Please revert the animation snapshot changes.

[Exmo]

Can’t say I agree with this take.

Before 7.1 I never had a problem extending dancer’s lb to 4 seconds. I can’t say I had any issue escaping after extending cc either.

To be honest I think the snapshot changes made it harder to extend dancer’s lb. Now people can walk out it and not get cc’ed which means now they can retaliate against you where before 7.1 if they were in the radius when you lb’ed they’d be cc’ed and can’t respond at all.

After 7.1 I feel like I need to be more careful with my lbs, so you and I have had very different experiences. I don’t know what gamemode you’re experiences are from but just for context my experiences are from both Crystalline Conflict and Frontline.

That's fair. It sounds like a difference in playstyle. You're right that people can walk out of it if they see it coming, but it also means they can walk into it if they don't see it coming, which is fun when you can pull it off. I mostly play FL.

[Sinstrel]

...but it also means they can walk into it if they don't see it coming.

This right here. I am a DRG main so the skillset that I've picked up of sneaking in DRG LB in CC has been paying dividends while learning DNC in recent days. The one map I used to hate with a passion (Tatami mats) has become so much fun because of enemy team running right into DNC charms while trying to avoid the Mini/Chop bots or frantically trying to get out of a 30k tatami backflip.

[Sunhwapark]

DNC lb snapshot feels the exact same as before to me.
Different ones for certain would be Samurai & MCH lbs.

Most general attacks now are quite easy to line-up to land when someone's guard duration is about to end at the very least.

[Sheidyn]

If you asked something like this in literally any other game, where you press a button and apply the effect to a player immediatly if the character's animation is nowhere near done or the VFX did not even spawn yet they would call you an absolute lunatic, but for some reason we are settling for less in this game, and i fail to understand why aside from not wanting to adapt to something more accurate to what is happening on the screen is because you relied on this early snapshot cheesing that the game provided, or not willing to adapt to a more methodical gameplay where you can't send your stuff and know it will magically work because the enemy did not read your mind instead of reacting.

Examples such as:

- A SMN running in, pressing LB, and not being able to guard it even though realistically, Bahamut takes like 1-2 seconds on the animation to hit you, but since the damage snapshotted, the SMN is rewarded by pressing a button without any thinking aside from seeing people are not guarding. Should i just pray that when a summoner comes in i'll just magically predict when they are going to press a button and i press Guard a second earlier?

- A MCH LBing you without warning, and no matter what you do you cannot react, and take the damage for free for no reason because you somehow were not reading the MCH mind at the time, getting an easy kill on you

- A SAM doing full damage LB on you EVEN AFTER the debuff expired because they pressed the button when there was one second left.

- A WAR literally stunning you when they press the button and THEN landing on you, when clearly the point of the ability is to look like it's stunning everyone around them when they slam the floor. In what other PvP multiplayer game would this make any sense? They would say it looks stupidly silly.

- A WHM having a insta-stun button where the stun happens first, and the Beam shows up after, this is somehow more wanted? It looks absolutely janky and it feels unnatural.

The PVP experience before these changes was guessing and hoping you are right, relying essentially on random chances and cheesing some people with no skill required and no counterplay what so ever. Now the game does actually require skill because things get executed in real time (as real time as this game can be of course, the netcode in this game is far from perfect).

There is skill in predicting your enemy, no doubt, but there is only so much you can display that way, whereas reactionary gameplay where a player needs to be more careful, being aware of the enemy's resources, able to improvise and react to the enemy, shows a greater display of ability and a higher skill gap than having 2 dudes deciding to LB you and immediatly dying, not being able to do anything about it.

if they revert these changes, i will be disappointed because it means they are settling for less instead of wanting to provide a proper PvP competitive experience.

[Mawlzy]

snip

If the animations were shorter and consistent between jobs, I'd mostly agree with you. And some jobs feel great to play. AST's double-cast gravity, followed by yeeting oneself off a cliff and suffering no fall damage. Very crisp. WAR getting pinned down in a sea of crowd control as primal rend dawdles through it's silly animation, not so much.

[Sheidyn]

If the animations were shorter and consistent between jobs, I'd mostly agree with you. And some jobs feel great to play. AST's double-cast gravity, followed by yeeting oneself off a cliff and suffering no fall damage. Very crisp. WAR getting pinned down in a sea of crowd control as primal rend dawdles through it's silly animation, not so much.

If the solution is to shorten the animation/VFX so the stuff comes out faster so it replicates the effect of the previous jobs, by all means. I just want it to make sense. If Primal Rend's stun needs to come out faster, the only thing i ask is a visual justification of it. Getting randomly stunned without any visual cues is just not a good look in my opinion, things need to make sense visually, without deteriorating the gameplay if possible of course, that's all i really ask.

[YumieYumiki]

It's not just the animations, really.
If I can get two pushback attacks connecting right after using shukuchi (despite now being out of range) the whole netcode architecture is hopeless.
"Ok so I'm resolving that you escaped with Shukuchi first but for some reason you also still ate those two pushback attacks afterwards" yeah ok they have no idea what they're doing at this point

[sleepyhat]

Wow, there are some really good and thoughtful responses here. I'm glad a lot of people feel the same way, and thank you for contributing to this thread if you did

Just thought I'd pop back in after the 7.16 changes. I believe they are a step in the right direction, but the rest of the skills that were not adjusted still feel awfully sluggish, and some skills like dark knight's impalement are still unreliable.

I'm grateful that we may have been heard in some way, but I still think there's quite a ways to go. Please revert the animation snapshots!

[Sunhwapark]

Wasn't expecting it to be done to so many skills.
The MNK ones are such a huge improvement, applying damage when the attack animation connects much more closely rather than across the board applying roughly ~1.5s delay after hitting any button.

Oh yeah and the DRK vacuum is much swifter once again, and the SGE bind is extremely smooth/fast in application - I would say they got a good deal out of the changes.

Feels like I'm getting whiplash on the timing of skills now, well time to die often and learn a little bit more again. (sorry in advance should I end up on your team)

[Raenra]

Not sure if it's the snapshot thing, but I notice it as Bard where your basic attack is a cast, against Samurais.
I watch their buffs before attacking to make sure they don't have the swirly-wind 1-shot buff up.
They don't, so I press attack.
Mid-cast, the buff will appear. I can't stop the cast, I get the debuff, I get 1-shot.

I've not played Samurai so perhaps there's some Animation that I'm meant to watch for, before the buff appears?
Tbh my eyesight's pretty shit, so probably wouldn't be able to see it anyway. But if not, it feels like there's very little counter-play to this.