Thoughts on Light Attack Weaving Amid ESO's Exciting 2026 Roadmap

Twohothardware · February 27

I'd like to see light/heavy attack animations overhauled like they're doing with DK and the other classes. Not just sped up animations like they tried to do here recently but actual new animations/sounds. Light and heavy attacks should look more weighted and intentional and damaging when they connect instead of floaty like they are now.

zammo · February 28

Suddwrath wrote: »

Light attack weaving is dumb and one of the worst aspects of ESO’s combat. On a similar note, heavy attacks are confusing from a series perspective…HA to RESTORE resources, really? It should have been the reverse. Light attacks should have been resource recoverer (not weaving, just light attacks) while heavy attacks were a resource spending option for DPS. Bad decisions were made when designing the combat and then ZOS just stuck with them.

Erm, the ZOS combat team are outside and would like a word. This is entirely on the community.

Rungar · February 28

light and heavy attacks should be reactionary only when you have an opening, not for general dps/weaving. The resource restore shouldnt be gauranteed.

slottable light and heavy attack skills that have focus on a single condition to exploit, and causing that condition with regular skills and then exploiting that condition is where the resource gain and dps should occur.

how they do it now is just dumb and boring busywork and thats why people dont care for it. So easy to fix.

Major_Mangle · February 28

exiars10 wrote: »

Of course ESO minority who managed to do properly initially just bug is in its own bubble and defend it .
The worst mistake devs did was to cater to them.

Outside the bubble, ESO is the most notorious for the worst combat in any MMO.
Just go read anywhere outside bubble in the last 10 years, and it's almost always that the combat is the ranked as the worst aspect of the game.
It goes like this "I would play ESO / I tried it but combat is horrible" or similar adjectives.

For me personally, combat is mostly terrible (LA weaing is just one part), and that doesn't include just playing as DD - tanking is even worse. Probably the worst aspect of game (excluding hundreds bugs) for me.

People who never experience another combat system than the old school WoW/lotro (or similar "long cooldown" snore fest combat) are usually the ones complaining about ESO´s combat. For what reason I can´t say. I personally love it and think it´s one of the best ones out there. The echo chambers of reddit or other MMO forums are similar "bubbles" as the ones you claim the ESO population lives in.

ESO´s combat system at its core is fine and honestly one of the best one in the MMO market.

NxJoeyD · March 30

I would be more subscribed to LA weaving if the Devs were to streamline skill animations to make them more consistent in terms of the time it takes the animations to complete.

Weaving light attacks between skills can be a viable mechanic but given the state of the server / latency as well as huge disparity between skill animation durations weaving doesn’t necessarily represent a polished mechanic.

Server latency aside, choosing to weave light attacks in between skills that are animated to execute blisteringly quick will yield a much more effective result than weaving light attacks between skills that have clunky or slow animations.

If all skills had animation durations that were consistent, not necessarily identical but within < 0.5s then I think we’d be in a better place to talk about the mechanical aspect of weaving as a game staple.

Weaving isn’t essential in gameplay, IMO contributing to a max of around 15% or so DPS swings in PvE. In PvP it becomes even more questionable as with subclassing, builds tend to cherry pick those skills which the Devs gave really quick animations and high scaling, enabling better weave potential and output, while others weave as effectively.

It’s another example of a mechanic that’s a solid idea but just isn’t well implanted in game. The games other mechanics don’t align in a way that creates a baseline for broad waving.

DrMedBorn · April 6

I wish it would be removed honestly. It makes the game look clunky

Vaqual · April 6

Whether it was intentional or not all those years ago, it certainly is now. It is an engaging system that adds a layer of depth to the combat that is almost singlehandedly keeping the "no-cooldown-10+2-abilities"-combat reasonably interesting. The animation canceling is not too jarring, even within the game there are worse offenders from an aesthetical point of view.

But the main advantage of the system is, that it allows weapon attacks to be balanced in parallel to the rest of the combat framework. If LA/HA were to directly compete with ability casts, a lot of things would need to be incentivized differently. And there is really no indication that such a version of combat would be any better.

BXR_Lonestar · April 7

I hate the weaving/animation cancellation aspect of this game and I have always resented that you need to know how to do this to do "acceptable" DPS. I like mythics like Oakensoul and Velothi Ur that allow you to make builds that don't require weaving/animation cancelling, but these builds only really work in PVE, not all of them are competitive with the meta, and there isn't enough variety of builds that don't require weaving/animation cancelling. We need more sets, monster sets, mythics, and arena weapons that lean into non-weaving so that these builds can raise their game a notch or 2 and so we can have more build variety than just "heavy attack build or beam build."

marcbf · April 7

I've been playing this game for close to 10 years at this point and I still have a problem doing LA Weaving. I would be very happy if it were less of a thing. Full disclosure: I have issues with both of my hands (CTS and arthritis) which absolutely doesn't make things easier. If anything I shy away from more difficult content because I cannot truly pull my own weight.

Darque.Fluxb14a_ESO · April 7

Rungar wrote: »

light and heavy attacks should be reactionary only when you have an opening, not for general dps/weaving. The resource restore shouldnt be gauranteed.

slottable light and heavy attack skills that have focus on a single condition to exploit, and causing that condition with regular skills and then exploiting that condition is where the resource gain and dps should occur.

how they do it now is just dumb and boring busywork and thats why people dont care for it. So easy to fix.

Not commenting on whether or not LA Weaving is good or bad, but I see you mentioned multiple times that you think Light/Heavy attacks should be slottable. From a user experience standpoint that is even more of a terrible mess, either they do not obey the GCD and are another layer of hidden/inconsistent information given about the combat system, or they do and they are not really light/heavy attacks but skills instead.

I propose you consider the compromising idea that each weapon skill is given a tag that indiciates whether it is a light or heavy attack, then remove light and heavy attacks and just keep them as part of the weapon skill line in that capacity.

Blackrim · April 7

LA Weaving is fine imo. No need to take skillfulness out of the game.

Jammy420 · April 7

Light attack weaving is not difficult, takes about ten seconds to practice, and if you do not want to do it there are builds for that. This horse has been beaten, killed, resurrected, incinerated, sent to the 9 hells, reincarnated and shot into the sun.

Sincerely someone with bad eyes, and rheumatoid arthritis. If you have problems with clicking and mouse and keyboard, use a controller, works fine and is better for your hands.

JMadFour · April 8

The main problem with light attack weaving is that it looks stupid.

It makes your character look stupid.

It looks janky and weird and not smooth at all, and it makes ESO’s combat look bad from an outside perspective. Which is the primary reason non-players say that ESO’s combat sucks and they refuse to try it.

The Professional Target Dummy Parsers who ESO Devs have decided rule this game don’t care about that, they only care about making the number bigger, so it’ll never change or even be made to look smoother and better.

and that is why ESO will never be more than the 3rd or 4th best MMO on the market when it could possibly have been #1.

LootAllTheStuff · April 9

exiars10 wrote: »

As I said, combat bubble.

ToddIngram wrote: »

Light attack weaving is an integral part of ESO combat system. It makes ESO unique, and that's a good thing.

There is supposed to be a skill gap between those who've put the time in to learn the system and those who haven't.

Yes, unique in the worst possible way.
In every gaming community especially MMO, ESO combat is consistently ranked as the worst.
Go read when somebody type "Should I try ESO as is just 5 USD on sale?" in gaming communities, it is quickly killed by bad combat comments.
Game only survived because of TES name, One Tamriel update, and consoles launch (no MMO competition). Any other game would otherwise died quickly with combat like that.

CameraBeardThePirate wrote: »

James-Wayne wrote: »

I can't stand the weaving, on a ping of 300+ it just creates rubber banding and stuck animations. They should reduce damage from light attacks and increase damage on skills.

They literally already did this. Use Velothi and don't light attack weave if your ping prevents it.

New players don't have Velothi, once they try combat they just bail out.
Heck, even I who again play for some time, didn't have it until two days ago because of drop rates.
And it's super / heavily time gated behind Scrivener's Hall.
Basically solution is super heavily gated (money + a lot of time and rng) instead to be accessible.
And another solution is "just use beam" Arcanist which is PvE DD P2W class for me and I refuse to create him despite owning Necrom.

There must be another drop source for the lead that normally comes from Scrivener's, because I have the amulet but don't have access to Scrivener's. In fact it was, until recently, the only mythic item I have managed to unlock.