Animation Lock doesn't making proper timing important?
No. Not having animation lock doesn't make proper timining UNimportant. You still have cooldowns to deal with and animation lock doesn't mean there is no non-animation based locking. Any locking that exists should make sense based on when it would make sense to be able to move, not just arbitrarily locking you from start of animation to finish. When I feel like I should be logically able to move by instinctively pressing buttons, i expect my character to move. That happens in most every game (even those touted as examples of good animation lock) except this one and XI. Your character does not need to be held in place during wind up and wind down.