Quote Originally Posted by gopher65
I've personally tested this. You can too. It's very easy. Simply go out with a friend and find the nearest ice beetle. Both of you start casting at the same time. Now ask your friend what their log says. They will see themselves hitting it first. You will see yourself as hitting it first.
This is true, unfortunately; however if you compare logs with several other players in the same vicinity, and all those other logs show player B hitting the mob first then the odds are good that player B did engage first.

I'm not a pro on latency or how it works, but it seems reasonable that a 3rd (or 4th) player would be getting the same latency from player A and player B.

I will amend that all players would need to be in the proper range to get the combat spam from all participants, and I am not certain what the radius is.