*Goldilocks and the three bars
haha
I still think that the main advantage of lagging isn't that it's harder for your opponent to hit you than it is for you to hit them.
If one side of a melee fight is lagging, both parties will see the movements of the other party delayed, including the knockback after hits.
Depending on the connection, teleporting will also happen, probably in pretty much the same way for both players.
The real advantage of lagging is that you know about the delayed movements before the fight and you get much more practice at it.
Some players are extremely good at hitting in the right rythm in low delay fights but if something changes like speed effect, delayed knockback, that rythm doesn't work anymore. Because of the random teleporting, it's more important to react quickly and possibly hit out of rythm if you get a chance to which you can improve by playing with lag a lot.
I personally play quite a lot on a canadian server, where I have a ping of about 110 to 120ms, so I got pretty good at the timing for that delay, so for me that would probably be the best ping. Someone that is used to 180 or 240ms might do very well with that. At some point the lag becomes a definitice disadvantage in melee combat because your hits start not to register. At that point you can only hope that your opponent is too surprised and can't adapt to the lag.
In games that are any good you aren't limited to swords and axes but also have things like bows, shields, water and lava.
With bows, lagging is a huge disadvantage. The arrow hit is determined by the server, so it doesn't matter if you see it hit or not. In a bow fight you can only hope that your opponent had never fought someone lagging before and is surprised by your sudden movement.
Shields are interesting, because the delayed knockback makes it possible to block your opponents hit and then hit them yourself. Using them precisely can be hard, but again you can practice using them with lag and get very good at it.
When playing with water and lava the lag is pretty much only a disadvantage, except for maybe some element of surprise by sudden teleporting.
TLDR: The lag can change the game, but you still need to get good at the changed game.
how to manipulate it properly
You can use
clumsy on windows or
netem on linux to add additional delay and dropped packets to your network. That is allowed on cubecraft btw.
