This is why I'd rather not play ADC. I tend to accidently cancel autos before they fire thus losing DPS resulting in kills waltzing away or me dying because I was out DPS'd (not to mention the overall stressful job ADCing is). Canceling autos in general isn't as big of a deal on mid laners/supports/tops unless autoing is important to there kit like riven (although canceling autos is bad for these other roles it determines outcomes of fights a lot less than an ADC does).

Glad there will finally be someone who knows why I'm yelling "Oh what a day!  What a lovely day!" during teamfights.

I think animation canceling can be a pretty big deal on orianna as far as potential dmg goes, but I haven't tried out the mechanics.

Another thing to note re: animation canceling - every champ has different animation timings so the benefits of canceling varies from champ to champ. There is always a benefit, but the question is how much of one.  Also, your attack speed is the other limiter here - even if you cancel the animation if your AS isn't fast enough, then you can't start the AA animation again.

OK - so that animation canceling.  The next bit is auto attack resets.  In this, you completely reset the autoattack so you can autoattack again.  So, with the former, you are limited by your attack speed. With an auto attack reset, you are not limited by attack speed - you immediately start the animation up again.  The trick is figuring out what functions as an auto attack reset.  So, there is an item that grants aa resets - tiamat.  That works on every melee champ.  The pattern is to cast an AA, wait until the attack actually registers (eg the dmg takes place between the wind up animation and the window down animation).  Immediately, use tiamats active.  This active immediately cancels the AA wind down animation and you are able to issue another AA command. The main difference between animation canceling and auto attack canceling is in whether or not you can immediately attack again regardless of AS. 

Another champ, which I think should be of interest to thunder (in case you don't already know), I believe that Mf's q functions as an auto attack reset.  So, the pattern would be to auto attack, then cancel the aa's animation after shooting the projectile with your q, then auto attack again.  At the very leash it should be easy to string the aa/q together if not aa/q/aa. 

one more topic in a sec...

The last thing I want to talk about is animation canceling and/or extending combos with flash.  I'd wager we've all seen the more common usage of this on gragas.  Graggy uses his dash to move in your direction, then flashes immediately.  His dash animation continues and now he can still hit you covering the same distance as a the dash while reducing your potential reaction time (mostly because its unexpected).   That's one easy to pull off example.

There are other cool things you can do.  Here's a neat vayne trick I learned and tried out yesterday.  Let's say you are on the bottom side of the map and you are 1 v 1 vs another adc (no one else is around).  Let's say you are both lined up north and south in a line, in auto attack range.  If you used your condemn, you will just knock them back to safety due to the whole north/south setup bit.  However, if you cast condemn and then flash to the left or right of them before the animation is finished, they will actually be condemned based on wherever you landed.  To reiterate, if you are in a north/south line and just condemn, the enemy will simply be knocked back north or south.  If you condemn, then immediately flash, the enemy will be knocked back based upon wherever you are standing when the animation finishes (post flash).  To the enemy, it will be pretty much instantaneous condemn as the exact moment your flash animation finishes, the condemn instantly begins the knockback. 

In short, not only does the flash cancel condemns animation, but is also enables you to reposition where the enemy will be knocked back instantly.  It's actually pretty easy to do as well.  To practice it, when you are out of range, cast condemn (eg so you run up to the enemy and then it is cast because you already issued the command).  Now, flash as soon as you are confident the command has been sent. 

Flash animation canceling is gigantic on riven as its another tool to not only reposition but to instantly land a stun with no animation delay.  Anyway, there are some abilities in the game that will allow you to carry the damage over to wherever you flash and others that will not.  Skipping obvious things like graggys dash, think about champs that have longer animations for various spells.  You can often chain those together by either casting the ability, then issuing a flash command to carry that abilities effect forward.  Worth toying around with anyway.

Last, if you want a really good example to try out animation canceling on, try out zyra.  Her wind up AA animation is very quick, while the wind down is much longer.  Just wait until you see the projectile moving and then issue a move command and see how much faster you can follow and damage. 

This is not true... The cooldown of your autoattack starts from the moment your projectile is spawned and you are unable to begin "winding up" another shot until that cooldown is expired. Canceling the wind down allows you to move and not be self-rooted. It does not increase your damage against stationary targets (eg, your true maximum dps is not increased). It can increase your damage in "real" situations because it allows you to chase a fleeing enemy better because you aren't self-rooted as long, and so eventually you get an extra autoattack you wouldn't have gotten because they would have left your range.

You are confused with autoattack RESETS (or at least, this particular sentence is confused with resets).

As you mentioned: Resets will wipe out the cooldown entirely. Most champs have one reseting skill, even Mages:  Anivia E is an AA reset).

A third thing you are forgetting to mention is there is animation canceling for spells as well: canceling Caitlyn's Q with her net (her Q has a wind down animation that prevents movement but not spells), or Renekton's W with Hydra (same thing).

Finally, Riven is special because you can animation cancel both her spells and her autoattacks AND her Q is an autoattack reset. This is what allows "auto > Q > auto > Q > auto".

Finally, i want to point out that Leona's Q is a unique spell because it's the only double-reset in the game. Not only does it reset any initial auto, her Q-empowered auto is also reset. That's why she can kill wards by herself if she is next to them when it is placed.

Ah - I think that makes sense.  Let's take this further though.  Is the animation itself sped up to correspond with attack speed?  I THINK so... think so... at any rate, I agree - I was incorrect re: the added damage - its increased damage potential based on mobility/positioning only. 

re: spells and canceling - yeah, there are quite a few of those as well and I really don't know all the possible combos.  I think that's worth calling out - be nice if things like this were perhaps covered in champ guides maybe.  Not that it would be much use as I don't really read the guides so much and just figure out crap from vids mostly atm. 

Pretty sure you already get the riven concept, but to tack on.  the combo is AA-Q-move command, repeat.  Q cancels the auto attack animation and the move command cancels the q spell animation.  Riven's kind of neat as her E cancels out the animation on pretty much everything and you can flash combo and have a stun go off the exact moment you land from a flash making it ridiculously hard to dodge. 

I'd def be curious to figure out what spells can have their animations canceled with move commands, etc.  Kind of going through a few champs here and there and trying to figure them out. 

Yes, wind-up and wind-down animations are reduced by AS (how much a per-champ basis and i know a few times Riot has balanced around it - my understanding is that it is coded more for ... aesthetics and clarity than for balance since perfect wind-down cancelling only applies to Scipters and LCS matches with 0 ping).

This is why AS quints are so good on ADCs post-buff. Not only are AS quints BiS in terms of damage, it gives you """free""" MS in kiting/chasing situations when you are kiting since your wind-up is 0.1 seconds shorter. That benefit is doubled if you aren't Challenger and properly animation-cancelling.

On a random thought: it'd be hilarious if CDR reduced spell animation duration

mf's q does not aa cancel - can only be strung together with aa - nothing fancy here.

?

What were you thinking was different or could be done?

I read that it functioned as an AA reset I think - then I toyed around with her yesterday and found that was not the case.

we have an application at work called NAR that I can't stop calling GNAR in email #lolruinedme

GAHNAR

A lot of MF players don't take Attack Speed Quints since you can get three quick autos (if you count the Q as an AA) off from cancelling the animations. AA-Q-Move Command-AA.  At least it feels fast?  If you want to test it out today, we can see for sure.  We both play MF without Attack Speed Quints.  You orbwalk two attacks and I'll AA-Q-MC-AA.  I think my combo would go off faster than your two attacks but I'd like to know for sure.

I think Hedgie is right.  Riven and Leona are special cases that allow for completely uninterrupted combinations.  There always will be some delay with AA resetting on any other champ for the attack after the ability or empowered attack, but I think it's significantly mitigated.

That's the wrong way to test if MF's Q is an AA reset (which i'm pretty sure it is)

Both of you should run 0 AS quints/masteries and fuck around in bots for a bit so that you can buy a Frozen Heart + Warden's Mail.

Then, attack-move-click eachother from out of range. ONE of you should issue a Q command immediately after AAing. The other shouldn't.

If Q is an AA reset then both MFs then the 2nd MF should attack slightly faster with her 2nd autoattack. If both AAs occur at the same time, we know it isn't an AA reset.

Technically, you don't have to have the AS reduction items, but it'll help smooth any errors from ping or difficulty perceiving tiny differences.

If you don't issue the attack for Leona after her empowered AA, she doesn't immediately do the third attack.  There is a fast harass combo for MF where you Q an opponent then immediately click on him which almost instantly AA's him.  If you don't click right away, you don't cancel the Q animation and your follow up attack is a lot slower.  So to get the full effect you have to do something afterward when getting the most out of this sort of thing.

What's wrong with testing out AA-MC-AA against AA-Q-MC-AA?  Sounds like a great idea using 0 attack speed but getting the FH first might be a little overboard.

I'm looking to see how much more effective resets are on sending off the auto attack after, not proving to Pacov that Q is an auto attack reset.  After hearing him use the term 'skill cap' inaccurately for the millionth time, I've given up on arguing semantics with him.  Maybe he thinks only Riven and Leona have his definition of AA resets.  And that's fine.  What matters is what gives you more DPS, not definitions of game mechanics.