If I may ask, I was reading a riven complain thread where they were talking about animation cancelling, and how Kalista cannot cancel her auto attacks.
Why is this such a big deal (in regards to animation canceling)?
Why is it a big deal on Riven, or why is it a big deal that Kallista cannot?
It's a big deal for Riven because every single part of her kit can have animations cancelled. This leads to a huge skill gap between Riven players that can animation cancel, and Riven players that can't. If you can animation cancel well, then you can output a fuckton of damage in under a 1-2 seconds and people can't really deal with it other than by staying away (which is also hard because y'know 4 dashes + flash + two hard CC skills that aren't ults) It also makes Riven incredibly hard to balance. If you gut her damage output to make up for being able to animation cancel, then people who can't animation cancel are SOL. If you buff her intended play style for people that can't, then for people that can animation cancel she becomes broken like pot shops in Legend of Zelda. It's an unintended mechanic that Riot ended up allowing to stay, except, unlike Lee Sin ward hopping, it ended up creating a huge divide between the playerbase and making her nigh impossible to balance effectively. That's why some people in the community would rather see her massive animation cancel potential removed, and then have her stats buffed to compensate (once it's removed, suddenly she's as binary as Garen and much easier to balance around). To be honest, animation cancelling is a cheap exploit that has little to do with actual gameplay mechanics and a lot to do with how much Street Fighter you played in the arcades as a kid.
It's a big deal for Kallista because it forces her to commit to every single auto attack. You ever mess up and target the wrong person or start to auto a minion too soon? Everyone can cancel their auto by moving except for Kallista who might get fucked over from the mistake (missing CS, hopping towards impending doom, etc). It also means that she can't shave off the ending animation, that's purely aesthetic and can prevent you from being able to auto more). So if Kallista hops the wrong way, she has to finish hopping the wrong way before she can go anywhere else.
