Latency - How bad is bad for boxing in arena/bg's?

[Farleito]

So I am curious... for those of you who box in arena/bg's, what is your average latency?

I'm seriously thinking about forking out the $75 to xfer my 3x shammy team. I've been playing on Dalvengyr (East Coast Server, Boston Data Center), yet I am located on the West Coast (Los Angeles). I suppose I chose Dalvengyr because it was the "recommended" server, and I didn't do my homework.

I am getting a 250-300ms ping to the server I am playing on. This means that I have anywhere from 0.5 -- 0.6 second delay on follows, focustarget, etc. [250ms to get to the server, 250ms to come back] Half a second does not seem like a lot, except when you're in combat and want to earth shock/silence/etc. To put things in perspective... When I jump (spacebar) on all three characters, the delay is so bad that when I land on one character, it shows the other two characters starting to jump. Again, roughly a half second delay. In rare cases, there is almost a full second delay. When I switch targets to cast on, the other two are still casting on the old target (at least one spell cast). Rather annoying.

...then I found this gold mine:
http://www.wowwiki.com/US_realm_list_by_datacenter

I created a couple of toons on Frostwolf (Los Angeles data center) and I was getting a latency of 20-30ms. I have tasted low latency, and it tastes good! Now, before I transfer my tri-box team, I would like to get some input from you guys... Do you think the reduced latency is going to help me in the arena? Aelli, what is your latency at? You seem to be doing the best in the arena.

[Gigatron]

Very nice link, I also wish I had that list when I started. Although, I did create a test character on all the realms I was interested in and spent a bit of time in orgrimmar to get a good average. Thats how I picked my server, I get on average 100ms, but wow 20ms sounds pretty damn good.

[Ughmahedhurtz]

I couldn't tell you what's bad for boxing as I've never done it on anything but broadband. My highest pings were on cable where they were about 110 on sundays and 60ish on off-peak times when I was in Houston connecting to one of the Dallas PVE servers. Magtheridon is in Dallas and I'm up here too now, which explains my completely OP pings. My FiOS stuff now is usually between 8 and 20ms. :P I would think, though, that server lag would be worse than your latency. You might suffer issues when doing epic mounts or shattrath but everything else should be OK even with pings up to 500.

[Havelcek]

You're going to feel that latency when you are trying to /follow.

[Farleito]

You're going to feel that latency when you are trying to /follow.
...you make it sound like there is an alternative?

With /follow, your character will be (latency*2)ms behind you, on your "main" screen, however they are right on your ass on the following screens. That leads to the "Can not do that while moving" error when you want to quickly rush in and cast on somebody. I was able to come up with a solution for the /follow to cast transition by using some "clever mappings" w/ autohotkeys. The /follow is really not a big deal. The focustarget or targettarget is where things get janky, or the dropping of a grounding totem or earth shock, while I try to time it against a sheep.

When pvping, do you guys use /follow all the time? or do you map the movement keys to all characters? I'm still trying to come up with a better "opening" for pvp. I think I'd be more successful if I could LoS quickly and/or prevent the enemy from LoS so easily. This is where /follow fails.

/follow also fails in Under City. How many people have fallen to their deaths in the UC lifts? I keep getting stuck (when mounted) near the top of the lifts. Apparently, Taurens mounted on the Kodo's don't exactly fit thru the doors. The main will get thru, and the /follow'ing will get hung up at the top of the lift as the lift goes down, they finally free themselves and fall down the lift...and if it can't get any worse...when you res the toon, conveniently at the top of the lift, and accept the res, he falls again cause the lift is at the bottom now. POS!!! :cursing:

[Gigatron]

Also, one thing to note is many of us have 5 pc's, which means a dedicated network card for each character. I'm not sure what the extent, if any, this may have on latency. :?:

[Ughmahedhurtz]

Also, one thing to note is many of us have 5 pc's, which means a dedicated network card for each character. I'm not sure what the extent, if any, this may have on latency. :?:True multi-BOXers, assuming the same network hardware, actually deal with less effective latency than the guys that run multiple copies on one PC, due to various load-balancing issues. Sometimes it's not very noticeable, especially if you're running a super-mega-awesome quad core box with fast HDDs and lots of RAM. ;)

[Farleito]

I'm running a single box, dual-core, dual SLi, 4GB RAM w/ Raid 0. I would argue that the network load would be negligent in either case; multi/single boxing. I get the same latency w/ 1 client or 3 clients. Each client gets around 20-25 fps (except in Shattrath City).

Going back to my original question: What's your average latency, and do you do well at arena? My average is 250-300ms and I get my teeth kicked in 75% of the time.