Either make dodging AoEs possible, or make them not instant-kills

[Pinch]

Or they could just do the job right and make it so that player hit confirmation is handled clientside. Yes, that makes it easier to hack. That is why we are supposed to have GMs.

Do it right? No MMO's give the client control like that.

What FFXIV needs is proper collision prediction on their AoE's. I'm fairly certain that their AoE collision is just a simple check that does not compensate for latency at all, which would explain getting hit by stuff that you clearly seem to be out of.

A collision prediction system that would compensate for latency would work like this:
- AoE spell finishes, create a list of players it would hit.
- Calculate each player's predicted position (i.e. where they will probably be on their screen) when taking latency in to account, which would be: (current position) + (velocity) * (latency)
- If the predicted position is outside of the AoE, do nothing, otherwise, hit them.

Since players are generally going to move in a straight line to get out of AoE, a simple prediction like that is very safe. For extra security, the server could check where the client was when the AoE went off on their screen, and hit them if they were still in it.