When fighting enemies it’s quite frustrating the need to anticipate their attacks because the damage is dealt before the animation.
My experience is that waiting for the attack animation makes it impossible to dodge the damage, while dodging before the animation is complete, is most of the times useless because the enemies will simply change their direction in a flash to follow wherever you dodged.
Damage areas are also bigger than the animation, which leads to having to leave extra space between you and the enemy.