Hey everyone! Today I will be teaching
you everything you need to know about
animation cancelling in DotA 2. Animation cancelling is a simple but effective
skill that helps you do more damage in a
shorter amount of time which can be
crucial for helping you secure a kill that you might otherwise not get. If you
are in the lower ranks this skill will
certainly help you out and you should
see some MMR gains if you practice and
do this correctly. In the higher skill
levels you absolutely must use animation
cancelling to keep up with the pace of
the game. So watch closely as I guide you through. Okay so first up what is this
animation cancelling thingo that I'm
talking about? Well whenever a hero casts
a spell or attacks, there is an animation
that plays from start to finish and
which typically consists of two parts:
the cast point or attack point and the
backswing. The cast point relates to
spell usage while the attack point
refers to your normal auto attack. Now
the first part of the animation is
referred to as the cast point or attack
point and is basically all of the
animation up until the spell is actually
cast or the attack has been launched. You
can also think of this as the delay
before your spell has cast or attack has
been thrown. For spells, DotA has a visual indicator which is sort of like a
countdown to when the cast point has
been reached and mana is consumed. As you
cast you can see the green quickly fill
up the spell you used and once it is full
you've reached the cast point. Now for
melee heroes the attack point is as soon
as the attack lands on the enemy and the
damage has been done.
However for ranged heroes it is as soon
as your projectile is launched. As soon
as you've reached the cast point or
attack point the backswing begins and
this part can typically be canceled as
it no longer has any useful effect in
the game, it just slows you down.
Backswing is basically a nice animation
that plays to polish the gameplay but
other than looking good it does nothing
for your gameplay. Every single hero and
spell in the game have different attack
animations or cast animations and as a
result the time of the animations differ.
Some have very quick animations while
others can be very slow so it is worth
learning to cancel the animation with
different heroes in order to maximize
your effectiveness. Now you're probably thinking "how on
earth do I do this wonderful animation
cancelling?" Senpai please teach. Well it's
actually very simple to do but since
there are so many different heroes and
abilities in the game it will take some
practice to get it right. I know that I
sometimes accidentally cancel the
animation too early before I reach the
attack point and this sucks because I
might miss the last hit or do less damage
to the enemy than I could. Okay so to do
this you want to cast your spell and
then as soon as the cast point is
reached
press your stop key to cancel the
backswing part of the animation. Another
way to animation cancel instead of
pressing your stop key is to issue
another command immediately after the
cast point or attack point has been
reached. For example right-clicking to move your
hero which brings me nicely to the first
of the three reasons why you may want to
animation cancel. The first reason for
animation cancelling is so that you can
get more attacks in while the enemy is
running away. This is done by what is
called attack moving which is
essentially the art of attacking the
enemy and animation cancelling the
backswing by moving closer to your enemy
so that you can maintain the distance to
them and attack them again. It's actually
quite simple to do but it involves
learning the attack point of each hero
in order to do it correctly. You will see
this all the time in high level DotA as
it is critical to deal more damage and
kill enemies. Let's take Lich for example.
He has a reasonable animation but it has
a bit of back swing which will reduce
the number of attacks you can get in
when the enemy is running away. What you
want to do is attack the enemy and then
move towards the enemy as soon as the
projectile is launched. Here's a
comparison of the number of attacks you
can get in five seconds starting with a
full animation.
Now let's see that with animation
canceling.
Although it is not a lot extra it
definitely adds up throughout a match
and can mean the difference between
securing a kill or letting them get away.
The biggest factor here is the
difference in movement speeds between
yourself and your enemy and you can get
more and more attacks in if you are
faster. Certain heroes like Ogre Magi
sometimes like to pick up an orb of
venom in the early game as this, combined with his ignite ability can slow an
enemy quite a lot and allow you to chase
the enemy down while attack moving and
dealing huge damage. The second time you want to animation cancel is immediately
after casting a spell in order to
quickly cast another spell or again to
quickly move and close the gap to the
enemy to keep chasing and attacking them.
This time let's look at Crystal Maiden.
Both her Crystal Nova and Frostbite
abilities have animations that take 0.9
seconds but the cast point is just 0.3
seconds in, which means that 0.6 seconds of both of these abilities are backswing
which can be canceled and another action given. Here you can see the comparison.
Firstly I cast frostbite on Lion and
immediately cast crystal Nova before the
frostbite cast point was reached. You can
see that it waits until the full
animation is over before casting the
crystal Nova. This time I wait until the
frostbite lands and then cast the Nova
while also moving towards the Lion
between attacks maximizing the damage I can deal before Lion gets away. Your
spell backswing is easily canceled by
moving as you can pretty much start
casting the spell and then spam
right-click as your right clicks won't
cancel the cast command but will cancel
the backswing animation. And finally the
last reason to animation cancel is to
trick the enemy into thinking you are
going to cast a spell but actually
cancelling the spell before the cast
point is reached. This one is very useful
especially at the higher ranks to bait
out a spell or item usage from the enemy
or to cancel a spell that you might
otherwise miss. Let's look at Leshrac for
this one. Leshrac's Split Earth ability
has a long cast point making it very
obvious to see when he is going to throw
this stun at someone and thus making it
easy to dodge. Now if you go to stun and
you press your stop or hold key before
the stun actually casts, the animation is
canceled and no mana is consumed and the ability doesn't go on cooldown.
This can be used in a variety of ways
and will come down to your imagination.
For example you might want to try to
trick an enemy carry into using their
BKB and then avoid the fight. Or perhaps
you are playing Earthshaker but you
think that the Fissure you've just
started casting might miss so you can
actually press your stop key to cancel
it and then recast a better one. Or
maybe you're a mid or carry hero going
for a last hit but need to bait the
enemy into attacking first.
So try animation cancel your attack
before it lands to trick the enemy into
attacking themselves. This won't always
work but sometimes mind games like these can work in your favor so it's worth
giving it a try. That's it for animation
cancelling.
Make sure to practice this one with
different heroes as they are all very
different and take awhile to master. I
hope you found this video helpful and
hopefully your MMR and skill level
will improve from it as well. As a
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I'm DEFYED and Happy Gaming!
