Brand "Rework" lacking in addressing his core problem: Outdated Animations

Greetings all!

My first post ever here as a comment on the "rework" on the PBE. I understand that things often don't pan out how they look, so maybe he'll be SUPER OP/nerfed into the ground when it goes live, but I kind of doubt that.

A little note on my personal experience with Brand: Brand was the first champ I ever mained, and [zombie-brand-mindblown] was my first skin (back when league was still free for me - what's a little investment, right guys? Right?) The point is, I'm not a particularly good League player (I hate ranked) but I have been playing Brand for going on ~4 years, so I do know the champ well enough to feel like I can bring at least something to the discussion.

First, let's talk about Brand in his current state:

Brand's current strengths:

1. Brand's passive is awesome, it's attached to play and counterplay (hit/dodge skillshots), it's thematically strong (I set my opponents on fire and they burn. Yay!) and it opens up the coolest part of Brand, his combos.
2. The way his spells play off of each other for different effects is very cool; there are many potential responses to different scenarios, rewarding me for thinking about my options and for playing more Brand.
3. While lacking in the utility department, Brand's damage output enables him to demolish both individuals and teams. This is actually a huge problem for Brand. Kog'Maw is an apt parallel - protect the Kog and he will destroy everyone, but there is no "protect the Brand" strategy. Why is that? For one, he is all burst damage, but with a sustain damage passive attached to spells. No spells, no damage - this WOULD be fine, but as we shall see, there are problems that prevent this from truly being the case.

Brand's current weaknesses:

1. He's immobile. Like Kog, catch him out of position and he's either dead or chunked and down summoners, almost without exception. Again, this is fair and for a late game threat to an entire team, makes sense.
2. He has a hard time not pushing lane - this isn't a bad thing as it balances out how much of a lane bully he can be. Since everything but Q and E (unless cast on blazed opponents) has aoe, Brand has to balance NOT pushing the hell out of his lane or spending mana trying to bounce it. Especially for newbies, this is good - you have to learn to paste yourself and not cast spells willy-nilly.
3. His Ulti is unpredictable and unreliable. Honestly, I go back and forth on this one. On the one hand, thematically it makes some sense - fire is unpredictable - on the other, how much can you balance a kit around something that depends more on luck than choice?

You can make the case based off of these points that Brand is pretty-well balanced, and you're not all wrong. Brand tends to sit just above a 50% win rate, and I believe that's because a good Brand can really punish opponents for getting out of position - which is of course why he doesn't do nearly as well in higher elos, where lower ping/better knowledge/faster reactions gimp his damage output significantly.

All of this would be fine, but then we get to BIGGEST problem with Brand which goes beyond a simple in-game weakness: He is OLD. His animations each have a fairly significant cast animation - that's a HUGE problem late game for a combo mage. It's fine that he can get dove by a Xin Zhao and murdered quickly, that's pretty much how these two champs are supposed to interact. It's not okay that despite having the time to cast Brand's spells to get cast within that narrow 2-second window of life, NONE of them go off because he's outdated.

I get it. He's not Zyra, who made him more than obsolete the second she was released by doing Tons of Damage with Tons of Utility.....

But why not? Why not give Brand a real chance to shine but making his E something just flat out more interesting? Why not just give him a new R? Yeah we can live with the old one, but why? It's not like the R contributes much of anything to his combos - if anything, you have to figure out how to work AROUND the R when it bounces into Gromp instead and then fizzles.

I can't help but feel severely disappointed with how incredibly limited the rework of Brand actually is. Brand is advertised as one of the "Center Stage" Mages for the Mage update, and the only thing that REALLY changed about him is his passive... Which was already a solid part of his kit. You won't even notice the change before level 3, and then again it becomes situational. Brand is a fire spirit destined to DESTROY THE WORLD - so why not give him the chance to be a late game carry? If you're going to double down on his weaknesses and strengths - highly limited utility, mega damage - why not give him the chance to actually do that?

Fix the animations! And for Christ's sake, give him a more interesting e [zombie-brand-facepalm]

Sincerely, a Scrub.