FPS Stutter Fix, Solo Shuffle Update - Increased Leaver Penalty, Pre-Patch Hotfixes

[Lumy]

FPS Stutter Fix
With Dragonflight Pre-Patch Phase 1 being live this week, some players have been facing fps drops when moving throughout the world. While this is fixed on the PTR (and on live in the next build), it has been reported that setting GxAllowCachelessShaderMode to 0 and then restarting the game may fix the issue.

Update: A hotfix has been implemented, the commands no longer need to be run since the cvar is now set to 0 by default.

/console GxAllowCachelessShaderMode 0
/console gxRestart

Solo Shuffle Update - Increased Leaver Penalty

Thank you for your continued feedback on Rated Solo Shuffle. As mentioned in the original post, we want to disincentivize players from leaving their match, punish them appropriately, and have minimal impact on players who did not leave.

After an update we intend to make next week, players who leave a Rated Solo Shuffle match will now lose personal rating equivalent to losing all 6 rounds within a match, while the remaining players will not have a change in their rating.

Additionally, we will increase the duration of the deserter penalty on repeat leavers.

We’ll continue to monitor feedback and player behavior in Rated Solo Shuffle. Thanks again!

Dragonflight Pre-Patch Hotfixes - October 27, 2022

Achievements

• The achievements for the Season 4 Fated Raids were prematurely moved out of the Dungeon & Raid category, as they are still earnable. They are once again visible.

Classes

• Shaman
  
  • Enhancement
    
    • Fixed an issue where some unintended spells could grant a stack of Maelstrom Weapon.
      

Covenants

• Kyrian
  
  • Path of Ascension
    
    • Fixed an issue where Splinterbark Nightmare's melee was consuming charges of Drustbloom Embrace.
      

Creatures and NPCs

• Fixed an issue where the gold dragon frame was missing on Elite enemy and World Boss nameplates.

Quests

• Fixed an issue where “The Sunken Vault" could not be completed.
  
• You can once again communicate with the following NPCs:
  
  • Arluin during the quests "Or Against Us" and "If Words Don't Work..."
    
  • Runecarver during the quest "The Weak Link."
    
  • Lord Herne during the quest "Meet the Queen."
    
• Falstad Wildhammer should now correctly offer and accept quests during the “Blood in the Water” quest line.

User Interface and Accessibility

• Fixed an issue where melee attacks could not be canceled by pressing the Esc key when Action Targeting is enabled.
  
• The stance bar is no longer centered when closing Edit Mode after moving the bar.
  
• Spells are once again visible on the action bar when moved around while the Always Show action bar setting is disabled.
  
• The Group Finder eye icon will once again stay searching and visible after a loading screen occurs.
  
• Fixed an issue where party frames were missing in Arena when Raid Style Party Frames is enabled.
  
• The Reagent Bag slot has been removed and will return when Dragonflight launches.

[Cosmic Janitor]

I gotta try that console command. Had that or some other stutter issues on wednesday and kinda just got tired of playing at that point.

[JSoup]

>The Reagent Bag slot has been removed and will return when Dragonflight launches.
Good. As someone who loves his storage space that empty slot with no way to fill it was driving me nuts.

[Veluren]

I managed to get the stutter fixed with that toggle, but it still seems like the game is utterly gouging my GPU usage, whereas before it was only using about 40-60% it's consistently at like 95+, I'm trying to figure out where that's coming from, but no dice so far.

[Zelliaind]

I managed to get the stutter fixed with that toggle, but it still seems like the game is utterly gouging my GPU usage, whereas before it was only using about 40-60% it's consistently at like 95+, I'm trying to figure out where that's coming from, but no dice so far.

One of the things I noticed, and not sure if it'll help you or not, is to manually select your Graphics Card in the settings instead of having it set to "Auto Detect". For whatever reason, me manually selecting the card fixed that issue when I had it even though I've only got one card.

Weird I know but...there you go.

[Morgaith]

I managed to get the stutter fixed with that toggle, but it still seems like the game is utterly gouging my GPU usage, whereas before it was only using about 40-60% it's consistently at like 95+, I'm trying to figure out where that's coming from, but no dice so far.

The game always used most if not all of my gpu (which is good aka im not bottlenecked elsewhere rly) but my 2 iq take is that the stutter would've solved itself through gameplay given enough time played but seeing as this patch was just released all the "work" it was doing in the background caused massive stutters.

[Bats]

The solo shuffle penalty is still not enough. Say for example if the person leaving is the "worst" player of the group and was on your team for the first 3 rounds, they leave on the 4th, you're now the one paying for it with 3 losses where if he hasn't left it could have been 3 wins and 3 losses.

Also the issues where you've been in the queue for 15 mins and play for 5 just to be put in a queue again after the example I mentioned above will feel AWFUL. Similar to how OW queues work, if your game ends early because of a leave, you should have priority queue.

[lordjust]

The game always used most if not all of my gpu (which is good aka im not bottlenecked elsewhere rly) but my 2 iq take is that the stutter would've solved itself through gameplay given enough time played but seeing as this patch was just released all the "work" it was doing in the background caused massive stutters.

What that fix is doing is going back to cached shaders in the RAM which uses some CPU cycles. They introduced the cacheless mode to take advantage of faster NVME SSDs to free up some CPU cycles to be less CPU limited. In general they did some tweaking to be less CPU limited so people should see a higher GPU usage and higer FPS but maybe experience some stuttering because instead of being CPU limited people are limited by the speed of their SSD.

Some people say they have stutterinmg dispite using a 980 evo or something along the lines but when it comes to SSD speed you have to look at the whole system. You need a fast SSD, you need the right PCIe version to support those high speeds (like PCIe 4.0) and a CPU with enough PCIe lanes to support those speeds.

The minimum requirements for WoW changed and at minimum you're expected to have an SSD but they didn't specifiy what speed you need and seeing how different the speeds can be, it's difficult to say when it's better to use the cached mode and when it's better to use the cacheless mode.

From my testing on a 2700x with an PCIe 3.0 SSD I'm bottlenecked by my SSD speed and have stuttering and lower FPS when using the cacheless mode despite having higher GPU usage (100% in cacheless mode and 60% in cached mode). So cacheless mode is probably only worth it if you have a fast PCIe 4.0 NVME SSD with a system that can support the full speed.

[Veluren]

One of the things I noticed, and not sure if it'll help you or not, is to manually select your Graphics Card in the settings instead of having it set to "Auto Detect". For whatever reason, me manually selecting the card fixed that issue when I had it even though I've only got one card.

Weird I know but...there you go.

Yeah, that seems to have fixed it, weird as hell but thank you muchly

[Morgaith]

ssd stuff

Well darn, ty for the post. I'm using a 980pro with a PCIe 3.0 or 3.5 motherboard so that could be a culprit.

[Northy]

Weird, they didn't fix Elemental's Heat Wave talent.

[crusadernero]

Probably why they have been so reluctant on having solo shuffle. Maybe 6 matches are to much and ppl cant be bothered completing it?

[Tiwack]

Unsurprised people leave the shuffle when there's zero gear checks or match-making balance in place. It's just best-geared player wins more often than not lmao.

[AtomR]

"The Group Finder eye icon will once again stay searching and visible after a loading screen occurs."
Oh, will it? And will it still be doing that as a giant eyeball on top of my character and throughout all the instance, impossible to move?

[Biggles Worth]

Thanks for the console commands. I thought things were extra stuttery last night. The commands worked for me so far.

[Daan]

After an update we intend to make next week, players who leave a Rated Solo Shuffle match will now lose personal rating equivalent to losing all 6 rounds within a match, while the remaining players will not have a change in their rating.

The only really annoying thing won't get fixed? Come on. Punishing leaver is correct, but getting no rating after 5 rounds due to a leaver sucks.