The delay on countering defensive abilities is terrible

[Michieltjuhh]

This is probably directly related to the godawful latency in arena, but I've noticed this too often.

I play BM, Assassin and recently rerolled the broken Summoner, and on all three of them I've noticed that more often than not I can't properly break a defensive skill. On my BM, if I use Boot on someone defending it will half of the time knock them down anyway (talent included, ofcourse). This is however obviously a latency issue, since boot is available regardless of them defending. On a sidenote, I've also noticed people breaking my block after I stopped blocking already. Summoners suddenly Entangling me while I'm already moving again, for example.

However, on Assassin and especially Summoner, I noticed that it on a good day takes ATLEAST 0.5 seconds before Guard Break or Entangle show up on RMB. I've procced countless of defensive abilities (Decoy, Seed Shroud, Counter, not breaking a Block or Destroyer shield) with Heart Stab and Sunflower which to my knowledge shouldn't even be available against defending opponents unless I somehow fire off my Sunflower in a direction that hits the opponent but doesn't have them targeted. Doubt that happens 100% of the time, though, and still doesn't excuse the Heart Stab scenario.

It's one thing to have latency be insanely high in arena because the servers are on Antartica. It's another that the game doesn't even properly work.

[Michieltjuhh]

Update: Today on my Assassin I successfully countered a Summoner with Decoy. Half a second later, he hit me out of stealth with Entangle.

Entangle, a targeted RMB ability that is ment to counter defensive skills and shouldn't be available unless the opponent is actively defending, was used on me while I was supposedly untargetable in stealth after he had already hit my Decoy with a different ability (either cat or LMB, I don't remember).

What a rubbishly optimized game.

[LagIncarnate]

The reason is mostly due to the latency, and the horrible amount of purely server reliant coding that was done in this game. B&S was pretty much designed around every single player playing on 0 ping. Aka it's basically a game that should have been designed with client-sided commands in mind, but was inexplicably reversed and is completely reliant on the server to issue each and every command.

 

In order to cast a guard-break you have to wait for the data from the server that tells your client that you're standing within range of a target that's guarding, meaning until you get that data you can't cast a guard-break on the target.

 

In regards to your other problem, you can similarly use guard breaks until the server tells the game client that you're no longer in ranged of a target that's guarding. Meaning your guard break can be cast, can hit the target, and can even apply status effects despite the guard having ended.

 

The most annoying thing about that second issue is that it breaks one of the games other rules, that you can't cause an effect while the opponent doesn't have the required effect. E.g. Even if you cast a knock-up on a target while they're stunned, if the stun wears off before the skill casts, the target wont be knocked airborne. This is because it does the attack, the attack performs a status check, the status check fails (target = not stunned), target is not affected by the skill effect because status check failed.

But guard-breaks don't follow the same rule, because guards are considered an action and not a status. Meaning that you perform the attack, but the attack doesn't perform a status check, so whether or not the target is guarding or not, the target is affected by the skill.

 

Last point is that latency can cause enemies to hit you in stealth. If you have say, a 0.5 second delay, you can stealth, and the enemy can still attack for 0.5 seconds, if one of their attacks within that 0.5 seconds hits you through the stealth evasion boost, it breaks stealth.