Very high ping

Hey everyone,

I’m wondering if anyone else is dealing with this issue.
I live on Réunion Island, which is geographically pretty close to South Africa, so the South Africa gateway should logically be my best option.

However, when I select that gateway, the game shows around 44 ms, but once I actually get in-game, my ping jumps to 380 ms. That’s even worse than on EU servers like Paris.

I tried using a VPN and connected to a South African node before launching PoE2. That brings the ping down to around 200 ms, but it's still nowhere near the advertised 44 ms.

Is this expected? A routing issue?
Any info or tips would be appreciated!