What is animation cancelling?

Question

Many popular streamers have been talking about "animation cancelling" for months, and about it having some added benefits for many different heroes and abilities.

I'm not too sure what animation cancelling is. What's the point of it, and how does it work?

Answer 1

Animation cancelling is a way to skip the animation of most weapon reloads, ability animations, and other abilities.

What this means is, when you use an ability X, you can use another action or ability to reduce the amount of time you spend staring at your hero waiting for the animation to finish.

A simple example of this:

• Mercy's pistols have to reload after fully firing it
• As Mercy needs to also juggle knowing when to use her pistols as well as healing and boosting teammates, staring at your pistol and waiting for it to reload may take up precious time
• If, immediately after you press reload, you switch to your Caduceus (healing beam), when switching back to your pistol it will be fully reloaded
• In short, you've saved the time you would've spent staring at your pistol waiting for it to reload, and could've used that extra second or two healing or boosting a teammates.

What heroes work very well with this?

• Reinhardt
  • His Rocket Hammer has a fairly slow swing speed, however...
  • It can be animation cancelled by holding your shield up immediately after swinging and connecting with an opponent (hitmarker)
  • It can also be animation cancelled by launching his Fire Strike right after your swing connects.
  • The benefits of this? You can skip a half second of waiting for your weapon to return to the original position to use any other ability
• Reaper
  • His Wraith Shotguns can be animation cancelled into melee.
  • You press reload, then press melee, and thus, instead of waiting for the reload animation to fully play out, you can cram some extra melee damage to an opponent who's chasing you down while you reload
  • You can also cancel reload into Wraith Form, and when you exit Wraith form your weapons will be fully reloaded
• Junkrat
  • Concussion mine deployment can be cancelled into Steel Trap, so instead of having to wait until the Concussion mine has landed, you can launch a steel trap in the meantime
• Soldier 76
  • Much like Reaper, can cancel his weapon reload with other abilities. He can cancel his reload into melee, sprint, or even biotic field
• Genji
  • Genji and Roadhog are the two heroes that gain the most use from animation cancelling, because most of their abilities can cancel into melee. For a hero like Genji, who is all about getting into the enemy's faces, this adds tons of extra damage that can decide a kill or not.
  • His Shuriken burst can be animation cancelled into a melee, thus adding extra damage.
  • His shuriken can also be cancelled into melee, which can then be cancelled into Swift Strike. You can start to see the possibilites here
  • A popular and simple combo is:
  • Right Click (Shuriken burst)
  • Melee
  • Swift Strike
• Roadhog
  • Much like Genji, can cancel weapon animations with his hook. Because of this, his hook combo is one of the most devastating combos in the game
  • A popular combo is:
  • Alt-Fire
  • Hook
  • Primary Fire
  • Melee