Mutalist Cernos visual effects causing lag & stuttering

[(PSN)Maunstre]

As of the Rising Tide update for PS4, the increased particle effects for the Mutalist Cernos weapon have been amped to such a degree that using the weapon causes pronounced input lag, frame drops, and stuttering. Upon firing and holding to fire, a trail of pixie dust and smoke, two distinct effects, emit from the arrowhead. When the bow is drawn, moving to the right keeps the effects out of frame and reduces their impact, but should the player move to the left at all in any way, the two trails will envelop the screen and cause an immediate performance drop for a solid half a second to a full second or longer with frames plummeting and input largely not registering until the game catches up. This was encountered while playing solo; with a full squad I can only imagine the slowdown frustration.

I usually run MCernos for survival, as it's great for "set and forget" trap-setting with its toxin cloud (I use a gas build), and I run for 40+ minutes. With this new particle issue, I was forced to quit by 15 minutes due to the lag and utter inability to see. The new particles, the smoke especially, is so thick that it obscures player view when emitting from the arrowhead while the bow is drawn (even while it isn't, as the trailing effects continue even when the weapon is at rest).

ETA: The lag effect of the particles was the same with particle intensity set to 100 and at absolute minimum.

Edited December 13, 2019 by (PS4)Maunstre

[(PSN)YRU_Ronin]

I'm on ps4 as well and have recently discovered the status monster that is the mutalist cernos, and I can confirm this fx bug definitely causes severe performance issues. I was thinking of how to post the issue here but I'm glad to see someone's already done it

[CuriousCanidae]

I'm on PC, a fairly low end laptop and plays with every single graphical effect turned down. However, I also ran into this problem today while I got this weapon for the first time. The sheer amount of particles after 10 minutes just disable the ability to see anything due to lag.

The problem is sort of relieved by not showing the weapon when at rest, but that doesn't fix anything because the cloud returns when I draw the bow again.

[(PSN)Phantom_Rogue_1]

I turned off element effects and it didnt turn off the effect for the vow i am using ps4 and cant aim the bow either you gotta hipfire it or not use it at all.

[(PSN)Road2unner]

First mission I used Mutalist Cernos in, it actually crashed my PS4 Pro. After shooting about 10 arrows in a row PS4 suddenly amped up the fan to the max (I have the newer, quieter SKU, which usually does not do that), beeped 3 times and turned off cold. Wouldn't turn on either until I unplugged it for few seconds and then scolded me for not turning it off properly, as is the standard procedure.

Edit: Turning all the graphics settings down seemed to help with a tornado-fan situation a bit... until I walked into a cloud of Cernos' smoke and my PS4 turned itself off again. As is the weapon is unusable. Haven't seen anything like that before. Waterfalls also spin up the fan, but not to that extent.

Edited January 22, 2020 by (PS4)Road2unner