From the creator himself:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w01Cj6402eM
What is Khonsu? By some accounts, a folly… a type of ornamental tower. A breaking up of the landscape, something to draw the eye to look up. Khonsu was an experiment in additive world design, creating distinctly ‘new areas of interest’ within the existing known map. Season of Mastery and Season of Discovery shared the same map and code as Classic Era. As a result, adding something ‘new’ to the map is all conditionally spawned to only occur on the seasonal rulesets (realms). These ‘limited’ spawns are not ‘owned’ by the map, and are not built into the terrain/landscape. Examples of these temporarily spawned objects would be the phylactery Araj the Summoner drops on death, and the original version of the Pet Stone. Longer lasting versions would be the holiday tables, kegs, etc that appear in the world. Objects with collision created in this way do not have the same properties as the objects would have if they were owned and baked in with the map terrain - such as pathing data. Creatures cannot path on top of or through these spawned objects. As Khonsu’s spaceship-tower was entirely composed of these spawned objects, permitting combat there required special care. Khonsu nor the Astral Wraiths are able to move, so we avoid that limitation entirely. They’re all technically flying creatures. Unfortunately these workarounds cannot make up for player summoned pets (or Frozen Orb) and their natural tendencies, which is why Khonsu tells players that familiars aren’t going to assist them in the duel.
Typically, World of Warcraft creatures using ‘avoidable’ long choreographed spells with cast times accomplish this by spawning invisible creatures they channel their attack towards, to guarantee their pre-channel, cast, and impact zone all line up. Khonsu’s design involved building a way to lock the attack direction without relying on invisible creatures. Like anything new, there were some rough edges that still needed to be smoothed out.
The fastest way to move from point A to point B is with a straight line. All video game netcode has a set update frequency. World of Warcraft movement updates are no different. Movement in a line only periodically refreshes your location. Every time you stop and start, you send character position updates. Every direction change (adding in strafes, or turning with your mouse) keys in a movement update, at a much faster frequency than simply moving nonstop, one direction, alone. You can visualize this with the aura applied when zoning in or dying. By moving in a straight line, even when movement speed increases, my position does not update more rapidly. I’m bound by ping refresh rate for my sole direction input. We can force updates by adding movement on demand, visualized here. Moving in a mostly straight line but adding ‘micro strafes’, nearly imperceptible to the eye or another observer, will significantly improve your positioning responsiveness. All of World of Warcraft works this way, as do most online games in general. This has always been the reason players have died to Mythic mechanics or void zones they clearly moved out of in time. “Look where my body is!”
Khonsu’s attack timings were intentionally tightened up, with a compact playspace, to stress and create this exact interaction. Players would curse at “bugs”, clearly being outside of the attack area on their screen, and still dying. The sequence of abilities is deliberately inconsistent, especially after the first full cycle. This is what keeps you on your toes after ‘mastering’ the fight and knowing how to handle each individual attack - anticipating the combo in any order. Khonsu was playtested over and over again internally to get the timings right, perfectly uncomfortable, to encourage anyone going for the long haul to eventually discover the more agile and reliable ways to position their character.
Once players discover how to reliably elude, and the advantages strafing, jigling, or stutter stepping give, they can apply this to all parts of the game. They might even teach their friends what they learned! Additional examples of this behavior in action: when running with a pack of mobs chasing you, sometimes when you abruptly stop, the creatures overshoot your position by several yards and keep moving behind you, in the same direction you were traveling. At the same time, when you are tanking multiple mobs, slowly backpedalling and stutter-stepping is the most reliable way to reposition mobs safely so they don’t overadjust and risk getting behind you. These are commonly experienced cases showing ways movement update frequency and creature predictive pursuit pathing interact (so when creatures chase players in regular combat they aren’t perpetually out of range of the player due to feedback lag!)