Attack Lag

I can normally play Maple just fine, with no lag whatsoever.
When I decide to attack (a monster), however, I am hit with hardcore lag.
Has anyone else had this problem? If so, how did you fix it? This is incredibly annoying. I am barely able to quest/hunt and bossing is extremely annoying.
I lag the most when using Ishtar's Ring, all other attacks don't lag as bad, if at all. The lag is bad enough to freeze my screen for 3-4 seconds when I first attack after I sign in, then eases up from there. The screen freezes every 2 seconds for like.. half a second. My boss times were getting slower and slower.. if I managed to not DC.
This is also scaring me because, knowing Nexon's autoban system.. lag at bosses likes to ban.

My laptop should be able to handle this, as I can run games like Dragon Nest/WoW with no lag.

Any suggestions?

i run dragon nest with more manageable lag than maple, even when getting my ass handed to me by firespites. (fire bosses that make my computer go HNNNGH)

sounds kind of similar to mount lag though, or when there's too many people attacking in a map, have you tried lowering your settings to minimum and using the smaller window for the game? this helps me reduce lag a lot (prevents vision though.)

Changing settings does nothing and I always play in window mode.
I was thinking it might be Norton, but I didn't have this problem when I first installed it.

EDIT:
Mounts do indeed lag the pomegranate out of me.

Sounds like your comp just isn't up to it. I get the same sort of problems on my old comp; Ishtars ring dropping frames per second to seconds per frame, town lag etc.
If there is any doubt, bring up task manager and see what CPU goes to when spamming attacks.
Also see what memory usage goes up to when bossing. I've had it up to a Gb before crashes.
MS has become a resource hog in recent years, either by bad coding or being bloated by anti-hack checks, or who-knows-what.

I vaguely recall someone who played both GMS and KMS posting screenshots showing GMS taking 2 or 3 times the CPU and memory that KMS did.

My laptop has an i7 processor with 8gb RAM. (Don't have specifics atm)
I don't think "it can't handle it."

I did watch the CPU yesterday; it was 300k using all attacks except IR when it spiked to 600-700k ish, 25% CPU.