Animation canceling is creating an unbalanced risk vs reward environment in this game's otherwise incredibly fun player vs player (PVP). For purposes of this bug report, animation canceling is when a player purposely performs an action while casting an attack to prevent the attack's animation from stopping the player's movement. The two most exploitative methods to perform animation canceling in PVP is by using emotes such as "em shocked" or "em liedown" and by using the crey pistol accolade power. When either of these methods are used, a player's attack, no matter how long the animation should take, will no longer prevent that player for moving around the arena or zone. For example, "Bitter Freeze Ray," from the ice range power pool, should prevent a player from moving for almost two seconds but delivers a powerful attack; however, due to animation canceling that player can fire, cancel, move, and continue firing. The intended design of being a powerful attack but having to wait for an animation is negated by this exploit. Another example, "Absorb Pain," from the empathy support power pool, should have the award of providing a player saving heal but at the risk of pausing the caster and preventing a self heal. However, due to animation canceling that powerful heal can be activated and the empath player can leave the fight without any movement constraint.
This exploit can be used with any power and is taking away from the enjoyment pvp provides with the intended risk vs reward design. No one expects that the volunteer developers should redesign how animations function. Instead, simply adding conditionals to prevent the use of emotes and the crey pistol from being used in pvp could solve this issue.