Getting around high ping

[miraidensetsu]

Well, I'm trying to get better, but my high ping is starting to getting in the way. It is around 240~260ms. And using a proxy server doesn't solve anything, because the ping drops to 200~220ms when using it.

That means: I'm clipping like crazy, swiftcast sometimes register too late (and swiftcast > holy ends up on me hardcasting holy with the swiftcast icon), relying on bene is too risky, I end up eating some AoE because I haven't enough time to get out of it, and other lag issues.

Is there any tips to circumvent those issues? Precast more? Counting some extra time for the lag? Invest on spellspeed meld left-side (enough to take off 0.3 seconds of the GCD to accomodate the ping time) and vit right-side?

[MuseTraveller]

Hello fellow healer with high ping! I've been playing with 200-260 and healing just fine, savage included. It simply takes some getting used to. Precasting is your friend, trust tetra and rarely trust the bene. Swift cast your holy but give it a second before you hit that delightful bomb of light. Meld as normal. Dodging aoed will be way more unforgiving but consider you should be able to start moving while your cast bar is on 75% ! Good luck.

[Elamys]

I too have terribly high ping and main a healer. Good thing is it looks as though you're playing a white mage which is probably the best job for that. Regens are your friend, so you may want to try to keep those up more than you would normally. And precasting is very important, as is stutter stepping (moving when your cast is almost completely full, which will allow you to complete the cast while moving).

[Sebazy]

I had close to the same ping when the EU servers were located in the US. A few tips I picked up from then as well as my time spent on WoW NA:

Take a close look at other things you can tweak to improve your setup's responsiveness. Double checking Game Mode is enabled on your TV or monitor is a great place to start. This knocked a good 30ms off my old Dell U2713H and can save you as much as 100ms or even more on some TVs. With a TV there are other settings you can tweak for faster response times as well, switching off motion interpolation is sometimes worth half to a full frame of latency on the chance that game mode doesn't lock it out already.

Factor in the efficiency of your UI. Do you click abilities? Think about adjusting things or creating additional hotbars to minimise how far you have to move your mouse. Are people's HP bars or key cooldowns tucked away out of sight? Again, consider shuffling things around to give yourself more of a HUD approach to help watch important buttons and bars. I'd suggest having a look at Elia Sand's UI if you want to see how far the UI efficiency rabbit hole goes.

Knowing what's coming easily makes up for almost any latency deficit. If you know that a mechanic is coming, you can prepare and potentially precast for it. If we ignore DPS metrics and logs rankings for a moment, this is really what makes a great healer truly shine and IMHO is a very significant part of why my groups have held me in high regard even if my actual damage is mediocre at best for the most part. Even when it comes to people making mistakes, being able to observe and appreciate the big picture will often allow you to anticipate someone's failure before they've even done it. This gives you plenty of time to get that heal or barrier heading their way before the damage is done. The best way to learn this? Record yourself. I swear I say this in every thread that's asking for advice but it's the single biggest tip that anyone can ever receive IMHO. It's easy to do irrespective of your platform and unless you play on a PS4, have no upload speed and even less spare money to go get a capture card instead, there's no excuse in 2018.

One final tip I would suggest, if you do get a recording of yourself and want some earnest advice on it, don't be afraid to put it up here.

http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...70#post4123070

If you're ever in doubt of how concise, well thought out and thorough some of the advice here can be, the above should dispel that.

[EaMett]

My ping isn't that bad (about 150ms currently) but I played at 5-9 fps for the longest time which is even worse. I basically had to remember every encounter by heart and start moving before the aoes showed to avoid them (titan was the worst). Perfectly doable and I rarely ever got clipped but obviously requires a lot more work (also things like your dps naturally suffer in the process).
Some things to be aware of, if there's a multiple ground aoe mechanic that people stack for, don't stack with the rest of the group, they never stack perfectly and any missplaced aoe will basically hit you. You can generally always stack in line with the others, just not on top of them.
We have faith in you. You can do it!

[Vivian_Vex]

Practice practice practice practice

I have satellite internet and a 1 second delay on my movements on the best of days. Meaning if I am standing in an AoE that takes a short amount of time to go off, I'm going to get hit by it. (Which has made stuff like Titan EX *So much fun I can't even describe it*) and while it's still there with a 1 second delay I've more or less have got the timing down so AoEs and delay in spells don't really hold me back anymore

Really you just have to cast a spell and then pay attention to when the animation starts. THEN cast the follow up.

[Elysana]

While you're doing all these lovely suggestions, think of this as training, because when you get an ISP with better ping, you'd probably be really good!

I used to play with very slow internet (3 mbps) and I thought I was a very, very bad player, but apparently it was the ping. Perhaps out of sheer luck, I survived difficult content.

After I switched to a 75 mpbs connection, I started to realize I was not THAT bad and felt better about myself.