Alternative to fixing combat:

SE very specifically said (and I must say I very much so disagree with their decision) to leave animation times non-clippable, thus making instant attacks work very clunky and often times nonresponsively. It's their call, I can sympathize with it being part of learning to play is watching your animations and timing things properly and wanting combat movements to make sense, but it does have a negative affect on the game when you literally have to jam an off the GCD ability to make it work. So here's what needs to happen even if you don't want to make instants really "instant".

EITHER:
- All spells need to trigger an "animation cooldown" for all abilities, so that it's easy to see exactly when an animation will end for your current action. Even adding this to a tooltip for Action Time would greatly benefit the players.
OR
- Give the game a "true" global cooldown that all abilities share that is either .5 seconds or 1 second. I disagree with this method more than the previous because it hinders buff stacking but either method helps with my next points.

NEXT:
- With the new global cooldowns added so we can see how long we're truly being locked out, allow for "instant abilities" to que, so they will ready even if we press them just a little early so they don't feel so CLUNKY.

- Remove all of the animation movement vulnerabilities (LB/Raising/Jumps) and give invulnerability frames for those actions. Animations that last several seconds can be hit by ground attacks that weren't even there prior to attempting to raise/LB and so on.

If these things can happen, I'll give you your "we like making you think/plan ahead/and have realistic looking combat". But unpredictable behavior and having to jam button is not okay. Thanks, SE!

Please post your thoughts/concerns so we can get SOMETHING done with this combat. I feel this is the most fair way to go about it to please both SEs design and make quality of life for players much better.