vet dungeon, maybe cap individual DPS to 40K per DD in normal trial and 70K for Vet, (super easy fix in PVE but not for PVP, unless you cap individual DPS to maybe 10K in PVP that could work and cap healing at 5K)

5.Use CAPs on various stats that are being stacked and overpowered
a. mag/stam/health 40K max/ recovery also 2K max
b. w/s dmag 4-6K max (4K in normal/PVP, 6K in vet content)
c. see #2 crit cap
d. whatever else is being overly stacked

Meh mate. If zos wants to higher floor, they should do 2 things.
1. Fix their game (bugs, lags, optimize it more, etc etc)
2. Create in-game proper tutorials and training grounds.

Anything you suggested is dumbing down the game, you are asking for:
1. Slower combat.
2. Gear to not matter. (It doesn't even balance stam Vs mag correctly, since stamina gets bonus weapon damage from armor).
3. Buffs to not matter (heck, people will be forced to NOT bring buffs, to ensure only the strongest one exists).
4. Ultimates to not matter (since during ultimate time your damage spikes up above your usual damage)
5. Gear to not matter, again.

You may enjoy such a game, I wouldn't. As I mentioned the previous list of what zos should really do, there are ways to help floor without dumbing down the game.

1. Yes everyone wants bug/lag fixes, new hardware.
2. On PTS right now they have 'combat tips' which tells people when to block/roll/interrupt which is really great and wish I had from beginning, also the have companions which will help the 'floor', which is not the issue at all

But none of that or anything many people say on this forum addresses the insane power creep, which ZOS knows is a big problem and should address directly with any of my suggestions. The fact that you personally benefit from such overtuning is why you are constantly going on threads trying to convince people that anything that could fix that is bad idea. ZOS will either fix it or they won't.

Power creep is present in every MMO. There is no way to completely avoid it but there are certainly things that you can do to manage it. Removing AC is not a long term solution to power creep. Would it reduce the ceiling in the short term? Sure it would, but it would also lower the floor. Bad players AC more than they even realize, and if you removed AC from the game, there would be a lot of Dead DPS because they couldn't react in time. Its also a nuclear approach that you can only do one time, and then power would just start creeping up again.

Power creep is much better addressed with things like adjustments to gear, base stats, CP passives, skills, or even NPC health. You are trying to address power creep by fundamentally changing combat mechanics that have been in the game since launch. It's a bad solution any way you slice it.

I have heard all the doom and gloom predictions from the same people over and over and how they will quit game, then the changes go through and everyone adapts. Removing the terrible LA/AC will have no long term negative effects, but you are right that wouldn't be the only thing to eliminate power creep.

They have been doing the tweaking around the edges of gear, stats, skills, buffs, and it will NEVER work because it is not a holistic approach. The problem is and always will be allowing any one thing to be overtuned/abused and the only way combat that permanently is to put a cap on it. It is so simple and obvious. For instance, if people stack into crit too much instead of tweaking different sets, passives etc. just put cap, I say 50% but it could be 100%, I don't care which cap they figure out but it is a no brainer that if you want any type of control or consistency this is the only way to do it successfully.

BTW I have another suggestion with skipping boss mechanics, if you don't cap DPS directly then just make the boss immune to damage throughout any mechanic phase, that way you can still get them to 75% fast but until the mechanics are over you can't get them to 50% and skip that round of mechanics.

Clearly we are not going to agree on this, but to be candid,[snip]

"if you don't cap DPS directly then just make the boss immune to damage throughout any mechanic phase, that way you can still get them to 75% fast but until the mechanics are over you can't get them to 50% and skip that round of mechanics."

Tons of fights in this game work EXACTLY like that.

"I have heard all the doom and gloom predictions from the same people over and over and how they will quit game, then the changes go through and everyone adapts. "

We aren't talking about your favorite class getting a nerf or the new gear you just farmed being worthless in an update. It has happened to all of us at one time or another, and sure, it is often met with rage quit threads and the like.

What you are suggesting a fundamental redesign of combat in this game to vastly remove skill and effort from the damage equation. Most of the end game community is not going to be on board with that, sorry to say. The combat system is why most of us are here. It is better than any other MMO I have experienced, but admittedly, the learning curve is higher than most games and certainly not for everyone. The good news, you dont need to be a master to clear 95% of content.

My advice: Rather than try to redesign the game to fit your abilities, work on improving your abilities to fit the game, or perhaps find another one to play. Do some research on builds, spend some time on a dummy, find a decent trial progression group, play through VMA a few times, etc. All will make you a better player and you might actually realize just how good combat actually is in this game along the way. Or maybe, you will realize that end game ESO is just not your cup of tea, which is perfectly okay.

Bear Out.

Do you know when I was 10 years old I got a trophy for best outdoor/landscape drawing, so ESO achievements don't interest me. [snip]

It doesn't matter what you or I think is the best way forward for the game. If ZOS wants to make content more accessible or 'lower the ceiling' then there are some very quick and easy ways to accomplish that. I'm not worried about it, [snip]

[Edited to remove Baiting]

Zama666 · May 2021

Is a keyboard better for AC vs a PC game controller?

When using the controller I was trying to alternate between light attacks and the puncture skill.
It turned out be 2:1 Puncture:LA
But the button presses are 1:1

I am guessing it should be 1:1 for LA:Skill, right?

There is no way to AC back to back LAs?

Am I just doing this wrong, or is there a better visual cue? Sound?

Thoughts?

Tanks,

Z

ZOS_ConnorG · May 2021

Greetings all,

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Everest_Lionheart · May 2021

Zama666 wrote: »

Is a keyboard better for AC vs a PC game controller?

When using the controller I was trying to alternate between light attacks and the puncture skill.
It turned out be 2:1 Puncture:LA
But the button presses are 1:1

I am guessing it should be 1:1 for LA:Skill, right?

There is no way to AC back to back LAs?

Am I just doing this wrong, or is there a better visual cue? Sound?

Thoughts?

Tanks,

Z

It’s more in the timing/tempo no matter which you use. If you are going 2:1 that means you are probably inputting faster than 1 LA + 1 skill per second. Both have their own independent cooldown. Channeled skills are a different animal entirely and take some getting used to how to weave and AC. You will notice certain skills you can’t even barswap on until the animation completes.

I’m not sure you mean the S&B skill puncture here as you don’t necessarily need to weave as a tank. So I assume you meant puncturing sweeps which is one of those channeled skills I mentioned above. Best way to weave using that skill, use a metronome and set it to 110bpm, alternate LA and skill with each beat. That going to smooth out your inputs a bit as opposed to setting tempo at 55 and doing LA+skill every beat. That smoother input of alternating using the double tempo allows the channel to finish and allows you to ani cancel the second half of it. You would still have the barswap issue however which is why magplar rotation on the front bar finishes with either spear or PL (build dependant) for a more effective swap cancel.

Zama666 · May 2021

Everest_Lionheart wrote: »

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Zama666 wrote: »

Is a keyboard better for AC vs a PC game controller?

When using the controller I was trying to alternate between light attacks and the puncture skill.
It turned out be 2:1 Puncture:LA
But the button presses are 1:1

I am guessing it should be 1:1 for LA:Skill, right?

There is no way to AC back to back LAs?

Am I just doing this wrong, or is there a better visual cue? Sound?

Thoughts?

Tanks,

Z

It’s more in the timing/tempo no matter which you use. If you are going 2:1 that means you are probably inputting faster than 1 LA + 1 skill per second. Both have their own independent cooldown. Channeled skills are a different animal entirely and take some getting used to how to weave and AC. You will notice certain skills you can’t even barswap on until the animation completes.

I’m not sure you mean the S&B skill puncture here as you don’t necessarily need to weave as a tank. So I assume you meant puncturing sweeps which is one of those channeled skills I mentioned above. Best way to weave using that skill, use a metronome and set it to 110bpm, alternate LA and skill with each beat. That going to smooth out your inputs a bit as opposed to setting tempo at 55 and doing LA+skill every beat. That smoother input of alternating using the double tempo allows the channel to finish and allows you to ani cancel the second half of it. You would still have the barswap issue however which is why magplar rotation on the front bar finishes with either spear or PL (build dependant) for a more effective swap cancel.

Thanks - that was awesome! Cool down times - are they all the same or no?
Yes, I meant Puncture as in the 1H skill - my thinking it if fast, costs little stamina and does not do bad damage. so alternate with LA. I am also trying it with Biting Jabs and Low Slash.

Tanks!

James-Wayne · May 2021

Just nerf how much damage a light attack actually does and instantly you have closed the gap between players that can or can't weave for whatever reason.

Everest_Lionheart · May 2021

James-Wayne wrote: »

Just nerf how much damage a light attack actually does and instantly you have closed the gap between players that can or can't weave for whatever reason.

Leave light attack alone and give a strong buff to heavy attack one that offsets the DPS loss by needing to actually use it over a light attack in between casting skills. The reason we LA is because it allows us to flow much more quickly through our skills and get out all of our dots and buffs more efficiently. If heavy attacking offered something to offset in the way of damage there would be more variety in play style. The people heavy attacking for half the battle would instantly get the boost they need to close the gap and while it’s likely the top end will find a way to use heavy attacks to boost their dps even more it would be on a smaller scale than those at the lower end that almost exclusively heavy attack and sprinkle in some skills.

Oddly enough though heavy attack AC is quite interesting and more more noticeable than LA weaving. In fact I find it to be easy mode because you never have to let go of the heavy button. Just press your skill every second and it will fire automatically between heavies.

axi · May 2021

James-Wayne wrote: »

Just nerf how much damage a light attack actually does and instantly you have closed the gap between players that can or can't weave for whatever reason.

People have this wierd imaginary theory that light attack weaving is a core of doing top DPS. In reality in top parses light attacks atm are responsible for 15-20% DPS and when that is decent amount something else is responsible for remaining 80-85%. That thing is mostly proper rotation. Keeping perfect uptimes of buffs and debuffs , playing class mini games correctly , using abilities not too late but also not too early when fillinmg the gaps with spammables and all of that as close as it's possible to 1 second intervals is what is the core of DPS. Light attacks are just addition to that core. Noticeable but still an addition.

For most of the people who fail with their DPS it's not because of light attack weaving , it's because core of their rotation simply putting it sucks. Even if some top parsing person would loose 50% dmg from light attacks it would be just few percent of overall DPS loss.

Keep in mind that even for most of the low parsing people , light attacks are still responsible for decent chunk of their DPS so it's not like lowering LA dmg would lower the ceiling without touching the floor. In reality players with lower skills would be hurt more then those who are capable to play on high level and adapt easier.

Oreyn_Bearclaw · May 2021

Everest_Lionheart wrote: »

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James-Wayne wrote: »

Just nerf how much damage a light attack actually does and instantly you have closed the gap between players that can or can't weave for whatever reason.

Leave light attack alone and give a strong buff to heavy attack one that offsets the DPS loss by needing to actually use it over a light attack in between casting skills. The reason we LA is because it allows us to flow much more quickly through our skills and get out all of our dots and buffs more efficiently. If heavy attacking offered something to offset in the way of damage there would be more variety in play style. The people heavy attacking for half the battle would instantly get the boost they need to close the gap and while it’s likely the top end will find a way to use heavy attacks to boost their dps even more it would be on a smaller scale than those at the lower end that almost exclusively heavy attack and sprinkle in some skills.

Oddly enough though heavy attack AC is quite interesting and more more noticeable than LA weaving. In fact I find it to be easy mode because you never have to let go of the heavy button. Just press your skill every second and it will fire automatically between heavies.

One of the best tools they have to raise low to mid tier players would be to buff a HA rotation. Not saying it should outperfrom a LA rotation, but HA rotations have been trending in the wrong direction for the last few patches.

As others have stated, I dont think reducing LA damage would meaningfully shrink a gap. I think it would hurt bad players more than they realize.

Flamebait · May 2021

Nestor wrote: »

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FangOfTheTwoMoons wrote: »

Weather ZOS admits it or not; LA weaving is intended at this point. A few sets would be rendered usless.

LA sharing the same GCD as skills would also make light attacks usless in general. No one would ever use them again.

They admit it, even have something on one of the Splash Screens about it. They even talk about how to optimize the operation of it behind the scenes. I sat in one of the meetings where the developers talked about it.

People think that Animation Canceling is a mistake because it was not designed in at early alpha. That is not simply not true. Just like Vulcanized Rubber or Post It Notes or Rogaine, it was something that was discovered along the way during early development. They could have replaced it with Global Cooldowns, but combat is more fluid without those.

Flat out false they said it was a bug that they could not fix during beta, it had to do with the fact tanks and other have to block and dodge so those skills had to have priority over attack animations. After a while it was simply accepted as being a part of the game and the top tier players loved to sit there and brag how great they were. A really simple fix for it would be to change the damage to occur only at the end of the attack rather than the start, if you cancel the attack, no damage.

Gilvoth · May 2021

Flamebait wrote: »

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Nestor wrote: »

FangOfTheTwoMoons wrote: »

Weather ZOS admits it or not; LA weaving is intended at this point. A few sets would be rendered usless.

LA sharing the same GCD as skills would also make light attacks usless in general. No one would ever use them again.

They admit it, even have something on one of the Splash Screens about it. They even talk about how to optimize the operation of it behind the scenes. I sat in one of the meetings where the developers talked about it.

People think that Animation Canceling is a mistake because it was not designed in at early alpha. That is not simply not true. Just like Vulcanized Rubber or Post It Notes or Rogaine, it was something that was discovered along the way during early development. They could have replaced it with Global Cooldowns, but combat is more fluid without those.

Flat out false they said it was a bug that they could not fix during beta, it had to do with the fact tanks and other have to block and dodge so those skills had to have priority over attack animations. After a while it was simply accepted as being a part of the game and the top tier players loved to sit there and brag how great they were. A really simple fix for it would be to change the damage to occur only at the end of the attack rather than the start, if you cancel the attack, no damage.

Quoted for Truth.

animation canceling was a mistake that grew legs and is now concidered normal and if you dont do it then your trash and a bad player. it has ruined eso and will continue to be a huge problem unless it is fixed.

axi · May 2021

Flamebait wrote: »

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Nestor wrote: »

FangOfTheTwoMoons wrote: »

Weather ZOS admits it or not; LA weaving is intended at this point. A few sets would be rendered usless.

LA sharing the same GCD as skills would also make light attacks usless in general. No one would ever use them again.

They admit it, even have something on one of the Splash Screens about it. They even talk about how to optimize the operation of it behind the scenes. I sat in one of the meetings where the developers talked about it.

People think that Animation Canceling is a mistake because it was not designed in at early alpha. That is not simply not true. Just like Vulcanized Rubber or Post It Notes or Rogaine, it was something that was discovered along the way during early development. They could have replaced it with Global Cooldowns, but combat is more fluid without those.

Flat out false they said it was a bug that they could not fix during beta, it had to do with the fact tanks and other have to block and dodge so those skills had to have priority over attack animations. After a while it was simply accepted as being a part of the game and the top tier players loved to sit there and brag how great they were. A really simple fix for it would be to change the damage to occur only at the end of the attack rather than the start, if you cancel the attack, no damage.

Flat out false. There was not a single ZoS's dev that would said animation cancelling or light attack weaving was a bug they couldn't fix. What You're saying is a twisted version of what devs actually said , created to fit anti AC crowd agenda. Twisted version of one particular comment. Here is the original post created before game even launched that most people saying what You've said is reffering to. Can You show where excatly it's being said that weaving is a bug they couldnt fix?

Fact that dev team didnt expect that players will start to use one particular mechanic to maximize DPS doesn't mean mechanic itself was a result of a bug or that devs couldn't change it if they wanted to. Separate global cooldowns with different priorities for different actions were core element of this game since early stages of combat development. Fact that devs didn't predict every possible outcome of that design does not make it weaving a bug. A bug by definition is an error in a computer program or system. It's hard to call weaving a bug when it was correctly following all the rules of combat design. At best it can be called an oversight but even that is kinda stretched theory since devs embraced and liked the use of it since the 1st day people started to show them what they can do with it.

There is plenty of quotes from very early days of the game where devs said weaving/AC is not a bug ,cheat or exploit and they encouraged people to practice it. Can You link even one source which would support Your comment?

KhajiitLivesMatter · May 2021

Merforum wrote: »

Every discussion regarding DPS (damage per second) and how to get it as high as possible inevitably end up talking about Light Attack Weaving but not much is said about WHY it offers such insanely high damage. So let's see why that is. If X represents light attack damage and Y represents 'average skill' damage, if you do a perfect Anim Cancel for 10 seconds it looks like this,

X+Y + X+Y + X+Y + X+Y + X+Y + X+Y + X+Y + X+Y + X+Y + X+Y = 10X + 10Y

LA Weave without Anim Cancel looks like this

X + Y + X + Y + X + Y + X + Y + X + Y = 5X + 5Y

It becomes very apparent that a perfect LA weave does 100% more damage than a LA weave without animation canceling because by doing AC you get TWO actions/second while not doing it you only get ONE action/sec. And if most of your skills are DOTs/AOEs it is even more than 100% because they are UP longer and triggered sooner.

Now in real life most 'elite' players get only 90% AC so let's call it 9X+10Y, and most people who try AC but don't succeed get maybe 10% so 6X+5Y, but you can see no matter what you do to change the X LA damage or Y skill damage there will still be a huge difference, if we plug in X=1K, Y=2K, we get elite 29K, normal 16K. IRL the numbers have much more disparity that this so this is probably just one issue.

There is actually 2 ways to fix this if you are really concerned about (raising the floor/lowering the ceiling) or balancing.

1. Make it much easier to animation cancel by buffering button pushes so if someone pushes LA, then a skill within 1 second it will register more often. Instead of the way it is now where even the best of the best can only do it 90% of the time and that is on a dummy, in real content I bet they don't get that much. If it was easy enough so literally everyone could do it 75% of time and elite 100% that would really help.

2. Make LA use same GCD as everything else, ie don't allow 2 actions per second only 1 action. Still allow block, roll, bash etc to cancel animation but it should cancel the ACTION also not just the Animation, that way people won't feel the need to use this as a combat tactic.

Personally I prefer the second option because with all the lag and disparity of ping/FPS on systems, some people having high end rigs, video, KBM, etc, more than one action per second seems to be literally too fast for ESO system to handle and probably causing some of the lag. Action would still be super fast just not too fast for the servers and everyone playing to react to. Sorry this is a whole separate problem but related to why some people no matter how hard they try can't do AC very well.

light atack weaving is very easy atm
simpel tutorial:
1. download perfect weave
2. go to options and turn mode to hard
3. spam lightatacks as fast as possible
4. press skills in between
5. ...
6. profit

zvavi · May 2021

KhajiitLivesMatter wrote: »

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Merforum wrote: »

Every discussion regarding DPS (damage per second) and how to get it as high as possible inevitably end up talking about Light Attack Weaving but not much is said about WHY it offers such insanely high damage. So let's see why that is. If X represents light attack damage and Y represents 'average skill' damage, if you do a perfect Anim Cancel for 10 seconds it looks like this,

X+Y + X+Y + X+Y + X+Y + X+Y + X+Y + X+Y + X+Y + X+Y + X+Y = 10X + 10Y

LA Weave without Anim Cancel looks like this

X + Y + X + Y + X + Y + X + Y + X + Y = 5X + 5Y

It becomes very apparent that a perfect LA weave does 100% more damage than a LA weave without animation canceling because by doing AC you get TWO actions/second while not doing it you only get ONE action/sec. And if most of your skills are DOTs/AOEs it is even more than 100% because they are UP longer and triggered sooner.

Now in real life most 'elite' players get only 90% AC so let's call it 9X+10Y, and most people who try AC but don't succeed get maybe 10% so 6X+5Y, but you can see no matter what you do to change the X LA damage or Y skill damage there will still be a huge difference, if we plug in X=1K, Y=2K, we get elite 29K, normal 16K. IRL the numbers have much more disparity that this so this is probably just one issue.

There is actually 2 ways to fix this if you are really concerned about (raising the floor/lowering the ceiling) or balancing.

1. Make it much easier to animation cancel by buffering button pushes so if someone pushes LA, then a skill within 1 second it will register more often. Instead of the way it is now where even the best of the best can only do it 90% of the time and that is on a dummy, in real content I bet they don't get that much. If it was easy enough so literally everyone could do it 75% of time and elite 100% that would really help.

2. Make LA use same GCD as everything else, ie don't allow 2 actions per second only 1 action. Still allow block, roll, bash etc to cancel animation but it should cancel the ACTION also not just the Animation, that way people won't feel the need to use this as a combat tactic.

Personally I prefer the second option because with all the lag and disparity of ping/FPS on systems, some people having high end rigs, video, KBM, etc, more than one action per second seems to be literally too fast for ESO system to handle and probably causing some of the lag. Action would still be super fast just not too fast for the servers and everyone playing to react to. Sorry this is a whole separate problem but related to why some people no matter how hard they try can't do AC very well.

light atack weaving is very easy atm
simpel tutorial:
1. download perfect weave
2. go to options and turn mode to hard
3. spam lightatacks as fast as possible
4. press skills in between
5. ...
6. profit

No no no mate that's not how you do it.
light attack weaving is very easy atm
simple tutorial:
1. download perfect weave
2. go to options and turn mode to hard
3. Go to controls and change light attack to scrolling your mouse wheel
4. Scroll it while pressing skills
5. ...
6. profit

Goregrinder · May 2021

Oreyn_Bearclaw wrote: »

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Ippokrates wrote: »

milesrodneymcneely2_ESO wrote: »

If I were to watch a movie where the heroes raise their weapons to fire, then something blows up on the other end without them actually firing the weapon, I'd want my money back.

Oreyn_Bearclaw wrote: »

Everest_Lionheart wrote: »

Oreyn_Bearclaw wrote: »

Everest_Lionheart wrote: »

Oreyn_Bearclaw wrote: »

milesrodneymcneely2_ESO wrote: »

Oreyn_Bearclaw wrote: »

2. Absolutely not. This would gut combat and LAs would become useless. Why would I ever light attack if I could cast a skill with the same opportunity cost. The answer is that you would not. The game would need completely rebalanced and would be a massive undertaking.

That is the beauty of combat in this game. There are many layers to a min/maxed damage rotation and it requires player skill, developed through practice, to juggle them all. Nothing requires you to attempt any of it other than Veteran HMs and Trifectas, or high end PVP. PVP without AC would be a nightmare. Your ability to react to your opponent would be all but eliminated.

Look, I get that animation cancelling and weaving aren't going anywhere.

But, I'm STILL galled by the fact that they didn't intend for it to be this way. And I'm DEEPLY repulsed by the idea that a fundamental mechanic (the standard Light Attack) is going to be completely invisible, for the most part.

If I were to watch a movie where the heroes raise their weapons to fire, then something blows up on the other end without them actually firing the weapon, I'd want my money back.

It's here. It's part of the zeitgeist. I get it.

But we don't have to like it, and we don't have to pretend it's polished, streamlined, and intentionally complex.

Not coming at you, though. You're awesome, and I get a lot out of reading your posts. I've even taken that advice into the game, with DANG good results. BEARHUGS!!!

First glad, you have found my many rantings over the years to be helpful. First and foremost, that is what I try to do on these forums. Admittedly, sometimes I break from that.

I will, however, push back just a bit. You actually do see the light attacks. When you watch a good weave with low ping, it actually looks very fluid to me. Certainly it gets choppy with higher ping, which I admit could be counter to immersion, but very little of the LA animation is clipped, and its really just the end of the follow through. On a staff you still see it go forward and shoot the elemental damage, on DW for example, you still see the weapon strike the target. If you use the movie example, well, you don't just attack and hold a pose, you move immediately into the next attack. This allows you to do that. You are a powerful being with unique abilities, but you also wield a basic weapon. LA weaving allows you to blend those two together, which is what I assume our heroes would attempt to do.

Ironically, the one type of AC useful to damage that really does clip the animation is swap canceling, and NOBODY talks about it. Probably because most people do this without realizing it. You cast an animation, and then you swap to a different bar. The game allows it because it makes combat feel more fluid. And similar to block, you need to be able to do it, especially in PVP to react to your opponent (certainly why it was coded with a higher priority). If you want to know what it would be like if you couldn't do this, play sorc with Hardcasting frags as a spammable, because it wont let you swap until the animation completely resolves. It is really clunky to play with and frankly feels awful to use.

In fact, the hardest part about doing the parse I showed was trying NOT to swap cancel. Similar to block canceling, people do it all the time and have no idea they are technically animation canceling.

Swap cancelled or not, GCD still applies. Not such a big deal with light attacks because the cooldown is shorter, but with skills if you happen to get ahead of yourself it won’t cast.

Nowhere is this lore prevalent than a Necro rotation casing BB every third skill where BB will be physically greyed out until it is available when you split your backbar in this manner. Now BB is 3 seconds but if you are doing your 2 LA-skill than swap cancel you’ll see it right away. A good Necro user trusts the skill to be up the second he/she hits the button/key, many Necro users will spam the hell out of BB until it casts.

The irony here is that what I just mentioned above is part of the skill gap of why some people can barely break 60k on a Necro and others can break 90k. One skill cast that many times perfectly over the rotation makes all the difference from mid to upper tier DPS.

Other skills/procs have a similar skill gap. And that’s the real difference between floor and ceiling.

Of course the GCD still applies. But swap cancelling is what allows you to maintain your pace when you swap between bars i your rotation. If swapping was on the same GCD as skills, you would lose pace when you swapped. The bigger point is that 1, it chops the animation way more than a LA weave (some skills more than others) and 2 everyone does it too some degree without even realizing they are doing (of course like anything, it can be perfected). 3 almost nobody knows talks about it.

As to Necro, yes the skills can be buggy. That said, blastbones has a travel time. If you are in melee you can cast it every third skill, whether you need to swap between casts or not. If at range you cannot cast every third skill.

On a dummy, I never have issues with blastbones going off. In actual content, you have to be sure it actually goes off before you cast again anytime your don’t have your nose on the boss. Hardest part I think for Necros is being sure you have corpses up for some skills. Siphon is probably the skill I try to cast and have issues with the most.

Necro can be played with a very static rotation, but it does take a lot of bar swapping compared to other classes, which certainly causes some people issues. If you are having issues with BB firing on a target dummy, you are trying to go to fast or not casting 2 skills in between.

Yeah I know the feeling regarding Necro for sure for corpses and siphon. I had to slow up slightly (full disclosure I do parse with a metronome, was a music student in a former life.) Other classes I can play at 57bpm though I set it for 114 and alternate LA-skill on the beats and it works fine (console plus input lag, needs a different cadence between skills and hitting them evenly seems to make the difference. Necro on the other hand I am at 55 (set to 110) and that hits the sweet spot. That amounts to .91 LA ratio versus .95 ratio which for console is pretty good. Full static rotations because console is not user friendly either and it’s hard to read the buff/debuff timers plus some just don’t exists so you need a rotation you can trust.

Regarding AC I generally swap on certain skills. My MagDK swaps on whip and eruption, both my nightblades swap on trap/degen or shade/siphon, magplar on purifying light and trap/rune, Stamden on SA and poison injection. Necro swaps on everything 🤣. On stam toons with bows I also bash cancel endless hail. I like to bash weave engulfing flames on MagDK as well. I’m debating bash canceling swallow soul on Magblade, but at 4x per rotation it gets expensive fast, could just block cancel I suppose.

For sure AC is an acquired skill and a necessity to maintain rhythm. And the way I run my practice tempos that means the AC, pots and synergies fall between the beats. For the musician in me that’s simple subdivision.

I use music analogies all the time when I am helping people 1 on 1 to work on their rotation. I also used to parse with a metronome. It's a great way to make the timing second nature.

Me too, but I cannot shot in proper tempo. How many ticks you are using? I was trying somewhat between 60-67.

Agree with @Everest_Lionheart. Cant go above 60 as its a theoretical limit. I used to set at 55. Havent done it in a while, but that will get you about .91-.92, which is usually what I am for. I tend to always speed up a bit in actual content, so I want just a bit of head room.

The other way I use music is to think of certain rotations as being on a given count. If I am playing Necro or Warden, its a 3 count with Sub Assualt/Blastbones always on the 1. With my sorc, its on a 6 count with Daedric Prey always on the 1, etc. Most classes have a class defining damage skill that needs to be at the center of your rotation.
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Merforum wrote: »

zvavi wrote: »

Merforum wrote: »

Thanks for all the comments and info. Looks like If ZOS wants to close the gap between high DPS and mid level there are a few good suggestion on the table:

1. Fix LA/AC, either make LA in same GCD, remove LA/make medium light, or widen window for it to register to make it much easier to do (something like 1 skill per second or 1 skill plus LA every 1.5 sec with correct animation)

2. Cap Crit chance and damage at 50% each

3. Reduce # of Buffs on 1 player at a time, and don't let major/minor of same thing stack but maybe keep a few class passive buffs outside of that for build/class diversity, ALTHOUGH PVPer will NOT like that part so SEPARATE PVE and PVP

4. CAP DPS per boss per area, for instance don't allow more than 40K group DPS to normal dungeon bosses, not more than 80K group DPS to Vet dungeon, maybe cap individual DPS to 40K per DD in normal trial and 70K for Vet, (super easy fix in PVE but not for PVP, unless you cap individual DPS to maybe 10K in PVP that could work and cap healing at 5K)

5.Use CAPs on various stats that are being stacked and overpowered
a. mag/stam/health 40K max/ recovery also 2K max
b. w/s dmag 4-6K max (4K in normal/PVP, 6K in vet content)
c. see #2 crit cap
d. whatever else is being overly stacked

Meh mate. If zos wants to higher floor, they should do 2 things.
1. Fix their game (bugs, lags, optimize it more, etc etc)
2. Create in-game proper tutorials and training grounds.

Anything you suggested is dumbing down the game, you are asking for:
1. Slower combat.
2. Gear to not matter. (It doesn't even balance stam Vs mag correctly, since stamina gets bonus weapon damage from armor).
3. Buffs to not matter (heck, people will be forced to NOT bring buffs, to ensure only the strongest one exists).
4. Ultimates to not matter (since during ultimate time your damage spikes up above your usual damage)
5. Gear to not matter, again.

You may enjoy such a game, I wouldn't. As I mentioned the previous list of what zos should really do, there are ways to help floor without dumbing down the game.

1. Yes everyone wants bug/lag fixes, new hardware.
2. On PTS right now they have 'combat tips' which tells people when to block/roll/interrupt which is really great and wish I had from beginning, also the have companions which will help the 'floor', which is not the issue at all

But none of that or anything many people say on this forum addresses the insane power creep, which ZOS knows is a big problem and should address directly with any of my suggestions. The fact that you personally benefit from such overtuning is why you are constantly going on threads trying to convince people that anything that could fix that is bad idea. ZOS will either fix it or they won't.

Power creep is present in every MMO. There is no way to completely avoid it but there are certainly things that you can do to manage it. Removing AC is not a long term solution to power creep. Would it reduce the ceiling in the short term? Sure it would, but it would also lower the floor. Bad players AC more than they even realize, and if you removed AC from the game, there would be a lot of Dead DPS because they couldn't react in time. Its also a nuclear approach that you can only do one time, and then power would just start creeping up again.

Power creep is much better addressed with things like adjustments to gear, base stats, CP passives, skills, or even NPC health. You are trying to address power creep by fundamentally changing combat mechanics that have been in the game since launch. It's a bad solution any way you slice it.

Yep, you don't nerf the mechanical movements of the game or remove a player's ability to react, you nerf the math. The stats on gear, abilities, player's health, etc. I think some people confuse player skill with power creep, and they are probably new to the MMORPG genre so we can't really blame them for not knowing.

Oreyn_Bearclaw · May 2021

KhajiitLivesMatter wrote: »

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Merforum wrote: »

Every discussion regarding DPS (damage per second) and how to get it as high as possible inevitably end up talking about Light Attack Weaving but not much is said about WHY it offers such insanely high damage. So let's see why that is. If X represents light attack damage and Y represents 'average skill' damage, if you do a perfect Anim Cancel for 10 seconds it looks like this,

X+Y + X+Y + X+Y + X+Y + X+Y + X+Y + X+Y + X+Y + X+Y + X+Y = 10X + 10Y

LA Weave without Anim Cancel looks like this

X + Y + X + Y + X + Y + X + Y + X + Y = 5X + 5Y

It becomes very apparent that a perfect LA weave does 100% more damage than a LA weave without animation canceling because by doing AC you get TWO actions/second while not doing it you only get ONE action/sec. And if most of your skills are DOTs/AOEs it is even more than 100% because they are UP longer and triggered sooner.

Now in real life most 'elite' players get only 90% AC so let's call it 9X+10Y, and most people who try AC but don't succeed get maybe 10% so 6X+5Y, but you can see no matter what you do to change the X LA damage or Y skill damage there will still be a huge difference, if we plug in X=1K, Y=2K, we get elite 29K, normal 16K. IRL the numbers have much more disparity that this so this is probably just one issue.

There is actually 2 ways to fix this if you are really concerned about (raising the floor/lowering the ceiling) or balancing.

1. Make it much easier to animation cancel by buffering button pushes so if someone pushes LA, then a skill within 1 second it will register more often. Instead of the way it is now where even the best of the best can only do it 90% of the time and that is on a dummy, in real content I bet they don't get that much. If it was easy enough so literally everyone could do it 75% of time and elite 100% that would really help.

2. Make LA use same GCD as everything else, ie don't allow 2 actions per second only 1 action. Still allow block, roll, bash etc to cancel animation but it should cancel the ACTION also not just the Animation, that way people won't feel the need to use this as a combat tactic.

Personally I prefer the second option because with all the lag and disparity of ping/FPS on systems, some people having high end rigs, video, KBM, etc, more than one action per second seems to be literally too fast for ESO system to handle and probably causing some of the lag. Action would still be super fast just not too fast for the servers and everyone playing to react to. Sorry this is a whole separate problem but related to why some people no matter how hard they try can't do AC very well.

light atack weaving is very easy atm
simpel tutorial:
1. download perfect weave
2. go to options and turn mode to hard
3. spam lightatacks as fast as possible
4. press skills in between
5. ...
6. profit

Have you actually tried playing with this addon? My weave is pretty good (usually about .92 when I parse, with at most 1-2 missed LAs), i tried this addon. Sure they dont need to be quite as precise, but your APMs go through the roof with this addon. I would never recommend this addon to anyone struggling with a weave. It doesn't make things easier.

axi wrote: »

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Flamebait wrote: »

Nestor wrote: »

FangOfTheTwoMoons wrote: »

Weather ZOS admits it or not; LA weaving is intended at this point. A few sets would be rendered usless.

LA sharing the same GCD as skills would also make light attacks usless in general. No one would ever use them again.

They admit it, even have something on one of the Splash Screens about it. They even talk about how to optimize the operation of it behind the scenes. I sat in one of the meetings where the developers talked about it.

People think that Animation Canceling is a mistake because it was not designed in at early alpha. That is not simply not true. Just like Vulcanized Rubber or Post It Notes or Rogaine, it was something that was discovered along the way during early development. They could have replaced it with Global Cooldowns, but combat is more fluid without those.

Flat out false they said it was a bug that they could not fix during beta, it had to do with the fact tanks and other have to block and dodge so those skills had to have priority over attack animations. After a while it was simply accepted as being a part of the game and the top tier players loved to sit there and brag how great they were. A really simple fix for it would be to change the damage to occur only at the end of the attack rather than the start, if you cancel the attack, no damage.

Flat out false. There was not a single ZoS's dev that would said animation cancelling or light attack weaving was a bug they couldn't fix. What You're saying is a twisted version of what devs actually said , created to fit anti AC crowd agenda. Twisted version of one particular comment. Here is the original post created before game even launched that most people saying what You've said is reffering to. Can You show where excatly it's being said that weaving is a bug they couldnt fix?

Fact that dev team didnt expect that players will start to use one particular mechanic to maximize DPS doesn't mean mechanic itself was a result of a bug or that devs couldn't change it if they wanted to. Separate global cooldowns with different priorities for different actions were core element of this game since early stages of combat development. Fact that devs didn't predict every possible outcome of that design does not make it weaving a bug. A bug by definition is an error in a computer program or system. It's hard to call weaving a bug when it was correctly following all the rules of combat design. At best it can be called an oversight but even that is kinda stretched theory since devs embraced and liked the use of it since the 1st day people started to show them what they can do with it.

There is plenty of quotes from very early days of the game where devs said weaving/AC is not a bug ,cheat or exploit and they encouraged people to practice it. Can You link even one source which would support Your comment?

[snip]

[Edited for Baiting]

Merforum · May 2021

Obviously if you tune a game without taking into account an 'unintended programming error', especially when that error gives exploiters 30-100% higher DPS, it shows exactly why some content is too easy for 5% and just right for 95% of people. The game effects of this aren't even the whole story, for people who have no clue about programming, there is a basic concept called 'unhandled exception' which happens when you don't take into account something that might happen and give specific instructions what to do. EX.

If X do (A)
If Y do (B)
If Z "oops we didn't think anyone would do Z so we'll just hang here for a while and maybe after this happens 50 times the system will lag out"

It has been absolutely proven without an doubt
1. LA/AC gives some people 30-100% more DPS
2. A mechanic that gives even 10% more DPS should not be completely based on precise timing of .1-.2 seconds when there is network/system lag and spikes that makes it extremely difficult (and might be even causing the lag)

Oreyn_Bearclaw · May 2021

Merforum wrote: »

Obviously if you tune a game without taking into account an 'unintended programming error', especially when that error gives exploiters 30-100% higher DPS, it shows exactly why some content is too easy for 5% and just right for 95% of people. The game effects of this aren't even the whole story, for people who have no clue about programming, there is a basic concept called 'unhandled exception' which happens when you don't take into account something that might happen and give specific instructions what to do. EX.

If X do (A)
If Y do (B)
If Z "oops we didn't think anyone would do Z so we'll just hang here for a while and maybe after this happens 50 times the system will lag out"

It has been absolutely proven without an doubt
1. LA/AC gives some people 30-100% more DPS
2. A mechanic that gives even 10% more DPS should not be completely based on precise timing of .1-.2 seconds when there is network/system lag and spikes that makes it extremely difficult (and might be even causing the lag)

Again with the miss information. Please stop with the 30-100% nonsense. You have been shown ad nauseum that this is objectively false. You haven't proven anything in this regard. Your second point isn't even something that can be "proved" as its a personal opinion of yours. An opinion that is not shared by any skilled player I have talked to in all my time in game or on these forums, which is quite a lot. You want a game balanced around poor internet and an inability to press buttons in a competent manner, sorry not on board.

Also, AC was brought to light beta. The game has been balanced and rebalanced countless times since then with this specifically in mind. Classes, Skills, Gear Sets, Enemy Stats, Achievements, have all been designed and balanced around AC since the game was officially launched.

Merforum · May 2021

Merforum wrote: »

Obviously if you tune a game without taking into account an 'unintended programming error', especially when that error gives exploiters 30-100% higher DPS, it shows exactly why some content is too easy for 5% and just right for 95% of people. The game effects of this aren't even the whole story, for people who have no clue about programming, there is a basic concept called 'unhandled exception' which happens when you don't take into account something that might happen and give specific instructions what to do. EX.

If X do (A)
If Y do (B)
If Z "oops we didn't think anyone would do Z so we'll just hang here for a while and maybe after this happens 50 times the system will lag out"

It has been absolutely proven without an doubt
1. LA/AC gives some people 30-100% more DPS
2. A mechanic that gives even 10% more DPS should not be completely based on precise timing of .1-.2 seconds when there is network/system lag and spikes that makes it extremely difficult (and might be even causing the lag)

The fact are clear and have been proven in a million ways. Case closed.

Gilvoth · May 2021

that comment, by Jessica Folsom, is proof enough that its free damage that is not intended and that high amount of instant FAST Damage should be removed.

VaranisArano · May 2021

Gilvoth wrote: »

that comment, by Jessica Folsom, is proof enough that its free damage that is not intended and that high amount of instant FAST Damage should be removed.

Sorry, your picture didn't come through.
Link: https://imgur.com/CGS12Mx.png

Edit: sometimes I see the image, sometimes I don't. Weird.

And I don't think it says what you think it says.

Question to Gina Bruno: is animation canceling (light attack -> skill -> block) an intended mechanic? Any plans to prevent people from using this to maximize DPS?

Answer from Jessica Folsom: Not exactly intended, but not an exploit. It's one of those things we didn't really expect.

A. That's talking about block canceling, not light attack weaving.
B. You don't have a date on that image, which makes that statement hard to contextualize in terms of changes to ESO over the years and in light of other Devs comments.. ZOS has made a lot of changes to diminish block canceling, while explicitly teaching and balancing for light attack weaving. (Edited: when the image loads, I see that you've referenced it from axi's post above, where they say it's from before the game launched.)
C. She answers the "is it intended" part. It's not an exploit, so there's no obvious reason why the Devs should remove it.

As an example of one of the Dev comments I'm thinking of, here's then Lead Combat Designer Eric Wrobel on ESO Live in 2015:
"Animation canceling...we're embracing it. Animation canceling is a part of the game and we want people to be doing it."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ThZtwhYkKSs[/quote]

Everest_Lionheart · May 2021

Oreyn_Bearclaw wrote: »

show previous quotes

Merforum wrote: »

Obviously if you tune a game without taking into account an 'unintended programming error', especially when that error gives exploiters 30-100% higher DPS, it shows exactly why some content is too easy for 5% and just right for 95% of people. The game effects of this aren't even the whole story, for people who have no clue about programming, there is a basic concept called 'unhandled exception' which happens when you don't take into account something that might happen and give specific instructions what to do. EX.

If X do (A)
If Y do (B)
If Z "oops we didn't think anyone would do Z so we'll just hang here for a while and maybe after this happens 50 times the system will lag out"

It has been absolutely proven without an doubt
1. LA/AC gives some people 30-100% more DPS
2. A mechanic that gives even 10% more DPS should not be completely based on precise timing of .1-.2 seconds when there is network/system lag and spikes that makes it extremely difficult (and might be even causing the lag)

Again with the miss information. Please stop with the 30-100% nonsense. You have been shown ad nauseum that this is objectively false. You haven't proven anything in this regard. Your second point isn't even something that can be "proved" as its a personal opinion of yours. An opinion that is not shared by any skilled player I have talked to in all my time in game or on these forums, which is quite a lot. You want a game balanced around poor internet and an inability to press buttons in a competent manner, sorry not on board.

Also, AC was brought to light beta. The game has been balanced and rebalanced countless times since then with this specifically in mind. Classes, Skills, Gear Sets, Enemy Stats, Achievements, have all been designed and balanced around AC since the game was officially launched.

Should we tell him where AC done incorrectly can cause your DPS to actually take a nose dive?

Example: Necro - Boneyard. You can ani cancel by taking a synergy as well if you know how to time it right (and everyone pushing 80k plus can generally time it right) however this skill in particular if you ani cancel with a synergy it will also cancel the cast of the skill. You aren’t only losing your DOT you are also losing your synergy for even more damage and possibly some sustain though Necro has zero sustain issues to begin with.

Or try ani canceling ele weapon incorrectly and watching your toon stand there dry humping the air. It kind of hilarious actually until you realize every time you miss that LA you are wasting 2GCD and a boatload of damage (20-30k)

And then there the skills like jabs/sweeps with a channel time of 1 second but an animation that lasts longer than one second. Templar rotations look choppy because of this, luckily there is so much bling bling generally going on around you that you’ll barely even notice, especially if you are mag.

Speaking of magplar, try barswap canceling off the wrong skills and tell me how that works out. I mean many of us already know the answer here. It’s the rotation (order you cast the skills) that gives people the big damage numbers. Fitting an LA in between each only enhances a great rotation. Timing your ultimate and using the correct ultimate for the situation (off balance enemies will take more damage from different ultimate.) Using sets like acuity takes an even more refined rotation to get the most damage out of your dots and spamables. Using sets like deadly requires 100% uptimes on all dots to ensure you are getting that damage as well. Learning to hit those 80k+ numbers while wearing MK + Zen is a complete mastery of rotation and will add way more damage than ani canceling or LA weaving.

If only the OP understood what it actually takes to hit these kinds of numbers. It’s a delicate dance, not some mindless spamming of skills as fast as humanly possible.

Merforum · May 2021

Gilvoth wrote: »

that comment, by Jessica Folsom, is proof enough that its free damage that is not intended and that high amount of instant FAST Damage should be removed.

Exactly correct, everything LA/AC defenders come up with actually proves why it is cheesy rather than greatest thing in the world.

NoMoreChillies · May 2021

buff heavy attacks

nobody likes nerfs, everyone loves buffs.