ICC 25 LagModes

[Mookey]

Since my guild successfully defeated most of the LagModes yesterday I'm gonna make quick guides on unique abilities of certain bosses.

Lord MarowLag:
Your tanks now take 3 ticks of coldfire damage because from time when it's casted until they are able to move there is 3 seconds of spare time

Lady Lagwhisper:
You cannot move her because most of the time interrupts are happening in last split millisecond before she ends her cast. She gains blink, porting randomly between melee camp and your tank who tries to kite. Don't even try to avoid vile spirits, they have granted damage, spread to avoid part of it. DnD have granted 3 ticks of damage, so spread even more.

Lagship Encounter:
Opposing Boss gains 2 stacks of battle fury because lag is so huge that you don't see one that happened in between. Your jump have delay of several seconds so plan in advance your jump. Your cannons can fire only two three times between deep freezes. Pick pala or dk offtank because without dnd or consecration don't count on picking adds on home ship.

Lagbringer Saurfang:
Each of his abbilities grants double BP due lag.

Festerlag:
Pray to be close on spores on spawning, because it's very hard to reposition people with debuff.

Lagface:
Big Ooze have blink, teleporting to various possitions around the room. Spread arround boss because Slime Stream cannot be avoided.

All in all, proactive spam healing is recomended.

* * *

Sorry for this but last night raid really ruined all the fun I have in this game. I had several advanced raiders saying that they are very close for canceling subscription and not wasting time and money on pile of crap this game is atm. Poorly coded encounters, unbelievable amount of lag, fps drops... Really does Blizz care at all about technical side of the game? I mean fine - cataclysm and main team but still... 3 months of subscription is more money then selling new expansion, current players are valid customers same as future customers of Cataclysm will be, we are paying for this and this is how they return?

I have guild behind my back and really don't want to let them down, but this situations are really making extreme amount of stress for me and other officers because you have to step down for some encounters just because they are unplayable.

Sorry for this, I just had to vent somewhere... I hope this can make sign for blizzard to improve something.

[Malefik]

With you all the way mate, and it's to the point now where lag is so bad during normal raiding hours, that we are effectively resigned to the fact that we have to effectively 23 man most encounters. The nights where the planets align and everyone remains online, is where we actually get to try progression. My lag was 2800ms the other night, with tunneling. The average in the guild seemed to be 1200-3500ms. We did the first wing and called it a night.

We have been stuck on Rotface for 3-4 weeks now due to lag, and it's getting to the point where guild members are quitting in frustration. I would hazard a guess and say that the only guilds progressing in any way at the moment are either 1. raiding at non-peak times (early morning, very late at night) or 2. so overgeared that they can brute force through lag.

As for FPS drops, a few months ago, I would pull 90-120fps with everything turned up max, and about 50fps in raids. Now? 18fps in raids if I am lucky. I even started levelling an alt in barren areas like Ghostlands my FPS was shuffling from 25-50fps. I have changed nothing on my Quad core CPU, 4Gb of RAM or 1Gb Video Card.

Seriously they just don't give a damn anymore. I saw a guy in Orgrimmar with the name 'Kuntim' and another one called 'Farkenmole'. I reported both (even I have a limit of what's tasteful) and got a Blizz response back saying 'we find nothing offensive about the names in question.' WTF?

[Shortypop]

I think we all have days when we feel like this and then we have days when we take is as a challenge, our latest challenge has actually been launching raid instances and loot lag. We've had severe lag (latency usually fine but still laggy) in the lower citadel too - taken to 3 tanking gunship, got up to 9 marks on DBS and interupting on DW is not fun, but it usually settles down by the time we hit Plague wing - whether thats because of time or just that it's less laggy I'm not sure.

There are some cases when lag=wipe (not being able to eat slimes on Putricide was my least favourite before the removal of limited attempts) but as our RL loves to say often lag just accentuates poor play and if it's consistent lag you can often work around it to some extent or another. What really helps is an officer or RL or tank with a positive attitude, if you let it get the best of 25people tempers are going to fray and explosions are going to happen also if it's really bad move on to a different boss who might be more friendly to lag issues and if it's not playable don't be afraid to call it all together it may be better for guild morale to spend a night at the pub or in front of TV than unplayable lag.

[vine]

The increasing server instability and lag has reinforced my love of raiding 10 man over 25. As others have said it's usually a 22-23 man raid anyway due to "changing tunnels brb" "restarting the router brb" "Yourhighestdps has gone offline". We finish our 25man, take a 15 minutes break, then start our core 10man. There as so many less variables to deal with, and outgearing the content means losing one dps to lag won't push the enrage timer.

Good times... >.<

[Akeber]

I play from east coast on a west coast server (Echo Isles on Seattle Data Center), and we havn't had any issues in raids. This time last year it was a different story, Naxx was unplayable with 1/4-1/3 the raid disconnecting the moment the encounter started, and not being able to log back in until combat ended, and it didn't matter what night or what time of night. We "raided" like that for two months.

Honestly, besides the massive lag in Dalaran at peak times (using mailboxes, vendors, bank, etc.), raid lag hasn't been an issue outside of the odd night after a minor patch or maintenance. What datacenters are your realms located on?

[Frah]

Yes for us it is almost unplayable on wed thurs sun and half of monday last week and the week before was wed thurs sun.

I find it highly annoying when I read things like a new patch coming out the webservers being upgraded and some rubbish auction house via web browser when the servers are so shot. Gameplay as in the ability to play the game shoul dbe more important than the amount of content they spew out.

Here is a tip though which we discovered in Naxx. Dont raid with 25. Seriously try it. Back in Naxx we were lagging and wiping due to lag on loatheb and I can not remember why but I decided to leave 5 people outside the room doing nothing at all. The next try with 20 people in the fight was totally lag free. Strange and not unique we actually from then on would raid some bosses with less than 25. We did this again this week in ICC clearing all the farm bosses with 23 instead of 25 with greatly reduced lag.

[Fledern]

The amount of random disconnects have gone up considerably since the launch of ICC. Even people of known very good connections get massive lagspikes and random disconnects.

Apart from the general on/off lag, our biggest problem is Gunship. It ALWAYS, 100% lags like mad once the encounter starts. FPS drops down to 1 or 2, latency reads fine but suddenly you're stuck on screen, all your buttons lighted up, nothing happens for 30-40 secs then you get a Benny Hill show going on. Once the homeship orcs die, the lag clears a little - which leads me to believe it's a coding error. We've managed to wipe only once due to lag but the encounter does take about twice the time it should normally take. (And nerf prot palas who can withstand 20 stacks of Saurfang)