The issue with animation lock is how you hit one long weapon skill, Chaos Thrust for example, if at any time during that skill Ifrit used an eruption you would not get away, then you link this in with the bad 1.xx latency you had about 1 second to react to seeing eruptions in the log to avoid them.

Animation lock, I don't think was designed to avoid you spamming skills, I think it was more to do with Crystal Tools sucking for MMOs, look at FFXIII and FFXIII-2, they didn't have to worry about whether you could move whilst using a skill, so it probably wasn't possible.

The skill with Ifrit shouldn't be only stick to short animation skills, and it shouldn't be to stare at the log, I want to enjoy the graphics whilst I am playing and animation lock along with latency requires that, miss time a Chaos Thrust (which we all know is a powerful weapon skill) by 1 or 2 seconds it could mean being hit, remove the animation lock and it means you can use skills whenever you want.