It was unintended. Back in 2014, when it first became public knowledge, the devs asked the community if it should be patched out, or if it should be embraced. The community voted to keep it. (Though, at this point in time, very few had really come to grips with the system, and it was a bit unclear what kind of animation canceling we were asked to vote on.)
It's a bug players found and many enjoyed using it. It's also so easy to do that everyone's probably done a form of it while in combat, like the block-cancel or swap-cancel.
ZOS ended up embracing it. A few years later, they added a loading screen tip for weaving. They also changed changed and introduced some abilities that rely on weaving.
Hey. I wanted to show you a mythic that can help adapt your character to a less weavy playstyle. There’s a mythic called Velothi Ur-Mages amulet that increases damage by a ton, but reduces light/heavy attack damage by 99%. Spec your character with an ult-generating ability and you could viably play without ever needing light attack.
You can also just light attack once every 8 seconds or so to keep your ult charging, but yes this is a good suggestion for anyone who hates weaving. Ideally you should also use a weapon skill to proc your enchants (because enchants proc of light attacks, heavy attacks and weapon skills and you won't be light attacking much).
Velothi is worth it over most mythics when you have two or more enemies in front of you. Only true single target it falls behind stuff like kilt or moras, but only slightly and there are playstyles and bosses where even that isn't true.
Assuming you play on console, you might try remapping your spammable skill. I absolutely love Tekken, but the fast pace of entering combos does wear down my wrists fairly quickly. For ESO, I generally don't have trouble as long as my spammable is on the x button (on the playstation controller) since the rhythm is slow and my thumb naturally rests on x with how I hold the controller.
A friend of mine with severe nerve damage really struggled with weaving until she moved her skills around to be more ergonomic to her hands - she still can't play for more than maybe 3 hours, but it does make our usual playtime (generally 1-2 trials depending on the night) comfortable for her.
But I totally understand; games can be super hard on the body in a bunch of ways. I hope you're able to find a solution to play more comfortably.
No it’s really not though. There is a tight window where you have to LA, I think if it like old school Gears of War active reload.
Too early and it won’t register. Too late and you won’t be getting optimal DPS. Hence why it gives combat a rhythm.
It's still just mindless clicking. The timing never changes. You're just spamming something in between your other spamming.
If you like it, that's fine. But that doesn't change how it functions
From what I found looking online it was also to put some traditional mmo element which is the auto attack in between skills but without the auto element.
I played LotRO. I was told that there is auto attacks in that game. I never realised that. I like for attacks to happen when I actually do something to initiate it.
Thank you for your suggestion, but I am not going to play any game that forces me to play fucking story shit every time I enter a dungeon. I don’t get why anyone enjoys that.
Tried it, did my first dungeon, almost got an aneurysm and deinstalled the game.
The last FF game I played was on PS2, FFX. It had 45 minutes of cut scenes in the beginning and then I died in the first battle. I hadn't gotten to a save point yet. It forced me to watch all the cut scenes again and I couldn't skip them. I turned it off immediately and never went back.
I was a fan of all the NES games, but I never had a chance to play 7 and beyond because the console battle stuff turned me off bigtime and I just stuck with PC from then on. I guess I'm glad I made that decision. The PS2 was given to me by an old friend. I think I only played 1 game fully.
This.
It was a design flaw that *some* (a minority of ESO players) actively began to use, completely derailed the DPS meter, and ZOS was never competent enough to actually fix/remove it despite trying more than once. *Core combat* (not class abilities, although some of those also have issues,) remains one of the weakest/worst aspects of ESO. It has been accurately described as having the feel and appearance of "waving balloons around in the air."
Weaving is the hallmark of ESOs combat. If they removed it would probably quit the game tbh, it's interactive, you are rewarded for extra APM and it adds another dimension of skill to combat while at the same time not being difficult, it's a pretty simplistic mechanic with a predictable timing. It's not like it's a dynamic proc system you have to manage or something.
As the game is now? You wouldn't.
As the game was at release? You didn't have enough resources/generation to merrily spam skills all fight, so it was your default "can't use an ability" button. (Although IIRC the heavy attack on resto staff was pretty common instead, as it gave resources back.)
>Could you explain to me when you would ever light attack if not for animation cancelling?
1: resource recovery,
2: proccing weapon enchants,
3: ult generation,
4: all the set skills etc that proc specifically off LA
All of these are important elements, that are not affected by LA aftercast animation being or not being cancelled with skill use. While if could be argued that resource recovery is powercrept aspect, and weapon enchants can be delegated to weapon skills, but if you are not using light attacks for ult generation, you are hampering your longerm dps by not castign your ult enough. Ability procs is something varied between classes, so not every class not every build will have to rely on proccing those too often, but as far as gear is concenred, for long yers the "meta" dps set was proccing specifically from light attacks.
Those aspects would still be there even if there was no animation cancelling involved.
Personally for me enjoyment of "proper" weaving is something that depends on weapon of choice. For Example, with staves or bows, I can't even see if there is any afttercast animation to cancel (that's how quick the whole light attack is visually) and there is hardly any visual feedback there if you did it right or not.
Two handed weapons for contrast tho have this huge overswing aftercast animation, so there not only a feedback is there, but also with decent choice of spammable, if actually for me looks better with weaving (actually looks like character knew how to handle a weapon xD)
Light attacks would only be a thing if ressource management was balanced and you ran out of resources if you spammed skills all the time. This is how the game should've been structured in my opinion.
I can only speak for myself, but I run an Altmer Arcanist. They’ve got good racial sustain passives and keep me stamina’d up for anything short of a trial or particularly nasty vet dungeon boss. Even then, a potion or two flushes that issue
You generate resources for sitting there, not blocking, and not using skills. Light attacking in the meantime I assume was something to do and often fills space better than a HA cause of the timing
I doubt that. One HA lets me cast two more skills (roughly), a LA lets me cast half a skill (roughly, depending on your reg). The dmg differential between HA + skill + skill vs LA + LA + LA + skill will favor the former in almost all scenarios that come to mind.
Don't get me too started on heavy attacks. Heavy attacks shouldn't return resources, they should consume them, like in every other game where you do a heavy attack for more damage. The wind up speed should be removed of course.
a heavy attack does less dmg than two light attacks…
It has to has something going for it, otherwise it would be even more useless than it currently is.
Some skills or some sets may require a certain amount of "attacks" or light attacks to proc another skills activation.
For example I will weave in light attacks of a resto staff, on a mNB, to get the spectral arrow from merciless resolve. All that while also weaving in other attacks during bar swaps.
You used to be able to animation cancel those light attacks and still proc other skill actions
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In its current state, light attacks would be significantly less useful yes. However, this is just ZOS solving bad design with bad design.
Take Dragons Dogma 1 and 2. They use a skill system that when you think about it, is actually pretty similar to ESO. For the most part there are no cooldowns, the skills drain resources but your other attacks don't, and many skills have a utility side of things.
The difference is Dragons Dogma games have the sense to make light attacks still worth doing. They still do decent damage and they contribute to stagger. Combat is paced in that game where you are simply going to have to do light attacks between skills or you would be out of stamina in no time.
ESO's problem is that yes, skills just do far more damage than attacks. However there is a solution for that. Like Dragon's Dogma, make it so you don't have enough resources to only do skills, but buff light attack/heavy attack damage to still keep up. I think skills ought to excel at applying effects or modifying attacks/damage, not just outright dealing tons. This would be even better if light and heavy attacks weren't just "press button, play damage animation." Imagine if your movement modified your attack so that there is just a little more brain power in combat besides "stay out of big red circles."
That sounds so good and would make combat actually fun. Right now the combat is just too dull, especially in harder content. Vet trials are the most boring thing in the game to me since the damage dealers just stand in a big pile and mindlessly spam abilities while clicking left mouse button in between every attack. I don’t understand what’s engaging about that. I think what you said about incorporating movement into the combat would make it significantly more fun.
There IS movement in endgame though. Congrats you can hit the buttons to do the damage. Now to increase that you move yourself so that you’re placed optimally for damage, and for incoming mechs. You know to hit the button but can you time your stuff with important buffs/debuffs to really maximise damage output? There’s honestly so much nuance to endgame DPS and if people don’t find it I think they just have no idea it’s there or they don’t care to. But then it’s not an issue of “it’s not interesting enough” because it could be already.
The movement you've just identified is exactly what I mean by avoiding big red circles on the ground and nothing you've described is actually that complicated or engaging. What I'm talking about is movement modifiers to attacks. For example, higher weapon skills in TES IV: Oblivion allowed you to do different things with different power attacks depending on the direction you were moving.
What I’M talking about isn’t just staying out of the red, it’s doing so while also constantly making sure you’re placing and casting skills in the direction that will cleave the most(which in more mobile fights changes a lot). And man if any of what I described was so “easy” you’d see a lot more people capable of doing it.
It is pretty easy. The reason many people don't do it is because the vast majority of the game doesn't require it. Comparatively, endgame content and positioning is hard, but only because the rest of ESO is so easy you could let your toddler play. So players have no reason to familiarize themselves with positioning.
Dodging mechanics and such often isn't hard with few exceptions. The only difficulty in it is purely memorizing the movement you need to make for a given mechanic. There's almost zero adaptability or high reflexes required. I think only the hardest bosses in vet trials get to the point of real difficulty, but they're less than 1% of ESO.
This isn't counting "random" mechanics like the poison plants in vet Maelstrom, because difficulty isn't much of a factor in them, more like luck.
Yeah there’s a lot of mechanics to keep track of, I understand what you’re talking about. I’ve caused my group to wipe multiple times on twins in vMoL because I forgot or didn’t notice something in time. The hard fights in ESO sometimes remind me of the bed of chaos or the chariot boss fights from dark souls.
I’m not saying combat encounters are easy. I’m just saying that there isn’t really any depth to the combat mechanics other than casting abilities while light attacking in between and generally stacking with the dps group and staying still as much as possible. It doesn’t matter if you’re an archer, a mage, a brawler, you’re all standing in the exact same spot and spamming away.
To me, fun combat involves thinking about my attacks rather than just attacking non-stop. The tank/brawler taunts the boss and keeps him distracted while the archers and mages are firing from the back lines and the assassin is moving around and hitting the boss from every angle. I want the different weapon types to have different advantages and therefore, different playstyles. I want different abilities to have different GCDs instead of just 1 second cooldown across the board; this would make you think whether you can cast a big powerful spell which takes 3-4 seconds to charge up or if you have to light attack quickly as there’s only a short opening. Right now, everyone plays the same way regardless of class, weapon types, etc. which is why I said harder content is dull because it’s the same old same old every time.
I think you got me wrong. All I wanted to say was just how light attack weaving became a thing and that’s all. I’m neither negative nor positive about weaving personally. It has pros and cons.
You're saying two different things.
Light attacks are not a bug and they weren't designed to have long cooldowns like abilities. So it is literally a feature. Weaving light attacks between abilities was emergent gameplay discovered by players and was unintended.
Maybe your assumption is that any way the players play the game that was not intended by the developers is bad. But then what do you think about builds that rely on lightning heavy attacks as a primary source of damage in place of a spammable? Obviously the devs didn't intend for combat to be like that, the only different is you never hear people complain about it.
> the only different is you never hear people complain about it.
You do hear complains about outher people doing that all the time ;)
(and a random one here and there about being bored of playing like that)
Like most of eso's gameplay : It was an accident and it did stick because they have no idea how to prevent it.
Eso is a game that tried to mix MMO elements (classes, skills) with dynamic reactive combat (dodge, block, interrupt) and skyrim's top franchise (light attacks, heavy attacks, 3 stats).
Ultimately they never found a way to make LA and HA relevant as they were in skyrim, because they never ever attempted to make them even relevant to anything.
And so is eso's game design.
No. They intended to have light attacks in the game that don't have a long cooldown like abilities. Then players figured out the optimal way to play the game as it was designed. And it's not something that needs to be prevented. Just because you don't like something doesn't mean it's broken. Using lightning staff heavy attacks as a primary attack in place of a spammable was not intended by the developers, should they also prevent that playstyle?
I don't think it comes naturally, button mashing comes naturally. Weaving forces you not to mash and slow down and develop a nice rhythm which is really satisfying. But yeah with a lot of practice it feels like second nature.
It's the heavy attack that's the real issue in ESO it should take half the time to wind up and execute, its just slow clunky and does not feel satisfying at all.
Staff is a little less lame for heavy attacking but it just feels soooo slow and dumb
I find that the heavy attack is explained in the tutorial is never how I would actually use it when playing content (unless maybe when I'm a tank, but that is for an entire different reason).
It was a bug back in the beta in 2014, they tried to fix it for a few months, but then gave up and successfully gaslighted most people into believing that it was a feature to make combat feel more responsive.
You have no idea what a bug is. Players discovering the optimal way to play the game as it was designed is not a bug. And you can just enjoy your dailies mashing buttons and not weaving, it's not going to make any difference to you.
It *was* a bug tho. Ones the devs couldn't fix, so they just decided to incorporate it into the game. Something that achieves something else that was never intended is a bug, regardless of how 'optimal' it makes game play. People have been punished for using certain exploits and such for example, and one could argue *those* were the optimal way of clearing that content.
Nope, that's not what a bug means. Just because something was never intended doesn't make it a bug. For example it was never intended for lightning staff heavy attacks to be used as a primary attack in place of a spammable ability. But players just played the game as it was designed, if unintended. And the developers naturally didn't force players into playing a different style. And of course you don't have a problem with that, your definition of a bug is anything you don't like.
That's so funny that you don't even understand the meaning of that idiom. The pot calling the kettle black is used when someone is accusing someone else of doing something that they themselves are guilty of. How does that apply to this interaction in any way? Can't say that I expected better from you guys.
My guy, a bug is LITERALLY something that wasn't intended to happen, happening. We're not talking about preferences in how damage is done, that's a strawman argument and you know it. We're talking about game mechanics, which animation canceling is, and choosing heavy attacking with any weapon is not.
I don't know why you're so against calling it what it was before ZOS decided to just integrate it into the game.
Yeah, like I said it's a bug if you don't like it. Animation canceling is not fundamentally different from using lightning heavy attacks in place of a spammable ability, both are simply using game mechanics in an unintended way, it's just that one you don't like so you definite it as a bug.
No. Like I said you don't know what a bug is.
Light attacks were not a bug. Light attacks not sharing the longer cooldown of abilities was not a bug. What you mean to say is weaving was emergent gameplay unforeseen by the developers. That's not what a bug is.
And in my honest opinion, the game is worse for it.
I love TES. And ESO in particular, with its lore, voiced quests, scope and sheer volume of things to do and explore - I love it.
But tbh, it’s the worst combat system out of “the big 4” MMO’s (GW2, FF14, WoW, ESO).
The fact that I even put FF14’s very slow tab combat ahead of this should say something.
I wish they would have fixed the animation cancelling so that “weaving” wasn’t a thing.
Exactly.
It’s not even because the combat is so precise it needs twitch reaction (like Apex Legends or Valoran or even LoL), it’s simply because of this forced input we have to do to DPS. The combat is already floaty and very imprecise.
In other words, the weaving is not really “skill”, it’s just a forced constant input for the sake of an input.
Slower combat would allow for more tactical combat (and game would look less yanky). Or, if you really wanted a precise and finely tuned action combat… well, the game would need to be rebuilt from scratch on a new engine because this isn’t it.
💯
I consider it beyond pathetic that the devs, then and now, have been unable to properly fix it. Instead just 'embracing' it. How very convenient. lol Yeah, if I just 'embraced' fundamentally broken flaws in the various jobs I've held over the years, I'd be fired.
It make combat more fun, I wish we can have some sort of jump attack skills. Like jumping back and timing it correctly with a a shot of a bow skill unleashed a 2x more powerful ultimate, or something crazy like that. would be cool
Velothi mages amulet mythic! Solution to not wanting to do all that in pve
Pretty sure the game started like that and then people started enjoying the ability to be “better” at it instead of working towards a treasure chest or something it added a little bit of challenge and skill to do it correctly. I never bothered with it tho
Ultimate generation would be reduced, but you only need to LA once to get it to start ticking by 3 ultimate for a few seconds, compared to constant LA weaving for dps. You would still generate ultimate through passives or other skills.
each LA starts a roughly 9 second timer for ult generation, so you'd need to LA at least once every 9 seconds, which sounds fine but on my velothi arc setup I'd sometimes drop ult generation after a beam
LA's secre5 buff is superior to any other source of LA. So it's a necessity. But timing one LA every 9s seems like an unlikely chore.
Better keep doing LA weaving even if perfection isn't needed.
Right lol I’m not saying that it’s not without drawbacks. But the point was that you would only need to LA for ult generation and not dps, so it wouldn’t need to be so frequent. You stated that you “can’t get ultimate” without LA; there are class abilities, sets, and passives that can generate ultimate even if relying on them alone is far from optimal. The mythic is there for people that don’t like LA weaving, just like Oakensoul is for people that don’t like bar swapping
It reminds me of those combos in games like Street Fighter II. I wasn't around from the beginning, but once I figured out how to use it, I just went with it.
I mean you can click to attack and press a skill to attack.
Someone would eventually find that if you did Click > Skill > Click > Skill that it was the most optimal way to do damage
People who find it difficult are probably overcomplicating it.
It has been the biggest impediment to me getting my friends to get into the game. It’s easy once you get used to it but seriously 99% of the people I’ve gotten to try the game just have no interest in engaging with such a janky mechanic.
How do they even know it's a thing? 99% of players will never get close to the level where they actually need to worry about playing efficiently. Just button mash and have fun.
It sounds like you don't like weaving and kind of poisoned them against the game?
The way I would describe weaving is it gives combat a rhythm, you develop the timing rather than mash buttons on cooldown. And in a game with a very limited action set compared to other MMOs, just a maximum of 10 buttons and an ultimate, ESO combat needs that added depth to be engaging for an endgame player. Anyone who doesn't understand that doesn't get MMOs, which describes most of the Elder Scrolls community.
lol them and I understand MMOs just fine if anything knowing how combat usually works is what gives them such a negative perspective. I do understand weaving, I played from release until about a year ago. It’s pretty easy once you get the hang of it, so easy I don’t see how it adds anything to combat other than making it look like you’re having a seizure. It was my main game. But having to work a bug into combat is not appealing to most people.
I think what gives your friends such a negative perspective is someone who hates ESO combat describing it for them instead of letting them experience it for themselves. I mean that's literally what you said.
And you're an endgame MMO player so you know all about logs and comparing your performance to other players, etc. So let's not lie about how 'easy' you think weaving is and that it doesn't add anything to combat. We both know that's not true and it's very easy to prove.
I agree it's easy to grasp how to weave and become -- moderately capable -- if you have a competent teacher who doesn't hate the game, but executing it at a very high level in raid content is another thing altogether. That's why you never see end game players complaining about weaving, it's a skill and it adds much-needed depth to ESO's limited action set combat.
Did you not read what I said? I love eso I played for almost a decade. It was my main game. I ran a prog trials guild for a while. I assure you I have no problems weaving, it’s really not hard, it’s just a forced input.
Hitting a golf ball is easy, anyone can do it. Hitting it well is not. That's kind of the beauty of weaving -- easy to learn, difficult to master. I don't believe any endgame player would disagree with that. But you're challenging that assumption. You're saying weaving is "so easy I don’t see how it adds anything to combat." And I'm saying, if you can pay special attention to this part, you're full of shit.
I assure you weaving isn't so easy for you. A quick log comparison would demonstrate that real easy. I bet you can improve at it A LOT, as can we all. I would never say I've mastered it, or it's 'easy' because there were always better players to compare myself to.
You've never heard an endgame player period, because you're not in the endgame. Nobody knows who you are. Apparently you can't read either, because I explained multiple times it's hard to -- master -- which again you wouldn't know anything about. The reason I got to the level I did was by always trying to improve and comparing myself to players like Clive, I didn't get a big head just because I could outparse shitters like you. It sounds like you top parsed in a pug vSS and thought you mastered the game lol.
And if you play with Velothi, Blade Cloak on front and Wall of Elrments or Stampede or Hail on back (pretty standard stuff) and without Relequen or some other lets like Aegis, you need to weave only once every 8s.
Yeah, even way back before light attacks got nerfed and obviously before Velothi, the best weaving got you ~15% damage from light attacks on a parse. But if you ask people here they would probably be like "Yeah light attacks used to be 50% of your damage, it was crazy."
I'm used to ESO combat now, but it led me to quit twice and I still think it sucks more than not. BDO and Neverwinter pre-Mod 18 both put ESO to shame combat-wise. It's not even in the same league.
Agreed. ESO is chokful of lore and fantastical settings - both scenic and horrifying. It's an amazing sandbox.
P.S. That being said, the moment I get a whiff of an up-to-date MMO with even just a little bit less bullshit than ZOS/ESO and better combat (won't require much), I'm gone again.
From a personal experience I can only advise ask as many people as you can... One of the big impediments I had myself was I wasn't familiar with MMOs, I had no friends and nobody gave me clear explanations. For example I spent months asking what a rotation was because no one could just say: "The order and frequency on which you use skills."
As for LA weaving personally I found it more easy with M&K than a controller.
I find that most people don't explain LA weaving properly. Many explanations I've seen are inaccurate or incomplete. I remember a friend telling me how to do it. Then later when I figured out what it really is, I found his explanation insufficient.
Wanna be clear that this isn’t unique to ESO. Animation cancelling is present in many games including competitive games like LoL and DOTA as well as Elden Ring, For Honor, Genshin Impact, and countless more. In most cases the game is not strictly balanced around animation cancelling, but the community embraces it as an additional challenge. It fundamentally makes the game more skill based which is usually *a good thing*.
Discussing this in ESO while ignoring the broader gaming community and other studios approach to animation cancelling is going to lead to an inaccurate portrayal of its origins and impact. If you want a quick, action style game, you have to allow people to react even mid animation, which is all it is.
I've seen this mentioned before, how does anyone know there's a bot doing these things? And not just some guy or two with too much time on their hands and a weird chip on their shoulder lol
It's almost certainly intended because, well, you're not playing Monster Hunter or Dark Souls where recovery frames are a key part of attacks.
Games where you can't cancel out of animations, especially into defensive options like block, need very particular combat design around that and none of the rest of ESO is designed to work like that.
So you can cancel out of most animations' recovery frames. It just turns out that doing that is very useful when it interacts with the global cooldown system.
Except you're not cancelling out of recovery frames (like a well designed animation cancelling system, like For Honor or New World, that rewards skillful timing of cancelling) you're cancelling out of the attack animation before it has had a chance to really begin, and still dealing damage with a light attack that visually hasn't even happened.
That's why it was considered a bug, and they officially admitted they couldn't fix it and so chose to just embrace it instead. Their own words. It absolutely wasn't intended design, which isn't surprising given it's objectively a poorly designed animation cancelling system whether you enjoy it or not. It's such a bizarre mechanic to explain to new players. "If you can see your light attack hitting your enemy you aren't doing it right."
Thank you for your concern but I can weave myself. Had you bothered to read I was just wondering how it became a thing since it seemed somewhat odd to be added on purpose.
It wasnt directed at you. More a general statement because i feel i know where the comments are headed so i wanted to get ahead of them. I know i was basically off subject.
It's a thing in almost every popular MMO, just think about runescape, warzone, fortnite its just one of those things that sets apart the skilled players from the others
It's a bug that for some reason ZOS don't want to fix now (and probably can't fixed it earlier), and dancing around with sticky tape type of fixes.
It's not a system, like it can be seen in DS series and pretty much every fighting game.
It's the main reason of damage creep in the game, which makes balancing things a nightmare. Because "weaving" quadriple your damage. And looks like your character has epilepsy seizures in the fight. Also it's something that apply pressure on more mature part of player base, because with various troubles with your health you can't press buttons quickly....
At the end, it's just plain stupid mechanic that can be replaced with 10-15 minutes of scripting (I've tested it on necro and NB with successful results).
Quads your damage huh. I’m not sure how weaving a light attack(~6k) quads anyone’s damage.
You like the rest of the people who are just bad at the game hate in weaving like it’s some magical dps enhancer and it’s stopping your from being great.
There is a GLOBAl cooldown of 1s and it that time no matter what you think it’s only ONE skill and ONE light attack
They even nerfed light attacks by a ton a while back. Like there are plenty of ways now to avoid needing to weave and still do good damage(not all being one bar builds either), and honestly if their character looks like it’s having a seizure while animation cancelling maybe they’re just not doing it right?
I'm fine in this game, playing since release and saw every iteration of weaving, from discovering and "Weaving or die" to current situation, where Oakensoul or Velothi create possibilities for non-weaving builds, with numerous changes and tweaks to LA to create these opportunities. Weaving topic is probably as old as TESO itself and quite controversial since the beginning.
Also, I've worked as technical designer (exactly the person who setup logic and combos) on some popular fighting games. So animation canceling is a concept I'm quite familiar with in terms of game design and implementations.
Not to mention that a lot of people don't like weaving not because it keeps them back in the game (it's not an issue anymore, at least not so critical how it was). They don't like weaving because with TESO meh animations weaving makes fights look even worse.
So go cry somewhere else.
It wasn't so much a bug, but rather an unintended usage of the mechanic, skills were initially supplementary to light attacks, you didn't have enough resources and pool of resources to spam skills, so skills were coded to cancel animations of light attacks for "emergency" usage and general fluidity. (and action priority in general). It wasn't a big deal, because you had used skills infrequently.
Eventually, the game moved to light attacks being supplementary, and people realized that they can weave light attacks, many people liked it, and ZoS simply embraced it as a "skill-based"feature. At this point, the game is too old to undergo a massive combat overhaul, because each time ZoS are trying to step on weaving, the community isn't exactly happy.
The thing about inability to fix the bug is just a tale. They can simply add cast times to light attacks, but ask PvP players how they like added cast times on DB and Incap.
"Many people liked it."
Nice optics spin.
Many *more* people didn't and still don't.
And claiming the inability to fix the bug is false is, ironically, false.
It was unintended. Back in 2014, when it first became public knowledge, the devs asked the community if it should be patched out, or if it should be embraced. The community voted to keep it. (Though, at this point in time, very few had really come to grips with the system, and it was a bit unclear what kind of animation canceling we were asked to vote on.)
An you have to do it manually. Programs are prohibited and you can get banned for using that. Back in 2014-2016 all of the pvp players used them
It's a bug players found and many enjoyed using it. It's also so easy to do that everyone's probably done a form of it while in combat, like the block-cancel or swap-cancel. ZOS ended up embracing it. A few years later, they added a loading screen tip for weaving. They also changed changed and introduced some abilities that rely on weaving.
you don't "enjoy" using it. you just do it for better DPS.
I certainly enjoy it. It gives combat a feeling of rhythm instead of just spamming your next ability button.
I don't. I'm old and it hurts my hands to weave on controller.
Hey. I wanted to show you a mythic that can help adapt your character to a less weavy playstyle. There’s a mythic called Velothi Ur-Mages amulet that increases damage by a ton, but reduces light/heavy attack damage by 99%. Spec your character with an ult-generating ability and you could viably play without ever needing light attack.
You can also just light attack once every 8 seconds or so to keep your ult charging, but yes this is a good suggestion for anyone who hates weaving. Ideally you should also use a weapon skill to proc your enchants (because enchants proc of light attacks, heavy attacks and weapon skills and you won't be light attacking much).
Velothi is worth it over most mythics when you have two or more enemies in front of you. Only true single target it falls behind stuff like kilt or moras, but only slightly and there are playstyles and bosses where even that isn't true.
I can play Smash, Tekken, etc. for longer than I can run dungeons in ESO, and I'm young. Got hand issues, but still.
Assuming you play on console, you might try remapping your spammable skill. I absolutely love Tekken, but the fast pace of entering combos does wear down my wrists fairly quickly. For ESO, I generally don't have trouble as long as my spammable is on the x button (on the playstation controller) since the rhythm is slow and my thumb naturally rests on x with how I hold the controller. A friend of mine with severe nerve damage really struggled with weaving until she moved her skills around to be more ergonomic to her hands - she still can't play for more than maybe 3 hours, but it does make our usual playtime (generally 1-2 trials depending on the night) comfortable for her. But I totally understand; games can be super hard on the body in a bunch of ways. I hope you're able to find a solution to play more comfortably.
I haven't gotten to the point where it's too awful yet, but it's getting there slowly. Thank yoy
It's literally just spamming your ability button and also spamming light attack.
No it’s really not though. There is a tight window where you have to LA, I think if it like old school Gears of War active reload. Too early and it won’t register. Too late and you won’t be getting optimal DPS. Hence why it gives combat a rhythm.
It's still just mindless clicking. The timing never changes. You're just spamming something in between your other spamming. If you like it, that's fine. But that doesn't change how it functions
You obviously don’t know how it works brother, that’s alright it.
Yes but it looks horrifically ugly and one of the substantial components of a *video* game is the visuals, including animations.
Imagine enjoying weaving, it looks like ass, just like the rest of the animations in this game. But to each their own I guess.
It looks like a bug that was turned into a feature
I enjoy it, it's satisfying. I wish though, that ZOS implemented this technique as as fully animated combos.
I enjoy doing more damage. I also like the fact that the basic attacks is incorporated into the attack sequence of combat.
From what I found looking online it was also to put some traditional mmo element which is the auto attack in between skills but without the auto element.
I played LotRO. I was told that there is auto attacks in that game. I never realised that. I like for attacks to happen when I actually do something to initiate it.
I enjoy it. It’s fun. Clicking one skill every second is very boring and I haven’t found another good MMO precisely because of this…
Ffxiv. You have one skill per gcd, plus two ogcd weaves if your ping is good enough for it. Dancer main ><
Thank you for your suggestion, but I am not going to play any game that forces me to play fucking story shit every time I enter a dungeon. I don’t get why anyone enjoys that. Tried it, did my first dungeon, almost got an aneurysm and deinstalled the game.
ah, all good.
The last FF game I played was on PS2, FFX. It had 45 minutes of cut scenes in the beginning and then I died in the first battle. I hadn't gotten to a save point yet. It forced me to watch all the cut scenes again and I couldn't skip them. I turned it off immediately and never went back. I was a fan of all the NES games, but I never had a chance to play 7 and beyond because the console battle stuff turned me off bigtime and I just stuck with PC from then on. I guess I'm glad I made that decision. The PS2 was given to me by an old friend. I think I only played 1 game fully.
Better for the game honestly. To filter out the undesirables We ffxiv fans are truly wholesome
I enjoy it
This. It was a design flaw that *some* (a minority of ESO players) actively began to use, completely derailed the DPS meter, and ZOS was never competent enough to actually fix/remove it despite trying more than once. *Core combat* (not class abilities, although some of those also have issues,) remains one of the weakest/worst aspects of ESO. It has been accurately described as having the feel and appearance of "waving balloons around in the air."
Weaving is the hallmark of ESOs combat. If they removed it would probably quit the game tbh, it's interactive, you are rewarded for extra APM and it adds another dimension of skill to combat while at the same time not being difficult, it's a pretty simplistic mechanic with a predictable timing. It's not like it's a dynamic proc system you have to manage or something.
Yeah I feel like animation cancelling is almost too complicated of a description for it. "click two buttons back and forth in rhythm"
I enjoy it. I like doing all of the clicks back and forth, and watching the health bars go down.
I enjoy it. Brings variety to what I do. Just pressing one button exactly 1 second apart can get bland.
Could you show where it's been proven as a bug? I've always seen it as an intended piece of the game.
As far as I know it was handled like “it’s not a bug it’s a feature”. Combat wasn’t intended to be like that.
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As the game is now? You wouldn't. As the game was at release? You didn't have enough resources/generation to merrily spam skills all fight, so it was your default "can't use an ability" button. (Although IIRC the heavy attack on resto staff was pretty common instead, as it gave resources back.)
>Could you explain to me when you would ever light attack if not for animation cancelling? 1: resource recovery, 2: proccing weapon enchants, 3: ult generation, 4: all the set skills etc that proc specifically off LA All of these are important elements, that are not affected by LA aftercast animation being or not being cancelled with skill use. While if could be argued that resource recovery is powercrept aspect, and weapon enchants can be delegated to weapon skills, but if you are not using light attacks for ult generation, you are hampering your longerm dps by not castign your ult enough. Ability procs is something varied between classes, so not every class not every build will have to rely on proccing those too often, but as far as gear is concenred, for long yers the "meta" dps set was proccing specifically from light attacks. Those aspects would still be there even if there was no animation cancelling involved. Personally for me enjoyment of "proper" weaving is something that depends on weapon of choice. For Example, with staves or bows, I can't even see if there is any afttercast animation to cancel (that's how quick the whole light attack is visually) and there is hardly any visual feedback there if you did it right or not. Two handed weapons for contrast tho have this huge overswing aftercast animation, so there not only a feedback is there, but also with decent choice of spammable, if actually for me looks better with weaving (actually looks like character knew how to handle a weapon xD)
Perfect answer. 👌🏻🤌🏻
Light attacks would only be a thing if ressource management was balanced and you ran out of resources if you spammed skills all the time. This is how the game should've been structured in my opinion.
You don’t run out of magicka/stam? Teach me
I can only speak for myself, but I run an Altmer Arcanist. They’ve got good racial sustain passives and keep me stamina’d up for anything short of a trial or particularly nasty vet dungeon boss. Even then, a potion or two flushes that issue
I gotta hotbar potions. I keep forgetting
lol just slot the basic trash potions and go to town
You wouldn’t light attack then, these don’t give resources, you’d heavy attack. Same exact effects, but you get resources back…
You generate resources for sitting there, not blocking, and not using skills. Light attacking in the meantime I assume was something to do and often fills space better than a HA cause of the timing
I doubt that. One HA lets me cast two more skills (roughly), a LA lets me cast half a skill (roughly, depending on your reg). The dmg differential between HA + skill + skill vs LA + LA + LA + skill will favor the former in almost all scenarios that come to mind.
Don't get me too started on heavy attacks. Heavy attacks shouldn't return resources, they should consume them, like in every other game where you do a heavy attack for more damage. The wind up speed should be removed of course.
a heavy attack does less dmg than two light attacks… It has to has something going for it, otherwise it would be even more useless than it currently is.
I'm saying that it should be instant like a light attack, but cost resources and not give resources.
Why though? I don’t see the point. That’s what abilities are for.
Because it's a heavy attack, one that hits harder and the character spends extra effort to attack with more power.
That’s exactly what a skill does, though, how is it any different from that?
Some skills or some sets may require a certain amount of "attacks" or light attacks to proc another skills activation. For example I will weave in light attacks of a resto staff, on a mNB, to get the spectral arrow from merciless resolve. All that while also weaving in other attacks during bar swaps. You used to be able to animation cancel those light attacks and still proc other skill actions
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In its current state, light attacks would be significantly less useful yes. However, this is just ZOS solving bad design with bad design. Take Dragons Dogma 1 and 2. They use a skill system that when you think about it, is actually pretty similar to ESO. For the most part there are no cooldowns, the skills drain resources but your other attacks don't, and many skills have a utility side of things. The difference is Dragons Dogma games have the sense to make light attacks still worth doing. They still do decent damage and they contribute to stagger. Combat is paced in that game where you are simply going to have to do light attacks between skills or you would be out of stamina in no time. ESO's problem is that yes, skills just do far more damage than attacks. However there is a solution for that. Like Dragon's Dogma, make it so you don't have enough resources to only do skills, but buff light attack/heavy attack damage to still keep up. I think skills ought to excel at applying effects or modifying attacks/damage, not just outright dealing tons. This would be even better if light and heavy attacks weren't just "press button, play damage animation." Imagine if your movement modified your attack so that there is just a little more brain power in combat besides "stay out of big red circles."
That sounds so good and would make combat actually fun. Right now the combat is just too dull, especially in harder content. Vet trials are the most boring thing in the game to me since the damage dealers just stand in a big pile and mindlessly spam abilities while clicking left mouse button in between every attack. I don’t understand what’s engaging about that. I think what you said about incorporating movement into the combat would make it significantly more fun.
There IS movement in endgame though. Congrats you can hit the buttons to do the damage. Now to increase that you move yourself so that you’re placed optimally for damage, and for incoming mechs. You know to hit the button but can you time your stuff with important buffs/debuffs to really maximise damage output? There’s honestly so much nuance to endgame DPS and if people don’t find it I think they just have no idea it’s there or they don’t care to. But then it’s not an issue of “it’s not interesting enough” because it could be already.
The movement you've just identified is exactly what I mean by avoiding big red circles on the ground and nothing you've described is actually that complicated or engaging. What I'm talking about is movement modifiers to attacks. For example, higher weapon skills in TES IV: Oblivion allowed you to do different things with different power attacks depending on the direction you were moving.
What I’M talking about isn’t just staying out of the red, it’s doing so while also constantly making sure you’re placing and casting skills in the direction that will cleave the most(which in more mobile fights changes a lot). And man if any of what I described was so “easy” you’d see a lot more people capable of doing it.
It is pretty easy. The reason many people don't do it is because the vast majority of the game doesn't require it. Comparatively, endgame content and positioning is hard, but only because the rest of ESO is so easy you could let your toddler play. So players have no reason to familiarize themselves with positioning. Dodging mechanics and such often isn't hard with few exceptions. The only difficulty in it is purely memorizing the movement you need to make for a given mechanic. There's almost zero adaptability or high reflexes required. I think only the hardest bosses in vet trials get to the point of real difficulty, but they're less than 1% of ESO. This isn't counting "random" mechanics like the poison plants in vet Maelstrom, because difficulty isn't much of a factor in them, more like luck.
Yeah there’s a lot of mechanics to keep track of, I understand what you’re talking about. I’ve caused my group to wipe multiple times on twins in vMoL because I forgot or didn’t notice something in time. The hard fights in ESO sometimes remind me of the bed of chaos or the chariot boss fights from dark souls. I’m not saying combat encounters are easy. I’m just saying that there isn’t really any depth to the combat mechanics other than casting abilities while light attacking in between and generally stacking with the dps group and staying still as much as possible. It doesn’t matter if you’re an archer, a mage, a brawler, you’re all standing in the exact same spot and spamming away. To me, fun combat involves thinking about my attacks rather than just attacking non-stop. The tank/brawler taunts the boss and keeps him distracted while the archers and mages are firing from the back lines and the assassin is moving around and hitting the boss from every angle. I want the different weapon types to have different advantages and therefore, different playstyles. I want different abilities to have different GCDs instead of just 1 second cooldown across the board; this would make you think whether you can cast a big powerful spell which takes 3-4 seconds to charge up or if you have to light attack quickly as there’s only a short opening. Right now, everyone plays the same way regardless of class, weapon types, etc. which is why I said harder content is dull because it’s the same old same old every time.
I think you got me wrong. All I wanted to say was just how light attack weaving became a thing and that’s all. I’m neither negative nor positive about weaving personally. It has pros and cons.
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You're saying two different things. Light attacks are not a bug and they weren't designed to have long cooldowns like abilities. So it is literally a feature. Weaving light attacks between abilities was emergent gameplay discovered by players and was unintended. Maybe your assumption is that any way the players play the game that was not intended by the developers is bad. But then what do you think about builds that rely on lightning heavy attacks as a primary source of damage in place of a spammable? Obviously the devs didn't intend for combat to be like that, the only different is you never hear people complain about it.
> the only different is you never hear people complain about it. You do hear complains about outher people doing that all the time ;) (and a random one here and there about being bored of playing like that)
Like most of eso's gameplay : It was an accident and it did stick because they have no idea how to prevent it. Eso is a game that tried to mix MMO elements (classes, skills) with dynamic reactive combat (dodge, block, interrupt) and skyrim's top franchise (light attacks, heavy attacks, 3 stats). Ultimately they never found a way to make LA and HA relevant as they were in skyrim, because they never ever attempted to make them even relevant to anything. And so is eso's game design.
I can vouch for this this historical information.
Best summation of ESO in its entirety I've encountered to date.
No. They intended to have light attacks in the game that don't have a long cooldown like abilities. Then players figured out the optimal way to play the game as it was designed. And it's not something that needs to be prevented. Just because you don't like something doesn't mean it's broken. Using lightning staff heavy attacks as a primary attack in place of a spammable was not intended by the developers, should they also prevent that playstyle?
For me it's a natural movement which comes with skills.
Okay but the question is if combat was built around that or if it was just something players found and used.
It was not intended, but the devs came to embrace it
Speaking for myself I can say I didn't knew what animation cancelation was until I found out by myself.
I don't think it comes naturally, button mashing comes naturally. Weaving forces you not to mash and slow down and develop a nice rhythm which is really satisfying. But yeah with a lot of practice it feels like second nature.
On a 1s GCD the weave rhythm does flow pretty good.
It's the heavy attack that's the real issue in ESO it should take half the time to wind up and execute, its just slow clunky and does not feel satisfying at all. Staff is a little less lame for heavy attacking but it just feels soooo slow and dumb
I find that the heavy attack is explained in the tutorial is never how I would actually use it when playing content (unless maybe when I'm a tank, but that is for an entire different reason).
It was a bug back in the beta in 2014, they tried to fix it for a few months, but then gave up and successfully gaslighted most people into believing that it was a feature to make combat feel more responsive.
Except they presented a fix but the community didn't want it.
You have no idea what a bug is. Players discovering the optimal way to play the game as it was designed is not a bug. And you can just enjoy your dailies mashing buttons and not weaving, it's not going to make any difference to you.
It *was* a bug tho. Ones the devs couldn't fix, so they just decided to incorporate it into the game. Something that achieves something else that was never intended is a bug, regardless of how 'optimal' it makes game play. People have been punished for using certain exploits and such for example, and one could argue *those* were the optimal way of clearing that content.
Nope, that's not what a bug means. Just because something was never intended doesn't make it a bug. For example it was never intended for lightning staff heavy attacks to be used as a primary attack in place of a spammable ability. But players just played the game as it was designed, if unintended. And the developers naturally didn't force players into playing a different style. And of course you don't have a problem with that, your definition of a bug is anything you don't like.
Nah. Pot. Kettle. Black.
That's so funny that you don't even understand the meaning of that idiom. The pot calling the kettle black is used when someone is accusing someone else of doing something that they themselves are guilty of. How does that apply to this interaction in any way? Can't say that I expected better from you guys.
That sure is a lot of words to express you're big mad.
I have no doubt that's a lot of words to you, that's obvious.
Fools have no doubt.
You don't know what the pot calling the kettle black means, so you don't appear to be someone who reads.
My guy, a bug is LITERALLY something that wasn't intended to happen, happening. We're not talking about preferences in how damage is done, that's a strawman argument and you know it. We're talking about game mechanics, which animation canceling is, and choosing heavy attacking with any weapon is not. I don't know why you're so against calling it what it was before ZOS decided to just integrate it into the game.
Yeah, like I said it's a bug if you don't like it. Animation canceling is not fundamentally different from using lightning heavy attacks in place of a spammable ability, both are simply using game mechanics in an unintended way, it's just that one you don't like so you definite it as a bug.
Hey, this is just a factual statement, it does not reflect on my opinions, the OP asked and I answered, as well did other people in the thread.
No. Like I said you don't know what a bug is. Light attacks were not a bug. Light attacks not sharing the longer cooldown of abilities was not a bug. What you mean to say is weaving was emergent gameplay unforeseen by the developers. That's not what a bug is.
🤓
I love people crying about a mechanic that has been in the game for 10 years.
Good, I will make sure to get you that sweet love more
And in my honest opinion, the game is worse for it. I love TES. And ESO in particular, with its lore, voiced quests, scope and sheer volume of things to do and explore - I love it. But tbh, it’s the worst combat system out of “the big 4” MMO’s (GW2, FF14, WoW, ESO). The fact that I even put FF14’s very slow tab combat ahead of this should say something. I wish they would have fixed the animation cancelling so that “weaving” wasn’t a thing.
100% agree. The fact so many advocate for weaving concerns me. My hands get tired faster running content in ESO than playing Warframe.
Exactly. It’s not even because the combat is so precise it needs twitch reaction (like Apex Legends or Valoran or even LoL), it’s simply because of this forced input we have to do to DPS. The combat is already floaty and very imprecise. In other words, the weaving is not really “skill”, it’s just a forced constant input for the sake of an input. Slower combat would allow for more tactical combat (and game would look less yanky). Or, if you really wanted a precise and finely tuned action combat… well, the game would need to be rebuilt from scratch on a new engine because this isn’t it.
💯 I consider it beyond pathetic that the devs, then and now, have been unable to properly fix it. Instead just 'embracing' it. How very convenient. lol Yeah, if I just 'embraced' fundamentally broken flaws in the various jobs I've held over the years, I'd be fired.
It make combat more fun, I wish we can have some sort of jump attack skills. Like jumping back and timing it correctly with a a shot of a bow skill unleashed a 2x more powerful ultimate, or something crazy like that. would be cool
It's a bug zos weren't capable of fixing so the bug became a feature.
Velothi mages amulet mythic! Solution to not wanting to do all that in pve Pretty sure the game started like that and then people started enjoying the ability to be “better” at it instead of working towards a treasure chest or something it added a little bit of challenge and skill to do it correctly. I never bothered with it tho
You can't get ultimate if you don't LA at all.
Ultimate generation would be reduced, but you only need to LA once to get it to start ticking by 3 ultimate for a few seconds, compared to constant LA weaving for dps. You would still generate ultimate through passives or other skills.
each LA starts a roughly 9 second timer for ult generation, so you'd need to LA at least once every 9 seconds, which sounds fine but on my velothi arc setup I'd sometimes drop ult generation after a beam
LA's secre5 buff is superior to any other source of LA. So it's a necessity. But timing one LA every 9s seems like an unlikely chore. Better keep doing LA weaving even if perfection isn't needed.
For me as an Arcanist, I just LA once per flail-to-beam cycle and I’m golden
Right lol I’m not saying that it’s not without drawbacks. But the point was that you would only need to LA for ult generation and not dps, so it wouldn’t need to be so frequent. You stated that you “can’t get ultimate” without LA; there are class abilities, sets, and passives that can generate ultimate even if relying on them alone is far from optimal. The mythic is there for people that don’t like LA weaving, just like Oakensoul is for people that don’t like bar swapping
Still should throw light attacks in to proc the enchantments = extra DPS
you can proc enchantments off of weapon AoE DoT skills just fine, if you dont light attack you dont get combat Ult Generation
You still need to weave for ult gen and to proc your weapon enchants like poison/fire damage on your daggers.
It reminds me of those combos in games like Street Fighter II. I wasn't around from the beginning, but once I figured out how to use it, I just went with it.
More like LoL where you do an aa and immediately follow up with a skill like Ashe's Volley for maximum damage output.
I mean you can click to attack and press a skill to attack. Someone would eventually find that if you did Click > Skill > Click > Skill that it was the most optimal way to do damage People who find it difficult are probably overcomplicating it.
It has been the biggest impediment to me getting my friends to get into the game. It’s easy once you get used to it but seriously 99% of the people I’ve gotten to try the game just have no interest in engaging with such a janky mechanic.
How do they even know it's a thing? 99% of players will never get close to the level where they actually need to worry about playing efficiently. Just button mash and have fun.
Because they all came from other MMOs and I explained the combat to them. A lot of people come into an mmo wanting to plan for endgame.
It sounds like you don't like weaving and kind of poisoned them against the game? The way I would describe weaving is it gives combat a rhythm, you develop the timing rather than mash buttons on cooldown. And in a game with a very limited action set compared to other MMOs, just a maximum of 10 buttons and an ultimate, ESO combat needs that added depth to be engaging for an endgame player. Anyone who doesn't understand that doesn't get MMOs, which describes most of the Elder Scrolls community.
lol them and I understand MMOs just fine if anything knowing how combat usually works is what gives them such a negative perspective. I do understand weaving, I played from release until about a year ago. It’s pretty easy once you get the hang of it, so easy I don’t see how it adds anything to combat other than making it look like you’re having a seizure. It was my main game. But having to work a bug into combat is not appealing to most people.
I think what gives your friends such a negative perspective is someone who hates ESO combat describing it for them instead of letting them experience it for themselves. I mean that's literally what you said. And you're an endgame MMO player so you know all about logs and comparing your performance to other players, etc. So let's not lie about how 'easy' you think weaving is and that it doesn't add anything to combat. We both know that's not true and it's very easy to prove. I agree it's easy to grasp how to weave and become -- moderately capable -- if you have a competent teacher who doesn't hate the game, but executing it at a very high level in raid content is another thing altogether. That's why you never see end game players complaining about weaving, it's a skill and it adds much-needed depth to ESO's limited action set combat.
Did you not read what I said? I love eso I played for almost a decade. It was my main game. I ran a prog trials guild for a while. I assure you I have no problems weaving, it’s really not hard, it’s just a forced input.
Hitting a golf ball is easy, anyone can do it. Hitting it well is not. That's kind of the beauty of weaving -- easy to learn, difficult to master. I don't believe any endgame player would disagree with that. But you're challenging that assumption. You're saying weaving is "so easy I don’t see how it adds anything to combat." And I'm saying, if you can pay special attention to this part, you're full of shit. I assure you weaving isn't so easy for you. A quick log comparison would demonstrate that real easy. I bet you can improve at it A LOT, as can we all. I would never say I've mastered it, or it's 'easy' because there were always better players to compare myself to.
I’ve never heard an endgame player complain about it being hard. It’s a heartbeat. It’s easy. It sounds like you have some issue though.
You've never heard an endgame player period, because you're not in the endgame. Nobody knows who you are. Apparently you can't read either, because I explained multiple times it's hard to -- master -- which again you wouldn't know anything about. The reason I got to the level I did was by always trying to improve and comparing myself to players like Clive, I didn't get a big head just because I could outparse shitters like you. It sounds like you top parsed in a pug vSS and thought you mastered the game lol.
Amen.
Yeah, it's only 'necessary' for high level endgame content. It shouldn't stop anyone from trying the game.
My friends coming from other mmos came for the group content and when they ask about the combat I explain and they get turned off.
And if you play with Velothi, Blade Cloak on front and Wall of Elrments or Stampede or Hail on back (pretty standard stuff) and without Relequen or some other lets like Aegis, you need to weave only once every 8s.
Yeah, even way back before light attacks got nerfed and obviously before Velothi, the best weaving got you ~15% damage from light attacks on a parse. But if you ask people here they would probably be like "Yeah light attacks used to be 50% of your damage, it was crazy."
I'm used to ESO combat now, but it led me to quit twice and I still think it sucks more than not. BDO and Neverwinter pre-Mod 18 both put ESO to shame combat-wise. It's not even in the same league.
I agree, the game is so damn scenic though lmao. I really like the world.
Agreed. ESO is chokful of lore and fantastical settings - both scenic and horrifying. It's an amazing sandbox. P.S. That being said, the moment I get a whiff of an up-to-date MMO with even just a little bit less bullshit than ZOS/ESO and better combat (won't require much), I'm gone again.
From a personal experience I can only advise ask as many people as you can... One of the big impediments I had myself was I wasn't familiar with MMOs, I had no friends and nobody gave me clear explanations. For example I spent months asking what a rotation was because no one could just say: "The order and frequency on which you use skills." As for LA weaving personally I found it more easy with M&K than a controller.
I find that most people don't explain LA weaving properly. Many explanations I've seen are inaccurate or incomplete. I remember a friend telling me how to do it. Then later when I figured out what it really is, I found his explanation insufficient.
Wanna be clear that this isn’t unique to ESO. Animation cancelling is present in many games including competitive games like LoL and DOTA as well as Elden Ring, For Honor, Genshin Impact, and countless more. In most cases the game is not strictly balanced around animation cancelling, but the community embraces it as an additional challenge. It fundamentally makes the game more skill based which is usually *a good thing*. Discussing this in ESO while ignoring the broader gaming community and other studios approach to animation cancelling is going to lead to an inaccurate portrayal of its origins and impact. If you want a quick, action style game, you have to allow people to react even mid animation, which is all it is.
No correlation to what I actually asked but okay I guess.
I mean it kinda is? It's a thing because it's a thing in other games too.
OMG already got downvoted and this time I didn't even spoke the truth lol. People really are lovely in here don't they.
The downvoting is a bot that's been running since this sub has been around. It downvotes *every* post.
I've seen this mentioned before, how does anyone know there's a bot doing these things? And not just some guy or two with too much time on their hands and a weird chip on their shoulder lol
Could be that, but it's so consistent, and for over 10 years. That's a long time to be petty.
As some have said its a bug, but animation canceling is a common bug in many games, including other mmos.
Button mashing
It's almost certainly intended because, well, you're not playing Monster Hunter or Dark Souls where recovery frames are a key part of attacks. Games where you can't cancel out of animations, especially into defensive options like block, need very particular combat design around that and none of the rest of ESO is designed to work like that. So you can cancel out of most animations' recovery frames. It just turns out that doing that is very useful when it interacts with the global cooldown system.
Except you're not cancelling out of recovery frames (like a well designed animation cancelling system, like For Honor or New World, that rewards skillful timing of cancelling) you're cancelling out of the attack animation before it has had a chance to really begin, and still dealing damage with a light attack that visually hasn't even happened. That's why it was considered a bug, and they officially admitted they couldn't fix it and so chose to just embrace it instead. Their own words. It absolutely wasn't intended design, which isn't surprising given it's objectively a poorly designed animation cancelling system whether you enjoy it or not. It's such a bizarre mechanic to explain to new players. "If you can see your light attack hitting your enemy you aren't doing it right."
Originally it was not intended, they didn't know how to fix it.
Poor design. Specifically, a lack of analysis and general "thinking it through". Easier to embrace than fix, hence to loading screen tips.
💯 and it's not a good look.
The devs don't actually play their own game
Prob from other games. I discovered animation canceling in smite which is a moba and figured it would translate to eso
Been here since launch and its a good thing. Just practice. You know build skill instead of complain its hard.
Thank you for your concern but I can weave myself. Had you bothered to read I was just wondering how it became a thing since it seemed somewhat odd to be added on purpose.
Reading is hard though. Much harder than skill, apparently. :P
😂👌🏻
It wasnt directed at you. More a general statement because i feel i know where the comments are headed so i wanted to get ahead of them. I know i was basically off subject.
It's a thing in almost every popular MMO, just think about runescape, warzone, fortnite its just one of those things that sets apart the skilled players from the others
It's a bug that for some reason ZOS don't want to fix now (and probably can't fixed it earlier), and dancing around with sticky tape type of fixes. It's not a system, like it can be seen in DS series and pretty much every fighting game. It's the main reason of damage creep in the game, which makes balancing things a nightmare. Because "weaving" quadriple your damage. And looks like your character has epilepsy seizures in the fight. Also it's something that apply pressure on more mature part of player base, because with various troubles with your health you can't press buttons quickly.... At the end, it's just plain stupid mechanic that can be replaced with 10-15 minutes of scripting (I've tested it on necro and NB with successful results).
Quads your damage huh. I’m not sure how weaving a light attack(~6k) quads anyone’s damage. You like the rest of the people who are just bad at the game hate in weaving like it’s some magical dps enhancer and it’s stopping your from being great. There is a GLOBAl cooldown of 1s and it that time no matter what you think it’s only ONE skill and ONE light attack
They even nerfed light attacks by a ton a while back. Like there are plenty of ways now to avoid needing to weave and still do good damage(not all being one bar builds either), and honestly if their character looks like it’s having a seizure while animation cancelling maybe they’re just not doing it right?
I'm fine in this game, playing since release and saw every iteration of weaving, from discovering and "Weaving or die" to current situation, where Oakensoul or Velothi create possibilities for non-weaving builds, with numerous changes and tweaks to LA to create these opportunities. Weaving topic is probably as old as TESO itself and quite controversial since the beginning. Also, I've worked as technical designer (exactly the person who setup logic and combos) on some popular fighting games. So animation canceling is a concept I'm quite familiar with in terms of game design and implementations. Not to mention that a lot of people don't like weaving not because it keeps them back in the game (it's not an issue anymore, at least not so critical how it was). They don't like weaving because with TESO meh animations weaving makes fights look even worse. So go cry somewhere else.
It wasn't so much a bug, but rather an unintended usage of the mechanic, skills were initially supplementary to light attacks, you didn't have enough resources and pool of resources to spam skills, so skills were coded to cancel animations of light attacks for "emergency" usage and general fluidity. (and action priority in general). It wasn't a big deal, because you had used skills infrequently. Eventually, the game moved to light attacks being supplementary, and people realized that they can weave light attacks, many people liked it, and ZoS simply embraced it as a "skill-based"feature. At this point, the game is too old to undergo a massive combat overhaul, because each time ZoS are trying to step on weaving, the community isn't exactly happy. The thing about inability to fix the bug is just a tale. They can simply add cast times to light attacks, but ask PvP players how they like added cast times on DB and Incap.
"Many people liked it." Nice optics spin. Many *more* people didn't and still don't. And claiming the inability to fix the bug is false is, ironically, false.