What I've learned is if you're are still standing in the red target circle/cone/line when it starts fading away, you will ALWAYS get hit by the attack even if you're visually 30 miles away from it or even behind the mob. Most people expect the hit confirmation to happen AFTER this attack animation ends. How it works right now is game decides you're hit 2 or so seconds before the attack animation finishes.

Red target cone starts to fade > you run and you're visually behind the mob 20 or so meters away > 2 seconds later the dragon actually does fire breath attack after a big wind-up you still get hit.

This is even worse with abilities that don't have that red visual thing like those bosses with laser beams. You can't tell if the game already thinks you're already hit because you could be way outside of the beam on your screen but of course you're still hit. The mechanics of how it all works just makes the game feel unresponsive and laggy.