Hunters have a priority list of shots. Whenever our global cooldown finishes, we choose the best available shot, and fire it. Here’s the question: what’s the best way to fire your next ability as soon as the cooldown is available? Wait and press the key, or spam the key as fast as you can?
My completely unscientific study of this question has led me to believe that riding the key for your next shot results in more shots fired per minute. It’s not really easy to see this on a boss dummy, but in a 25 man with all the information being sent and received by 25 people simultaneously, it seems to perform better. Here’s the way I understand it:
- When you fire a shot, the command is sent to the server and the local GCD starts immediately.
- The server acknowledges the command about a tenth of a second (assuming 100ms latency) later and actually performs the shot.
- If you attempt to fire a shot while your machine’s cooldown is going, it sends another command to the server anyways.
- If the new command arrives at the server 1.5 seconds after you pressed the first key on your machine, the server will fire the new shot.
- If the new command arrives before the cooldown is finished, the server will reply “not ready”, and your cooldown keeps going. You can send more than one of these at a time.
Basically, the goal is to send your shot so that it arrives at the server exactly when the cooldown is finished. Assuming a 100 ms latency again, that means hitting the command a tenth of a second before the cooldown finishes. If you have consistent latency, that will work perfectly. Mine, however, varies quite a bit in combat. What I try to do is start spamming my key half a second or so before the cooldown is done, and keep mashing it until I see the ability being used.
Before patch 2.3, everything worked a little differently. For a brief period in 2.3, the rules were again different than they are now. Specifically, if you sent a command and it was rejected, you weren’t able to send a new one until the rejection message came through. This meant that mashing a key would actually often cost you a sizable fraction of your cooldowns per minute. Now, however, it appears that hitting a key several times and having it rejected doesn’t prevent the one that is timed properly from being accepted.
The long and short of it is that yes, button mashing can increase your throughput a little if you have high and/or variable latency in combat.
I discovered this when I was using Zeherah’s expression editor-fu to compare the “tightness” of my rotation to a friend of mine. Here’s his from an old festergut log:
Here’s mine from a recent Saurfang 10 HM:
If you want to see your own, go to a recent WoL report, narrow down to the fight in question, and then enter the expression editor. From there, use the following query, substituting your name for mine:
sourcename="Euripides" and type=TYPE_CAST
Hardly good news for anyone with carpal tunnel problems…
Still, nice to know, esp. for someone who’s latency is so bad that it has been known to spike sky-high in the middle of a random heroic for no reason :o
There are some registry tweaks you can make to reduce connection flakiness… take a look at this thread on the official forums. Also, you don’t have to constantly spam like I hear some people do- you will do quite nicely to hit the keys a couple of times just before the GCD.
(edited in link- reply by email apparently doesn’t include them)
Wheres the thread on registry tweaks pls?
I’ve always done the button mashing method for some reason… maybe I’m just OCD or something. Glad to know that I was doing it the right way the whole time!
I’ve done some registry tweaks before which definitely helped. It brought me down to about 60-90 ms on my wired school connection but it’s still consistently 100 on my wireles FiOS at home. Wish it was easier to get an ethernet cable to this room. =\
Anyway, great write up.
http://worldoflogs.com/reports/1upz111f46i1r5pf/xe/?s=7490&e=7736&x=sourcename%3D%22Catr%C3%ACona%22+and+type%3DTYPE_CAST
Looks like I managed to get overlapping Steadies… however that happened…
I suspect it has something to do with the fact that your steady shot cast time will hover above and below the global cooldown.
I don’t suppose you can tell me why some of my steady shots are so long? Is that just latency? The uber hunter in our guild, all his steady’s are the short blocks that I see sometimes on mine.
http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/41t3fz1zct4mhhx0/xe/?s=1536&e=1920&x=sourcename%3D%22Mechakisc%22+and+type%3DTYPE_CAST
Wow, that’s pretty terrible. I’d guess it’s one of two things: either you really have a bad latency, or there could be two data source logs that have some periodic “drift” between timestamps.
Next time you raid, see whether you’re able to fit the proper number of steady shots between abilities- if not, try that registry tweak mentioned in the comments.
I’m assuming it is the same as the Leatrix Latency fix? Blizz forums are down atm of course …
I’ve applied Leatrix already.
http://www.wowinterface.com/downloads/info13581-LeatrixLatencyFix.html
If that means disabling the Nagle algorithm for TCP traffic, then yes.
/cry
From the Leatrix page on WOWI:
Blizzard already disabled nagling in World of Warcraft. Isn’t this the same thing?
This is a common misconception but the answer is no. Blizzard disabled nagling at the application level (effectively integrating the TCPNoDelay function into the game client) way back in patch 2.3.2.
Leatrix Latency Fix disables delayed acknowledgements at the Windows level (by modifying TcpAckFrequency). They’re two different things.
Forget I asked. I’ll look at the forum when it comes back up.
Pretty sure delayed TCP acknowledgements is what Nagle’s algorithm is about- increasing total bits passed through the pipe at the expense of some latency for individual packets. In any case, that’s not what’s at issue. I’m not claiming to be a networking guru. If your steady shots really are taking that amount of time and it’s not just a logging issue, then you’re SOL.
This was Sindragosa achievement style, in case you notice that it looks oddly otherwise.
http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/xkqsd5my4qb4zlxv/xe/?s=6583&e=7114&x=sourcename%3D%22Mechakisc%22+and+type%3DTYPE_CAST
That’s a Sindy hard mode kill for comparison. The steadys still look odd, imo.
Actually, it looks like those really long steadies are actually perfectly timed (but not overlapping) steady shots. You’re getting exactly 1 every 1.5 sec in those instances. A combination of good mashing and good latency, I would guess.
G15 ftw.. hold down the buttons with my pinky.. posh dps tbh =D
Gotta be careful about that- while the G15 and its ilk are tolerated, it’s against the ToS to use them to perform multiple actions at the same time. Specific examples of things that are not allowed are doing more than one GCD with a single key, as well as repeatedly pressing a key.
I chatted with a gm for about half an hour the day before i bought it to confirm everything.. and he said if i have to ban you then i have to ban at least 80% of the gm team here too ;p
But yeah i only use it for my main shots.. ie cs>aimed>steady 3 seperate buttons and aye i know of the botting macros etc..
I know, it’s one of those “don’t ask, don’t tell” situations. Still, it’s against the ToS, so I’m not doing it.
An alternative is to bind mousewheel up and down to steady shot and, for example, chimera shot.
What i’m doing isn’t though..
/cast !auto shot
/cast Silencing Shot
/cast [target=pettarget.exists] Kill Command
/cast Chimera Shot
is on G3, g4 is the aimed shot version and g5 is the steady shot version.. there is nothing wrong at all with using the keyboard like that.
There is an issue when its a series of movements and abilites like you see bots using.
Also that steady shot macro is also bound to my E button and my mouse wheel up/down.
That’s totally fine- the only things they explicitly said they don’t want are multiple GCDs per hardware event, or auto-spamming a single key through automation.
Yup, sorry i thought you meant what i was doing was against policy etc :O
First time posting here, I love this place. Been hunting since release in Australia and had my fair go at farming ragnaros. Since playing back when aimed was THE shot to keep hammering with, getting a g15 during burning crusade when being a beast master and having steady shot spam/kill command was the dps spam way to go I learnt early that a mousewheel can be linked to an ability.
Rolling it up will spam one key lock faster than you can press. Rolling it down can spam some other key. Ad shift for a other 2 functions. G 15 can Record rapid fire, record your fastest spamming and see how inconsistent manual spam is.
Ultimatly, the GCD is there for a reason. You definatly can lag out your client with no gap custom spam macros. Likewise pressing keys furiously can affect your lag.
Don’t manually do it if you can use a tool to do it for you.
Rolling it up will spam one key a lot faster than you can press I meant to say. Stupid iPhone spell check.
Random addition, range tanked blood pinces in ICC 10 today and downed them for the first time. Went on to smash blood queen ( so much fun). And got sindragosa down to 30% on the second try ever. Was a great day of raiding even thought our guild 25 icc fell through.
I highly recomend having a go ranged tanking blood princes. Just bring along a pet set up for maximum move speed to bring the orbs to you.
Icc continues to entertain. I hope the fun won’t stop blizz design team!