Saryn Venom - The King Troll?

[Cyxe]

So we found that a Flux rifle with maxed Metal Auger and Shred (1.8 Puncture) focused on ammo, reload, and clip size, no damage mods other than Split Chamber and Wildfire, Saryn was able to spread spores from her Venom ability at computer-destroying rates.  Generally, I'll drop Bastille, he will cast about 5 spores on the first Ancient, and then the Spore-pocalypse begins as he cuts through dozens of spores at a time.  We tested this on Xini and for every single wave up to 50 we experience 0 fps until everything dies. His PC is substantially better than mine but we both get the frame rate loss. We're hoping that you can fix the loss of performance without nerfing our combo because the damage is very good (we think, hard to tell with a frame rate drop to 0 for both of us).

 

 

Team composition: 

Vauban - Torrid, Acrid

Saryn - Flux Rifle, Despair

 

Mission: Xini waves 1-50

 

Edit: We could probably go further than 50 but the FPS issue makes it... somewhat undesirable to continue.

Edit2: Forgot to mention that I was hosting. We still need to test it with him hosting on his Saryn with a better PC... Even if it alleviates the performance issue, it's not a real fix : \

Edited August 19, 2013 by Cyxe

[Yorinar]

Epic. I'm gonna have to try this.

Spore-pocalypse. lol

[Yomuntai]

lol spore-pocalype. Last time i heard that term was when I messed up my game in Spore.

[BIossome]

That's gonna have to be added on my to-do-list of things.

[[DE]Linkski]

So we found that a Flux rifle with maxed Metal Auger and Shred (1.8 Puncture) focused on ammo, reload, and clip size, no damage mods other than Split Chamber and Wildfire, Saryn was able to spread spores from her Venom ability at computer-destroying rates.  Generally, I'll drop Bastille, he will cast about 5 spores on the first Ancient, and then the Spore-pocalypse begins as he cuts through dozens of spores at a time.  We tested this on Xini and for every single wave up to 50 we experience 0 fps until everything dies. His PC is substantially better than mine but we both get the frame rate loss. We're hoping that you can fix the loss of performance without nerfing our combo because the damage is very good (we think, hard to tell with a frame rate drop to 0 for both of us).

 

Hi Cyxe,

 

Is there any chance that you could upload a video of this issue?

[Cyxe]

Hi Cyxe,

 

Is there any chance that you could upload a video of this issue?

We'll work on it

[TargetDummy]

Hi Cyxe,

 

Is there any chance that you could upload a video of this issue?

I can explain what he means, as I've tryed the same. Venom deals 10 (13 with Focus) damage per tick. You destroy spore, and enemies around that spore got venom DoT, and recieve spores on themselves. It is new mechanic to that skill, made Venom non useless at last. You can destroy lots of those spores at the same time (any shotgun with puncture >>> Flux), so lots of spores got destroed, and you recieve ammount of Dots on screen destroed_spores x number_of_enemies_around. With every DoT ticking.

Problem in game mechanic to show damage. Shotgun with multishot + lots of elemental mods + crits = cloud of numbers per shot. When you use Venom on very big crowd, those clouds of numbers ticks every second on lots of enemies on screen. Venom is a decent skill to use now, but because of how game shows damage, it can freeze/crash the game.

Problem can be solved, if game could just multiply those numbers. Like on MOA it shows 39 instead of 13x3.

[Fourdee]

-snip-

Seems this guy might be on the right track.

Seeing this, made me think of a possible improvement.

 

My suggestion to possibly improve DPS readout performance, using grouped damage totals from vector length:

- Check to see if target taking damage is inside view frustum (you already do this, i just hope its the 1st check :))

- Obtain the 1st vector location which is taking damage (eg: closest from camera)

- Use vector length (eg: global var <=2.0f) from that location to find all enemies which will take damage in that area.

- For all vectors taking damage in that radius, make a new total damage figure using a fixed array of int/floats. Else, find the next vector location which will receive damage and repeat function

- By using a fixed array size for new damage totals, you can control performance and prevent excessive long range readouts.

- Print the new damage figures out, and admire "total damage" in fixed areas.

 

Could reduce the overall on-screen text printouts by around 99% in xini anyway lol

 

 

 

I've experienced the very same issue playing as a host vauban with any Saryn spamming Venom Spores.

The trick is to stick a few vortex's in the mix (both paths to pod), and, flux rifle, you'll soon get the issue to occur.

- Past wave 10 on xini, the venom spores cause 5-10 fps at times. 

- Past wave 20 on xini, 1-2fps, 

- Past wave 30 on xini, 0fps, complete lock up for 15 seconds, when frame updates, everyone has disconnected.

Edited August 20, 2013 by Fourdee

[CharginTarge]

It's not the rifle causing the issue. I use Dual Broncos with multishot and penetration to spread the spores and it'll also turn into a slideshow. My hunch is that displaying so many numbers that they literally fill out the screen may have something to do with it.

[Kinperor]

Oh, there's a thread about this already. Me and my clanlings were hard at work studying the spore-pocalypse (we call this phenomenon STORM). We got to a point where we crashed the client's game as well as the host's.

I'll make a video later if I find a Vauban.

[Kinperor]

Alright, made a short video. Disclaimer: This isn't even close to the worst storm (spore-pocalypse, green sun, DOT-fest, whatever the name) that we got, but the process is the same. In the video below, you can see a bright green flash at the end (hence green sun) that last longer than it should. 

 

 

Again, this is a small storm, nothing major there, but the effect grows exponentially with the number of enemies encountered and how much health said enemies have. Here's a pic I grabbed from another storm where my FPS dropped at 4 and I had to look away from the spreading spores:

 

 

As you can see from all the numbers, there is a lot of DOTs going on on the other side of the camera. Venom really need some optimization. In the best case scenario you lose all your FPS for a big handful of seconds before every enemy is vaporized, in the worst case scenario you crash everyone's game.

 

I hope this help you fix/optimize the ability Dmitri. If it doesn't, I can bring you along with my pet Vauban and we can help you witness the Storm first hand.