Guild Wars 2

Joining in here, a little late, but relevant. (I had a break from the game)

I have same issues as described in this thread.

It seems to happen only with a certain smoke layer effect from things like trebuchets (i.e. Gendarran fields centaur siege as mentioned earlier in the thread) where my game grinds to a halt with ~1 fps, and it is not a specific spot for me only.
Places like outside the garrison in Queensdale, where centaurs launch an attack and bombard the bridge with trebuchets, the same 1 fps thing happens. I have noticed it several other places as well, all with the same smoke cloud effect.

I can provide screenshots if needed, as it is easily reproducable

I stopped playing and took a break around when dragonbash finished – and game seemed to run fine on highest settings.
Now even on low-medium, the smoke clouds now makes my game grind to a halt until I either wait it out or try to turn camera view away from it (both not very handy during battle) and as soon as I am not directly looking at the smoke or it dissappears, the game runs normal again

PC specs if it matters: