Guild Wars 2

playing from australia the lowest i probably get is around 220+ms.

anyone enjoying playing Ele with 200ms+ ping— i dont : (
when i see videos of people playing with low ping i realise how much more difficult it is to hit with anything with and extra 200+ms delay. I mainly play WorldvsLag which exacerbates the problem.

No. Not in tournaments. Not at competitive levels, where you have to have 150ms or less.

Sorry, to avoid forum ban I also have to put this absolutely useless line of text to make the post long enough.

I’ll never get lower than 220ms playing from South Africa to Europe, that’s just the reality.

I’ve given up on landing Burning Speed on a regular basis, not even going to get into landing many of my staff skills in WvW. I guess latency wasn’t something Anet thought about when they coded our skill lengths and speeds.

Nothing pisses me off more than chasing after an Invader who is in range and all my fireballs miss while my CC recharges. I feel your pain bro.

how to check the ping?

I am from brazil, so im guessing i have near 200-250

Going on my average from things like Lotro, TSW and D3 – 220ms I would say is average, never had ping below 200 in any MMO.

I’d love to be able to see latency in game though.

I have around 120ms input lag on my 50" TV and I cant play on it with Ele. Its just not possible.

You have also to take into account how many spells have roundtrip: first you issue the spell, then the server acknowledges, then you receive the desired buff / RTL / whatever.

So, any lag you have is effectively doubled because the “messages” between you and the server have to also come back to your client.

Now, while some stuff like RTL does not suffer so much (it gets executed server side even if you still don’t see it done on your client), other things like shields, stuns etc. you rely on your eyes to see if it’s up or not, and those are not visually updated till your client receives the acknowledge from the server. So, it’s true that your effect is already working but you don’t see it and you may needlessy wait since you don’t see anything still happening on your side.

I play my elementalist with a 300-400 ping, because I tether from my phone. I can do PvE fine, but dodging is difficult. I’ve actually played with a far worse ping (around 850 or so) and I can say that it becomes very difficult to not die. I really hate my internet options.

How do you guys play anything with that sort of ping? I mean everything is delayed by a few seconds, how do you even move?

OP, I’m from Oz too and also play an elementalist. I can’t say I’ve noticed this game being any worse than any other MMO I’ve played before when it comes to fighting the ping that we get here. I think if you’ve done alright in other games, you’ll do fine in this one too.

@ Leiloni, the delay is nothing like you suggest. The difference is fractions of a second.. not “a few seconds”. It is like the difference in twitch skills between a 15 year old and a 40 year old. Whilst combat is more active than other MMO’s, it is not like it is as twitchy as some FPS.

Alostrael.5734:

@ Leiloni, the delay is nothing like you suggest. The difference is fractions of a second.. not “a few seconds”. It is like the difference in twitch skills between a 15 year old and a 40 year old. Whilst combat is more active than other MMO’s, it is not like it is as twitchy as some FPS.

The difference is that other MMOs have global cooldown to partially counter lag. Nobody can spam skills quicker than that global cooldown and the cooldown is usually at least one second long.
GW2 has not it, so a guy playing on a fast connection will outpace who is on a slow one.

Vaerah.4907:

GW2 has not it, so a guy playing on a fast connection will outpace who is on a slow one.

I won’t argue that a fast connection can lead to someone being able to outpace a person on a slower one. That is a fact. I would argue however that the difference is minimal (in general) and is nowhere near the problem that some people would suggest.

If my ping goes up I notice it, in this game as well as others. It’s painfully slow when you’re used to 50-120 ping average and you do notice your response times are slowed down as is everything else you do. I suppose if that’s what you’re used to it’s probably just normal, though. But some games it is more noticeable than others - games like TERA and Aion it did make a big difference. I suppose a game like WoW it’s not so bad. Here, I’m not sure what effect it would have.

Alostrael

I won’t argue that a fast connection can lead to someone being able to outpace a person on a slower one. That is a fact. I would argue however that the difference is minimal (in general) and is nowhere near the problem that some people would suggest.

It’s easy to check. Go fight the training NPCs, expecially the thief (engie too can provide feedback). With low lag they die like… well… NPCs. Easy peasy.
With some lag (180ms) they suddenly become harder.
With >220ms RTL and the 3rd fire skill suddenly stop teleporting you to destination.
Worse, once you press the 5th skill it activates AFTER the mob has knocked you down / the engie has done his KD.
Even if it still fires in time, since RTL stopped halfway (and you get stuck) the NPC does not fall so he can keep pistoling about.

I’m currently playing in SEA and consistently play with around 300ms ping. While I enjoy playing my elementalist, and believe (or assume) that I’m doing pretty well, I think it’s more or less attributed to the fact that I’ve grown accustomed to the lag.

That being said, there are times I DO feel extremely handicapped. Aside from the usual RTL or Burning Speed>Fire Grab problems (which I’ve learnt to work around via playstyle), my biggest gripe is twitch reactions. Alostrael mentioned that GW2 is not as twitchy as some FPS, yes, but in terms of MMOs, I feel that twitch reactions are pretty clutch in GW2, especially when you’re playing a squishy class like thief or elementalist.

For example, in order to fully dodge an incoming Bull’s Charge>100b combo from a warrior, I effectively have to pre-empt the Bull’s Charge and dodge BEFORE he actually charges on my screen, if I try to react to it, I would be hit by the charge. Similarly, if I happen to get blindsided and eat a Bull’s Charge, I would immediately trigger Mist Form, but still eat at least 4 hits from 100b. Forget about trying to negate a hasted 100b without evading the root fully.

Sadly, laws of physics will never change and unless all of us move to Texas, we will never see improvements in our ping. I really do wish to know what playing with sub 100ms ping feels like though. I think I would feel like a god.