• Feylna

I ran AddonSpamFu last night and the addon Athene's Gear Check seemed to be the biggest offender. From one person alone I had recieved over 200k bytes over the course of just Onyxia's lair.

During some of the burstier sends from AGC and LibHealComm 3.0 we had a couple people D/C (people with either bad connections or lower-end computers).

I think its about time to start having prohibited addons in raids, the only person that should have Gear Score or addons like that are the raid leader, and only for FL to determine Ilvl. Also, high-share addons such as Carbonite or the like are unnecessary.

Has anyone determined what exactly LibHealComm does? Would having people disable it gimp our healers ability to heal? If I understand it correctly, its simply an addon that gives visual-heal effects to prevent overhealing; however, if everyone is doing their job properly then that is unnecessary.

 

Lexer

Well, you are right in that it transmits info about incoming heals. Other addons can use it to show visual incoming bars or numbers, or whatever they like. As a mainly raid healer I wouldn't like to be without it. Especially if you have more than one player raid healing, it really helps a lot to know who the other one is healing and where you need to concentrate on.

 

Schnappi

It's not as much about overhealing as it is about knowing who is going to die if you don't heal them.

 

Jayde

The issue here is that people have been using these addons for some time, and issues have only appeared after this patch. Obviously some changes have been made to the server and/or game and while perhaps disabling addons can assist the issue, it's seems more like fighting a symptom than a cause.

I'm highly doubtful that 12k or something like that over a fight from LibHealComm is an issue that should cause massive instability and constant server boots. It's such a small amount of data compared to what the server already sends each client on a regular basis in regard to the combat log, positions of NPCs and players, stat updates, etc.

If clients are being flooded by data somehow, it's most likely data being sent from the server, not from addons. For instance, a lot of people have huge disconnect issues after a major patch because their client is trying to refill their itemcache and the hanging causes a server timeout.

 

grutak

I posted this for my guild yesterday. Several people who had the DC on pull problem now no longer DC on those pulls. It might not be a fix for everyone, but its worth a shot.

 

littlejim

Can other players confirm that their patch.mpq file is 3.910.853 kb (preferably players that aren't having issues with disconnects)? I've been having disconnects on Gormok 25 man heroic, Onyxia (when the whelps spawn) and on Anub'Arak 25 man heroic. I'm interested to see if the patch.mpq file truly is the cause of (or at least contributing to) these disconnects, but I don't have the fastest internet connection on the planet, so I'm a little hesitant to download a 4 Gb file.

Most players in my guild are attributing my disconnects (especially on Anub'Arak) to my computer, which isn't top of the range. Still, my 7800 graphics card, 2 Gb of RAM and single core 2.41 Ghz processor don't seem to disconnect me on much more graphically intense fights, such as Firefighter 25 man, Algalon 25 man, or Twins 25 man. It goes without saying that I'm attempting Anub with minimal or no addons and all video settings on low (1024x768 resolution). I did however come across some video settings that need to be manually added to the WoW config file to take effect:

World of Warcraft - English (NA) Forums -> _____User tips and tricks

Outside of a raid, I can already notice a steep increase in my fps (anywhere from 70-100 in cities excluding Dalaran) with this change. If I still disconnect tonight, I think it's safe to say performance can be ruled out as one of the causes of these ToC disconnects (at least for me).

I'm also going to try the Fubar addon spam tracker and for those that are wondering, I've read on the US WoW forums that typing /ignore <name of player with addon spam> will prevent their addons from spamming you permanently. Apparently /ignore blocks even unseen channels of communication.

 

Tanoh

Mine. I don't have disconnects.

patch.mpq: 3 911 336 KB
patch-2.mpq: 172 127 KB

 

Psonica

Checked my 3 computers and filesizes are exactly as the above poster so if your patch.mpq is 3.910.853 kb you are missing something.

 

Jayde

Very interesting. A number of people in the guild seem to have 3,910,853 (some of which have disconnection problems, some of which do not) and a number have 3,911,336 (including myself).

It seems to be one of those two numbers in almost every case.

Is there any particular reason behind this? It's hard to sort out which is the 'correct' version and which isn't, since not everyone with the smaller filesize seems to have disconnect issues. I find it strange it's possible for the patcher to regularly end up with two distinct and consistant outputs like this.

 

RunsWithScissors

My patch.mpq file size is 3,910,853 kb and I am also having disconnect issues on those 3 fights. Seems like that may indeed be the culprit

 

littlejim

Except that I have the "correct" patch.mpq size and still have disconnect problems.

 

gcbirzan

I have 3.911.334 (4.005.205.969 bytes), and I get disconnects _sometimes_.

 

chaud

Rather than compare filesizes, why not check md5 (I doubt it, but it might show a difference between the same size files and people that disconnect/don't disconnect) ? I never have disconnected in a 10/25 man, enUS client values below.

Download the MD5summer

17d340dbd0ac02569d56cd0d96b2c8b7 *common-2.MPQ
325452ce19054ee76f29acb14da85884 *common.MPQ
c48af167bd3253f4762dd077112252af *expansion.MPQ
6c9f85caf621ee546dbfe8811315eb11 *lichking.MPQ
fd452103aaafddf9d1f67671b14d4b80 *patch-2.MPQ
a43ef75db0eeedb1b6003edb32deabdc *patch.MPQ

 

Finkum

Could the different sizes be due to localisation-specific data (e.g. the smaller size is for EU WoW)?

I also have the "correct" file size and suffer constant disconnects in 25-ToC and Onyxia, but I'll do a checksum compare later and see if that reveals anything.

 

chaud

I would imagine enGB, mxMX, esES, enUS or whatever would all be different.

e: Actually, most of the localization stuff is in other MPQs, so maybe they should be the same. Although MPQs might not match due to the patching process, as the repair tool verified my WoW install and someone else's while having different md5s.

 

Elyasviel

does the amount of memory your addons have affect your wow performance?

 

• mutagen

Addon memory got linked to performance back when WoW was using the original Lua garbage collector. In a nutshell, every once in a while the garbage collector would go through every bit of addon memory looking for variables, etc that were no longer in use and would dump them from memory. If you had your full addon load this would be a significant lag spike.

The incremental garbage collector included in one of the WoW updates (TBC / 2.0?) spreads this out over time. So a giant set of addons will still slow you down but won't cause those massive lag spikes. Most of the addon performance issues lie elsewhere these days, though having tons of addons increases the chance that one or more of them will misbehave and cause issues.

 

Arthek

World of Warcraft - English (NA) Forums -> Ulduar Change - Thorim disconnect
If that fixes the disconnects on Thorim they could apply the same fix for Gormok, right?

 

Moshne

Cartographer and the Carbonite Suite are especially spammy as well. I'd hesitate calling "HealComm" spammy, as that implies that it isn't provided a valid raid purpose. The communicative value of knowing who is healing what is worth a few 10s of kilobytes an hour.

Back in the SSC days I played Addon Nazi for our guild and had the guild disable several especially bad ones and had notable guild performance increases. However, even at its worst, the amount of data in that channel should not be disconnecting someone on their own. The usual suspects for a disconnect when reconnection midfight has to do with the game trying to redraw frames while significant amount of data is flying around. Pitbull or other UI mods are especially harsh about this, as they seem to react differently to drawing their frames during combat than out.

Altering your raids addons to regulate a few people's problems is probably barking up the wrong tree though. Try looking for the more likely culprits, as well as the ones least likely to generate discontent before going that route.

It's much easier to make strategic moves when you aren't trying to hold your intestines in all the time. - Juice

 

Jayde

Quite possibly. Like I mentioned above, it's far more likely that it's the servers themselves generating the data choking the clients rather than mods. The majority of mod setups simply don't generate a huge amount of network traffic compared to what the game server itself is capable of pumping out.

 

• Allara

Unit frame add-ons are very restricted in what they are allowed to do during combat. Essentially, only things the built-in WoW unit frames offer are allowed. Frame creation and deletion, sorting, etc. are not. Unit frame add-ons are absolutely not the reason for disconnections.

 

littlejim

An update on my disconnect issues: Problem seems fixed! I've begun ignoring all players in the raids I attend, except the officers and my disconnect problem has disappeared. By disappeared, I mean no dc's on any fight in ToC 10MN, 10M HC, 25MN, and 25M HC including Gormok the Disconnecter! I tried all of the other suggested fixes, with little result (reg fixes, wtf/cache/interface folder deletion, upgrading the my ADSL linespeed, driver updates, firmware updates, the list goes on). I've managed to greatly increase my fps and slightly reduce my ms with these changes, but I still disconnected in ToC 25 and ToC 25 only as many other players have reported. I'm interested to hear if many others have had similar success by ignoring their raid members? If so, it's time to push Blizzard for an interface option to block addon spam from other players.

Side Note: I still "feel" as if a dc is incoming at some points in ToC 25. Usually, this is marked by a high influx of data, such as the beginning of the raid aoeing adds on Anub'arak. My spells highlight for as much as 1 second while chain casting, so I immediately react by stopping all casts and facing my camera to the ground for 3-4 seconds. I don't know if this is due to my refusing to ignore 3-4 raid members (namely officers who will shout at me ), but my performance in raids is rarely hurt and best of all, I stay online.

 

• Goatbert

I think when Blizzard fixed Thorim they might have fixed Gormok, we never get chain DCs anymore.

 

Baalzaman

No, more recently Blizzard have made a change to the Gormok encounter: World of Warcraft - English (NA) Forums -> Gormoc the Impaler 25 man constant DC

 

KraxisSingular

Seems like it has worked for the most part, our main DCers only suffer the stagger effect like most of us now. Of course until now we are still highly wary of their situation, especially since we need their performance in heroic.

Obviously it needs a little more time to tell if this is the fix or just an attempt.