Severe Lag in Veteran Maelstrom Arena

WuffyCerulei

So I finally get to the Veteran Maelstrom Arena, and for unknown reasons, I've been experiencing terrible lag and several crashes in the arena. My ping has gotten over 999+ several times and would cause the NPCs to freeze. I would then end up dying from attacks I did not see due to the lag.
Please note that my settings are pretty low.
After crashing and relogging back into the game, I reattempt the Arena. However, I crashed yet again with this message:

I was not using the chat whatsoever, but was booted due to spamming.

DjSolJAH

Was running vMSA Monday and had MANY MANY health/resource de syncs. Some I would be running around (dead) for 10 seconds before it actually killed me on screen

Lylith

normal maelstrom is no smooth experience, either.

lots of rubberbanding and dying to unseen attacks.