So we've been throwing ourselves at Thaddius lately and every single attempt is ruined by people disconnecting, not moving at all due to lag or seeing themselves in different positions. We've tried having the ones with less than stellar connections off ventrilo (reducing the disconnects), turning down all the gfx settings, it just doesn't seem to help :(

Do any of the top guilds have this guy on farm status, reliably killing him on one of the first attempts? Or is it based on getting lucky?

I have a pretty good rig and even though I have FPS slowdowns, I make it to the other side every time. However, when the polarity check occurs, I usually get a few seconds lag on my skills. I'm wondering if it's that much worse on low-end computers. Could it be that some of the less attentive players use the lag excuse even if it's their fault for being too slow?

Are there any specific tweaks that can be done to the graphics settings that would reduce the "FPS lag" that apparently causes people to not be in the right place?

Does everyone on old server hardware experience skill lag during/after polarity checks? Is it even any different on new hardware?

Any tips on dealing with this would be greatly appreciated!

-Turn off all mods
-disable all the chatwindows you can
-only attempt 2-3 times per soft reset
-use a spiral rather than direct swap to help people separate faster
-attempt at non peak times
-point your camera away from everyone/down during polarity shifts
-pray

They're about my only suggestions. We're stuck on one of the original 20 dud servers and we even have additional lag problems because half our guild are australian. We have around 10-15 ppl who simply cannot do Thaddius because they lag/dc too much which is a real strain on a guild with only 55 or so active raiders. Most of the rest of us have slowdown during polarity and ~1second ability lag through the encounter. Its slightly worse for the aus people and slightly better for the us guys (but you wouldn't know it from the amount they complain, damn bastards are spoilt with their 30 average ping)

Thanks for the suggestions.
I guess we'll even try the soft reset, does it really produce noticeable results for you? I'm guessing the instance sessions are dumped to an archive after a soft reset?

Try doing it really early or late servertime.

Make sure no one releases --> no skeletons.

Unfortunately almost all of our wipes are due to the enrage so we all die at Thaddius's feet and we havent found a way of ressing from there (not that we've tried very hard). If anyone soulstones up or gets di'd near thaddius, they seem to get put back in combat instantly for us, so its a no go on ressing up. But yes, if something goes wrong with phase 1 we retreat and make sure we don't release.

We tried it this way for awhile but we found it was too time consuming and people were still getting hit. The direct movement between spots appears to be the most effective.

Don't click off DI, or use the SS until Thaddius reappears. If you use it before he reappears, you'll get stuck in combat.

Yeah, that almost certainly would be the problem. Whenever we've tried it, the person with ss or di would pop back up straight away, most likely before the encounter had properly reset. Thanks for the tip :D

*not on thaddius so might not apply*

turning off the in-game sounds sped up the game a lot for me on some occassions, especially when all the people are bunched up together. no need to hear all the casting sounds of the mages around you or the whizzing of the arcane missiles.

We finally got a spot of no-lag and our dps went up over 45% and dropped the guy in 4:35 as horde. This fight is all about your server. We're on one of the crappy PvP west-coast launch servers where your reported latency says 1200-2000 for up to 3 hours a night. Although the real lag only seems to last 2 hours a night.

There are polarization techniques to help out on crappy servers like ours though... Staying up late is probably the hardest part in the end... but the amount by which your dps changes based on time of day is just staggering... I honestly wish I had frapsed some of our attempts, people's jaw would hit the floor with the level of lag we're talking about here.