I'm sad:(

[Grotesque]

Battleping is basically required to play this game if you don't live where the servers are located.

Nope. Living in Europe, playing on Canadian Servers, never had problems.

[carraway]

This means effectively that I can struggle through the story dungeons but will never be able to play any endgame as I'd be a handicap to the party. Does anyone have any suggestions on how to mitigate this? I realise the answer is probably no but there must be Australians that make it to end game, do you get this terrible latency issue?

If you're playing on a Japanese server, you shouldn't be suffering from latency so extreme that you cannot (eventually) clear all available content. From what I understand, AU<->JP latency should be similar to Germany<->Montreal latency. Battleping does in fact have servers across Asia, including in Japan and Singapore.

We have an Australian player who uses Battleping to play on an NA server. This player has been with us since the launch of 2.0 and not only passes latency-induced gameplay checks, but also excels. We also have a player living in Japan and many Europeans.

That being said, you may encounter your fair share of "no fucking way" moments, which can be incredibly frustrating.