Ive always said the animation speeds are very outdated on a game where player speed has been improved dramatically over the years. Even the warlock blink takes forever to blink a player to the other side, animations needs to be sped up but obviously not too much. At the very least the warlock should be able to strafe or move while in the middle of the casting animation.

I think rifts and barricades should be instant like theyve done with ward of dawn

In PvE I've always found it one of the most useless abilities. When you need healing, sufficient to use up that ability, it's more often than not a death sentence to cast. To get out of harm's way first, as you're meant to, then speed up your recovery is just useless. You don't even need healing when you're safe, especially with high Recovery. PvP would need balancing but the rift has never been right.

Idiots put ‘QoL’ on everything they want different in the game now. It wouldn’t be a quality of life change because they’re already good. And it doesn’t need the change, just learn when and where you should be placing the rift and it’s fine as is.

The only thing that is risky about shortening the speeds is how it would affect the PVP meta. Both warlock rifts and titan barricades, when paired with void, are responsible for turning the tables in fights due to how hard you are to kill. If you were to make it instant, or close to, you would have people throwing their abilities down the instant they start getting shot. Since they do have significant animation times, there is a bit of skill needed when placing them (when and where) that, in my opinion, adds to the competitiveness of PVP. In PVE however, I could see the benefit of this. Right now PVP is just chumps spamming abilities, knowing the community, if you shortened the animation times, people would "run-and-gun" just placing them around.

Oh, so you can sit in that stag rift, one-shotting ppl with le monarque, quicker? Nah.