SE_James, I would like to say it's less of an issue with the server, and more an issue with the client. Someone posted a vid awhile back showing that the client doesn't update the server often enough on position changes. The inability to avoid attacks is not only evident on the Ifrit fight, but in ALL types of fights where you try to side step an attack to dodge something.

The vid I saw was someone who was playing FFXIV on two separate computers. He had one character continuously run around the other in a circle. The character that was circling saw obviously a smooth run around the one being circled. However, the character being circled saw the character pretty much start/stopping at certain points of the circle - almost creating a square shape sort of run.

The person in question concluded that the client/server architecture simply isn't updating each other often enough with position updates. What we see is NOT what we get. This is pretty evident when you get hit by knockback attacks. You can actually still do WSes (even though you're VISUALLY far away from the mob) for a good 3-5 seconds before the server realizes you're far away from the mob.

But yeah, I think it's something with your architecture that's causing this. All you really need to do is make the client update the server more often on position updates so this doesn't happen. The reason why everyone is complaining about it on the Ifrit fight is because of how often it's done and how much it SUCKS if you can't dodge it. It's much more noticeable to try to dodge something like that and get hit by it than dodging a random leveling monster's weaponskill.