Using emotes/actions causes hangs that freeze the game

[HalapenoPepper]

Hey y'all, this is really a continuation of a previous thread that received no support and was closed without notifying me (http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...19#post5192619)

Basically, when I use an emote, a combat ability, or really when any process requires a model or animation to be loaded, I have a chance to hang for several seconds up to whole minutes while the game tries to figure out what's happening. Music will stop, though network connection is unchanged, and gameplay continues relatively normally behind the scenes (damage ticks, chat remains active etc). When my game 'catches up', every animation that would have played during the hang plays at once.

This has caused a lot of frustration and ruined many great moments of the Shadowbringers story especially, and several times in party play such as running maps, my team have been left fighting monsters which have not yet appeared on my screen and are thus untargetable. Which is awkward when I'm tanking.

I have attempted a clean install of the game onto my SSD instead of an HDD and while the intensity of the hangs has generally decreased, they still occur fairly frequently.

Defraggler and crystaldiskinfo show my drives in good health after defragging HDDs and optimising SSDs, and I have no problems actually running the game on my computer.

Issues started approximately around patch 4.4, when the lead-up to Shadowbringers began in earnest, though I wasn't playing particularly regularly at the time.

Any help or ideas would be greatly appreciated.