Please revert the animation snapshot changes.

[sleepyhat]

Ever since the 7.1 update PvP has felt absolutely rotten to play. I don't really want to debate other changes, there are many other threads about them, I could probably tolerate them if the nail in the coffin wasn't the animation changes. They are far too slow. So many of my moves simply ghost or don't go off. My ping isn't ideal, but it was manageable before the rework. After 7.1 it's become frustratingly difficult to execute anything.

A lot of my friends have simply stopped playing. I think some of them would probably return if this was fixed. Yeah, this is what's on my mind at Christmas

I don't really have anything else to say, but I wholeheartedly wish for this change, and no matter what your grievances are with the current state of PvP, I hope you agree.

[Mawlzy]

Ever since the 7.1 update PvP has felt absolutely rotten to play. I don't really want to debate other changes, there are many other threads about them, I could probably tolerate them if the nail in the coffin wasn't the animation changes. They are far too slow. So many of my moves simply ghost or don't go off. My ping isn't ideal, but it was manageable before the rework. After 7.1 it's become frustratingly difficult to execute anything.

A lot of my friends have simply stopped playing. I think some of them would probably return if this was fixed. Yeah, this is what's on my mind at Christmas

I don't really have anything else to say, but I wholeheartedly wish for this change, and no matter what your grievances are with the current state of PvP, I hope you agree.

A related issue that I haven't seen discussed much is how much "wasted damage" one pumps out with the new system.

It is fairly natural to target enemies whose health bars are dropping. For long animations, however, this will invariably be a mistake, because the opponent will die before you apply any damage, and yet the skill still activates and goes on cooldown!

This has always been true to some extent due to latency, but planning attacks now is completely counter-intuitive, particularly for solo players. Literally the worst PvP combat philosophy I've ever experienced.

[Post]

At the minimum, I dislike that we have a mode where animations dictate when the damage is dealt, and yet there are stage hazards which are dictated by the cast bars like in PvE. It's a bit disorienting.

At the worst, we now have tooltips that are less accurate because they don't explain when you need to activate the button to actually get the effect.

Most animations also weren't designed to be responsive or snappy with the timing of your presses, they were designed to be flashy for job action trailers. Not really sure there's an upside. At best, it's just different from the previous version (and the rest of the game).

[Mawlzy]

At the minimum, I dislike that we have a mode where animations dictate when the damage is dealt, and yet there are stage hazards which are dictated by the cast bars like in PvE. It's a bit disorienting.

At the worst, we now have tooltips that are less accurate because they don't explain when you need to activate the button to actually get the effect.

Most animations also weren't designed to be responsive or snappy with the timing of your presses, they were designed to be flashy for job action trailers. Not really sure there's an upside. At best, it's just different from the previous version (and the rest of the game).

I think that's correct, and is a terrible way to design PvP.

[Mawlzy]

It's also why KOs and assists can feel so inconsistent some matches. I can't count the number of times I hit someone that still had HP, they suddenly drop to 0 when I know I didn't do that much damage, but the game doesn't count it as me having contributed to their demise at all so I get no BH, but the cooldown on my skills still starts, or worse, I completely waste my LB.

It's part of WHY I don't really like the whole FMF and Wildfire thing they expect me to do on MCH either, because even assuming I manage to kill the HP sponges running around now, there's no guarantee it'll count as a kill even when I was the person who got the last hit after completely unloading into them, because what I see on my screen isn't what actually happened and that enemy was already dead by someone else, so I only get the assist credit.

They got me out here trying to bust caps into ghosts, and man, I can tell you the busting doesn't feel good.

Yeah K/A credit has always seemed a bit random, but is far worse now. Apparently we have to determine what the health bars of enemies will be in a couple of seconds and plan our attacks around that. [1]

[1] This is, of course, impossible.

[Commander_Justitia]

The delay to certain skills make survivability harder, as you queue in recuperate/purify later as usual because you have to wait for the animation to finish. Reaction time is player skill. It should be rewarded and not mitigated.

[Valence]

The K/A system has always been a problem for Battle High since BH rewards you five times more for netting a kill than an assist. Otherwise, it doesn't matter at all, especially in CC (except for DNC but then it's on you to specifically partner jobs that kill better).

[Satyagrahi]

The animation trouble is especially apparent with DRK right now.

I primarily log in to play DRK in CC, and it seems virtually impossible now to come out of guard without dying.

It used to be that you could have your guard up, and use an action to restore your HP. This does cancel your guard of course, but restoring your HP was a very good way to end guard.

Now you just die because your enemies get their hits in before your HP is restored. It feels very unplayable.

[Commander_Justitia]

I think that is for every job the same. You cant do max duration Guard anymore, or the coordinated burst/cc will kill you right after, as they will definetly press their skills already at 1s remaining of your Guard. So canceling Guard at 3-4s may be better. But that also means that the enemy team will more often than not just burst into your Guard, as they expect that to happen anyway. Which is bad, because bursting into Guard should punish you, but it is actually not that bad. Another way to reward bad players for pressing their skills and punish good players for pressing Guard at the right moment.

[CidHeiral]

Agreed. Seeing my opponent visually get hit with an ability and then put up guard and avoid all damage is way more frustrating than the occasional weird guard snapshot death from the previous seasons. I'll take the latter any day of the week over this delay nonsense.