Return of Reckoning

So I just got killed by a sorc, nothing unusual there but they had Gloomburst, Arctic Blast, and Hand of Ruin all tic in the same timestamp.
I am in the US so I know my ping is not great and at that time it was around 160 and the game was running fine for me.
Gloomburst is a 1sec cast and Arctic Blast is a 2sec cast while Hand of Ruin is instant and at least when I play sorc part of the rotation is to cast Arctic Blast into Gloomburst and they will land close to but not on the same timestamp, not to mention a Hand of Ruin tic as well.
Somebody mentioned a ping reducer or VPN to try to get slightly better latency does that actually work for any of us NA folks? is that what really happened here?

https://imgur.com/szv1X5S

projectile skills have flight time.
he casted Arctic Blast first, projectile.
Gloomburst next, no projectile, hit on end of casting.
so both hit same time.
while he cast Gloomburst 1sec, GCD left 0.5
then Hand of Ruin, first tick hit insta.
timestamp don't show milliseconds, that 0.5
0.5 could be your ping stealing reaction time.
yea ping sux.

others say VPN helps but in my case it didn't.
it was faster but also getting lag freeze randomly.