I'm going to go with yes it can give you an advantage.
- When you have delay you always have delay vs anyone you spar
- When you don't have delay you get a more mixed bag in terms of other players connection
- When I was in Japan it only took me a few spars until I got the bait moves down. It was much much more easier for me to hit people and not get myself in trouble. For me more delay would make it even easier I just needed to be more patient then more consistency came.
- Gsing with delay playing defensive is pretty easy and running in and getting a quick hit almost feels like you have a delay barrier. The problem though some teams will just avoid you until the end.
- Going back to Japan to USA it took me a really long time to adjust back to no delay because a lot of those bait moves don't work and it's like resetting your brain.
And some other notes:
- If you have a lot of delay and terrible at spar you can win more vs someone who is terrible with no delay.
- For delay to give you advantage the person also needs to get used to the delay and bait moves. Reason why bait moves work so well is because it can throw off a sparrers muscle memory completely.
- Delay in spar in my opinion ruins sparring for new people trying to get into it.
- While sparring is competitive within the little group of sparrers, it would be 100x more competitive if the delay issue was ever fixed (or improved).
- The expectation going into spar for a new player vs what graal spar is completely contradicts the entire concept.
I've gotten used to sparring it for so many years so I don't mind it much but I do think about what if delay wasn't a thing in graal and how much more competitive sparring/pking would be in general for consistency purposes.
Overall it's the games fault, not the delayers so it's just whatever.
Just my opinion on the issue and not going to debate anyone about it.