For your first question, I'm not sure. I *think* the Lava Elemental's attack behaves like a Revenant's attack. Generally speaking, blast attacks can be difficult to evade. That actually brings me to the second question.
That's kinda stupid - Without MFa, how are you going to be dodging a homing attack with a *2* square radius? That's assuming that you can sidestep the blast from a revenant attack - I believe that the rocket explodes on the same turn it's fired, meaning that even with baseline movespeed you won't be able to "dodge" it.
I don't even know. ;_;
In short: it's all about
speed. In a-bit-longer-but-actually-more-to-the-point: Arch-Viles (and Revenants, on a related note) are not technically affected by dodging. Yes, Fireangel will let you laugh off their attacks, but that's kind of a special case. (I'm working off of memory for this next bit not having played DoomRL for a bit, but I'm pretty sure I've got this right)- Arch-Viles will target a particular tile when they initiate their attack. They need about two turns their time to complete their attack, and having 130% speed, or about 4 actions for every 3 of yours, they are very good at firing their attack with you still in range. The only way to properly avoid an Arch-Vile's attack is to have a high enough movespeed to move two tiles from the targeted tile before the Arch-Vile can finish charging. I don't know what the exact minimum speed value is, but you need to be pretty quick to pull this off.
To crib from your own diagrams, this is sorta how it should look:
"The Archvile raises his arms!" The tile you are standing on is now targeted.
V.....@...#
You move one tile to the right before the Arch-Vile can finish charging. He hasn't reacted yet.
V.....X@..#
You move one more tile to the right and just barely clear the blast area as the Arch-Vile gets his second move.
V....*X*@.#
Hope this helps!
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So it is actually a speed issue. Okay, thanks, I must have been imagining it.