GCD 2.3 Revisited – Sample spreadsheet

6 Nov, 2007  5 Comments  PvE, PvP

As a follow-up to my previous post, here’s the Holy Shield behaviour I came up with.

That way, if my reasoning is wrong, you can directly see where it happened and please, by all means, do correct me.

On Similar Matters

Tags: HowTo, Mechanisms

 

5 Comments on “GCD 2.3 Revisited – Sample spreadsheet”

  • Someone (31 comments) November 6th, 2007 8:51 pm

    I must confess I’m a bit confused! I thought the whole issue with /stopcasting was to “force” another spell to be sent to the server, even if the client thought it was still inside the GCD?

    Something like (for Druids):
    /cast Nature’s Swiftness
    /stopcasting
    /cast Healing Touch

    (Ignore spell errors as I typed that out of my head!)

    What’s that spell Cooldown got to do with it?


  • Gwaendar (204 comments) November 6th, 2007 10:51 pm

    I think you’re colliding two different things together which happen in 2.3

    1) The need for /stopcasting between two actions of which at least the first doesn’t trigger the GCD gets removed. To do so, they will allow one new action to be initiated even if client believes a cast is underway, but it will trigger a GCD (if the action has a GCD).

    2) They change the way the client communicates player-initiated actions with the server. The new system will communicate one GCD-triggering action to the server and wait for a response. In the meantime, a GCD is running and no GCD-tied action may be taken and none will be sent to the server. The server will then either acknowledge the action as legit and allow the GCD to run its course on the client, or deny the action and ask the client to cancel the running GCD.

    Due to the change of mechanisms, though, instant actions with a long cooldown get affected too, which will present issues to people using actions coming with a cooldown aversely if lag drops, as you cannot use /stopcasting to shorten a running cooldown.


  • Someone (31 comments) November 7th, 2007 1:53 am

    Well, I still don’t see this as a “big” issue! ;)

    And, on the “plus” side, if those changes are properly implemented, then at least my druid can (could, before re-speccing out of NS!) work better!

    When my druid wasn’t “that” much feral, that is, 40 in feral (no Mangle!) and 21 on Resto for Nature’s Swiftness, I had a macro that, among other things, had this:

    /cast Nature’s Swiftness
    /stopcasting
    /cast Healing Touch

    Now, currently it worked OK, but not great. It only worked with 1 stroke IF I was standing still! If I was on the move, since HT usually takes a few secs, I could not cast it on a single stroke because the client wasn’t aware that the server had acknowledged NS. I believe, but can’t test as the test realms are currently off-line, that in 2.3 it may work even on the run!

    And the same can probably be said about any similar “make-next-spell-instant” type of ability that other classes may have.

    If that is true, then I think it more than offsets a few milliseconds, especially since many players probably can’t smash keys that fast! (Just did a small test furiously pressing the same key and I got about 80 strokes in 10 seconds, each means 125 ms between each stroke.)

    So, my feeling is that this is a non-problem! Yes, there is a difference, yes it’s probably worst than was in 2.2, but is it REALLY noticeable? I’d say no, it isn’t…


  • Gwaendar (204 comments) November 7th, 2007 2:02 am

    Ask tankadins for a second opinion.


  • Wilz (5 comments) November 12th, 2007 9:59 am

    Someone, I’m guessing that you’re not on 400 ms during ALL of your playtime. And yes – ask Tankadins for a second opinion.

    I was ecstatic about this change as well, until I read gwaendar’s post and saw the comments below, mainly due to the failure to realize that GCD activation on client prevents further communication to the server of actions. That alone immediately made me realize the amount of pain melee classes would end up going through, especially those who are dependent on positioning.


World of Warcraft™ and Blizzard Entertainment® are all trademarks or registered trademarks of Blizzard Entertainment in the United States and/or other countries. These terms and all related materials, logos, and images are copyright © Blizzard Entertainment. This site is in no way associated with Blizzard Entertainment®