I plan my sites with all animations before building the actual thing. Then I make it work without JS (no animations, AJAX loading, etc.). In the end, I add all the JS which makes the page look good. Especially in the age of drive-by malware on websites and privacy-harming user tracking I know a lot of people who deactivate JS with browser plugins. If a site does not work without JS, they will not bother with it. I think, websites must work without JS, today and in the future as well.