I just wanted to get a handle on the issues that are discussed here as we moved on quite quickly from pure ability 'delay' to discussing several issues that all clump together to make the characters feel unresponsive. 1. Client to server synchronisation (I cannot think of a better description ) - I believe this is the issue that causes general delay in spells/abilities be it mounting then moving only to find your mount dissapear or coming to a stop and finding you cannot cast untill you have stood still for 0.5 of a sec etc. 2. Animation priority - Having to wait for previous animations to complete before you are allowed to cast your next ability, animations not always clipping and interfering with rotations. Also animations are different between mirror classes, and effect when 'instant' abilities actually land. 3. Abilities off the GCD failing - I don't know if this is a seperate issue but abilities like Riposte sometimes will refuse to activate despite the ability becoming avalible and the player having resources to use it, somtimes act's like they are on the GCD after all. May tie in with 1 & 2. Is this esentially the basic reasons why characters feel unresponsive? or is there more to it. As far as i can see different classes will be effected differently by all of the above for example healers might struggle more with 1 than dps, or a dps smuggler may notice number 2 more than anything else. I must say that even though I am your average player with an average reaction time i have noticed all of the above and believe characters won't feel responsive untill they are all looked at and fixed. I never post in game forums but feel this is such a make or break issue for this game that i just had to, it'll only become more of an issue once the game moves from leveling mode into endgame mode.

But it's all part of the same issue, its because the smuggler doesn't play as smoothly as an agent. He wasn't talking about class balance as a whole he was talking about the animations screwing up the same move for a mirror class. Maybe we just don't agree on what a side issue is, fair enough. I just think the problem he referred to is a symptom of the very issue we are talking about here, rather than general class balance. I'm not trying to argue by the way, i just think we are talking about the same thing but looking at it in different ways.

I think you missed the point here, he is talking about basically the same abilites taking longer to execute on mirror classes. It's like a horde death knights mind freeze going of faster than an alliance death knights purely because the animations are different. Which is clearly unacceptable.

But Riposte (the one he mashes at 0:13) if off the GCD, you shouldn't have to wait for the GCD on the last ability to complete before it fires off. I had this exact thing happen to me in a flashpoint 5 mins ago, I had to read the tooltip again to make sure I understood it right, but yeah GCD should have no effect on it.

Definatly needs a fix. I can get by quite happily casual solo PVE but when you speed things up and start chaining abilities together it becomes obvious. If you were sitting watching someone play this game you would think wow, nice animations and the fights look cinematic. But when your sitting there playing it at a reasonable pace it just doesn't feel right at all. I must admit I don't get how button mashing should cause this if there wasn't an issue in the first place. If the ability is avalible and the GCD clear it should fire and activate the GCD, no amount of button mashing should then interfere. Thats assuming it's on the GCD mind you. It's like there is a second GCD tied to animations that you cannot see.

I don't think it's a matter of adapting, fair enough you can adapt to slight delays if they are consistent and equal across the board but different mirror classes have different "animation setup times" for basically the exact same move. That is something that shouldn't have made it through beta. Also animations going off, activating the GCD but doing zero damage is not something you should have to adapt to. Wouldn't you agree that the vast majority of people posting about this issue are doing so in order to improve the game rather than to stick the knife into Bioware for the sake of it? As well as the odd delay and the delay in animation set up I have noticed that cast bar's sometimes do not appear although the animation and spell will go off. I also noticed that when rolling into cover on Smuggler and IA then casting charged blast/snipe the ability will attempt to go off but will cancel itself for no apparent reason, wasting a GCD. I have also seen other discuss this exact issue in general chat. It seems to stand out on some classes more than others (for me smuggler/IA) and don't know if all these issues tie together, but overall the combat response is something that needs looking at sooner rather than later IMO. If you played Warhammer you'll know it was an issue that was never truly fixed there, people are probably just worried it will go the same way here and be constantly swept under the carpet. You can have the biggest and best house on the street but if the foundtions are dodgy then the whole thing can come crashing down around you. Probably over the top analogy but combat is such an important factor in this game or any other MMO.

Aside from the slow animations the first time i noticed any issue with ablities/combat was on my smuggler, I would roll into cover and then fire off charged blast and it would begin it's cast only to be cancelled after about 0.5 secs for no apparent reason. I then had to wait for the global cooldown until i could try again. This happened quite frequently, certainly enough to be frustrating and the long global cooldown time in this game just highlights the issue. Another issue i noticed was the random lack of cast bar when healing on my IA. Every so often i would cast a heal and the animation would start and complete but no cast bar would appear. The actual heal pretty much always went off but the lack of cast bar makes you wonder if you are actually going to get a heal off. Once you start to notice things like this it becomes more and more frustrating every time your ability fails or your cast bar decides it's having a break, for me sorting out faults like this should be priority number one for Bioware. I don't really care if the odd harvest node is bugged out or i have to re-summon my companion every once in a while, fix the combat please! I just hope they take the issue more seriously than Mythic took it on Warhammer, as it is a gamebreaker for a lot of people and it's a shame because the game deserves better.