by roanispe Fri May 17, 2013 6:01 am
Generally speaking, what happens with magic is that when an opponent casts a spell is that the game makes two copies: a real, damaging one on their screen and fake, visual one on yours. This is mostly true for essentially all PvP interactions, including weapon swings, but in that case it is actually possible to interact with the visual copy of the opponent for purposes of hit detection. You can actually interact with these projectiles by use of Force and Wrath of the Gods but both of those are incredibly unwieldy, and the precise nature of making a rebound hasn't been well documented, if at all, to my awareness.
In a latency free environment, there would be no issue. However, for better or for worse, lag messes around with the effect to potentially unreasonable limits. In almost all cases, the actual movement of the wand happens on your screen before the spell counts as hitting. This gives you chance to time a dodge to the spell, instead of relying on luck. In the case of absurd latency, the hit can be registered before the instruction of the animation is received. However, it's essentially impossible to have such issues if the opponent's internet speed is above a certain amount since there can only be so much latency between different spots in the world. To reach that level, it is requisite to have an awful connection or a lag switch.
For most spells, casting before the opponent enters the world doesn't mean much since either the effect generates an aura, like with buffs, or simply dissipates in less time than invulnerability of entering a world gives. However, it interacts rather strangely with Homing Soulmass family of spells. They have a lengthy time before they disappear, and don't generate an aura like others that do. If done correctly before the opponent starts to enter the world, it will be totally invisible to you and you will have no visual cues to work off of. It's also not a hopeless situation you are dealing with either, since for most opponents you can trigger the effect and dodge it anyways if you suspect this sort of play-- they are so simple to dodge that you really don't even need visual cues to do so. Admittedly Pursuers is more difficult to deal with, but it's honestly not that hard once you get the hang of it.
Homing Soulmass spells can also take advantage of the dual copy system combined with latency to make the visual copy actually fire on the one screen, but remained unlaunched on the real one. Generally, locked-on movement with average latency cannot generate the circumstances for this to occur, but unlocked play allows players to take advantage of latency to create such a situation. One important thing is that Soulmass family spells take a brief fraction of a second before firing, and this is really the reason why it can occur even in average lag conditions. One way to make this happen is by careful rotation: you rotate in such manner that you suspect the time spend facing them is large enough for the mass to fire on their screen. This happens because where they are on your screen, and where you are on theirs is different. Under most conditions, you will lose one or two orbs. However, the opponent is stripped of an oft used assurance they dodged correctly by no longer having visual cues to dodge off of. They then have to dodge by waiting for a situation they are sure to fire in, and dodge of that by trying to rely on the movements of their opponent. Under natural conditions, it still possible to reliably dodge but, requires defensive movement.
