[2021] [deleted by user]

So I was doing some input lag testing of League with various actions. This was done on 240Hz FreeSync monitor, mouse with 9ms input lag, and the in-game framerate capped at 144fps (this is how the game is played professionally; higher framerate leads to odd stuttery/laggy behavior with movement and pathing). I was testing movement, abilities, how different settings affect input lag, etc.

One thing that I really wanted to test was smite timing. As this is something that is purely reaction and timing, and can absolutely win or lose games purely based off being able to smite on time.

So I fired up Practice Tool and tested smiting drag repeatedly to see the input lag specifically when using smite to secure an objective. Unfortunately, there is a really massive issue I discovered.

In most instances, there was a delay of around 60-80ms when the damage number appears, and then the damage would not actually apply to the drag's health number and health bar until around 60-100ms later. This is pretty bad in its own right, as this is a very large amount of variance in a summoner spell that is meant to be amount about strict timing and reaction. However, the biggest issue was that occasionally, the damage number would go through to the health number and health bar on the same frame that it appeared, while in other times, there would be significant delay before it appeared on health bar.

What this means is that even just in a few smites, the quickest time for smite damage to go to health bar was just 63ms, while the slowest was a whopping 171ms. This is nearly three times as long just from pure variance with how the game processes the smite.

Here you can see the fastest smite where the damage immediately goes to the health bar: https://streamable.com/dnup03 and the slowest smite where there is quite a delay before it goes to the health bar: https://streamable.com/whuc0i by comparison filmed in slow-motion at 240fps.

This is not from my mouse or my recording setup as those were very consistent for testing mouse movement clicks (and for many other games I've tested with the same setup).

I've also made a few other interesting finds, but I still need to go over some more samples and will probably post that later.

(Also the reason I have smite binded to mouse is purely for testing purposes lol)