well, the fight isn't as heavily movement-based as ifrit extreme, but backline still needs to stay between ~13-14 yalms away from van darnus at all times (but never as far as 15). being less than 13 yalms away and getting hit by chariot isn't nearly as much of a problem as being 15+ yalms away and getting hit by dynamo. it hits you hard, drains your mp and heals darnus to boot. latency certainly is a factor in staying just the perfect range from darnus at all times, considering animation lock and the like, and every time people get hit by dynamo he heals quite a lot.

the more he heals, the longer the fight gets. the longer the fight gets, the more likely you are to time out and fail. and even with perfect dps and not getting hit by any dynamos, he'll still take most groups at least 24-25 minutes to kill.

is latency the biggest factor? not at all. but it makes a difference in a pretty vital area of the fight, and as a result i think just as we're seeing with ifrit extreme (though obviously to a lesser degree)- more JP LSs will beat darnus faster than their NA counterparts. and perhaps i'm terribly wrong about this, but i tend to assume the skill levels of the JP and NA LSs on average are about equal. so for there to be such a huge disparity in the number of JP/NA LSs clearing content, and the speed with which they do so...

well, i can't really see much of any reason for that outside of latency. /shrug

do JP players deal with latency as well? yes, absolutely. is it as bad as NA latency? no, and while NA latency is only "~300 ms" worse, keep in mind the effects are cumulative- every single action, every movement... tack on another 300ms delay vs. JP. does the latency make it impossible? absolutely not. many NA LSs have proven that.

unfortunately, it's difficult to judge when this broken client version is all we have to go by. but i predict with the 2.0 client and the abolition of latency issues across all regions, we're going to see the overall gap in JP vs. NA progression close considerably. it should be pretty even then.

though, again, as peng said- we can't take anything away from Scorpion at all. they played out of their minds and deserve major congratulations.