Quote Originally Posted by Wintersandman View Post
You could argue the same on Benediction and Hallowed Ground.
It depends on their net code and how it deals with heals/buffs/damage and how it deals with range. Hallowed Ground might even be "favor the player" meaning any checks are done on their machine before applying the buff (opposed to asking the server first if it's okay to cast Hallowed Ground). That makes abilities like Hallowed Ground more responsive and easier to use. Many games like Overwatch treat different abilities with different rules in the net code specifically for that reason (such as Sombra's teleportation - too many players teleported but then died so now when activated it doesn't check with the server first so if the player who activated the teleport ability clearly saved themselves, then they live). I've never played Paladin so I don't know how responsive Hallowed Ground is, but abilities like that usually don't query out to the server before activating. This means a player delivers what would be a killing blow, but while that killing blow is taking it's precious tick time to reach the server and then to reach you, within that time you activated Hallowed Ground, you saved yourself from what should have been a death. Someone who uses the ability often might be able to say - are there times you trigger the ability (cooldown goes off) but you died anyway? Then it's asking the server first about damage before applying the buff.

With damage or healing I'm pretty sure both sides have to ask the server about the state of the player. There is no concept of one side being "favored". So they are at the mercy of whoever's action gets sent to the server first. I've definitely had times where I hit recuperate and the cooldown activated but I died. It's hard to tell if it's because of server lag or if I just took more damage than recuperate healed me for, but it's happened enough I think it's indicative that I was alive and cast recuperate on my screen, but when I told the server, an enemy had told it that it damaged me first, the server told me I was dead instead of giving me the heal. That's really about as even ground as you can have and while it sucks that it would look like I healed myself, the enemy acted first. It's quite fair except that my cooldown is taken, SE should fix that.

But with player position, it has to be "favor the shooter", because otherwise melee would be right on top of their target on their screen but frustratingly see "not in range". Deorbit is solely about the targets position, and that information takes longer to update on enemy machines than healing or buffs where both sides have to reconcile with the server first (or in some cases as mentioned something like Hallowed Ground might trigger before getting updates from the server). That means the enemy gets the absolute full benefit of every microsecond it takes to update the enemy that the players position was moved from Deorbit.

Again, I don't know their netcode, but I'm quite positive you can't say the same about Benediction or Hallowed Ground. Just based on my anecdotal experience as a Melee player not having issues landing attacks on targets that look to be in range on my screen, and with my deorbit targets taking hits from melee AFTER they've been pulled.