High latency DPS observations

The internet is down completely here in Afghanistan today, so I took this opportunity to write a few letters home and construct a new blog entry.

Since moving to location B on this deployment, my internet connection has been stable, running about 400ms latency with a cap of 128Kbps download rate.  This has been nice for applications like FaceTime, which seem to be optimized on the military and paid networks.  The internet costs $130/month for that “faster” speed, but over here I think that’s about as good as I could ever expect.  I've been able to communicate with my wife daily, and in some of my spare time I've been able to even do some light raiding in WoW.

My most recent enjoyment in online gaming has come from a surprisingly fun class to play in WoW, the hunter.  Mine has been 90 for a while, although I merely used that toon for professions.  However, I was relatively diligent in downing Ordos and Celestials each week for a total of 4 chances at high item level gear, and that paid off (this only takes about 10 minutes if you use oQueue, or accomplish it on a Tuesday after server reset).  I ended up with four pieces of “warforged” 559 gear, which tops out at 567 once upgraded using valor points.  For Smoogehunt, I started sensing that his DPS might actually be competitive in raids at a higher item level, even with the taxing latency that slows ability use.

And so, this is what I’ve learned about playing DPS classes with high latency…

BLUF (bottom line up front): Let your UI do some of the thinking for you, because you have less time to think.

In WoW, bandwidth is generally not your biggest limfac (limiting factor).  Your super awesome hacker university-level mega internet pipeline doesn’t necessarily perform any better than my in-home $50/mo cable internet.  In reality, latency plays a much larger role in your ability to complete raids or farm mobs.  (Don’t even try to compete in PvP with high latency, at least in arenas.)  As far as I know, there is no way to queue abilities for use, so every time you want to cast Explosive Shot, you have to press a button.  For every DPS class I've seen so far (DK, rogue, hunter, and warlock), this means your triggered abilities will always be delayed by your latency + reaction time + physical cast time.  So…with 400ms latency, it takes .4 seconds at least for my system to receive the notification that Lock and Load has procced, then I have to mentally react and decide to cast Explosive Shot, and then I have to physically push my “1” key.  Now, my reaction time is decent, but this delay is simply unavoidable over here.  How, then does a DPS player compete when he is at a near half-second or greater disadvantage?

Select the right spell at the right time.  i.e. Don’t bother with Serpent Shot when a lot of low-HP mobs are in front of you…use your Glaives.

The only thing I've found so far to help with that is User Interface improvement.  Simple addons such as TellMeWhen and SpellFlash will quickly cue your attention to upcoming and high priority abilities.  For instance, I found a pre-made string that I imported into TellMeWhen for my Frost DK.  It provides some centrally positioned icons that show when I can use an ability.  It does the checking to make sure I have adequate runes or energy, and it highlights procs when they happen.  For my DK this helps me anticipate which abilities I need to use.  Even with latency, if you are selecting appropriate abilities based on energy and procs, you will suffer less DPS loss because you are never capping in any of your resources. 

Capping your resource is an automatic loss of DPS.  For a DK, you have two resources (runes and energy).  Rogues simply have an ever-regenerating energy bar, just like a hunter, and casters have mana.  My warlock also has an energy resource that can be spent to transform, which is less time critical, and my priest stores up charges that I can consume to increase my healing throughput.  If you ever have 100% energy or all of your runes (rogue/hunter/DK), and an enemy is standing, you are losing DPS.  If you capped your focus as a hunter because the game was ticking away while your connection slowly registered your actions, you lost DPS due to latency.  However, if you have 500ms latency, you can still keep your focus below 100% almost all the time.  The only exception I occasionally see is when a Lock and Load procs when I already had about 50% focus.  I might hit 100% focus while I’m dumping Explosive Shot, but the next ExS that requires focus always brings me down quickly.

The universal cooldown seems longer when you have higher latency.  OK, maybe not mathematically correct, but I can tell you that you have to wait for the UCD (the natural recharge rate before you can cast any other ability) before you can select your next attack.  With high latency this often means that you accept an additional delay between instant casts.  I notice a much faster attack pace on a faster connection with my rogue and hunter, because each of those occasionally spams instant attacks to dump energy/focus.  The good news here is that most of the time you will be selecting abilities based on procs and cooldowns, not just spamming one key waiting for the UCD.  When I do need to dump energy/focus, it simply takes me longer than a player with 30ms.  Best advice here: don’t fixate on spam abilities…the chances are that you have a proc or a cooldown you can use to fill that time instead.  Try not to ever cap an infinite resource when in combat.

Targeting makes a huge difference.  In some fights, such as Garrosh, I have noticed my DPS goes far below normal.  That’s because I don’t have a great way to target new enemies when they pop up.  I still use my mouse wheel “up” as my “target next enemy,” which I’m finding to be entirely inadequate.  I’m rarely selecting my intended target on the first single scroll, so entire seconds are lost just trying to find something new to shoot.  This is not good, and it’s even worse if you are on a melee character such as a DK or rogue!  With a hunter you should have almost zero downtime because you attack at range and you can cast all of your shots while moving.  No excuses for a hunter, so I’m going to try to find a good addon for target selection, perhaps in the form of nameplates.

Be ready to use your big abilities.  Know which key to hit when your 2-minute DPS cooldown is up, and quickly fit it into your rotation.  I now use “Q” “E” “R” and “V” more than I ever used to, because they are relatively quick to strike.  The primary numbers I use are 1, 2, and 3, and I do use shift some.  I currently have some cooldown abilities tied to the F-1 through F-5 keys at the top of my keyboard, but I find myself reaching for those and using my cooldowns a lot less frequently than I otherwise would.  I am not sure where to fit those abilities, since I also don’t naturally use the Ctrl button.  I’m constantly looking for good keybinds to improve my speed when it comes to ability selection.  The first step is definitely getting to know which spells are your character’s most important.

I recommend Icy-Veins as a great first stop.  I probably spend about 15% or more of my time “gaming” actually reading forums, tutorials, and other people’s advice.  I have been told that Noxxic is grossly inaccurate, so I went back to Icy Veins for my theorycrafting and to simply learn basic rotations on new specs.  This is where I figure out what my important spells are, and I assign the most common ones to the easiest keys to reach.  For instance, Explosive Shot is “1.”

On the road again, but managing to stay connected

I am on the road again, and although I am sad to be away from my wife, I'm trying to make the most of my travels.  I explored some new areas, worked in a military capacity, and had a few hours to play WoW and Hearthstone.

On the Hearthstone front, I can tell that it will continue to be a fun game to play, especially when the connection will not support higher level LFR groups in WoW.  There is only so much WoW daily quest grinding you can tolerate, after all.  Hearthstone is a great deal of fun, although it requires uninterrupted time to play each game.  It is also a game that will require you to lose a lot before you have a decent deck, from what I can tell.  I have probably opened 5 or 6 bonus packs of cards so far, using gold that I obtained from daily quests and victories.  I am becoming quite familiar with the feeling of losing to other players, and even the NPC practice opponents destroy me quite often.  Even with a deck that includes blue and purple cards, it seems to be a very luck-dependent game.  An addicting and fun luck-dependent game which will probably consume some of my actual income for new card packs.

On the WoW front, I reached ilvl 488 by completing the Golden Lotus revered grind and running quite a few LFR groups.  I finished Throne of Thunder today, concluding the list of available LFR instances, although I observed 75% of the Lei Shen fight as a corpse.  I still have no idea what killed me.  But I have put epic pieces in ever slot except trinkets...those simply elude me, and I anticipate more rep grinds to obtain those.  I do not expect to have a good enough connection to continue running LFR groups, so my priest will likely remain my best geared character for quite a while.  

I am bringing directional wifi antennae, and multiple wireless cards and connection points in hopes of developing a reasonable and reliable connection with which I can skype my wife and play an online game when I have time.  Remembering my last two deployments, I am bridling my optimism so that I am not sorely disappointed when the internet sucks.

So, I'm preparing to shift to alt leveling and rep/heroic gearing.  I have a goal to level some classes that I have not ever played so far, such as lock, pally, shammy, and monk.  And, I am completely unfamiliar with my DK, druid, and hunter, which are all sitting patiently at 85.  Smoogestab, my rogue, is now at 86.  Icy veins seems to be the new go-to place for leveling and gear questions, and I have adopted their combat rogue leveling strategy, paired with a good leveling addon.

As far as UI stuff goes, I have experimented with quite a few addons recently.  So far, I have settled on Dominos, Recount, Dugi, Atlas Loot, and a leveling addon.  I am still looking for a good unit frame and cooldown addon for both my priest and all of my alts.  I am tolerating Healbot and TellMeWhen, and I dislike the xPerl unit frames I currently have installed.

So, today I begin the process of really learning how to play my favorite MMO again.  That is, I am beginning to study the game with the intent of playing at an above average level.  My end goal is to be a competent, competitive player when I do log on, even though that will be less frequently than the 19 year old college student with infinite time to play games.

I might never raid properly, on a schedule and at the higher levels, but I do intend to gear up and have fun with PVE instance play.

If anybody has returned to Warcraft after a long leave of absence, they would immediately be struck by the sheer amount of options that exist the moment they log in.  Here are some of the questions that I had right away:
Where am I?
How do I get back to Org?
How do I get to the panda island?
How should I set up my UI?
What addons are good now?
What is the best healer in the game now?
How should I level, and which character should I level first?
Should I run through the extensive quest line?
Should I run instances before I hit 90 (level cap)?
How should I spec my priest?
What spec should I use for questing?
As I approach 90, what do I do now?
What factions are out there and what do they offer?
Where do I find the daily quests, and which ones should I do?
Where do I start getting better gear?
What stats do I want on my gear?
How do I make gold now?
What professions should I work on first?
Is farmville useful or a pure waste of time?

So, that is what my first few hours of gameplay were like, although I managed to grind through a few mini quest lines on my shadow priest/disc priest.  I started doing some google searches and found some decent forum answers:
I just hit level 90! Now what? : wow
Level 90... Now what? - Forums - World of Warcraft

Here are some good things I've learned so far:

• Disc priests are still quite viable in MoP, which is the acronym for the newest expansion.  They are good in instances because they can DPS while they heal.  Other priest specific resources indicate that spirit is important for mana, and intellect is now only tied to spell power.  Good to know.
• At level 90, buy the flying ability for the panda area at the Shrine of 7 Stars.  It's called "Wisdom of the 4 Winds"
• Some of the factions in MoP include: Klaxxi, Golden Lotus, Shado-Pan, August Celestials, Angler, Tiller, Cloud Serpent, Shadow Pan Assault, and Kirin Tor Offensive.
• Valor points are used to buy pretty good gear.  You can only get 1000 Valor points each week.  If nothing else, make sure to get those 1000 Valor points every week.  You get them from heroics and dailies.
• Dailies yield reputation and Lesser charms of fortune.  Those are turned in at the Shrine for Mogu runes of fate.  Those allow you to roll an extra time in LFR and raids, helping you get better gear.
• Klaxxi have an item level (iLvl) 522 Epic neck at honored for 1250 Valor points.  This should take about 1 day of dailies after I have done the Dread Wastes quests.  Mobs yield amber shards.  Turn those in for "Lesser runes."
• Each faction has a badge at revered that gives 100% increase to rep gains for all characters on the account.
• Tiller dailies are all about planting and farming things.  They provide extra mats and stuff for my character or professions.
• Three primary options exist for PVE groups.  Random scenarios, 5 man heroics, and LFR (Looking for Raid).  LFR requires an average ilvl of 460 for the first set of bosses.
• Random scenarios queue quickly and have less people in the party; they are supposedly much faster.  Scenarios offer 450 and 463 blues, and sometimes 476 epics.  They give 40 Valor points for the first one done each day.

Right now I'm 89, about 2/3 the way to 90, on my priest.  Apparently, the real game starts at 90.

More WoW, deployment style...lessons learned

More fun with limited networks, tunneling, and “alt productivity” while in the desert.

• The network setup in our “free internet” areas has forced me to find an alternative to HighPingBuster and other PuTTy tunnels.I am having very good luck with Your-Freedom and OpenVPN.I even purchased a Basic plan and it is worth $6.
• Hercpilot is now level 85, with completely maxed herbalism and mining, and a 310 speed mount.He pretty much paid for himself, and herb farming is showing some serious potential.
• High latency herbalism/mining is a new kind of farming.You need to make some changes, and there are some helpful addons I’m using as well.
• A cry for help: Does anybody know of a viable satellite internet solution for future deployments for either an individual or a very small group of troops?I am having a really hard time finding anything remotely inexpensive and portable.

Before I start, here is a new rule I have for my characters: Don’t logout in Org. If your connection sucks when you try to get back in, you might find yourself making a new alt. The world latency in Org is considerably higher than most other zones, probably because of the bandwidth requirements.

Over here in Iraq, two of the the three routers that are set up for internet use for the troops automatically block PuTTy tunneling. This is the exact connection that HPB uses, and most of the time I am unable to connect to WoW through 2/3 of the available networks. The remaining router is usually the slower of the three, too. Skype, web browsing on common sites like google and facebook, and iTunes all work pretty well on those networks, so I knew that it was just a matter of finding a way around the preset blocks. I am quite pleased with Your-Freedom!

Small caviat: if you’re trying to log into Paypal through a tunnel, it will automatically limit your account and you will be unable to use it. My wonderful wife helped me set up the Your-Freedom account over skype, using the screen sharing function. She did great, and Y-F works wonderfully.

Setting up OpenVPN is easy, and requires a simple manual setting of the DNS on the TAP-Win32 adapter that it automatically installs. Configuring Y-F to use OpenVPN is equally simple, and that setup will allow me to browse the internet, log on to WoW, skype, download music, and even TORRENT uninhibited!

My initial tests indicate that there is slightly higher latency, but only slightly in game. Also, I did some research and found that “world” and “home” latency are different. From now on, the only one I care about is “world” latency, which is the factor for most of the send-receive functions in the game. The “home” latency only affects functions like chat, which probably explains why I can have a full conversation with a buddy on b.net while my character can’t even autoattack due to lag.

My official alt, Hercpilot, is now 85 with two maxed gathering professions and the fastest flying mount you can get. He is a DK, and leveling was fun in and of itself. I got to appreciate much of the 80-85 storyline, which I initially rushed through during late-night hours when cataclysm first launched and I wanted to get Smoogee to 85. I took time to read some of the dialogue and, probably because of lag, I followed the storyline in each zone. A good in-game friend, Kyle Rudd, hooked my toon up with a FULL set of redsteel gear AND a 2-H wpn that lasted me well through 84. The toon is still wearing most of that gear. Due to mob difficulty and latency, I switched between blood and unholy specs for most of the leveling process. I also want to point out that gathering is a good way to augment experience gains while leveling, especially with a DK. I got a flying mount promptly at 60, and it was a very quick grind to increase my gathering professions to a compatible level with outlands, northrend, and cata. It really makes gathering more viable for everyone, because you can FLY in the low-level zones now!! No more jumping around a mountain for an hour trying to get to a tough-to-reach iron node!

Gathering on a low-bandwidth, high-latency connection: It is not as easy as my U-verse connection at home, but sometimes it’s all I can do when the connection isn’t good. Here are things I’ve learned about gathering in these poor conditions.

If mobs are loaded in the area directly under you, herbs and ore will be showing on your minimap if they are present. That simple fact is how I can gauge when to stop and hover or when to blast through an area. One good strategy is to scan ahead of your character...if the mobs, critters, and NPCs ahead of you are loaded already, then you are receiving a good “feed” on nodes and you just need to continue until one pops up on your screen. If you don’t see any red, green, or yellow nameplates, you’re probably missing nodes. With an 1800ms world latency and decent bandwidth, your game will load NPCs and nodes slightly slower than you can fly. This is key: if you have the bandwidth, farming is easier. If you have the latency but low bandwidth, you need to let the game “cache”. Often, I’ll find that when I stop for one node, others will “appear” while I’m hitting that one.

Addons will help you. I highly recommend that you get rid of Gatherer and start using GatherMate2. GM2 has a Data file that will show all the nodes, and I think that is the best gathering addon out there for cata. I LOVE SimpleMiniMap v4, because it allows me to scale my minimap to 200% and it is compatible with ElvUI. This is a big part of my gathering strategy: I can see nodes clearly when they appear, and I navigate almost entirely off my minimap so it is easy to follow a pre-determined route. The simple code to make it the way I set it up is this: /smm scale 2. /smm skins skin 2. That is 200% and square.

I have not experimented with view distance and gathering nodes, but I will tomorrow after my flight tonight...(sigh, and after server downtime)

Lessons for you farmers: people still bot, apparently.  My experience so far is that the bots are relatively unconfrontational and will not approach you if you are already near a node.  Also, I have had no problem finding whiptail nodes whatsoever on Smolderthorn, even with what seem to be two other active farmers in Uldum.  It was respawning so quickly yesterday that I gathered 12 stacks in about an hour. That is a ton of herbs. Twilight Jasmine seems to be quite rare, though, and in the time I could farm a stack of that, I would already have 4 or 5 stacks of whiptail.