This damage-on-keystroke was discussed earlier and i'll give my perspective. While the instant damage on our end of project sounds great, the fact is if on the receiving end of it, immersion is lost. The same would be said for pve. numbers popping up before the rock takes off loses immersion. If you want instant damage then they need to change the move completely so it would support this.
The "lag" I speak of is kind of hard to explain, so I'm gonna try play-by-play to explain:
When you hit a "pause" lag, everything stops on the screen. However, there are things still happening "real-time." To bring you back "up-to-speed" the graphics sort of "fast-forward" all the events that happened while stuck on pause.
One day, as I hit project, I got the "pause" lag. The "fast-forward" didn't show a lift-hold-then-throw animation, but a sort of straight-shot directly from the ground vice the lifting then throwing. I thought it looked better.
Way I see it, this can make a faster Project and at the same time give the player the character immersion that was lost. Well thats my take on it anyway.