I understand but this is I think partly a player created misinterpretation of how skills work in FFXIV - animations have never been a "match" to the cast bar.

I think now after playing for a good stretch of time that the cast bars are meant as a telegraph -> "This is going to happen when this runs out!" and the AoE markers are "This is where this is going to happen! Boom!" once you reconcile that in your head it's simply an issue of being comfortable with the level of latency you're dealing with (because SE can't make the whole interweb faster) and checking your system settings to see how well your machine is running the game - PS3 users may have some animation/processing lag because... well it's old hardware.

I get that coming from offline games, or other MMOs that are designed a bit differently having the cast bar and the animation doing separate functions may be entirely counter-intuitive but it's just how they built it.

Flatten as an example - the cast bar lets your tank know it's coming, they need to get their ability off before the bar disappears - then the animation and subsequent damage are applied; but not the instant the bar disappears.


They basically built in a cushion for latency...