Do regeneration health increase ticks synchronize by server timer ticks?

You might want to accept the fact that some people actually like fiddling with numbers and are interested in them. I, for one, like maths and find in-depth knowledge of the game interesting.

Originally Posted by Deus_Otiosus This entire post should receive some kind of award for being both hysterical and fantastic. Well done.

Thanks for the reply, I think I see what you are getting at. A number of health increase ticks could occur at one interval, then a shorter or longer interval occasionally to even out the average amount of health over time. Very interesting, and I sure hope some algorithm like that exists in the game. Tricky to program it correctly though, and you would need to keep track of one extra counter per player.

The mathematics is not difficult, the tricky part is to test it in a reliable way. It would require the cooperation of at least two characters, who together can buff the regen of one of them to 2000%-3000% (to see the effects easier) and keep it consistent for long enough to run trials either against a known damage source or for the time to regen from 0 to full health (after a long drop or something). I can't test that by myself, and I wanted to hear if someone else had done such tests before I start looking for a way to run trials (it would be a lot easier for someone with two accounts).

Thanks Ad Astra for the tip about PM:ing Arcanaville, you are probably correct that if someone had done such tests she would at least know about it.

As for why doing things like these instead of "just playing the game"... Like I said, it helps with build plans. For example, one Empath I am designing could self buff to 1207% regen with Regeneration Aura slotted a certain way, but if everything from 1137% to 1298% gives the same end result anyway, I can do the slotting a lot cheaper (use lower level enhancements, ignore set bonuses etc). It also has implications for who I would cast Adrenalin Boost on, and whether I should bother slotting for maxed heal enhancements in Adrenalin Boost.

Arcanaville Fhtagn.

* Poof *

Where am I? Where's the emergency? Castle nerfing Electric Armor? Someone thinks taunt should debuff your height? What?


Oh. This? Jeez, ok, but let me get my morning coffee first.









Ok. Let's see here. First of all, I think some people have misinterpreted what ArcanaTime says about server clocks. In the original analysis I described this in more detail. There's a combat clock which is about 0.125 seconds long. And there is an animation clock that is about 0.033 seconds long. The game seems to align on server clocks but anything that *roots* has to align with the animation clock because rooting animations always run for a whole number of animation frames. Thus, to fire off an attack, you have to wait until the last server combat clock tick ends, then start the power on the next combat tick, but the animation will actually start on the next animation tick. So the alignment takes place four animation clock ticks later, or 0.33 * 4 = 0.132 seconds. That's the first animation clock that happens after one combat clock of 0.125.

Its a *little* more complicated than that due to a slight shifting in alignment over time, but since internal lag tends to blur that almost to the point of being undetectable and it always averages out, I didn't bother to provide a formula for being more precise. Its not worth it when calculating attack chains.

However, things that just happen and don't involve rooting animations either align with the combat clock of 0.125s per tick, or the server quantum clock of about 0.033 seconds (30 ticks per second), not the 0.132 "Arcanatime" clock. That really isn't a clock, but rather a "beat" of two clocks.


I *did*, however, actually look at the issue of rapidly ticking things. Not regeneration specifically, but damage DoT ticks and other effects that tick very fast. They do not have to align with those server clocks. The game seems to work backwards: on the next combat tick, it goes back and figures out what events were supposed to happen and does them. If a DoT (or a regeneration tick) was supposed to tick twice since the last time they occured, they just tick twice.


And actually, we have a hint for how this probably works. My guess is that all timers, including DoT timers, regeneration timers, and recharge timers, are decremented by the 30/sec server clock. When they reach zero, stuff happens. For things like regeneration and fast DoT, their timers could decrement to zero twice before they are processed. My guess is that when those timers decrement to zero a counter is incremented and they wrap around like an odometer in reverse. The next time the server comes around to check on them, it reads the counter, does their thing that many times, and resets the counter. So if the regen counter decremented to zero once, you get one health tick. If it decremented to zero twice, the game pulses you with two ticks. In this way, even though the game has a relatively slow combat clock (8/sec) it can process correctly (albeit in a slightly delayed fashion) events that take place much faster than that or events not aligned perfectly to that clock.

How do we know this? Hamidon raids. Pre-I9 Hamidon raids offered great insight into how the game processes things. Under the severe lag conditions of a packed raid, the server slowed down. Everything, including recharge, began to run slower. This implies the server doesn't literally back-calculate *everything* because if it did, the server would get more *jumpy* but not slower. Actually getting slower implies that things in the game that should be ticking at one rate are actually ticking at a slower rate. And that can only happen if the thing doing the ticking slowed down. Which is exactly what would happen when the server was so overloaded with things to do it actually took more than a 30th of a second to process everything that was supposed to happen in that 30th of a second. So the 30/sec server quantum clock couldn't run 30 ticks per second. When it started running at 10 ticks per second, everything in the game universe slowed down to 1/3rd speed, including recharge and probably regeneration and recovery ticks (of course, in those raids who would notice those).

So, my best guess: combat ticks are back-calculated. The game figures out what should have happened in the last 0.125 seconds, and does them. Quantum ticks are not back-calculated: they do the same thing every time they tick, which is supposed to be 30 times per second. If the game cannot do so fast enough, it starts slowing down and everything that relies on that clock slows down with it.

Which implies that things like regeneration ticks might be forced to align with quantum clocks. But not necessarily if their counters are wrap-around counters.

Let me see what I can dig up on this. This might be very difficult to test precisely, but I may have some old data that could be mined to figure out whether regeneration ticks are forced to align with anything. My hunch is, when the server is working correctly, its not.

*Chugs his Cherry Wheat, rolls onto the floor into the fetal position, and begins sucking his thumb.

What is this madness about Electric Armor getting castle'd? don't scare me like that...

My guess would be a separate entry into the queue for each item every time the timer hits zero. This would be simpler code and would give correct results in the case of, for instance, a race between Regen Rate and Fast DoT. . . but in almost all cases, you'd get the same results either way. And my opinion on the right way of coding it does not necessarily align with the actual code.

Drinking Octoberfest right now....

Sam Adams = Love.

Erm.... I don't get it. It would be 12/0.033 I think. Plus Arcanaville said that during those 0.033 seconds, if Regen rate is too high, another "value" would be incremented that would "multiply" (or increment, as you wish) the value of health you would receive on the next tick (the 30/sec one). As I understood, server doesn't apply any limit on maximum regeneration rate.

Or maybe I'm totally wrong and Arcanville fried my brain.

Yeah, I'm gonna go with that... I think.