ITF lag issues

In the last two missions I have this problem on all of my toons every time I run the ITF certain powers will lag. It's always the same powers in the same missions. For example, on my spines/regen scrapper: mog, buildup and hasten will ALWAYS take anywhere from 5 to 15 seconds before they go off (the red circle appears around them but after that they just quit doing anything). This is an eternity when you are trying kill dozens of enemies coming at you from every direction and keep yourself alive in the process. It only affects 2 or 3 powers on each toon. The rest of my powers will go off normally. I sent in a petition and I'm going through the process with support. The main reason I'm posting here is to see if anyone else has noticed this or a similar problem.

I always have problems with those two missions with all or most of my click powers. I assumed it was just the price we pay for having a cool but huge outdoor mission densely packed with fairly complex foes like the Cimerorans.

Super simple version: the server is built to run at 60 FPS but is so busy it is actually running 40 FPS. Your power needs 240 frames to recharge... you (and your client, which times powers independent of the server) think that should take 4 seconds, but the server says it needs 6.

Details:

Its the price for bad code on the developers part. Its just like at large ship raids (particularly when there's lots of pets out) or hamidon. The server isn't running things in real time, it is instead simulating the game in discreet time-steps. The problem is when it takes longer on the wall-clock to process a time-step than a time-step is long. (example: if it takes 2 real-life seconds to process 1 second of game time... you can see how things get messed up)

This is compounded by your powers recharge being monitored by your client, not the server. So while the server is a few seconds behind, the client is clueless about it and tells you your power is ready. Unfortunately the server doesn't agree, so when the client says "fire X" the server says "action queued" aka the red ring.

It is a real pity the server doesn't return to the client any sort of time-step information so that the client could run a similar simulation and at least give you accurate power recharge times, even if the server itself can't be fixed to manage to run things within the allocated step-time.

The plus side of this failure mode is that things fail "gracefully" in that regeneration ticks process on that same simulation process, so even though your DPreallifeS is falling, so is the target's regen/power recycle/etc per reallifeS.

Its actually the price you pay for "too many mobs or player pets active at once." If you watch ship raids, lag will be much, much, much worse when a raid has a bunch of MMs and other player summoned pets.

Let me tell you, I'm not looking forward to ship raids with full-incarnate players and everyone summoning two minions.

I just had to cancel the weekly Rikti mothership raids that I've been running on the Champion server for the past two years because of this. The zone is almost always full before we start. The lag has just become worse and worse to the point where it is no longer bearable for me. And yes, it is exponentially worse when pets are present, which is just about always.

I use a couple of binds that correct this somewhat.

/bind f1 "unloadgfx"
/bind f2 "sync"

So now when I am out of whack I punch the f1 and f2 combination and it usually corrects for a while.

Normally on those maps I hit f2 every couple of minutes to resync to the server.

On the plus side, I do find I use much less endurance.

I have been on raids where the leaders have asked (not insisted) MMs to not summon their low-tier pets to help with lag.

I'm in USA and on a solid and stable broadband connection. 30Mb/s down and 5 Mb/s up
I also use a quad core i5 coupled with a gtx 580 and do not generally suffer lag or power lag on the ITF.
I'm only sending this out to let people know that it's entirely possible to not lag on the ITF in ULTRA settings.
Good luck resolving your issues.

It's partly how you define lag as well.
If you mean it as in "frames per second drops to the point of slow or stuttering images" then my high end gaming rig doesn't ever lag in ITFs or during MSRs.

If you consider "powers in my tray look as if they are charged when they are not" as lag then yeah I've gotten that on occasion and it's annoying.

Personally I go by the first definition (since there is nothing I can do about the 2nd) and would say I don't ever lag when playing CoH.
I think it's what most people refer to when they say they are lagging but that's just my opinion.

P.S. Yes I have a high end system (I build custom computers for a living) and fast internet.

One --> Artz Giveaway <-- To Rule Them ALL!

I will settle this. ORANGE FTW! - Ex Libris

I believe that another part of the ITF Lag Issue is the sheer number of Capes present. It's VERY easy to get HUGE clumps of mobs in one area in the second mission.

Before he was canned, Brawler did some tests on a multi-cape system, and found that the more capes there were, the worse performance degraded. 2 was bad, 10 was worse, and 100 was similar to what I've heard about lag in WoW Raids.

[ ProTip: The banner is a link to art refs!! | The Khellection | The HBAS Repository | Brute Guides (4/16/10) | How To Post An Image - A Quick Guide ]
Biggest Troll on the forums? I'll give you a hint:

Part of it is the number of enemies using the Shield Defense set. With the ally buff, there are a lot of server side calculations. Whatever portion is caused by this, we're going to have to live with. They can't fix it without ditching the powerset for the Cimerorans.