I was messing around in the practice range and I noticed that after I melee’d or sprinted with Soldier 76 to cancel the reload animation, he would take longer to start shooting…
Before, this is how long it would take to start shooting again:
Now they are all 1.483 seconds… But why? It seems they removed it (or it’s a bug) in patch 1.51 or 1.50.
Unless Soldier specifically was bugged without my knowing, it’s been that way for years. Characters who have early load points in their reload animations can use abilities/melee and still get their ammo, but they’re not allowed to fire their weapons until the reload time would have finished normally.
The delay is most noticeable on Sombra, since she can finish her animation cancel within about half a second by tapping Hack, but she can’t shoot until long afterward if she does that.
If it was a bug, they let it go on for a really long time. The reload animation cancel has been consistent for quite a while, and I was using it recently.
In patch 1.34.0.1.55918 (March 19, 2019):
Soldier 76 got a slight buff where the delay before you can fire the weapon after using Sprint was reduced from .500 to .300 seconds
This allowed Soldier to start shooting even sooner if he sprinted instead of melee’d. Currently, the delay is still .300 seconds after sprint but reload animation cancel has been removed (very recently), making it completely pointless.
And as a fun fact: it takes Sombra 1.383 seconds to start shooting again after reloading.
Yeah, Sombra’s reload is 1.4 seconds (in-game tests are generally off by one tick, or ~.017 seconds), regardless of animation canceling, despite the 1.5 seconds shown on the Wikia site that most people use. I did some tests on her timings around a year ago to demonstrate how she can use any ability or melee “for free” while reloading without affecting her weapon fire—including Hack, after the update that enabled her to animation-cancel with it.