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Combat Animation Bugs Dissected and Analyzed
A compilation of Warhammer Online combat animation bugs as of the latest patch (Saturday, Sept. 14th).

The bugs:

1) Spell Animations Finish Before Casting is Finished.

This problem occurs becuase WAR's cast animations are static, while WAR's cast times are dynamic (due to pushback from damage). In WoW, every race/class has their own cast animation, its the same for every spell, it can go on indefinitely before the spell fires, and its exactly the same throughout. Whether your uninterrupted frostbolt is 2.5 seconds or your LOLFELHUNTER frostbolt is 12 seconds, your frostyhands are there until the castbar finishes, and your frostbolt goes off.

In WAR, each spell has its own separate animation, and its timed to end when the base cast time of the spell ends. What do you get when your cast time is increased by a second? a second delay between the firing of your frostbolt and when your frostbolt spell finishes, throwing your brain off, and making it look clunky.

2) Spells Made Instant Cast by Abilities Have Full Animations.

This problem is most notable on two classes who change spell cast times the most: Shaman and Archmage. When you go from 1-4 waagh or force, your spell animation increases in speed to match the change of the base cast time of the spell, as displayed in the video. The problem comes when you hit 5 waagh or force, as the animation instead of becoming instant, reverts to the FULL CAST TIME animation, the longer the spell, the worse. If the animation lasts more than 1.5 seconds, you acutally have to interrupt your own animation for an instant cast spell to cast another spell on your next global cooldown. This combined with #1 and #3 can be a real pain the butt, and is extremely clunky feeling.

3) Animation Irregularites When Spamming Spells.

Many classes have a "spam spell", an instant cast spell with no cooldown. When you use this spell multiple times in a row (by spamming the button) You don't get the same animation over and over again, you get weird irregularities, sometimes it won't go off, sometimes it goes off multiple times rapidly, sometimes only part of the animation shows up. This makes it very difficult to tell when your spells are going off, if they've gone off, and how many times they've gone off without looking at debuff bars. This is exasperated becuause the debuff bars in this game are pretty much worthless, as they are tiny and are mixed with your buffs, making finding things practically require mouseover.

4) Kiting is IMPOSSIBLE: Animations Misfire with Directional Changes, Instant Cast Spells with Directional Requirements Wont Fire Unless You Are Facing Your Target for 1+ Seconds


This ones a real killer. You can't 180 + instant cast + 180 and keep running. I'm not sure if this is an animation issue (instant cast spells have an animation time, unfortunately) or if its a latency issue, but it SUCKS. I can't get instant cast spells to fire that have directional requirements without facing the target for much longer than it takes to 360 kite.

What makes this one even worse, is the full animation of the spell goes off, even though the spell didn't fire, making you ONCE AGAIN have to check debuff bars to make sure your spells go off.

This is probably the worst issue, by far.


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Its been mentioned a few times "Give me WAR gameplay with WoW combat" -- I couldn't agree more. All of these problems build on eachother, and are exacerbated by the sub-par UI for buffs / debuffs, making landing spells more work than fun a lot of the time.

I'm not sure how they will be able to modify spellcasting for dynamic spell cast times without taking a step backwards and using a static animation like WoW, but something needs to be done.

All this aside, the games a TON of fun, and unlike WoW, I feel like I can log in for an hour and get something accomplished besides chilling in org waiting for BG queues to pop or cutting myself when we're missing 1 guy to get a 3's or 5's going.

Mythic has been steadily improving their game, and each patch is noticeable, hopefully the trend continues.

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