Playing WOW at 350-400 ms and how it affects your gameplay.

[brian211]

Seeing that Icecrown is the most populated server of warmane, lag spikes and latency issues have been going around for awhile especially for those players outside Europe, hence not everyone enjoys the benefit of a 50-100 ms gaming, and now my question is?

Does latency play a big part in terms of raiding or PVP? whether you're a dps, tank or healer given that your average latency is somewhere around 350-450 ms which is my case since I play in southeast asia and no matter which ISP i use to play wow, this has been my standard latency for awhile. I heard players complain if they get around over 100 ms and how it affects their game play.

Question is: Is it possible to play a class on its optimum performance level with 350-450 latency from PVP to PVE?

[Aleastraszabcde]

At optimum performance with 400 ms latency?

Short answer : No.

Long answer : <400 ms delay> No.

[Pooppickle]

i live in the states with ~120ms even that feels limiting (often faking casts at the right time but getting interrupted anyway after ive stopped)
400 i wouldnt even play 2bh

[DarkenedHue]

I play from the same region as you and experience the same latency. I've been here for years now and have played pretty much every relevant spec in high-end PVE so I can shed some light on what it's like, in comparison to playing on servers where you have good latency (my frames of reference are the Oceanic servers US - Aman'thul and US - Frostmourne, where I experienced < 100ms).

PVP:
PVPing is extremely frustrating. The handicap you suffer is just enormous. Forget about playing any healers or MDPS. You can play most RDPS specs acceptably but you're still at a significant advantage playing against people who mostly have < 60 ms. I'm the type of player that likes screwing around in BGs when bored while waiting for a raid to happen, but PVP on here just stopped being fun for me as a result of the latency.

PVE:
You can get away with that kind of latency in PVE, for the most part. If you're the kind of player interested in min-maxing then the loss of DPS from the latency will still drive you up the wall a lot. As any caster DPS, you inevitably lose plenty of casts over the course of a fight because of your latency. You also have substantially less time to react to mechanics (especially things like Defile which are already annoyingly latency-sensitive). As a healer, you often get the information that a person's health has been lowered a good bit after it's already happened, and when you finally get to react to that with a heal, the server is again delayed in reading the message you send it. You're just inherently unable to play these classes at their full potential with latency like that.

In PVE, what you should note is that classes that are not GCD-locked are the least susceptible to having their DPS crippled by latency. For the most part, it's really just Feral Druids and Rogues that fit this description though, because of the way their energy resource works (a lot of time is spent idly "pooling" for energy, which makes high latency less punishing because you don't have to be constantly pressing buttons). However, these specs are kind of set back by being melee DPS. The disadvantage of melee DPS classes when you have high latency is that you end up having a terrible time whenever you attack any target that's moving, because their position in real-time is not what's reflected to you on your screen (another reason why it's a terrible idea to PVP as a melee DPS spec with that kind of latency). This is particularly annoying when boss movement happens, and you end up wasting a precious few seconds chasing after the boss unable to get any attacks off while your other raid members manage to attack it just fine. Feral Druids have it slightly easier because of the inherent +30% movement speed, and on occasion you're also able to use Sprint/Dash to prevent DPS loss from that.

[tobtej]

I feel your pain.. I've also been playing here for a while now. My constant Ms is around 350-450 around raid time (17 St) I can say for certain that you will have to time /precast and predict alot of spells.. especially in Icc and Ruby..it's definitely 'playable' but to maximize your class to its full potential it will be very hard if topping recount is your game. I for one have stopped try harding since it's basically impossible to fight for top spot in the Big Dick list. Having random spikes and unpredictable internet speed. Although I have cleared all raid contents , even A Tribute to Immortality.

Having that said anyone know which is better Pingzapper or Wtfast..I'm playing from SE Asia.

[Pooppickle]

using either pingzapper or wtfast is liable to get you banned; you don't know what other people have been doing on those IP's, tying them to your account is a very bad idea.

[Shred92]

Best thing you could do: research VPN/VPS providers to see which ones have the best routes to OVH Roubaix (I'd say most of them). That requires knowledge and also spending some money every month.

At those distances even the speed of light is a limiting factor (RTT from Thailand to Paris, for example, is over 60 ms) so don't expect any miracles.

[Pooppickle]

Best thing you could do: research VPN/VPS providers to see which ones have the best routes to OVH Roubaix (I'd say most of them). That requires knowledge and also spending some money every month.

At those distances even the speed of light is a limiting factor (RTT from Thailand to Paris, for example, is over 60 ms) so don't expect any miracles.

...and risk being banned if someone else ever used that ip previously to cheat.

[brightslumbag1]

I also feel the same frustration as the OP, one time I had to use a paid VPN service to reduce my latency, it gave me somewhat 30% improvement. I also heard people getting banned for using a VPN service due to what Poopsickle stated, but they made a ban appeal and was able to get their accounts back and active, I think it's about choosing the right VPN, I recommend choosing paid VPN service because scammers and cheaters don't usually resolve to paid services but rather they lurk around the free ones.

[morfagor]

Stay away from PVP, and don't even try to play warrior.

[MaXiMuS54]

RDPS is basically only thing you could play over 300ms in PvP. Otherwise as melee you'll be out of range frequently and as a healer youll be interrupted all the time. PvE should be viable, though I wouldn't play a healer.

[Thraxox]

I've been playing at 270-400+ MS the entire time playing here. 270 feels like heaven for me and 400+MS can still be playable for me but if it goes beyond 600 I stop mid raid.

[Disktrasa]

Your guys dedication is heart warming (sais guy on 40 ms).

[Djole89]

For competitive gameplay, anything above 40 ms is too much. You can even see and feel the difference in arenas for example between 10 ms and 40 ms, but that much hardcore is not present nowadays (only abusers). Anyway, for shooter games in PvP you'd want anything below 20 ms, and for Wow it's good if you're below/at 50 ms. After that, around 70 ms, it's turning to casual from competitive play. Still playable, yet you can only forget about performance and try to enjoy the game. This goes up to 100-120 ms max, after which is, and should be for everyone, pretty much unplayable. The rest is just the amount of your tolerance.
Me for example, if I don't see my text sent soon enough, my anger starts to compress and I tend to cancel that kind of activity for good.

Edit: This kind of a problem is determining what your play should be. If it lags - go farm something, or even try some old dungeons, RHC, whatnot.

[kamalsran]

I played from India from 2011 to 2017 . I paid subscription for wtfast for most of the time i played from India. For me it was difference between having 350 ms and having 200 ms. It was huge.