These days it's getting so bad and utterly frustrating that it makes me want to just give up on this class (if not this game). Casting Elemental Toxicity on any raid encounter that has more than 3 mobs will cause insane casting lag. Try casting it when you have 5+ mobs linked together, and I end up sitting on my hands, watching a screenshot of the game for 2-4 seconds. This is highly frustrating. Summoners are good at AE fights. Except that we can't use our biggest AE spell anymore on some of these fights. The issue seemed to have appeared somewhere between November 2010 (when I quit) and April 2011 (when I came back). I had zero lag issue with that spell before quitting. But when I came back, it was so bad that on some AE fights I couldn't cast that spell anymore (sometimes it would even make me or the other conjuror in our raid) go LD. Chatting with someone else on this issue, we came to the conclusion that this was 1) server-side lag, not client-side lag, 2) linked to the hate adjustment calculations. It seems that the hate adjustment component of ET might be responsible for the issue. True enough, disabling some other hate modifiers I had on me at least made me stop going LD during those large AE fights, but it was still lagging beyond belief. So please SOE, either fix the lag issue (if it's a bug), or consider removing the hate modifier part of ET (if it's truly related to the lag issue). This problem is getting worse with this new expansion, where a simple fight with three linked mobs will turn into a lagfest. I also know it's not specific to conjurors - a fellow necro also experiences bad lag whenever he casts ET on those AE fights.
For those thinking this is a client-side issue, here are my system specs for reference (meaning I don't think they are the bottleneck here): PC has an i7 860 running at 3 GHz, with 16 GB RAM. Video is a Radon HD6950. Game settings are set to extreme performance (or close to it, I might have dialed up a setting or two so I could see particle effects required in some fights) Internet connection is cable 30 Mbits down / 3 Mbits up (and those are actually reached, confirmed with occasional Speedtest runs) My latency to SOE's server is around 120-150 ms (based on the in-game ping report). Zero packet loss, and no latency spike either beyond occasionally hitting 180 ms. Router is an Asus RT-N66U that can easily handle symetric 100 Mbits if needed (I also tested the same router I had before the issue started, so it's not a router issue)
I'm pretty sure its not client side; I run max settings and I can have nothing but particles taking up my screen for 3-5 minutes at a time with no lag whatsoever, but ET on almost any group of mobs will cause extreme lag and at times I've been kicked to char select because of it; and thats with almost no particles going off.
I have been wanting to post about the lag caused from toxicity for a long time, but I feared the nerf that would accompany such a post, and did not want it to be my fault. But now that its been asked: PLEASE look into this. My necro could never E-tox on a 5 mob encounter and go all out without going linkdead. On that note, there is a lot of abilities and procs that have been added that are basically meaningless low damage, and I assume if they were just all removed, no one would notice, and the lag might be slightly better. Like some damage procs (that don't crit) add 100 to 200 dps to a 200-400k parse. I don't think anyone will miss the .05% dps increase. But I could be wrong, and all these little procs aren't a problem.
If you realy have this issue with 3-5 mobs it's something from your side (I have an average-at-best PC with a rather good connection and this was never a problem) That said ET is a nightmare with 6+ LINKED mobs (drakes in UD or the waves before Baelon for ex. Funny enough pulling a couple rooms of unlinked mobs and casting ET doesn't produce any noticable lag)
I have no overhead combat spam, and the lag is insane on linked mobs of 6+, or multiple smaller groups of linked mobs 3+, enough to cause crashes to char select. I know its not the particles, as I can have far more particles going on other characters and more going on, but E-tox on my necro with multiple linked groups or large linked groups is just bad bad times.
The lag from ET is ridiculous. What's funny is my hubby and I (conjy and necro) can be in the SAME group and if he casts ET on a group, he crashes, but I don't. When I cast it, I crash and he doesn't. But we both lag/stall out for a majority of the fight.
I used to crash all the time on large AE fights involving ET too, until I started taking off Defensive Haven. If like me you use it to boost your pet's HP (and therefore Lifeburn), try taking it off on those fights. That's another reason why the theory that the lag is actually related to the calculation of the hate modifiers to apply on hits seems to be a good one (unless it's just one element of the big pile of calculations that are overloading the servers).
