I've had a similar issue for a long time, since around patch 3.2. Sometimes it recovers within a few seconds (5-15), but most of the time it doesn't and it'll quit responding, requiring a process kill and restart. It used to only be in specific zones (Idyllshire, Aleport, and some Gridania zones), now it's much worse.
Tried things with changing antivirus, disabling overlays, reinstalling, and whatnot.
AMD FX8350, Radeon RX480, 8GB RAM, Windows 7 Professional.