Is animation cancelling a thing in this game?
Yes, animation cancelling is a thing in GW2. No, it’s not a huge thing, it’s just something minor. You will not be missing out on a lot if you don’t do it.
In PvP, it is used by top-tier players for obvious reasons. You can trick enemies into thinking you’re doing some dangerous attack, bait them into dodging early and possibly use the attack some other time.
In PvE, animation cancelling is usually incorporated into class rotations to maximize the DPS output. If you learn rotations by heart (the way they’re written somewhere or from a video guide), it will help you to get rid of the aftercast of some attacks and do more damage, but the difference is so minor, it will (again) be used only by the top-tier players.
Or in other words: animation cancelling is a critical tool for good players wanting to be great. (It’s down on the list for medium-skilled players wanting to be good; there are a lot of other tools one probably needs to learn that would make a bigger difference.)
John Smith: “you should kill monsters, because killing monsters is awesome.”
Animation cancelling is also used for movement, by cancelling the endings on some skills, like Jump Shot with engie.
“Only problem with the Engineer is
that it makes every other class in the game boring to play.”
Hawks
that it makes every other class in the game boring to play.”
Hawks
Some skills have an initial effect while the rest doesn’t really matter, typically movement skills.
An example is the warrior’s flurry. It’s a channeled skill, but the main thing is the first strike immobolizes, so once you get the desired immobilized, you could say, stow your weapon and use another skill for damage.
The most widely used example is the engineer’s acid bomb. This skill leaves a pool of acid that does damage over time and sends you flying backwards. But in a lot of cases, you don’t want to fly backwards, so you swap out of it after you create the acid pool. That cancels the leap and you can continue smacking your foe at close range.
And yea, it’s not too big of a deal either way, but it is good to know.
For once you have tasted flight you will walk the earth with your eyes turned skywards,
for there you have been and there you will long to return.
for there you have been and there you will long to return.
(edited by ArchonWing.9480)
What they are talking about here and what you are used to in eso are different. It comes to the way the game handles cool downs.
In eso there is a global cool down on skill usage. They need this system so you don’t do unlimited DPS by spamming force pulse for example as fast as you possibly can. They put a global cool down on categories for example:
1 light / heavy attacks
2 skills
3 weapon swap
4 block etc
By overlapping another type of global cool down you actually remove the former one from the queue, and the animation is cancelled with any prior damage still remaining.
In guild wars 2 every individual skill either has a cast time, channel duration or individual skill cool down, not to mention after cast durations.
So what does this mean to you? Well when someone says animation cancelling they mean in the terms of jukeing. That’s when you use a skill with a very big tell to trick someone into doing something. For example on Revenant I can use my herald elite to trick my opponent into wasting a dodge roll. However when I animation cancel that ability I cancel the cast of that ability, a self-interrupt if you may. In pve also I can save it for a tiny bit later if someone already finished that break at, or save myself from an accidental cast. This is what they mean.
In terms of what you are talking about, there are some limited times when you can cancel the after cast of an ability to make activation of the next ability. However because the only effective way to do it is with weapon swap (stow weapons has its own animation frame) which has a 9s cool down; nobody ever mentions it.
Side note:
Guild wars 2 doesn’t have global cool downs on skills. This means you can spam instant cast skills inside of other skills or just over and over as fast as you can.
(edited by Zlater.6789)
Generally yes, animation cancelling is very important to some builds and styles of play.
On my engineer, I could never play without proper use of it. The main agent of this is my favorite kit, the elixir gun, which completes the attack quickly and then launches you far back, when you don’t want to go flying you can press the weapon swap key and you will stop yourself from flying back.
As mentioned before, there is also animation cancelling in this game to avoid wasting cooldowns. Some skills will only go on cooldown at the end of the cast (some at the start or midway), these can be cancelled when their use would serve no use.
On most classes however, there is very little animation cancelling. But knowing how to use it (weapon swap/weapon swap) during the animation, will help you become a better player. You can even travel farther distances with some movement skills by cancelling them. Because you cut off the landing animation, allowing for a more fluid continuation of your movement.
Trust me, it’s a fun part of the game, but be sure to learn the basics first. (combo field interactions, positioning, boon stacking, stealth stacking, cover conditions and cleanses, movement speed functionality, and profession abilities) These are far more important and will always serve you.