InputLag/stuttering

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Hello, I am struggling with input lag/stuttering for some time now, starting in Liberation of Undermine and continuing in this expansion. The issue became very pronounced when I started progressing Mythic Vanguard. Which pushed me into doing some troubleshooting. During Vanguard the problem felt like it became worse and worse, to the point where now, during Alleria prog, it feels like the abilities are not firing. I will try and walk you step by step through what I have done during troubleshooting and how the problem manifests.

My system:
CPU: AMD Ryzen 9800x3d
GPU: MSI Radeon RX 6900 XT GAMING Z TRIO 16G (used a RTX 3080 until last week)
RAM: 2x Corsair CMH32GX5M2B6000Z30 16GB (EXPO enabled)
MOBO: MSI Pro B650-A WiFi (MS-7D75)
STORAGE: Samsung SSD 970 EVO 1TB m.2 (mounted on the first slot of the MOBO)
Wired Internet connection, around 15-16ms Home/World latency, pretty stable

I am playing Balance Druid, and the character is located on Draenor EU.
The game was freshly installed before Midnight release.

The biggest pain I confront is, especially after I press an instant ability, the next ability fires with noticeable delay, like half of GCD or something like that. At the same time, I can see the GCD animation reset, or doing the swipe faster. Sometimes I also get the same feedback that you usually get when you are trying to cast on something that is LoS. Quart is also showing latency between 100ms-700ms. I am adding GIFs with the best visual examples I can get. If you are interested in seeing more, I can happily share the VODs in private.

In terms of addons, during the raids, I am running ElvUI w/ WindTools, BigWigs, Plater, Details, NSRaidingTools, MethodRaidingTools, Quartz, BetterCooldownManager, BugSack Buggraber.

  • tested with and without addons. I also disabled/enabled one addon at a time. The problem persists. And it is the same on training dummies.

  • Cache folder deleted

  • Fiddled with SpellQueueWindow

  • Swapped from a RTX 3080 (drivers uninstalled via DDU in Safe Mode)

  • Double checked if the settings in BIOS are fine (EXPO profile, PCIe Gen Switch - set to Gen4; Re-Size BAR enabled, Above 4G Decoding enabled);

  • Overlays OFF (NVidia, Adrenaline, Discord)

  • Killed all the apps, including iCUE, discord, raider io etc. during Target Dummy tests, during Raids left only Discord and OBS opened.

  • Switched between DX11 and 12 in game settings

  • FPS capped / uncapped

  • Tested with ExitLag

  • Tested with NordVPN (connected on different servers)

  • Tested with MobileData through USB tethering and Wireless Hotspot (bad/ugly results, but did it mostly to see the routing)

  • 0 packet loss on ping 8.8.8.8 test

  • Nvidia Reflex did not help

  • AMD Anti-Lag is not helping either

I also get some black flicker, very pronounced during Alleria. It happens as well outside that fight, but very rare, and very subtle. This is the reason why I swapped my RTX 3080 with the 6900 XT, so I can at least rule out a driver/hardware problem. Swapped the cables and the port as well between the Raids. And ofc the problem is still there.

One other thing that I have done is to do some WinMTR tests on whatever IP I am connected to in WoW.

This are 2 tests ran half an hour apart on target dummy.

|------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------|
| WinMTR statistics |

Host - % Sent Recv Best Avrg Wrst Last
DSL-AC87VG - 0 258 258 0 0 7 0
[p50928010.dip0.t-ipconnect.de] - 0 258 258 6 7 33 6
[f-eh1-i.F.DE.NET.DTAG.DE] - 0 258 258 10 11 35 11
62.157.248.74 - 0 258 258 10 14 69 10
[ae2-br01-eqfr5.as57976.net] - 0 257 257 15 21 115 16
137.221.65.29 - 0 257 257 15 138 825 16
137.221.65.168 - 0 258 258 16 28 158 16
[et-0-0-0-pe04-eqam3.as57976.net] - 0 257 257 15 16 51 51
137.221.66.47 - 0 257 257 15 16 33 15
10.105.34.27 - 0 258 258 15 16 39 16
10.105.40.99 - 0 257 257 16 16 37 17
5.42.176.1 - 0 257 257 16 17 57 42
37.244.61.185 - 0 257 257 15 15 34 16
________________________________________________ ______ ______ ______ ______ ______ ______
WinMTR v0.92 GPL V2 by Appnor MSP - Fully Managed Hosting & Cloud Provider

|------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------|
| WinMTR statistics |

Host - % Sent Recv Best Avrg Wrst Last
DSL-AC87VG - 0 122 122 0 0 6 0
[p50928010.dip0.t-ipconnect.de] - 0 122 122 5 6 21 6
[f-eh1-i.F.DE.NET.DTAG.DE]- 0 122 122 10 11 62 10
62.157.248.74 - 0 122 122 10 14 71 11
[ae2-br01-eqfr5.as57976.net] - 0 121 121 16 81 1979 16
137.221.65.29 - 6 95 90 16 226 4295 16
137.221.65.168 - 0 107 107 16 311 3739 16
[et-0-0-0-pe04-eqam3.as57976.net] - 0 122 122 15 16 42 15
137.221.66.47 - 0 122 122 15 16 27 15
10.105.34.27 - 0 122 122 15 16 27 16
10.105.40.99 - 0 122 122 16 16 26 16
5.42.176.1 - 0 122 122 16 17 46 16
37.244.61.185 - 0 122 122 15 16 27 15
________________________________________________ ______ ______ ______ ______ ______ ______

It looks like the 137.221.65.29 is always the culprit here. An IP search on google tells me it is part of Blizzard infrastructure, a router located in the Netherlands. This, paired with the fact that I read reports of people asking the same thing about european servers on Reddit, forums, class discords etc. makes me believe that is not in my head only and I am not the only one running into this issue.

If anyone else has any advice about what to do more, or has the same issue and can vocalise, please do so. I am literally at the end of ideas. I think the next step for me will be to take the PC into a service center and have people there test it as well.

Not sure why I cannot post GIFs of examples I have with the flickers and Images with my in game settings

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