The Feel of Combat

Note: I know this will be improved, but it'd be nice to talk about how people would like to see it improved.

These are the Quality of Life issues I am currently seeing:

Ability Use Isn't Obvious
We highlight glyphs above people's heads, but that's it. On top of that, most attacks are instant making the animations feel disjointed.
The glyph above the head could be more obviously colour coded based on the type of the ability. They could also either be designed to work in 3D space or at least face the camera so you can always see them.

Auto-Facing
As an option, this would benefit melee. Probably unavailable or limited in PvP, but it adds a lot aesthetically in PvE. Within a certain angle of your target your abilities should adjust where you're facing, possibly re-aligning the camera subtly too. This keeps your characters movement more accurate in relation to the enemy (moving forward goes towards them, back, away, etc) and also helps combat animations look more natural as they'll be hitting closer to their target.

Animations/Sound/Text
This could do with some early experimentation now, possibly in blades. Animations just don't feel visceral or accurate. You character swings, somewhere in there you deal damage and the enemy makes a noise, but it doesn't feel right.
If you watch something like Guild Wars 2, they have smooth attack animations that apply the damage at the appropriate time with a clear sound and obvious damage (big and white text, nicely stylised, appears at the correct time, updates on new damage.
By updates, I mean, for instance, if we used Rend, the damage would appear when the bleed occurs (probably with a sound) and for each tick of bleed, the number shown would increase and the duration the text would be visible would refresh. Not only is this a nice visual, it lowers the amount numbers on screen. In Guild Wars they even have icons for status effects next to the number and critical hits have a red "explosion" image behind the number rather than a colour change. Numbers are also bigger based on the damage dealt, this would make your abilities stand out (assuming abilities end up doing more than basic attacks).
Basic attacks could also stack their numbers (or any quick succession of attacks of the same type). This would show accumulated damage from creatures such as wolves instead of a long stream of small numbers as they attack every quarter of a second.
There are also strike graphics. Sparks, blood splatter, etc that could really help improve combat readability.


All I can think of right now. Please add your own ideas for how combat would be more fluid. I know movement while attacking in combat feel awful atm for a start (And movement is actually penalized?).