Bard swarming ?'s - settings

[Calibix]

So I have been swarming lately because my pocket healer is on a week vacation and I've been having some trouble finding groups. After a lot of deaths, I have adjusted some settings to deal with fps/lag/hitching issues I have when doing larger pulls of 40 or more mobs. I turn Shadows off as well as particles and this has helped greatly, yet I still have some problems during large pulls. It has even caused me to DC twice now, and I haven't DC'd once since I started playing P99 (assuming it wasn't an ISP issue, but my ISP is pretty stable although not super fast). I notice when I look back at the swarm I get more of the issues, presumably from rendering so many models.

My system is an i5-2500k, GTS 450, 8gb ram, windows 7 ultimate. I use mouse turning because I cannot get the tap turning method to work properly (feels like it doesn't support 3 movements keys at once, nor can I get it to auto-strafe run properly). I have /hidecorpse all macroed so I can hide corpse's as I kill to prevent accidental looting ie death.

Does anyone have any recommendations as to what could be causing those issues, or any other suggestions as to how to improve performance during swarming? I figure since 20 mobs will kill me in one round if I mess up anyways, I might as well go for broke and just pull as many as I can, but it is very frustrating to die to an issue that wasn't necessarily under my control.

Thanks in advance.

[Dalven]

You basically want to make all your performance settings as low as possible. There are a few threads about this if you look around but some of the following settings might help you.

Turn your clip plane right down - I used to do this after gathering the swarm.

Turn of your DoT spam messages

Turn of mob names

Turn off sky.
]
Lower your fps.

Being in the UK my ping was always a bit ropey between 130 - 250 but never seemed to affect my kiting. I used to lag out a bit when people zoned in which would invariably = instant death but I improved load times by running the game out of my RAM (there's a thread on the forums on how to do this if you search for it).

I used to use the tap method with auto run on and just tap one of the direction keys. I had two song macros set up for each dot which would be like /cast 1 (Dot) /pause 30 /cast 2 (selo's) which I would click with the mouse. Only disadvantage of this is after you begin the macro you are locked in to until the second song begins to cast.

[Calibix]

Thanks for the advice. Been doing 60-70 without too much of an issue, at least no lag/fps related deaths. I'll try some of your tips.

[falkun]

Sky OFF
DoT Messages OFF
Clip Plane MINIMIZE
Shadows OFF
Spell Particle Density OFF

[Calibix]

Ok, so from 1 day to the next my fps has gone from 300 or so while gathering to 100 while gathering, and its causing issues when I actually start killing. Settings are exactly the same. Any idea what would cause this?