The following css code works for me to delay the appearance of the tooltip:

.k-tooltip {
  animation: 800ms reveal;
  animation-fill-mode: forwards;
  visibility: hidden;
}

@keyframes reveal {
  99% {
    visibility: hidden;
  }

  100% {
    visibility: visible;
  }
}

My use case is for hover and it works nicely for that.  However, it also triggers for a 'click-based' tooltip and this effect is probably not desired for a click tooltip.  I'm not using any click tooltips, so this is fine for me.

Also, this trick doesn't have any impact on the 'hide' delay - again, I don't need a 'hide' delay.

 

If your needs are similar, this might buy some time before the feature request is implemented.

I'd also like to be able to programmatically close all tooltips if you decide to work on this one.  If you use tooltips for buttons in a grid they seem to stick because I assume they don't receive a mouse out event.  If I were able to just close all tooltips that would resolve the problem for me.

If adding a close event might as well also add a programmatic way to open a tooltip as well even though I don't necessarily have a use case for that right now.

Any news about this request? 
This functionality would be useful in order to not immediately close the tooltip and thus be able to interact with the tooltip content (for example, a link or button). Currently, when OnShow = Hover, the tooltip closes instantly and does not allow any interaction with its content.
Regards.

^^ Yes.

So ShowDelay and HideDelay properties (similar to animation container).