Please revert the animation snapshot changes.

[Valence]

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.

Depends if your attack is very fast to resolve it can be relatively safe but you still run the risk to just press the button when the samurai presses theirs much like it used to be the case before anyway.
If your attack is long winded, odds are that they can actually react to it and counter with it yes.
It is rarely a good idea to attack samurais without having kept track of their use of the debuff, or at least their LB gauge in the case of CC. It hasn't changed in principle after the snapshot changes, it has just made it a lot more risky.
And since you're playing BRD, you have literally zero shields to bait Zantetskukens into a failtsuken.