Changes Focused on Boosting Game Performance

[Aelonwy]

Non of the devs mentioned that (and I find it really odd) is that a large portion of lag is also created when the monsters are spawning in large groups. Eg - something that happens in Thunderforge when there are a lot of players entering a doorway and suddenly the mobs are being spawned and the whole party lags to death and that is NOT because of any procs because non of the players was able to activate anything.

That happens in variety of places and in my opinion is related to the mobs-spawn-targeting + calculations or something.

That^ is a really good point and fairly observable. More mobs has always equaled more lag for me. Now I know there are people that herd up mobs from multiple rooms and hallways and group them up for mass holds/mass damage but I have NEVER been one to get more than a single room and stragglers in my play groups because that seems to be all the lag I can tolerate and still function to fight the mobs. Maybe if the game design had NOT evolved into clone stamping down groups of 8+(in some cases 12+) mobs every 20 feet e.g. Slave Lords, Mines of Tethyamar, ToEE, Masterminds of Sharn, we might also have fewer calculations and thus less lag?

By repeatedly designing adventures in this style they are also effectively changing the way we play to deal with these CONSTANT large groups of mobs. The practice of some players/groups to grab the aggro of multiple mob groups is to be more efficient with their DPS in direct correlation with these massive mob groups being behind every door and down every hallway. It would be more beneficial to both variety of playstyles and the servers if more mobs were hand placed and only certain rooms (not every room and hallway) had large groups where it is reasonable in the dungeon ecosystem that a large group might congregate.

[elvesunited]

Increasing the chance of a proc happening isn't an option so best solution is to increase the power based on the number of hits. It's already being done for straight damage procs and vampirism. If damage procs are getting spikier why not do the same for the other types of procs? I wouldn't expect all of them to be handled but it would be nice to get the most popular ones.

Tendon Slice, Nerve Venom: Increase the duration based on the number of hits in the attack.

Paralyzing arrows: Increase the DC by +2 per extra hit in the attack

Negative level on Vorpal: Number of levels drained based on number of hits in the attack.

Adrenaline recharge, Archer's focus: number of charges increased by number of hits in the attack.

etc.

DDO benefits from a wide variety of build types and some of them ( many of them defense limited types ) rely on non-damaging procs. While I recognize that lag reduction is a priority some effort toward compensating for the reduction of non-damaging procs would be appreciated.

[dunklezhan]

Increasing the chance of a proc happening isn't an option so best solution is to increase the power based on the number of hits. It's already being done for straight damage procs and vampirism. If damage procs are getting spikier why not do the same for the other types of procs? I wouldn't expect all of them to be handled but it would be nice to get the most popular ones.

Tendon Slice, Nerve Venom: Increase the duration based on the number of hits in the attack.

Paralyzing arrows: Increase the DC by +2 per extra hit in the attack

Negative level on Vorpal: Number of levels drained based on number of hits in the attack.

Adrenaline recharge, Archer's focus: number of charges increased by number of hits in the attack.

etc.

DDO benefits from a wide variety of build types and some of them ( many of them defense limited types ) rely on non-damaging procs. While I recognize that lag reduction is a priority some effort toward compensating for the reduction of non-damaging procs would be appreciated.

This is pretty much my thinking about how they should tackle procs, if they want to effectively lower their frequency like these changes do.

If they did something like this, I'd probably be looking forward to the change quite eagerly tbh.

Hopefully something can be done with the non-damaging procs before this goes live, but I have a horrible feeling it would mean them going through every ability everywhere looking for procs to adjust. Some would be obvious, like arcane archer. But there'll be all sorts hidden about, no doubt. I worry about how long that's going to take, and for how long proc builds just won't be all that fun to play.

I'm also a bit concerned about aggro management becoming harder with spikier damage (not just for holding it, but for shedding/reducing it), but I suspect that although it might need live testing (so this might have to go live without changes in that regard) that aggro might be an easier thing to more globally tweak rather than having to be a huge do-over of tons of abilities.

In short: I think procs and aggro management changes are probably out of scope for this change although I think they're going to be needed. I just hope that they are then watched carefully and treated as a mop-up priority.

[Lanadazia]

So, are we therefore saying that these changes are absolutely required to cut the number of procs to a datum that will allow the game to function, and above which it can't? That we must accept there is no other way?

By implication are we then saying that once that datum is hit, it can never again be exceeded - i.e. there can never again be any further features invoking additional procs added to the the game?

Because if so, then tacit acceptance of these changes, not only means accepting all the nerfs and limitations that will apply, but also surely means tacit acceptance that the game development is to be severely stymied going forward.

How on earth can such an approach and it's implications be acceptable?

For this reason, this approach to the problem is unacceptable to me. I'm extremely disappointed it seems to be OK to SSG.

Please. Find another way.

well said. this seems to have an impact on the game thats so big and hits some root things about DDO that we all love, that its really hard to accept.

is this way an easy fix? is there a way to fix it thats alot more work, like recoding something?
would megaservers help with this?

[DjangoKeys]

So, are we therefore saying that these changes are absolutely required to cut the number of procs to a datum that will allow the game to function, and above which it can't? That we must accept there is no other way?

By implication are we then saying that once that datum is hit, it can never again be exceeded - i.e. there can never again be any further features invoking additional procs added to the the game?

Because if so, then tacit acceptance of these changes, not only means accepting all the nerfs and limitations that will apply, but also surely means tacit acceptance that the game development is to be severely stymied going forward.

How on earth can such an approach and it's implications be acceptable?

For this reason, this approach to the problem is unacceptable to me. I'm extremely disappointed it seems to be OK to SSG.

Please. Find another way.

The thing is, I highly doubt SSG is even remotely aware of how their nuke from orbit approach on this pass has angered every player I’ve talked to. Ok, one guy wasn’t upset, but he’s a well known SSG sycophant. They could take a dump on his builds and he’d thank them for it. Literally everyone else I’ve talked to about this is angry enough to either stop spending money, let their VIP lapse...or like me, both.

So, if SSG is so wrapped up in their own fiction that they’re going to call blatant and substantial nerfs to non-damage procs “boosting game performance,” imagine how badly they’re going to bung up EDs when they do that pass.

Honestly though, what’s been regularly bunging up stuff is one particular dev’s devotion to playing build favorites and essentially telling people they’re not doing the fun right. Trying to remove a vital part of a build because “that one skill shouldn’t be the only thing holding them up,” says exponentially more about self-inflicted issues with poor game design than it does anything else.

[elvesunited]

Well it looks like we get another go at it. From the DDOcast, there is going to be a third update lamania release.

The big change will be to adrenaline and hunt's end which are proposed to go down from 400% damage to 200%
with the recharge chance being changed to 100% on a vorpal ( at least for melee )

We'll have to see if they go after any of the other non-damage procs.

[Hawkwier]

Well it looks like we get another go at it. From the DDOcast, there is going to be a third update lamania release.

The big change will be to adrenaline and hunt's end which are proposed to go down from 400% damage to 200%
with the recharge chance being changed to 100% on a vorpal ( at least for melee )

We'll have to see if they go after any of the other non-damage procs.

See, this attitude really ticks me off. Make a change that hurts players - too bad, suck it up folks, greater good and all that. But as soon as that same change has a benefit - oh no, can't have that, we're gonna nerf you before breakfast. Either way, players get the pointy end. Absolutely stinks IMO.

Also, 100% on a vorpal - aka increasing the frequency chance to compensate, like some of us asked for, like we were told wasn't possible because of increased proc rates. Surely not???

And you wonder, Devs, why we don't blindly trust and accept what you are doing when it's increasingly all too apparent you are making this stuff up on the hoof?

Please. Just stop this. You don't seem to know what you are doing.

Change the scalable damage procs only. See how that works out first. You might not need to nerf any non damage procs for a decent reduction in lag. At least try it. What do we have to lose?

[blarhblarhblarh]

Would be easier to use D&D BAB. Would not require so many people fighting. Doublestrike and doubleshoot is not even a thing in core rules.


Anyway none of this will matter if you need DDO to answer your ticket to solve a bug and there are no one to answer your prayers. Doesn´t matter if you pay vip or if it´s a quick bug to solve.


The unbalanced issue that this change will bring shall last at least 4 months for SSG to solve. I really hope that some of you guys stay in the game because I don´t want to play alone. In the meanwhile they will not touch in the sorcerer when they changed stuff they said they wouldn´t, and everyone will be able to get at least to 300k in a crit, the ubber players will reach 1 million.

Hope it works to solve the lag at least.

[Souless]

In Update 49 we are making significant changes to how melee and missile combat is calculated to address long-term community and development team concerns about game performance. If you're curious, we've included a long form explanation as to what these changes entail on the back end, but if you're interested in just the changes and the results, here's what we've found:

Before this change: Simulations of a raid group proccing on-hit effects use approx 99.965% processing per-instance and produce an effects queue, which causes combat processing lag for all players on the same server while the queue is processed.
After this change: Simulations of a raid group proccing on-hit effects use approx 50% available processing per-instance (still well within the green zone of server frames per second) and rarely if ever hit an effects queue.

An important thing to note when going into this is that when an effects queue happens, it does not only affect your instance, but every other instance on the server that your instance is being processed by. Server in this case does not refer to world, such as Ghallanda or Sarlona or Wayfinder, but the actual machines that process DDO and share the load of each instance between them.

This also alleviates a source of client lag (floaty text queue), so if you play with floaty text off to alleviate client strain, this will prevent that strain by removing pressure from the floaty text queue.

Background Information

We've dedicated a lot of time to investigating and alleviating specific sources of reproducible lag within DDO in recent months. One of the most frequent causes of lag happens when an Effects Queue forms. This means that players have applied a ton of on-hit effects to a monster and the game has reached a buffer and must clear its queue in order to continue processing new information.

You can see this happen in raid groups; the party jumps in, opens up with a ton of active attacks and on-hit effects, and the game begins to degrade in performance almost immediately. It is also worth noting that this kind of lag has two separate portions: Client Combat Lag (which can be alleviated by turning off Floaty Text in your settings) and Server Combat Lag. We are specifically targeting Server based lag with this change. Behind the scenes, the server crunches damage, effects, and debuffs in a big queue. We can measure how efficient the server is at processing this queue by measuring the server frames.

To begin researching and addressing the root causes we put together simulations of a standard raid group and their on-hit profiles. Simulations of a raid group attacking a single target quickly ran into the same kind of performance problems that have become prevalent in raid groups, so we knew we had a reliable test case. What we found was that the amount of damage dealt didn't matter, it was about the frequency that effects were being applied. It didn't matter if a simulation was against one target or many - if the effects queue was in trouble the rest of the instance had its performance significantly impacted. That means lag for not just you and your group but for other people on the server.

What's Changing

• Doublestrike and Doubleshot will no longer apply a full subsequent "attack" as part of your attack chain. Instead, when a player Doublestrikes or Doubleshots (for brevity, we will call this a multi-hit from now on, just remember that this applies for all melee and all ranged) the game will instead multiply the base amount of damage dealt (first number and sneak attack) by the amount of multi-hits generated. This means that a player who deals an average of 100 damage on their first hit will now deal 200, or 300 damage, or however many multi-hits multiplied by their base damage, when their multi-hit goes off.
• When a multi-hit happens, you'll see an icon of two swords next to your damage in the floaty text, similar to how Point Blank Shot provides its feedback.
• Abilities that apply additional ranged projectiles (Shuriken Expertise and Advanced Ninja Training) no longer apply multiple hits or projectiles. Instead, just as if they had been purely Doubleshot scalars, they will simply be additional chances to multi-hit.
• Effects that trigger on-hit will also have their damage multiplied comparatively. This means that if you deal 10 Law damage on each hit, on a doublestrike, it will deal 20.
• Repeating Crossbows and the Dual Crossbow style still fire 3 or 2 full projectiles (so you'll still see 3 numbers or 2 numbers, respectively) and are still affected by their Doubleshot penalties of 66% and 50%, respectively.
• A player's 100% effective Doublestrike cap still applies in this system.
• Offhand strikes will still be a separate "hit" and will roll their own damage from their own weapon and can still Doublestrike. However, we have removed the stat Offhand Doublestrike from the game. Your offhand now Doublestrikes at 50% of the Doublestrike of your mainhand. This means that if you have a 50% chance to produce an offhand strike, and 100% Doublestrike, your offhand will hit 50% of the time for 50% Doublestrike (so a 50% chance to deal double damage). Abilities and enhancements that used to provide Offhand Doublestrike no longer do so.
• Shields still cannot Doublestrike.
• Strikethrough attacks still proc their own Doublestrike roll individually per target struck.
• The main reasoning behind these changes (letting repeaters and offhand strikes still proc rather than fully condensing) is that we want to keep our damage numbers appropriate to the amount of animations that a player actually produces.

A major effect of this change is that you will see much spikier damage across the board. The multi-hit calculation takes the original roll into account when determining damage, which means that you'll see much higher highs and much lower lows. Attacks that crit will multiply that increased damage, so you'll see much higher numbers on those attacks. Attacks that miss will deal no damage, as before, but rather than a multi-hit giving a chance for a second strike to deal damage, they will still deal no damage, as the original strike has missed.

These changes eliminate the Floaty-text queue in practice. Players who are used to seeing damage numbers scroll by on a delay will see the system replaced with numbers that are current. This will make DPS easier to estimate from a series of hits, and there will simply be fewer numbers to add up and adjust.

The Crunchy Details

Curious as to what's actually happening when a player attacks? Currently, when a player Doublestrikes or Doubleshots, we actually handle those types of attacks through very different flows. Both melee and missile attacks use something that we call a detect-attack to deal their regular damage, but how they get there is very different. Right now, a player “Doublestrikes” when their attack scripts use their Doublestrike stat to determine if they fire off another detect-attack. A player “Doubleshots” when the Missile Attacker code gets to the part in the code where we determine how many "Missiles" are a part of the projectile. From there, the scripts use the number of missiles to determine how many times they use a detect-attack.

Now, when a player “attacks” (from the detect-attack callback or elsewhere) the determination to Doublestrike or Doubleshot is made within that single attack call. The appropriate stats are queried, even the weird ones like the Shuriken multi-throw feats, and the appropriate adjustments to the chances are made such as the Doubleshot penalty from using a repeater or dual crossbow. From there, we determine how many “extra attacks” you have rolled, and if you have any bonus “attacks,” we multiply the damage you would deal by that amount.

We also have to do some funky stuff to get the damage of procs to double or triple or quadruple, and that starts in the same place where we calculate the number of effective hits. The combat code saves the number of hits and passes it down the chain until it gets to the place where effects actually deal their damage. From there, the effect will understand how many times it needs to be multiplied.

So, for comparison: Before, a melee character swings with his weapon, and Doublestrikes, which would be two detect-attacks, two damage rolls, and two series of on-hit effect triggers. Under these changes, the player attacks, Doublestrikes, and double damage is dealt, but only one set of on-hit-effects trigger because, to the game, only one “attack” took place.

What this means in practice is that no matter how many projectiles a shuriken thrower uses, or a dual-crossbow player fires, the maximum rate of an on-hit effect is now directly linked to your actual attack speed, and therefore, is significantly reduced. This has the potential to greatly reduce the amount of actual “attacks” in DDO without greatly disrupting player behavior.

Summary

The end result of this change should be improved gameplay on the performance end. Furthermore, the numbers you see while dealing damage will more accurately reflect what's happening in the moment, and you should be able to make calculations more quickly. We hope that you'll give this a solid try on Lamannia and look forward to your feedback, both on the usability of this change and any change in performance therein.

Having just read this, and not having time to consider/examine the responses to these changes. These changes seem to be a NEW way to MAJORLY NERF a toon's combat effectiveness in general. Ranged toon in particular. The reasoning for this conclusion is: The nerfing will come in the form of the double-strike/double-shot nerf proc. From the perspective of ranged toon player and my ability to contribute to a group IS based on attack rate (which you guys changed to double-shot for performance issues) is where the major nerf comes from. It will affect EVERYTHING that my ranged toons have spent years to build...Nerve Toxin/paralysis nerfed into Oblivion, running in fury...Adrenaline will no longer reliably return. EVERYTHING outside of raw dps (which you guys nerfed with the last ranged combat pass) will be affected by this new change.

Somehow I find it hard to believe that the proc rate in the combat system is responsible for the lag that we see in game. Lag that we have seen since day 1 I might add. I recall a few years ago, this same argument used on two-weapon fighting, to nerf that fighting style into oblivion.

The end result of this change should be improved gameplay on the performance end. Furthermore, the numbers you see while dealing damage will more accurately reflect what's happening in the moment, and you should be able to make calculations more quickly. We hope that you'll give this a solid try on Lamannia and look forward to your feedback, both on the usability of this change and any change in performance therein. THIS STRIKES ME AS A BLATANT LIE....

If by some miracle, you guys are correct and attack speed is in fact the problem. And actual calculation of the damage/effects of damage isn't. Then the simple way to introduce a reduced attack rate WITHOUT AFFECTING DPS or procs would be to to MULTIPLY EVERYTHING. Nerve Toxin has a 7% chance to proc per hit....If it is a "no big deal" calculation/lag wise to do a 2x, 3x, or even 4x the damage...it should be simple to that same thing to proc effects 14% chance for a 2x shot/hit, 21% for 3x...ect. Adrenaline would proc 2 adrenalins for a 2x hit or 3 for a 3x hit. It could also be applied to other effects like purification...ect... This could be applied to ALL COMBAT as well so that NO ONE GETS NERFED.

My 2 cents worth...

The Bytcher~
Souless/Spectyr/Xbow/Valice/Tazzor/Xindao
Ascent

[Souless]

We are trying to reduce the amount of times over a period that procs happen, and changes that put us to the same amount of procs per second will not fix our effects queue problem.

After reading ALL of this post and comments and Based on this response, I'm reevaluating my previous argument/comments..

This is a BLATANT RANGED COMBAT NERF

Because all other effects seem to be getting a proc rate buff: 2x healing for fists of light, 2x damage for adrenaline etc...If it were the NUMBER of Calculations/sec that mattered...Why not ADD time to the swing rate of melee...ADD extra time to casting spells that require multiple mobs to have multiple checks, etc....

Answer: For whatever reason the Dev's feel the need to NERF ranged combat into oblivion. This will NOT fix the lag. What it will do is remove ranged combat from the game. As I've already said: they used this same argument to nerf TWF years ago. And do we have less lag?

This was stated earlier, but it bears repeating: I feel the most lag when mobs are spawning or when they start moving around non-standardly (teleporting devils, burrowing scorps, summoning mephits).
This was also stated earlier: Lag increased with the addition of Strikethrough AND Multivial. Seems, all those ranged procs were NOT a problem before.

Soul~

[Nammmmmmm]

the biggest proc thing I can think of that has issues is Executioner shot/strike

can we get it changed to 100% proc chance if this goes through? even an actual assassin rogue currently needs to offhand/doublestrike to make this useful

While 100% sounds nice, it needs to be in the ballpark of where it was before with regular doubleshot. They just need to make EACH doubleshot applied to trigger the 35% chance.

Executioner's Shot/Strike from Shadowdancer. A 35% chance on-hit is large, but it's got a cooldown, and I disagree that as an instakill it's not relevant. There's a huge difference between 1 proc (35%) and 4 procs (1-0.65^4, or 82%). That's an enormous difference for Assassins, Artificers (repeaters), some flavors of Thrower (eg, Monk). That ability alone is enough rationale to choose Shadowdancer as one of those builds

So, being an instakill at all makes it relevent? You clearly have never built one before.

35% to trigger the instakill is large? This is BEFORE the DC is applied. Instakills are the only advantage shadowdancer has over other builds. If this remains unchanged shadowdancer will simply not be played by anybody else who is trying to be relevant in groups. (assuming they arent a tradtional rogue assassin)

[VinoeWhines]

Are you guys even aware of the non-damaging procs in combat? You know, you created all of those abilities which are like 1-5% to proc per hit, which often made TWF competitive? Vorpal, paralyze, lightning strike, energy drain, blind, deception turn around, stunning % on hit, vulnerability, curses, etc....

It doesn't seem like this was addressed in the notes, yet it is a vital part of combat...Was this change really discussed from all angles?

Minor point, but this sounds like it will make DR in epics much easier to overcome if your damage is multiplied together...

This point is very critical for players relying on proc affects like CC to not get killed by mobs.
This will have to double the proc rate if it's a double strike, and if your doing triple strike, the proc affect would have to triple as well.

In essence if your doubling the damage to one hit, the doubling of the proc will have to also take place or else this invalidates players relying on Proc Effects in the rotation of attacks to help a player stay alive in combat.

Often it is the proc affect that saves you from getting one shotted and the original way, allows you to cause the proc affect and give you a chance to heal, recover, rez someone, heal someone, escape or re-engage to finish mobs.

It takes a very long time to even summon two oozes with Legendary Ooze weapon. Now it might never proc in combat and oozes can sometimes draw aggro to help group out when players are getting taken out left and right.

Again: the proc rate needs to be multiplied base on if the Server is calculating only "One Attack only"

Another suggestion: Can Raids be Setup to be on their own Virtual Servers, that way they are isolated from the non raid quests and don't affect the world.

Create VLANs for Raids and they can even be decentralized from other Server payloads. Create load balancing for the Raid instance. Clustering maybe even to give them more resources if the que's start to rise, allocating Quality Of Service bandwidth traffic priority to them when necessary.

Maybe Sandbox troubleshoot each metric to then see which part of the stack needs to be addressed and given it's own database or Object allocation.
It sounds like the crew is narrowing to some extent where lag/bottlenecking/calculation affects, mapping is being source driven in the chain of events, but amputating certain affects prematurely might end up causing other issues(Overperforming, non-WAI) results in this approach as a result.

Thank you once again for your attention to these matters.

[TheMaxpower]

1. This is a HUGE nerf to builds that rely on procs.
2. This "solution to lag" is making a lot of your customers very upset.
3. This solution is unlikely to work!
4. End result - Game will still have lag, plus lots of upset customers.

Sad

[Hawkwier]

Well it looks like we get another go at it. From the DDOcast, there is going to be a third update lamania release.

The big change will be to adrenaline and hunt's end which are proposed to go down from 400% damage to 200%
with the recharge chance being changed to 100% on a vorpal ( at least for melee )

We'll have to see if they go after any of the other non-damage procs.

The 400% to 200% reduction is, yet again, an overshoot compensation that disadvantages players...

As things stand, an adrenaline hit gives 400% damage, plus a DS chance at a non-adrenaline double hit.

With this new proposal you get 200% damage X (1+DS). That's it.

So, just to make up the 200% difference, you need to have hit 100% DS.

Firstly not everyone has 100% DS. I can only achieve that in reaper with the DS boost. So it's a nerf in any non-reaper quest, such as a raid.

Secondly, even if they do have 100% DS, they are still not being compensated for the loss of the extra DS hit they get with current. Effectively, compared to current, the effect of current DS is being removed entirely for an adrenaline hit.

All DS will effectively be used to compensate for the 200% damage nerf, even if you do have 100% DS.

Gain a benefit from these changes? Ooh! Can't have that. We'll nerf you back - AND THEN SOME!

But if you're disadvantaged by these changes? Too bad, they're necessary, deal with it.

Again, an over-hasty, ill-considered, over-zealous nerf that debits players. Why do we never seem to see changes that favour us - why does every solution seem to have to hurt?

I'm sick of this.

[anticlimax]

While 100% sounds nice, it needs to be in the ballpark of where it was before with regular doubleshot. They just need to make EACH doubleshot applied to trigger the 35% chance.

So, being an instakill at all makes it relevent? You clearly have never built one before.

35% to trigger the instakill is large? This is BEFORE the DC is applied. Instakills are the only advantage shadowdancer has over other builds. If this remains unchanged shadowdancer will simply not be played by anybody else who is trying to be relevant in groups. (assuming they arent a tradtional rogue assassin)

I agree that without something being done, shadowdancer may become irrelevent but, having used shadowdancers execute extensively I can say that 100% proc is in the same ballpark as any build that can get 3 shots per attack. That was the breakpoint that turned execute from a pointless ability to a build defining ability. I can see where you're coming from saying the proc could be rolled multiple times depending on multi-attack but, I feel this misses an opportunity to make the ability usable by builds other than maxxed out multi-attack thrower builds. Melee will not be able to hit the breakpoint, bows can't do that reliably anymore either. Getting assassinate dc to a high level is difficult and synergies are rare: that is the balancing factor that makes 100% proc rate fine.

[Taraborn]

The 400% to 200% reduction is, yet again, an overshoot compensation that disadvantages players...

As things stand, an adrenaline hit gives 400% damage, plus a DS chance at a non-adrenaline double hit.

With this new proposal you get 200% damage X (1+DS). That's it.

So, just to make up the 200% difference, you need to have hit 100% DS.

Firstly not everyone has 100% DS. I can only achieve that in reaper with the DS boost. So it's a nerf in any non-reaper quest, such as a raid.

Secondly, even if they do have 100% DS, they are still not being compensated for the loss of the extra DS hit they get with current. Effectively, compared to current, the effect of current DS is being removed entirely for an adrenaline hit.

All DS will effectively be used to compensate for the 200% damage nerf, even if you do have 100% DS.

Gain a benefit from these changes? Ooh! Can't have that. We'll nerf you back - AND THEN SOME!

But if you're disadvantaged by these changes? Too bad, they're necessary, deal with it.

Again, an over-hasty, ill-considered, over-zealous nerf that debits players. Why do we never seem to see changes that favour us - why does every solution seem to have to hurt?

I'm sick of this.

Actually you are being compensated for the extra DS hit, currently with +400% you do 5 + 1 = 6 times damage, with +200% you will do 3 x 2 = 6, and will average higher because of the higher crit chance on the Adrenaline hit.

[Epicsoul]

More mobs has always equaled more lag for me.

Spawn lag certainly exists. However, I'm not sure it's tied to the number of mobs, necessarily. For instance, when the Elite Barbazu Legionnaires spawn in Legendary Vision of Destruction it doesn't seem to lag very much, but when the 4 Orthons spawn it always lags significantly. I'm not sure why, but in that particular case the game handles the larger trash waves better than just the 4 Orthons.

1. This is a HUGE nerf to builds that rely on procs. A nerf to some builds, yes. A HUGE nerf? Meh. The changes also create a niche for some play styles.
2. This "solution to lag" is making a lot of your customers very upset. Most of the people I play with are largely okay with the changes.
3. This solution is unlikely to work! How did your tests on Lam go?
4. End result - Game will still have lag, plus lots of upset customers. Lag will still exist. Queue lag seemed improved on Lam. The eternal whine of upset forumites will continue to pervade throughout eternity regardless.

Sad Be happy!

A history of the forums, by Epicsoul:

FORUMITES: Lag is DESTROYING the game. Fix it!
DEVELOPERS: Here are some changes we're implementing to help with lag.
FORUMITES: Not like that! You're DESTROYING the game!!!11!

[DjangoKeys]

A history of the forums, by Epicsoul:

FORUMITES: Lag is DESTROYING the game. Fix it!
DEVELOPERS: Here are some changes we're implementing to help with lag.
FORUMITES: Not like that! You're DESTROYING the game!!!11!

ACTUAL FORUMITES: So, SSG, the lag that you’ve been adding to the game thru your poor game design choices has gotten to the point - yet again - that the game is effectively unplayable. What are you going to do about it?

ACTUAL DEVELOPERS (To themselves): So, we’ve spent the last 5 years under our own steam adding increasing amounts of bloat to the game to sell power, but now, we’ve got to take a lot of that back so we can sell it again. Besides, we need that overhead to buffer us when we add all that bloat back in legendary levels.

ACTUAL DEVELOPERS (To players): Here are some nerfs...er, changes focused on boosting game performance.

ACTUAL FORUMITES (To devs): You do realize that your “changes” are actually major nerfs that will result in a lot of builds becoming completely unviable overnight, doncha? Ok, you’re acting like you don’t so let us explain it to you.

ACTUAL FORUMITES (To themselves): Are they lying, or are they just that dense?!

[Aelonwy]

Spawn lag certainly exists. However, I'm not sure it's tied to the number of mobs, necessarily. For instance, when the Elite Barbazu Legionnaires spawn in Legendary Vision of Destruction it doesn't seem to lag very much, but when the 4 Orthons spawn it always lags significantly. I'm not sure why, but in that particular case the game handles the larger trash waves better than just the 4 Orthons.

Couldn't that be an example of two different types of lag? I mean yes, certain mob types cause lag more than others but more mobs always equals more lag for me and more mobs of the mob type that is extra laggy will only make it worse. So for example if 4 bugbears doesn't cause me lag but 20 does this doesn't negate that 4 orthons by themselves might cause the game issues because their mob type just has extra stuff causing lag so 20 orthons would be devastating.

Oh I thought of an example:

When I'm fighting a few oozes everything is okay but if my son comes up and cleaves and splits them all suddenly the game lags for a second or two as untold number of oozes spawn. We ran Wizard of Wines recently and this happened at least twice. More mobs = more lag for me.

[Hawkwier]

Actually you are being compensated for the extra DS hit, currently with +400% you do 5 + 1 = 6 times damage, with +200% you will do 3 x 2 = 6, and will average higher because of the higher crit chance on the Adrenaline hit.

Point taken, though that's only true at 100% DS.

At 75% DS, old v new is 5.75 v 5.25, at 50% it's 5.5 v 4.5, and at 0% it's 5 v 3...