[2021] Animation speed is completely ignored by everyone in terms of balance.

Originally posted by MrRadioNewVegas

In a video with fineokay, Clumsy (one of the devs) made a comment on this sort of thing in regards to Mulan. He noted that an obvious buff to Mulan would be to have her 1 animation be much quicker. It would make her damage come out faster and she would be less likely to be interrupted. The problem is that sort of animation is done that way for both style and substance. It would look pretty comical if she moved a whole lot faster in that animation. So they look elsewhere in terms of buffs. There is also something to be said about players being hit by abilities being able to have a chance to react and respond. There is an argument to be made that some abilities taking longer to come out can be better for balance or just for making abilities look cooler and more fun.

Essentially, there are a great deal of gods that get better if their abilities are faster but there are several reasons they are hesitant to do it. There are balance and style implications. Hades 3 having a delay or Zhong 2 having a wind up allows for relic usage in response to those abilities as well as a chance to interrupt them with CC. I think those are kind of necessary drawbacks among others to tanky mages. In addition, I think you could argue those abilities look cooler as a slower animation. Maybe, Hades could be faster and it would be fine. I do think Zhong is an odd choice as he has been in and out of meta.

This is absolutely correct. I think OPs title is a bit extreme - this is not ignored by everyone.

We on the design and balance teams discuss this all the time, and we are generally hesitant to make these changes for a few reasons, some of which you already listed correctly. Some other things id add

Players absolutely underestimate how huge of buffs these are. We have seen this across many different data points in SMITE history. Making an ability easier to hit - faster animation speed, larger hit area, etc is one of the biggest buffs we can give a god. The increase in win% is often much larger for these types of changes even when compared to larger damage buffs and cooldown buffs. Zhong is already seeing pro play. Hades is one of the winningest gods in the game (except pro play) - we specifically discuss and choose not to buff in this way all the time
We also have recently become much more open to these buffs. Apollo, Anhur, and Neith were feeling bad, seeing very low play, and much lower win% than Zhong and Hades do now - and we sped them up. We are open to this option, its just a much more intense change than the community usually gives it credit for. These hunters have had to take sufficient nerfs to balance them back out after those changes. Some might still consider Anhur and Apollo OP. Eset was also intensely OP not that long ago through just numbers buffs alone, we try not to change anim times unless we really have no other options.
Lastly - faster isnt simply better. It may make the god stronger, but it risks causing frustration for everyone else. Having some animation time is important for counterplay and clarity. We try to work slower animation times into kits often, even on new gods, even though players tend to request them to be faster. The design team spends a ton of time and effort on anim timing decisions, and I think the spirit of this post takes this for granted. There are a lot more variables to consider when working on combat timings.

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