I've noticed lately that a lot of players seem to hit a massive lag spikes during boss encounters. Worse still, a lot of players will disconnect at certain parts of these encounters everytime.
I was running in a pug ICC25 recently in which one member kept disconnecting. The member would come back screaming "Check your addons for Libhealcomm!" and, after all of the healers (including myself) admitting that we had no clue what he was talking about, he decided to randomly blame me.
"Ahzae, it's you, I know you have it."
Of course, I didn't know what "it" was, and I was using the exact same addons as all of our other healers. I simply assumed, along with most others in the raid, that his connection simply was not good enough and he was looking for a scapegoat. This turned out to be completely true, too.
I decided to find out what Libhealcomm actually was and after some research I found that it's a library used by Grid that sends hidden message to other players in the raid in order to show incoming heals. The first discussion I saw about it had players blaming Libhealcomm for disconnects due to "Addon Spam" - Addon spam is the term used for an inordinate amount of hidden messages being received by other players addons.
The discussion continued with what seemed to be much wiser more level-headed users who outlined the evidence showing that Libhealcomm spam was not what was hurting them, and that they must have a bad connection. However, I wasn't planning to stop there.
I dove in deeper into the field of Addon Spam and came up with (hopefully) a few solutions. From what I've discovered, these three addons seem to be causing the most trouble:
1. Carbonite
I really hate to admit this, because I've been a huge carbonite addict for a while, but it seems that this addon is the worst offender. Carbonite has a tendency to be constantly sending hidden messages about everything that's going on (position, hp, quest status, "Punks", etc.) and it hits a peak during raids. Add to that the fact that Carbonite uses a huge amount of cpu power and memory, and you've got a possible liability instead of a helpful tool.
Carbonite seems to have been designed for high-end users with top of the line hardware and a net connection you could drive a car through. Even if your hardware can handle what it does, it might still be adversely affecting others.
My recommendation is to stop using it. Carbonite is a terrific tool - well designed and amazingly useful - but it may be causing more problems than you realise, and not just for you.
2. Gearscore
Hooray! Another reason to hate gearscore! Sadly, Gearscore isn't the worst when it comes to addon spam, but it can still cause problems. If you use it and you have problems, switch it off and forget about it. Forever.
3. Recount
Recount is the only one on this list that doesn't affect anyone else, but it will kick the crud out of your own cpu at certain moments, causing fairly predictable disconnects.
If you find that you disconnect at times when Recount is hit hardest (eg. Raid aoe on fifty-odd whelps or just about any moment in a 25-man raid) then disable it.
Hopefully, removing these three should improve the quality of the time you spend raiding, however there could be any number of causes for what's going wrong. If you're still having problems after removing these three (or if you don't use them at all) I'd suggest doing your own research into the matter. Chances are that there are loads of people experience the same problems and just as many who have found a way to combat it.
Remember: When Cataclysm hits you'll likely be spending some time without any addons, so it's best to stay as true to the original ui whenever you can.
-Ahz
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