Yeah i think combat speed wont be an issue at release. There are a lot of things (double-clicking for dash, clicking for sneak attack, separating jump from disengage so we dont use it every round - these already add a lot of time to combat) they can tweak so it doesnt take away time unnecesarily, regarding the long decisions of the enemy they are still constantly adding things for the AI to do it which means they have to alter the action priorization and behaviour setup eventually and usually thats only finished when they start to work on difficulty levels etc. (closer to release) i remember dos2 combat AI was much slower at the beginning of EA to decide what it will do and got faster for release. Im pretty satisfied with the speed of animations i have to say it will add a lot to the full picture. And i agree, for me: combat needs to be more interesting (less repetitive) but thee is a lot of feedback on that already. Regarding reactions I think some of them could be left automated but not the tricky ones, we will see which route they will go soon i guess.
