Some attention to most annoying combat(or UI?) design flaws please.

[Bahram]

Working around it is not the solution. And animation cooldown working as intended does not explain why the UI has to be inconsistent whit what is actually happening.

I mean, working around it might be the solution. The intention may very well be to prevent popping multiple cooldowns at the same time without "losing time." I do, however, agree with your assessment that the tooltip for the ability should reflect how long that animation is going to be, especially if it's instant. It's pretty deceptive for it to claim to be instant and be off the global cooldown, but yet subject to the animation. I've gotten to "feeling out" how long it will take for a certain ability to finish triggering, but I don't see a reason why it shouldn't be outright stated.

[complexxL9]

Well they put it into "working as intended" category.. that is just like saying "we intend to confuse you with how the UI informs about skills available for use" can't wrap my head around it...

[kosomoto]

I have a theory on this. People keep saying "hidden cooldown" but I don't believe that is what this is. First, understand that every time you press a hotbutton, the signal is sent to the server to "do this ability".

I believe that in order to prevent players from killing the server with rapid button mashing / spamming, the devs have setup something in either the client or server, that causes the game to disregard excess button presses for a brief period after using one.

If they got rid of this, the server would likely lag and crash because of people who can't just press a button once.

That theory makes no sense. Why then do other MMOs not have this issue?

[ZakarnRosewood]

This is the first legit "combat flawed" thread I've come across. I know exactly what you mean, its almost an animation lock. For example on my WAR I have a combo I use where I do "Heavy Swing" then "Skull Sunder" and they are tied on cooldown so while that cooldown comes a second time I use "Brutal Swing" as a lead in to "Butcher Block". Even though the cooldown never shows up for "Brutal Swing" I have to wait a few seconds before I can click on it.

This is not a huge deal as long as you are aware of it but a quick "true" global cooldown would be nice. Not something to rage over but something that could be worth bringing to the Dev's attention for future patches or hotfixes.

[Ryios]

As a warrior I have noticed this, but it doesn't bother me. I've gotten used to it. E.g. I could be in the middle of rotation and Vengenance comes up which is an instant active and it won't click. But if I wait for my current character animation to finish or come to a close I can click it.

I think the root problem here is that the character animations do not completely allow overlap. So if an ability has an animation and one is in progress you can't use it until the one in progress has reached a certain completion percentage. I find that I can cast a new one about 3/4 of the way through a current one, do to the delay and that they overlap a little, but not completely.

[Vaer]

There is a slight aftercast after every ability at least that's what I've noticed, even for things that are off the GCD.

It's really annoying when you want to pop reactive abilities like Sentinel, Convalescence, Hallowed Ground, etc and it goes off 0.5 seconds too late.