Bill Z Bubba

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They fix the bug were the sound for eviscerate plays whether it hits or not? That can definately be annoying.

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It should be fixed, if it is still happening, post here and I'll take care of it ASAP.

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Last night, I couldn't get it to make the grunting sound whether it hit or not. Mind you, I was perfectly happy with this. I'll double check again when I get home.

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Everyone should just get over it. This is clearly a case where the DEVs are not going to hear the players. MoG has sucked though all 7 issues. I have an MA/Regen and a Kat/regen.

Come to think of it they did fix MoG, renamed it Overload and gave it to the energy brutes. I have a 36 nrg/nrg brute and am looking forward to it. Also, I am able to take on +1 and +2 on my nrg/nrg now . In I6 I get whooped unless I stick to white/blue which is why my nrg/nrg is retired til I7.

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Odd. My EM/EA brute was running relentless from way early on in his career. Solo of course. Overload was pure cake and icing on my ice cream. Defense scaling on top of it all? Oh my...

Very nice. In the one Grandville mission he ran last night for the Rikti, I really felt the difference. Was strange being turned intangible by that shield bearing Council boss.

I concur with CelticMan. A claws scrapper can often survive events that leave other scrappers face planted simply due to our ability to control a fight with shockwave and focus.

Even as it stands now, in a fight against an AV, due to our contstant, sustained DPS vs other scrappers burst damage, we're now the top of the food chain if we want to be. Still hurting in PvP? Against another scrapper, sure. Again, due to burst damage. But squishies fear us and spines more for our range than our burst damage, so I'm not overly concerned there either.

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Bill (and everyone else), you do realize that Claws has gone from one extreme to the other now, right?

I know from testing claws/regen that it creates a HUGE issue for me now, but one that's far better than the alternative. Now, the first 5 powers in Claws are almost "must have" in usefulness but the problem is, the first 5 powers in regen are the exact same way. Factor in 2 pool powers (for travel) and you have a very very tight situation. And that's just power selection, I haven't even factored in slotting yet (and early on, I slot the secondary heavily for survivability purposes).

Oy, gonna have to work on a build to swap to when this goes live. But this is an awesome revamp.

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With the first 5 attacks in claws taken, you won't need a secondary. <GLEEEEEEEE>

Strike is ALWAYS a right handed gut shot using the Jab animation. Slash changes hands. I can get it to slash with left if I fire it off after a strike. Swipe is ALWAYS right/left order on the doublehit.

Cycling swipe/strike/slash/spin with sprint ON, I have to work hard to get my end below half.

4 of the new paragon protector elites, conning orange, ripped through my SR with little effort.
6 orange rikti bosses had a rougher time of it.

Having only the RCS to test in, I can't honestly say that I'm feeling either buff (defense scaling or passives) at this particular moment.

Without a respec, I'm unable to give Bill a proper attack chain redo. Nice to see Crey conning properly in the RCS. Unfortunately, you have lvl 50 bosses with way grey minions surrounding them.

On my EA brute, I did notice a distinct improvement in the number of misses.

Lastly, please remove the grey popups for "dodged" and "deflected." With the lack of graphical optimization, that's just one more piece of unnecessary graphics floating in front of me.

I thought it was trading up on left vs right. I'll double check when test comes back up.

If you're in it for pure DPS, swipe is still the skipable one. If you're in it because you love claws, eviscerate is the one to skip now.

Personally, I'm skipping strike because it now looks like the Boxing punch. And I can't fit it in to my build. Gotta drop something. Spin, with teh lower end cost... so nice.

Oh maybe I'll keep strike and drop eviscerate. So many choices...

Currently running my built for test only claws/regen lvl 8. Swipe, strike, slash, spin.

Endurance cost on spin reduced. Considerably. Checking my 50 claws/sr soon.

So far, my statement on the attack chain I have on the level 8:

DEAD FARKING SEXY!!!!!
Ripping folks up the way we always should have.
Castle and Stupid_Fanboy, if you're ever in Austin, I'm buying the drinks.

More after testing in RCS with Bill. Gotta see how defense scaling and end reduction on shockwave and eviscerate worked out.

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You know, for *once* I completely love a piece of design by the devs, and what happens?

Everyone else hates it.

I like the Patron Powers, I like the reddish electricity, it's cool all around, imho. Sadly, hardly anyone seems to agree.

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I'm with ya.

I'd like to see a mathematical breakdown of being fully slotted with even-50 HOs versus being normally slotted with lvl-53 SOs.

For example:

Attack A has normal slotting of 1acc/1end-red/1rec-red/3dam with lvl 53 SOs

vs.

Attack A with 3acc/dams and 3end-reds

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Hey Bill...what about frequent Losses of Connection to Mapserver?

I dont know whether it's my graphics card, my NIC or the COX servers?

Any suggestions? Or should i just give my wife this old gamer pc and build a new one?

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I was afraid that this question would be raised...

Networking can be a pain in the tush. Frequent disconnects can be caused by:
Your network card and/or drivers
Your router
Your cable/dsl modem
Your ISP
The server you're connecting to
Backbone issues between you and the server
Sunspot activity
Coronal mass ejections
It's Tuesday

Basically, ANYTHING between your chair and the server can cause disconnects. It's one of the reasons I avoid posting in tech threads on this issue. There's simply too many variables for me to test over a forum.

As you are having these problems consistently, the first step is to make sure that your software firewalls aren't causing you problems. My advice is not to run them in the first place. Next is to update all drivers and firmware for your NIC, router, cable/dsl modem. Make sure that all of your cabling is in good working order. Still having problems? Get with your ISP's tech support and with NCSoft's tech support and open dual tickets.

Good luck.

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Question about the swap file in virtual memory. I have 2 gigs of ram and I usually run teamspeak and possibly internet explorer in the background, would it cause problems turn of the swap option for my virtual mememory?

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You'll never know until you try. My guess? No. But I have no idea what kind of memory usage teamspeak has, so the answer could just as easily be yes.

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If letting windows manage your pagefile on your boot drive crashed 3DMark BiilZ I think you have larger problems with your pagefile (IMHO)

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I was pondering the same, but seeing as how I have zero issues with anything else, and I didn't patch 3dmark05 after installing it, I'm betting that it was a problem with their app, and nothing else. I do agree, however, that 3dmark isn't a very good test for testing out VM regardless.

By the by, I've been running back and forth between no VM and VM on 2nd partition, and the one item that sticks out at me most is that with VM enabled, movement in zones and zoning between zones FEELS more choppy and slower respectively.

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Yet, every so often I hear claims that XP is better all around. It hogs more resources on startup just to idle (more for windows means less for games) and is less stable. What am I missing?

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What are you missing? Some bloatware. I'll do some digging around today to see if you're actually "missing" anything. But to be honest, I rather doubt it. I've had more trouble launching some older titles in 2K than XP, but beyond that...

EDIT: Was curious, so here's some reading for us all
One link
"Windows XP has better support for games and comes with more games than Windows 2000." What does this mean? Why does it have better game support? Both OSes can run DirectX9.0c, so what is 2K missing? In my quick search this morning, I'm not finding much. The funny part of it is, by doing the work to yank all of XP's bells and whistles, you end up with a slightly updated, retooled Win2K.

That said, from the scuttlebutt I'm hearing so far, those of us with 32bit procs should just sit on XP/2K, and those with 64bit procs should move on to Vista.

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The Pagefile. Those who think that disabling the pagefile obviously results in a boost in performance on current (2-3GB mem) machines should read the following thread

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This is a debate that will not die. And it probably shouldn't die.
Here's what my last round of testing pagefile/swapfile/virtualmemory settings provided:

Virtual Memory enable for let Windows manage on primary system partition: 3DMark2K5 crashes
VM disabled across both partitions: No problems
VM enabled on 2nd partition, Windows Managed, got about 10 more points in 3DMark2k5.
VM enabled on Pri or 2nd partition at a set 1024MBmin/max size, no problems with performance about the same as the other settings.

Here is my current running opinion of how the swap works:
Virtual Memory, itself, can not be disabled. It's core to the way MS codes their OS. The Swap File CAN be disabled. Completely. Windows will just use RAM for Virtual and Regular memory usage. Writing to a hard drive is slower than writing to RAM.

Disabling VM on all drives doesn't cause me any problems, therefore I'll continue to do it. However, I have 2GB of RAM and a single drive. ( A slower drive than I thought I had put in there.) It does appear that allowing the swap to remain on the system partition AND managed by Windows causes problems. (And this is the default setting for XP.) It APPEARS that the best performance would be by having the swap enabled, managed by windows, on an entirely separate physical drive than the OS.

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So how do you fix the messed up contact pictures??

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I had messed up contact pictures with 6.3. I had one messed up contact picture with 6.4 but I haven't seen the problem in a few days. What version of Catalyst are you using? I know with 6.2 I didn't have any problems with contact pics.

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My Contacts images were only messed up the one time, with one character, all I did was drop out of the game, disable Fast Writes, reboot, problem gone. <Shrug> I have no idea what is actually causing the garbled images, nor the long delay when bringing up the contact menu. However, I am not currently experiencing either. But I'm playing a lowbie with a small contact list.

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While water effects may not be antialiased, the rest of things render noticeably better. Also, Water doesn't really seem to need FSAA. Now if it forces FSAA disable when using those effects, I may buy in. I am seeing something different, however.

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Not sure what you're seeing, but High Water, OR Depth of Field OR Bloom, or any combination of those three break FSAA on ATI cards with the current or previous Catalyst drivers and the current implementation of those HDR effects in CoH/V. Meaning that NOTHING has FSAA layered on it. Low water doesn't break FSAA because it doesn't go through the p-buffer.

At least that is how it was explained to me by the devs.

I have been informed by ATI that engineering is working on the issue and I've been told by one of the graphics devs at Cryptic that they are in talks with ATI on finding a resolution.

Of course, I've been hearing that for 6 months now.

I'm the same way about windowed mode. I hate it. Hopefully someone from Cryptic will give us an update soon on this outstanding issue.

I run an X800Xt at stock speeds. Unfortunately, I haven't done any research into ATI's Crossfire setup, so I'll be of little help to you there.

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My experience has usually been that 1280x800 runs much faster than 1920x1200 as well, but that might just be a quirk of the Mobility card, etc.

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Not a quirk at all. The higher the resolution you render a game at, the harder your video card has to work. the SLI/Crossfire setups will be especially beneficial to those that run obscene resolutions.

To be honest, I've tried to lower my resolution, but unfortunately, the "fuzziness" that occurs on LCDs not running their native res is a little too much for me. I may try again and just force myself to deal with it though. I miss the days of staying above 50FPS all the time.

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Hmm- nope. Wrong. I'm not 'upset'. The guide lacks much information I normally would expect of a guide. I would, however appear that you are a little upset, and maybe a lot.

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Oh how it PAINS me that my settings guide didn't live up to your expectations! The HORROR!

You have a point, you know. People wouldn't need to write guides at all if everyone spent the time necessary to round up all the information on their own. But that's the reason I did it, and will keep doing it. I love tweaking my system. I love digging up the information. I love sharing what I've found in the hopes that other people who DON'T want to spend the time digging can at least get their systems running in an acceptable manner to THEM.

You could have said, "Oh, this guide doesn't have information pertaining to my search, so I'll go find another." Instead, you decided to come in here, without reading my performance guide, without bothering to read the other threads on this topic, without bothering to read further changes in other posts within this thread, without bothering to check my post history, hell, without even bothering to register the fact that this guide is TITLED "UPDATE."

You came in here to be a [censored].

You succeeded well in that. The few good points you've made have been completely trashed by your trolling of myself and the others that have responded to you. Believe me, I know trolling. I do it myself from time to time.

***EDITED FOR TOO MUCH SILLINESS***

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Ok -
1024x768 2X temporal AA, 4X standard aniso, crisp textures, HQ water, triple buffering, Vsynch on, 30 to 45 FPS, while SJ ing over water intalos. Looks BEAUTIFUL, no glitches, crashes, etc. I'd forgotten how much Triple buffering smooths things. The difference is so big, I am now compelled to run this somewhat lower res.

Glad we had this bit o flak, B Z. Made me think, and lernt stooff!!!

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You are very much confusing me. Here's why.
1: FSAA does NOT function on ATI cards if High Water, DoF or Bloom is enabled. This is not an opinion. This is a fact verified by the devs. Those HDR effects are pushed through a p-buffer, which ATI's drivers can not layer FSAA on to. So you might as well disable FSAA, as it isn't making any difference.

Beyond that... I'm glad you're happy.

That was a good read.

And a fine explanation of why someone running a 9800 trying to push 1920X1200 will be screaming often.

You aren't the first person to state that folks would be better off running 100% or less character detail, and I'll gladly admit that leaving mine at 200% is based on my obsession for eye candy. I've also not been able to determine any performance loss at having it cranked up.

But it's something that will be added in the next rev.

LOL... Lallendos, your last 2 links are the same links I posted just a few posts back, and are the same links that I've had in my performance guide for quite a while.

Always best to read everything before posting.

Fast Writes are an odd one aren't they?

Had you read my performance guide, you would have noticed these two links:

One for ATI settings
And one for Nvidia

Had you used a little more search-fu you would have found a whole slew of entries about fast writes and the bizarre behavior some of us have seen over the last few revs of the Catalysts. Back with the 6.1s and 6.2s, disable FWs, I was getting a massive increase in FPS, but now that performance bump seems to be missing, regardless if FW is on or off. Still playing around with that in order to find out why. For all I know, it could be that having fast writes on is interfering with triplebuffering boosting performance when v-sync is on. <shrug.>No clue.

I don't mind the poking. You have a valid point that a guide should have links off to explanations on what each setting in a driver accomplishes. My bad for not repeating them here when they already exist in my other guide. This guide is the HOW, the other guide is the WHY.

You will find, especially on internet forums, that you will get a far different response from the folks actually doing the work and testing settings out, if you come to them with nothing but facts and more testing.

At least for me, I find myself far more responsive to logic than opinions. And far less reactionary as well.

EDIT: Here's a fun one for everyone:
For the first time for me, one character's contact list pictures were broken. 1 part was the bottom half of my contact's image, another part was the bottom half of MY image, and a 3rd part was pure graphical gibberish.

Disabled Fast Writes, rebooted, problem gone.

So how do I know what fixed it? Was it the reboot? Was it the disabling of Fast Writes? Sunspots? Gremlins?

Yall tell me.

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MWAHAHAHA

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Well good. Thanks for verifying your trollness.

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Bear in mind that having a nice big LCD monitor doesn't make you an expert on how they work

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I have never claimed to be the end all be all in ati/lcd gaming knowledge. I have corrected my guides several times thanks to input from other players. So step 1 here should be for you to take that into consideration when discussing these matters with me.

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You can't change refresh rate, because there technically isn't one.

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I understand this. It doesn't change the fact that I CAN change the refresh rate setting within XP by lowering the resolution. Is it actually making in real change in how the monitor works? Probably not, but it doesn't change the fact that the setting can be changed. It doesn't sound like either of us know WHAT changing the refresh is actually doing, does it? Is it simply a case that Microsoft is too stupid to grey out the setting, or is there something going on that you and I don't understand?

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Do you understand what you give up at 1920xXXXX resolution, in using FSAA?

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No. I had absolutely no idea that enabling FSAA had any effect on performance at all. /sarcasm off
I am fully aware of some other FACTS as well. Running without FSAA, at any resolution, is crap to MY eyes. This means one of two things: Either I can't tell the difference between a lower resolution with higher FSAA, (not the case as I have tested it) or FSAA is doing something other than what you think it is. Will I pretend I know what FSAA is doing? Nope. All I know is what my eyes tell me. They tell me the following:
1920X1200 w/o FSAA is MORE jagged than 1280X1024 w/ 4X FSAA.

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yet I imagine for most people reading your guide, running 1920 x XXXX native resolution on an LCD would be more than sufficient without antialiasing

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You could be right. From what I've seen reading these boards, most folks don't even realize that their FSAA is broken until they disable CoH/V's HDR effects. (In the case of ATI cards.)

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I alt- tab every game session, on my 9800. My daughter does also, on her GF6200. I still run 1280X1024 with no FSAA

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No FSAA and no problems alt-tabbing. Coincidence? No. Live with your jagged edges. I honestly don't care. For me, they are detrimental to my enjoyment of a game. My guide is specifically written and meant for people that DO care about how their games look.

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And as for crisp textures.... again try it.

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Just did. Smooth and Crisp. The only difference I'm seeing is that on wall textures, crisp introduces some kind of odd waviness. Beyond that, I see no difference. Perhaps because I run FSAA and AF?

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Character detail shouldn't be changing view distance of enemies.

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Implying to me that for PvP, this should be all the way up, and for PvE, it doesn't matter. Do you concur?

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Persons trying to duplicate your settings on these cards may be a little unhappy.

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Actually, from the feedback I've gotten, the folks with higher end hardware than I have been able to push items higher, the folks with lower end have adjusted their settings appropriately and thanked me for guiding them to which settings were the big performance hitters.

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Oh, and it bears repeating: Triple buffering will incur a great amount of memory bandwidth/usage cost. Vertical sync WILL cause frame rate loss.

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Tested this for ya. In CoV, flying across Nerva:
V-Sync+Trip-Buff on: No tearing, 15-30FPS
V-Sync+Trip-Buff off: Tearing of vertical lines 20-35FPS
Yes, 5FPS is quite a jump. (No, I'm not being sarcastic.)
V-Sync On, Trip-Buff Off: Interesting. 20-32 FPS, but mostly stayed in the 27-30FPS range. No tearing.
So I'll meet you halfway. V-Sync should be on for high resolution LCD users, Triple Buffering off. I'll have to figure out later why triplebuffering isn't boosting the performance while V-Sync is enabled.

Now the biggee:
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I am quite glad that a few people have $300 to $500 video cards, but the trend towards $400 PCs tells me that you are causing people to make underinformed decisions.

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Here, you're just being flat out offensive and antagonistic. The majority of the folks that need a guide like this or my performance guide are the people slamming their heads against a wall trying to figure out why they're only getting 5FPS in CoV.

Although I greatly appreciate any feedback that will lead to a better guide, and thus help more folks, this ego-feeding antagonism of yours I can happily do without. Especially when some of what you say has been proven incorrect.

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One difference is that on some ATIs you can enable high quality AA if you force it in driver.

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Must be the case. For as I've stated numerous times, driver manage FSAA creates smoother lines than CoH/V managed. Something is different. So I'll stick with what my experience shows me.

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DVI cable to use with his Dell 21 inch LCD instead of using the VGA cable and has experienced much better FPS rates than with the VGA cable. Hear anything about this?

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Yes. I also used the DVI cable after first running around with analog (d-sub) when I first got my LCD. Loads difference. The biggy for me was that all my gamma issues went away. If you CAN go DVI, do it.

Black_Specter,
Yup. I've given up on allowing CoH/V to manage my FSAA and AF. Too much hassle, isn't rendered as cleanly. So back to disabled in game and managed by CCC for me. I'm currently running 4X/4X and everything looks fine.