The problem with "Instant OFF GCD" abilities makes combat feel less rewarding.

[complexxL9]

I think realism of character animations is overrated.
I myself don't even notice those animations, I mean how can you notice them in end-game content, when in encounters there is so much stuff to do, like watching your cooldowns, procs, dots falling of enemies, your self buffs ending, avoiding aoes and other kind of abilities and reacting to all kind of stuff..

Animation realism of your character at that point doesn't really matter, as you rarely are watching your own character in encounter. Of course beautiful animations are nice to have, but they should never impact gameplay negatively, and they do now.

[Jackus]

I hate it most when I have a few instant abilities that I would like to use, by time the GCD is over with those abilities they have already disappeared.

[Lafaiel]

I just watched that video, as a tank I don't really have this problem, I macro all the moves I use that are combo'd together with a /wait 1 in between and they go off 100% of the time, the animations for the instant cast skills (for melee since I play warrior and pugilist) are fairly short and that 1 second wait works perfectly unless you have a fairly high latency. Also, hotkey everything you can.

[complexxL9]

... I macro all the moves I use that are combo'd together with a /wait 1 in between and they go off 100% of the time, the animations for the instant cast skills (for melee since I play warrior and pugilist) are fairly short and that 1 second wait works perfectly unless you have a fairly high latency. Also, hotkey everything you can.

I don't think this addresses the problem. How that macro can help in situations like this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=40a_cnDQKeE ?
You have like 1 second to interrupt boss one shot skill, but 1 sec is the time animation plays for your previsous skill, so interrupt won't go off, pretty much a wipe. A tank would be in similar situation if there was an encounter where boss performs special move which one shots tank unless he pops a defensive cooldown. Only difference is - a tank can afford to lose dps, and just stand auto attacking while anticipating that boss move.

[Erudain]

it's the very long a$$ animations for skills previously casted.

i apologize for bring AION up, but back in AION that was the reason even casters went for "attack speed" weapons. a cleric would raise her hand and put it down after casting a heal. the "attack speed" weapon would make that movement faster. with semi-endgame weapon & glove, it made the movements very snappy. hands were raised, swinged and put down immediately after each skill.

Not to mention that as a melee dps you could weave/aac your auto-attcak to increase your dps...I'm not being able to do it here, since the auto-atk animation cannot be cancelled, if you auto-atk you have to watch your auto-atk

[Kantide]

I think realism of character animations is overrated.
I myself don't even notice those animations, I mean how can you notice them in end-game content, when in encounters there is so much stuff to do, like watching your cooldowns, procs, dots falling of enemies, your self buffs ending, avoiding aoes and other kind of abilities and reacting to all kind of stuff..

Animation realism of your character at that point doesn't really matter, as you rarely are watching your own character in encounter. Of course beautiful animations are nice to have, but they should never impact gameplay negatively, and they do now.

We may as well be playing a text based MUD then 8P. Also, try telling this to the people who complained about the inertia animations being removed.

Also, I don't think the issue is the animations themselves as much as the timeframe in which the server checks your position/button press. I have noticed for example on SMN when I cast something like Fester which is off the GCD and then immediately cast Ruin or another spell with a cast timer, the cast begins right away even though the animation doesn't due to the animation from fester still being ongoing, causing the animation of the overall cast of Ruin to be shorter and ending as it should. The conclusion this gives me is that there is delay from when you press a button and when the server acknowledges it and sends a response back to the client to start a cast/activate a buff rather than the client saying "oh this animation is still happening, better wait to activate this next ability".

[TaranTatsuuchi]

I still miss the inertial animations.

[Raymeo]

In my experience with tanking as a Paladin, I can't even begin to tell you how many times I've popped my Hallowed Ground in order to buy a healer some time to raise a fallen party member mid-battle. While I've lost count of the specifics at this point, the number of occurrences in which I've watched Hallowed Ground begin its seven minute freakin' cooldown only for me to die before the ability actually takes effect is far greater than the number of times I've actually had the ability work as intended. Think you're helping the healer? Hah. WIPE, SUCKA. Enjoy your next attempt with the ability on cooldown!

And those are just the times in which the ability's actually gone onto cooldown! Don't even get me started on how annoying it gets when a high-damage phase is occurring and I SPAM my "instant" defensive abilities for those three seconds between weaponskills, only to see NOTHING get used before my threat combo has to be continued. Better pray that you were topped off before that Mountain Blaster, because there's no telling whether or not your defensive ability's getting used in time to mitigate it! Same goes for the twins popping on Garuda and auto-targeting healers before they're even in the off-tank's Shield Lob range. If that first Shield Lob doesn't put them at the top of the threat list, then you'd better pray that the off-tank hits the jackpot with their Provoke spamming so the ability actually gets fired before the healers die, because sometimes it's really just a coin toss like that! (Even when it does fire off though, half the time threat changes lag so much that the healers still die before the twin turns around, immediately followed by, "WTF tank, stop sucking!")

But you don't understand, we've gotta finish dem animations first! Dem animations... the ones that cause my character to run in a completely different direction than I'm ordering them to move half of the time. Gotta dodge Slipstream? Better not try to maintain threat by using an ability while running through the boss, or you'll just throw yourself into reverse and zig zag back in front of her face. STUNNED, SUCKA. Think you're being slick by using Shield Lob from a distance as you strafe out of two bee AoE's on Demon Wall, in an attempt to spare your healer from pulling aggro while you're forced out of melee range? Nope, you'll just hurl yourself right back into the center of the red like a spaz. PARALYZED, SUCKA. That's what you get for using your abilities!

If you really want to do something awesome as a Paladin, go stand behind Ifrit and Shield Bash his Eruptions. THEN you can use an ability on demand. Be sure to savor the moment! Oh, and make sure you don't use anything other than auto-attack in the meantime -- we wouldn't want you to get TOO crazy now, would we? You could put your whole party at risk! That's the price of your pretty animations.

This all needs to be fixed, please!

[cfStatic]

They need to change "Instant" to "Instant Cast" to make it more obvious what they're referring to because as someone else said, players are going to insert their own definitions of what instant means.

Also, animation fluidity be damned. If it's an off GCD ability, I shouldn't be having to wait for a second or more before even being able to use it. Go on, use an on the GCD ability and then one thats off the gcd. If it's off the GCD, I should be able to punch that ability and have it go off as soon as I use it. That's why it doesn't respect the GCD in the first place.

[Taaz]

I'll add my bump to this. Really annoying as a PLD trying to both keep your combo up and use a Rampart or Sentinel.