I reviewed parses this morning, some of them were up to 14 months old. While doing so, I came across several burn parses on AMV from 6-10 months ago, that were VERY close to my current best and better than my current average burn fight of comparable length, with the same group makeups, but with more accuracy, more cleave, with a 2.5 instead of a 2.0, and now with 7th year being used once per raid night, and max AA (some glyph usage). The accuracy of the parses varied, but the highest parses were all just over 80%.

It was actually quite depressing to look at, but not be able to put my finger on the exact cause. I have changed guilds since this time from an Anguish guild who was working on Sendaii, to a guild that is working on AG raids...but in all honesty, this guild does not handle the burn portion of fights as well as the Anguish level did, so I cannot say that, without a shadow of a doubt, my damage has went down.

My gut tells me that the average crit amount has dropped, with particularly less 10k+ crits under Assassins/shaman 2.0. Does anyone have lengthy test or beta parses from a period prior to the AA consolidation? Please please please, speak up if you do. I will hopefully be able to replicate your parse on beta and see what has changed.


With that said, I did come across this post on the shaman boards, which questions whether or not offensive spell procs are resetting melee swings, much like their defensive cousins are.
http://crucible.samanna.net/viewtopic.php?t=4933
That has not been confirmed or denied, but could be all or part of the problem.

I wish I could help :( I parse everything from everyone, but my weapons, mod2s & AAs have gone up so much since the first time we did Veldyn`s Shade, I can't really give any data. However, other rogues in my guild have thought their dps went down with AA window change. If you don't get anybody to help, I'll bug them for their logs & analyze them myself.

I can't pinpoint a time it changed. But what it seems to me is...

1: Critical BS DMG seems about the same, but the frequency has dropped.
2: Normal BS dmg has gone down, especially when not directly behind the mob, hitting mostly for minimum BS dmg.

I can do the whole log thing when I get home from work, something I have been meaning to do anyways.

I still think they haven't completely fixed whatever they broke then.

I also think nobody at SOE cares.

Yeah it is still broke.

Terag Xaj lvl 75 rogue HFC

I also see a drop in regular DPS, Some of my hits are hitting way lower now than the were from before the AA Consolidation....

I'm pretty convinced my dps has dropped substantially too, but it may just be that there's fewer dps classes on the burn parses I'm looking now so they take longer to die (and as we all know, longer fights => poorer dps).

So I can't say with certainty, but something definitely feels wrong. I'll hunt and see if I can find my old parses and dig up the more important stats - like average crit rate and average hit values. I'm still using the same mainhand with the same aug I had this time last year pretty much.

Brog

It does not add up, especially for epic 2.0 users who should have received a boost from the delay rounding fix. Please list any ideas that you think might be causing this.

My ideas:
1. Delay Rounding fix inadvertently affected backstab in a detrimental way and they thought it was fixed when in reality it is not fixed, from the 7-25-07 patch message:
I have always been a furious backstab clicker, spamming the button while constantly jockeying for position. I don't watch the button to visually see when it resets, react to it, and then give the server time to react to it. I doubt that most rogues are this way and it could very well be the reason that some people are not reporting a difference.

2. Combat Fury AA and/or Veteran's Wrath AA lines are either not working or are actually reducing critical hit amounts if you have the AA's. (We still crit as much as before, just hit for lesser amounts)
http://forums.station.sony.com/eq/po...opic_id=115623
Maybe rogues had additional code buried in there somewhere else? Something related to backstabs and crits perhaps? This may be affecting all special attacks, but just not be as noticeable for every other class.

3. Elemental damage is not working as before? Maybe not affecting crits? It should show up as backstab damage in some form or fashion on the UI window and does not currently.

4. The server is losing random backstabs like it loses hides, sneaks, etc. Once again, our class has the most to lose of any class, if the server just doesn't register a backstab for whatever reason. This would be affecting all classes, but be most noticeable on rogues. However, as is mentioned in the Hide Bug thread, it does not affect everyone for some reason. Maybe certain servers are more laggy and prone to drop them? Maybe it happens most when boxing, using wineq2.0, or possibly when playing on older/slower systems.

We need parses from before the delay rounding patch went in, otherwise we are most likely screwed.

Well, I definitely noticed a decrease, I watch my crits very closely, and seemed like crit backstabs went down. I dont have any pre-patch parses though, like everyone else. HOWEVER, this weekend it seemed back to normal. Maybe they ninja-fixed it? Has anyone else noticed things still not being quite right as of Oct 1?

Neijitsu

Im not entirely positive on this, and almost seems like it character based. My comp runs faster than any of our other rogues, I've got better overall gear and my weapons and the augs in them are far better than either of the other rogues who raid normally, we've all got all offensive aas done yet my crit backstabs are considerably lower than theirs. Ive noticed also that my 41dmg offhander hardly crits for more than my old 34dmg offhander. And theres are an increasingly large number of dropped backstabs lately, though since the patch I haven't had a dropped hide yet. As for elemental damage, my epic with Ioan's special ingredient and Verdant emerald of wounding should ideally be a 35dmg weapon. It backstabs for just over what my icedancer does with 27dmg, no elemental added dmg. So if elemental damage ever did effect our backstab damage it sure doesn't anymore...

I thought this reduction in DPS had to do with the dagger revamp, but since that was pushed to SoF if that's true we were unnecisarily nerfed.

Try blocking storm blade / panther. Right now there is a bug with imbue procs that causes you to lose combat rounds and using these buffs can actually result in a loss of DPS.

thought that was only defensive procs, not offensive ones.

This may be off the wall a bit, but I have noticed a total nose-dive in dps under the following conditions...

Assassins/Epic-click/Thief's eye/Intensity AA/Tribute (accuracy and double attack)

I really havent been able to pinpoint it, but I think it has more to do with Intensity/Assassins combo that my bs's go to crap. Most of the time, Im lucky to hit 2k bs with the combo (and I dont double/triple much either)

This is somewhat of a recent so I havent had time to really dig into it, nor have I parsed it (you really dont need to parse to see the difference).... I'll post any new info I get as I get it

Panther, Storm Blade, or any other spell procs on you?

The 2.0 click adds this proc:
http://lucy.allakhazam.com/spell.html?id=6272

I have removed my epic click from my hotbuttons for the moment. I kept hitting it out of habit (doh). And then you have poisons and dirty fighting...

PS Wycca, check your PMs please.

Did and responded. Theres a possible issue atm with any sort of spell buff proc (regular procs unconfirmed) resetting your weapon delay. Although, if youre talking about backstab, then it shouldnt impact it. Monks noticed a large dps drop around and after the Sept 5 patch as well, although its looking like it may be that proc issue.

This was posted on the root cellar first, asking for parses to verify before going public. The thread got several responses but no one came forward with parses to rule out the possibility that the bug I am experiencing is due to my computer, internet connection, or something else. I did a similar parse the night after this post with the level 80 betabuff rogue and got similar results. However, still no one outside of me, has provided a parse (or a log if you don't want to take the time to break the information down, i will GLADLY do it!).

So, I am now posting this publicly and hopefully someone will be willing to parse. My belief is that this is NOT a rogue only issue. I believe it is affecting every class who pushes a button for a special ability such as hide, sneak, backstab, bash, slam, kick, flying kick, taunt, and any other. I don't know if it affects spells (probably not) and it may not affect AA abilities or anything else with a better server handshake than these old ability types seem to have.

First data set: 5 hour 20 minute parse on beta using test 75 and /betabuff rogue 75. Shaman haste, no overhaste click.
3723 backstab "rounds" (see clarification below--a round is 1 backstab key press) of which:

6 had a delay of 11 seconds
74 had a delay of 10 seconds
2 had a delay of 9 seconds
318 had a delay of 6 seconds
3241 had a delay of 5 seconds
76 had a delay of 4 seconds
6 had a delay of 1 second (these appear to have been the same actual backstab round on a different timestamp. I am including them separately but they should be consolidated) 1 example of such:

[Fri Oct 05 01:31:18 2007] You pierce Test Seventy Five for 1497 points of damage.
[Fri Oct 05 01:31:19 2007] You begin casting Deceiver's Blight Strike.
[Fri Oct 05 01:31:19 2007] Test Seventy Five's armor bubbles and melts.
[Fri Oct 05 01:31:19 2007] You try to crush Test Seventy Five, but miss!
[Fri Oct 05 01:31:19 2007] You crush Test Seventy Five for 246 points of damage.
[Fri Oct 05 01:31:19 2007] You try to backstab Test Seventy Five, but miss!
[Fri Oct 05 01:31:20 2007] You backstab Test Seventy Five for 3127 points of damage.
[Fri Oct 05 01:31:20 2007] You pierce Test Seventy Five for 311 points of damage.
[Fri Oct 05 01:31:20 2007] You pierce Test Seventy Five for 466 points of damage.
[Fri Oct 05 01:31:20 2007] You crush Test Seventy Five for 518 points of damage.
[Fri Oct 05 01:31:20 2007] You try to crush Test Seventy Five, but miss!
[Fri Oct 05 01:31:21 2007] You pierce Test Seventy Five for 199 points of damage.
[Fri Oct 05 01:31:21 2007] You pierce Test Seventy Five for 399 points of damage.
[Fri Oct 05 01:31:21 2007] You try to crush Test Seventy Five, but miss!
[Fri Oct 05 01:31:21 2007] You crush Test Seventy Five for 187 points of damage.
[Fri Oct 05 01:31:22 2007] You try to pierce Test Seventy Five, but miss!


With that said, there appears to be some minor timestamp issues, which could be attributed to a number of things... However, if latency was the primary issue, I would expect to see delays that are not close to 5 seconds. There are no 7 or 8 second backstabs, also nothing larger than 11. Every single one of these are an approximation of 5 or 5x2. For a total of 82 backstabs of 3723 possible that are simply not registering with the server, or 2.2% in a zone with 5 other people and very little server load.

Does this number increase in a raid situation? I would think it is very possible, if not probable.

Second data set:
11 seconds 53
10 seconds 53
Total Backstabs Skipped 106

6 seconds 1154
5 seconds 2707
4 seconds 6
Total Backstabs functioning correctly 3867

2.668% Backstabs lost





Details on how I reached these numbers:
Senzi, sent me the link to this autofire program, which claims to not break the EULA in any way. It's a simple script that creates a keyboard input at desired invervals in your windows client. This script should be superior, in all regards, to having a human being mashing a button for 5 hours.
http://home.neo.rr.com/darq/Pages/autofire.htm
I set it to attempt to backstab 10 times per second and left it running overnight, until the server went down.

To isolate the data:
-I opened my log and copied the fight to a new text file, starting with the first backstab and ending with the last backstab.
-I then loaded YALP, chose the beta log, and used the search feature to extract every line with the word backstab. Right click the text in YALP and copied to clipboard, pasting only the backstab rows over to a new text file.
-I then loaded Microsoft Access and imported the text file using "fixed-width" format which separates the timestamp into nice clean fields. I chose the 23:21:52 field and deleted all other columns of information. I saved this table.


-Created a query with the query wizard using the "find duplicates" function. Saved query, then edited the query to find not only duplicates but singles, by changing the query parameter from >1 to >0. Save changes and run the query. Now every backstab attempt is consolidated by the timestamp and I can copy the fields and paste them in Excel.



-Once in excel i sorted the column and subracted fieldA from fieldb to get the time difference. Copy/Pasted this formula throughout and finally Selected the data, and copy/paste special VALUES to get the rid of the formulas. Now I can sort by the time difference to find any values that are out of line.



Sample of a skipped backstab which should have happened around the [Fri Oct 05 01:20:00 2007] mark:

[Fri Oct 05 01:19:55 2007] You pierce Test Seventy Five for 173 points of damage.
[Fri Oct 05 01:19:55 2007] You pierce Test Seventy Five for 179 points of damage.
[Fri Oct 05 01:19:55 2007] You try to crush Test Seventy Five, but miss!
[Fri Oct 05 01:19:55 2007] You crush Test Seventy Five for 290 points of damage.
[Fri Oct 05 01:19:55 2007] You backstab Test Seventy Five for 2993 points of damage.
[Fri Oct 05 01:19:55 2007] You try to backstab Test Seventy Five, but miss!
[Fri Oct 05 01:19:55 2007] You try to backstab Test Seventy Five, but miss!
[Fri Oct 05 01:19:56 2007] You pierce Test Seventy Five for 335 points of damage.
[Fri Oct 05 01:19:56 2007] You pierce Test Seventy Five for 265 points of damage.
[Fri Oct 05 01:19:56 2007] You try to crush Test Seventy Five, but miss!
[Fri Oct 05 01:19:56 2007] You crush Test Seventy Five for 294 points of damage.
[Fri Oct 05 01:19:57 2007] You try to pierce Test Seventy Five, but miss!
[Fri Oct 05 01:19:57 2007] You pierce Test Seventy Five for 179 points of damage.
[Fri Oct 05 01:19:57 2007] Your Deceiver's Blight Strike spell has worn off of Test Seventy Five.
[Fri Oct 05 01:19:57 2007] You crush Test Seventy Five for 293 points of damage.
[Fri Oct 05 01:19:58 2007] You try to pierce Test Seventy Five, but miss!
[Fri Oct 05 01:19:58 2007] You pierce Test Seventy Five for 165 points of damage.
[Fri Oct 05 01:19:58 2007] You crush Test Seventy Five for 471 points of damage.
[Fri Oct 05 01:19:59 2007] Balvaran scores a critical hit! (1178)
[Fri Oct 05 01:19:59 2007] You pierce Test Seventy Five for 1178 points of damage.
[Fri Oct 05 01:19:59 2007] You pierce Test Seventy Five for 225 points of damage.
[Fri Oct 05 01:20:00 2007] Balvaran scores a critical hit! (584)
[Fri Oct 05 01:20:00 2007] You crush Test Seventy Five for 584 points of damage.
[Fri Oct 05 01:20:00 2007] You try to crush Test Seventy Five, but miss!
[Fri Oct 05 01:20:00 2007] You try to pierce Test Seventy Five, but miss!
[Fri Oct 05 01:20:00 2007] You try to pierce Test Seventy Five, but miss!
[Fri Oct 05 01:20:01 2007] You crush Test Seventy Five for 451 points of damage.
[Fri Oct 05 01:20:01 2007] You crush Test Seventy Five for 460 points of damage.
[Fri Oct 05 01:20:01 2007] Balvaran scores a critical hit! (1540)
[Fri Oct 05 01:20:01 2007] You pierce Test Seventy Five for 1540 points of damage.
[Fri Oct 05 01:20:01 2007] You pierce Test Seventy Five for 439 points of damage.
[Fri Oct 05 01:20:02 2007] You crush Test Seventy Five for 451 points of damage.
[Fri Oct 05 01:20:02 2007] You crush Test Seventy Five for 288 points of damage.
[Fri Oct 05 01:20:02 2007] Balvaran scores a critical hit! (1278)
[Fri Oct 05 01:20:02 2007] You pierce Test Seventy Five for 1278 points of damage.
[Fri Oct 05 01:20:02 2007] You pierce Test Seventy Five for 453 points of damage.
[Fri Oct 05 01:20:03 2007] You try to pierce Test Seventy Five, but miss!
[Fri Oct 05 01:20:03 2007] You pierce Test Seventy Five for 189 points of damage.
[Fri Oct 05 01:20:03 2007] You crush Test Seventy Five for 416 points of damage.
[Fri Oct 05 01:20:03 2007] You crush Test Seventy Five for 324 points of damage.
[Fri Oct 05 01:20:04 2007] You pierce Test Seventy Five for 168 points of damage.
[Fri Oct 05 01:20:04 2007] You pierce Test Seventy Five for 168 points of damage.
[Fri Oct 05 01:20:04 2007] You try to crush Test Seventy Five, but miss!
[Fri Oct 05 01:20:04 2007] You crush Test Seventy Five for 170 points of damage.
[Fri Oct 05 01:20:05 2007] You pierce Test Seventy Five for 227 points of damage.
[Fri Oct 05 01:20:05 2007] You pierce Test Seventy Five for 241 points of damage.
[Fri Oct 05 01:20:05 2007] You try to crush Test Seventy Five, but miss!
[Fri Oct 05 01:20:05 2007] You try to crush Test Seventy Five, but miss!
[Fri Oct 05 01:20:06 2007] You try to pierce Test Seventy Five, but miss!
[Fri Oct 05 01:20:06 2007] You try to pierce Test Seventy Five, but miss!
[Fri Oct 05 01:20:06 2007] You backstab Test Seventy Five for 2038 points of damage.
[Fri Oct 05 01:20:06 2007] You try to backstab Test Seventy Five, but miss!
[Fri Oct 05 01:20:06 2007] Balvaran scores a critical hit! (2670)
[Fri Oct 05 01:20:06 2007] You backstab Test Seventy Five for 2670 points of damage.
[Fri Oct 05 01:20:06 2007] You crush Test Seventy Five for 384 points of damage.
[Fri Oct 05 01:20:06 2007] You crush Test Seventy Five for 471 points of damage.
[Fri Oct 05 01:20:06 2007] Balvaran hit Test Seventy Five for 175 points of non-melee damage.
[Fri Oct 05 01:20:06 2007] Your target is immune to the stun portion of this effect.
[Fri Oct 05 01:20:06 2007] Test Seventy Five staggers painfully.
[Fri Oct 05 01:20:06 2007] You pierce Test Seventy Five for 453 points of damage.
[Fri Oct 05 01:20:06 2007] You pierce Test Seventy Five for 372 points of damage.
[Fri Oct 05 01:20:07 2007] You crush Test Seventy Five for 471 points of damage.
[Fri Oct 05 01:20:07 2007] You crush Test Seventy Five for 471 points of damage.
[Fri Oct 05 01:20:07 2007] Balvaran scores a critical hit! (1416)
[Fri Oct 05 01:20:07 2007] You pierce Test Seventy Five for 1416 points of damage.
[Fri Oct 05 01:20:07 2007] You pierce Test Seventy Five for 453 points of damage.
[Fri Oct 05 01:20:08 2007] You crush Test Seventy Five for 170 points of damage.
[Fri Oct 05 01:20:08 2007] You crush Test Seventy Five for 175 points of damage.
[Fri Oct 05 01:20:08 2007] You pierce Test Seventy Five for 453 points of damage.
[Fri Oct 05 01:20:08 2007] You pierce Test Seventy Five for 299 points of damage.
[Fri Oct 05 01:20:09 2007] You try to pierce Test Seventy Five, but miss!
[Fri Oct 05 01:20:09 2007] You pierce Test Seventy Five for 424 points of damage.
[Fri Oct 05 01:20:09 2007] You try to crush Test Seventy Five, but miss!
[Fri Oct 05 01:20:09 2007] You try to crush Test Seventy Five, but miss!
[Fri Oct 05 01:20:10 2007] You pierce Test Seventy Five for 453 points of damage.
[Fri Oct 05 01:20:10 2007] You pierce Test Seventy Five for 453 points of damage.
[Fri Oct 05 01:20:11 2007] You try to crush Test Seventy Five, but miss!
[Fri Oct 05 01:20:11 2007] You crush Test Seventy Five for 487 points of damage.
[Fri Oct 05 01:20:11 2007] Balvaran scores a critical hit! (7912)
[Fri Oct 05 01:20:11 2007] You backstab Test Seventy Five for 7912 points of damage.
[Fri Oct 05 01:20:11 2007] You backstab Test Seventy Five for 1246 points of damage.
[Fri Oct 05 01:20:11 2007] Balvaran scores a critical hit! (7912)
[Fri Oct 05 01:20:11 2007] You backstab Test Seventy Five for 7912 points of damage.
[Fri Oct 05 01:20:11 2007] You pierce Test Seventy Five for 158 points of damage.
[Fri Oct 05 01:20:11 2007] You try to pierce Test Seventy Five, but miss!
[Fri Oct 05 01:20:12 2007] You crush Test Seventy Five for 422 points of damage.



Anyone have test, beta, or even live parses to provide? This could be done anywhere assuming these things are true:
1. You have a solid/stable internet connection

2. You have /log on.

3. The NPC does not move and cannot push you out of range. The Katta Banker would work, if you can still attack them. Also, there used to be a mob called an Inactive Clockwork in Steamfont mountains. He is in the NE corner near the mines. He doesn't attack back and it takes a very very very very long time to kill him (several hours at least by one person).

4. You have a gamepad with autofire that you can link to your backstab hotkey or you use the program linked above.


I suppose someone should also parse sneak and/or hide independently and it could be done anywhere as long as you have items 1, 2, and 4 above.

Good information!!

Thanks for doing all this work. I wish there was someway I could help out. If the Inactive Clockwork is still around, I will see if I can create a setup similar to yours.

Some questions tho:

1. This might be an occasion where there is too long of an event to parse. I am not suggesting missed backstabs is good, only that 2% in a 5 hour parse might not even be one single missed event in a fight lasting 5 minutes (depending on distribution). Of course the opposite could be true and a particular fight for whatever reason could register a high proportion of missed events.
2. I still have a hunch this issue is linked to the "delay" issue SOE tried to resolve a month or so ago. If you /say or /tell or /w too quickly, you now get a server response message to say "you cannot use that command right now". Some commands are worse than others. Sneak/Hide is another example. The server instability issues are well known. My guess is that client/server packet quality has been degrading for some time for whatever reason. It would be kind of amusing to find it had everything to do with the increase in the global file size for LON.
3. Once again, we are suffering from not having a decent parse library of events over a period of time. This particular problem could have been in existence for months and been caused by any one or multiple patches.
4. I have lost the link between AA consolidation and reduced damage? How does this thread title have anything to do with missed backstabs? Where does the possible spell buff proc bug fit with either of these areas? How many bugs are we potentially looking at for reduced damage?

Eh... I wouldn't stop clicking your 2.0 even if it does eat combat rounds, just the other imbues. Looking at some random parses of my guild the average hit ranges from 500-700. That is, damage done per swing across the guild. This means that, on average, every time I proc deceiver's blight strike my raid is doing 6250 to 8750 more damage. Which is a lot more than I'm going to do on any given combat round. (Backstab excluded as imbues are uncomfirmed of affecting this skill.) The epic click also increases your chance to tripple backstab, which is another mark in its favor and a big one when combined with Assassin / Frenzied stabbing.

This isn't really something that you could parse on a test dummy either, so you just have to decide if taking a hit on your own dps but raising that of your whole guild is worth it to you. It is to me, so I keep clicking.

1. My suspicion says this is actually worse when the server, or maybe even the client, is under heavy load, such as during raids. It is during these times that I tend to find the most bugs with hide failing on me and this piqued my interest as to whether or not other abilities were also bugged.

Backstab is nearly 50% of my damage on burn fights and an ignored possible triple backstab under burn conditions is not trivial! I don't like the general idea of the server ignoring my backstabs, but the dropped sneak/hides are arguably more game breaking and annoying. This is an ability that used to be dependable 100% of the time after buying nimble evasion.

2. My gut says this is the same issue addressed in the 7-25-07 patch message:

- Fixed an issue with the Rogue's Backstab ability button that caused it not to work when clicking it too many times before it was ready to be activated again.

I have always spammed my backstab button and likewise, I have always done really well compared to my fellow guildy rogues, so I don't think spamming the button has ever hindered me. Spamming the button allows me to focus on HoTT and on positioning instead of waiting to see when I am allowed to backstab again. IMO this was new code added to catch and/or prevent ghost-killing and a side affect is that it increased server load resulting in dropped packets.

3. We may very well be dealing with 3 separate bugs that have a combined detrimental affect. 1. Loss of backstabs (and evades) 2. Proc buffs, including our own 2.0 click, poisons, and dirty fighting - 3 abilities that a raiding rogue would have going about 99% of the time. resetting melee rounds 3. AA consolidation causing a reduced damage amount on our critical hits.

4. I have definitely had a drop in DPS and this thread is my attempt at solving the mystery. There were several patches that could have brought about the total changes, but I am certain it happened sometime after May. I still need to test the elemental damage to make sure it is added to the backstab damage. At the very least, the new UI does not reflect it doing so.

Speaking of which, anyone have suggestions on the best way to test elemental damage? The betabuff rogue does not have any elemental damage augs, which would be simplest way by putting an aug in a weapon and parsing with/without it.

I don't have access to my character on test or beta, so only live parses to go on from a mixture of raids, groups, etc. This makes the data very noisy.

However even so I see one large spike at 5/6 (about 60% on 5, 40% on 6) and similarly another smaller spike at 10/11. It's got a lot of noise around it, but that's still double the local background noise and I don't see why I would personally have a bias to hitting the backstab key at that point.

Brog

The more I look at this, it looks like it's a case of haste being ignored by the server.

Your hasted backstab delay is obviously about 5 seconds refresh. Via some slight fluctuations it's easy to get a delay of 4 or 6 seconds.

If the server is ignoring the haste at times (server load or via hacking checks), it would give you your default delay, which appears to be 10 seconds. The distribution of hits at 9 and 11 seconds suggestions similar slight fluctuation.

It's worth noting that on the server these parses were done on, server/zone configuration is not setup like regular servers, so there may be more load than you would think from having 5 people in the zone.

That being said, it appears there is a problem somewhere, that its likely impacting other things (at a 2-3% impact rate most people wouldn't notice it, backstab being such a large amount of dps would be one exception) in addition to backstab.

Your parse, and this thread, has already been sent to the appropriate parties btw.

It's a case of a backstab press being ignored by the server due to a client sync issue. Been around forever.

Any casters ever try to cast a spell with a refreshed gem and get 'spell recovery not yet met'? Same deal, just a lot harder to notice.

Hate to say it, but what it really needs is one of those eq hacking guys to point check what happens with the messages!

My guess is that the client does infact send the message that backstab (or hide for that matter) has been pressed and the client dutifully greys out the UI box as in high latency issues it maybe slow to get a response. However for some reason either the server doesn't receive the message or if it does our client doesn't receive the acknowledgement in reply.

Note that means it's possible the attack actually does happen and the mobs hp are subtracted, but the message doesn't reach us saying it's happened. I suspect this isn't the case though and that the message simply isn't arriving at the server (or is being dropped on the floor due to the server being overloaded for some reason). Why do I believe it's the outgoing and not incoming message lost? Because we know on hide requests that if we don't get the "you have hidden" message then mobs aggro us, implying that the server also believes we haven't correctly hidden. Occam's razor would indicate it's the same cause of problem and not two very similar bugs.

Brog

-

When you press hide the Client assumes it is a legitimate hide attempt and thus greys out the button and "Appears" to hide you as it sends the server request. Given this does not impact game balance any, this is a request the client can assume. However the reason for the return message is in fact the game server sending the return acknowledgement and officially putting you into Hide.

The Request Packet does indeed go out to the server when the button is pressed, however It is impossible to tell if the Server is not getting it, or if it is not getting sent back, as once the packet goes out it just disappears. I have been monitoring that packet stream for weeks now and there is just flat no reply, but it is impossible from this end to tell if the server did not acknowledge it, or if the return packet was just lost. I can confirm however the Packet does indeed make it to the server as it traces right up to the server.

The same thing happens for Backstab with the minor difference of the Client makes less assumption, and only greys the button out. The Damage value comes from the server exclusively. As with the hide packet, the packet go to the server on the normal route, but simply never comes back. This is not a case of it being something SoE did as a balance issue this is clearly a bug. Balance issues would yield a miss, repost or other mitigation message. Every single packet Must be Acknowledged by the server, however Every single packet Is not being acknowledged. This may not be a issue that is so easily fixed, it could boil down to any number of Packetloss related issues. If the server is dropping the packets, they certainly it "Could" be fixed, it just is going to be exceptionally difficult.