Miscommunciation and Misconceptions

Good day everybody.

A little introduction, I used to create a ton of macros for multiple classes including Shammies and Hunters, as well as other classes.

Since GSE 3 has come out, and I have spoken about this prior, GSE 3 is not easy software, and really does cause a more challenging time to develop macros. We don’t need to be programmers to use or make macros, yet currently, this is the state of the program.

To speak of some issues, it is recommended that the MS polling rate of GSE 3 is set to 250ms. While this might be true if you’re using software-based key software like AutoHotKey, if you are using hardware-based like Razer, Logitech, or Corsair that declaration is thrown out the window.

I run Corsairs iCUE software, and I ran a test in-game on how it takes me to push and release a button in WoW, on average and I’m sure most users like this are doing about 100 ms with the GCD taken into effect. So if you’re using AutoHotKey you might need to increase it to 250, but if you’re using dedicated hardware, 100 ms seems to be fine. Due to this change on a dummy on my BM Hunter, my DPS with @Elfyau macro went from 6k DPS to 9k DPS. This is a fundamental increase of 33% performance by lowering the MS and using the hardware MS that was used prior.

I looked into this deeper, and the GCD is actually 1.5 seconds for casters and 1 second for melee. BM Hunters fall into the group of melee (instant cast) while Marksman Hunters are in the casters category at 1.5 seconds.

Now for the other issue, memory leaks. This could be because the program/addon doesn’t comply correctly, but there are memory leaks that can be seen in the case of loading. If you do a base install, the program takes longer to load, and also pops up certain Blizzard windows including the Achievements pane. This also takes longer to register the polling data on unit frames including health. In GSE 2, this was never the case, but with GSE 3 it seems to happen. I ran a test on my other system with GSE 3 and GSE 2 (old download) and I noticed this issue happening more frequently with GSE 3. I then unloaded GSE 3 on my main computer and noticed a performance gain, not just with opening windows, or panes but also with polling data.

As for me, my strategy is when I heal now, I’ll need to disable GSE 3 since I used click-casting.

To note, this has also been shown to be an issue with other addons like Vuhdo, and TL;DR Missions as well. It seems like the code isn’t working properly, in the fact of TL;DR Missions, there is malicious code injected which does cause a potential virus. If you are running Windows Defender it won’t catch it, but others will.

I don’t feel that GSE 3 is running any malicious code, but there is a reason for the memory leaks, and other add-ons are starting to show this too.

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Interesting and seems like you did your homework…there might be some reasons for this. We shall see. thanks for the input…Kudos.

@Moonsorow
Have you brought this to Tim’s attention on his GitHub? Sounds semi serious for those that play on a potato.

Very interesting read and I agree that more people should tune a macro that they’re publishing at 250 ms.

I haven’t yet, seeing my main SSD die today I didn’t get a full chance, but after I reinstalled WoW, and GSE I noticed the changes.

The first thing that I noticed was Elf’s BM Hunter ones that he supplies on Curseforge, at 250ms I was getting 5-6k single target DPS, but then I changed iCUE to 100 ms based on my press/release which was closer to 80, and tested it out and found my DPS improved by a significant amount because it could fire the button quicker. This is because BM is the class of melee like Ret and Fury, which is why the lower GCD is needed. Unlike FF15 which put every class at a GCD of nearly 2 seconds, WoW did it differently.

I haven’t tested this on my tank yet, but I am assuming that it should be similar to melee, and can be run at 100 ms.

As for discussing with Tim, I need to communicate with him I haven’t done so yet. But the debate on 250ms is incorrect.

Also, Blizzard is going to be banning people from using click software like this when Dragonflight has a similar feature with press and hold, and auto-cast. Where Blizzard could do something is more for the software emulations like AHK, and others but iCUE, Synapse, and G Hub are not getting banned because they serve a larger purpose.

interesting read for sure but im failing to see any proof backing up your claims.
You state “We don’t need to be programmers to use or make macros, yet currently, this is the state of the program.” when its simply not true and is your opinion. Plenty of us create macros with gse3.

Yes more memory is going to be used by installing an addon…
Yes increasing memory usage will increase load times… this is the case with all addons
and yes increasing MS will likely increase DPS or at least how often a spell fires off simply due to it trying to use whatever spell is in that click of the macro. it cycles faster.

Im not saying its perfect but there’s nothing you said thats anything more than opinion and tests run with and without gse installed.

The 250ms thing isn’t about performance it’s about your account getting banned. The average person struggles to click 10 times a second for 7 minutes. Around 1500 accounts were banned in the last month and most of them were for having toggle based macros in Synapse, GHub, ICue and Corsair running around 80ms. Also Synapse and iCue have been specifically reported as not working with Dragonflight. Now at the end of the day you will run your macro at whatever speed you wish. I can only earn and make aware. The whole adulting thing is it’s your decision and the consequences are also yours.

As for the performance yes you are seeing it. The performance hit from GSE2 all happened in combat. It also randomly would do people in combat mod raid. The performance hit was there but as 90% of macros were so bad they essentially threw every command at WoW between GCD’s, you just passed it off as bad dps. Essentially WoW was dropping most of what your macro did in GSE2 anyway so no one noticed. In GSE3 it has been moved out of combat and actually sets up the things that GSE2 lied to you about doing. And yes there are a number of things you can do to fix your performance. Most of those come down to simplifying your macro, making better use of variables and functions and getting rid of the kitchen sink stuff that is on there on every click. Deleting the macro stub (Delete Icon) for macros you are not using also significantly frees up a ton of resources. In my case my macros are running at a significantly increased dps and better consistency and control but they were designed to run at the GCD of 1.3 seconds in retail. Yes I’m clicking at 1300ms not 250 or 100.

The other difference in 3 is ALL the commands are sent to WoW where they weren’t in 2. Running a kitchen sink macro at under 50ms can dc you if you are close enough to the data centre for spam flooding the server side input queue.

As for it being too complicated well that’s just is what it is. GSE3 is about control and it doing exactly what you are telling it to do. It is garbage in - garbage out and has no tolerance for ignorance or incompetence. That precision and capability has trade offs and while you say it’s not needed, I appreciate your opinion, I’m just not doing anything to change it as GSE is doing what I designed it to do. It, like a few other mods you have mentioned, (you should also look into TSM - but don’t run that if you don’t have 64Gb ram and WoW on a NVM) require serious computational effort and WoW’s garbage management and memory management struggles to cope with what they require of it. It won’t run on a potato. It’s not designed to. If you look through the GitHub tickets there are significant efforts put into the performance side - if you are worried I suggest going back and reading them as they have a lot of information about what you can do to optimise. These are also referenced in the release notes of each version but at the end of the day you can choose to either accept that it is what it is, use something else or write something else.

This is also NOT WowLazyMacros mod. WLM existed before GSE and will probably exist after GSE. GSE is used by a lot of the people here at WLM but it is also used by a lot of people who don’t come here. 90% of what is created and shared here uses about 5% of GSE’s capabilities. There are other groups right up to the world first guild end that push it to its brink and I have to weigh both needs. The rule has always come to functionality over aesthetics.

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Good morning Tim

I was here prior to GSE too, you probably don’t remember the macros I had created for Hunters in MOP, and in Legion that were the top parsing macros around. The top 100 Players both in PVP and PVE were using my macros.

Let me explain what seems to be unknown about the banning process. Firstly, I used to work for Blizzard as a developer for WoW, I also was the chief engineer on building their initial servers back in 2004. My topology, engineering, and design of the server infrastructure are still used today. The net code that you speak of, is not correct. Blizzard is banning people left and right primarily for software based tools like AHK or those equivalent to Multi-Boxing tools. As long as the macro is not helping you move or jump or play the game for you, the macro is then fine. I have been using these macros since I developed them and never have I gotten banned, and you can also ask Ion because he uses these too (we used to joke about at the office all the time that Ion could never play the game that he was part of producing).

I have run macros at 80, 150, and 250 ms and in all cases never gotten banned. My wife also uses these same macros and never got banned. I have friends who use AHK though and they got banned. The difference is the hardware mask. iCUE and other software masks the key clicks, this is why you don’t see Steelseries or Hyper X with this. I used to work for Hyper X’s other company D-Link Systems as their VP of IT where we used to manufacture gaming devices such as keyboards and mice for gamers and my team had built out a macro system similar found in iCUE and Synapse, and those players who bought that hardware from D-Link never got banned. Same when I used to work on Razer I was one of the developers for the Synapse software, that developed that macro code, and nobody has gotten banned. All I keep hearing from friends at Blizzard is that people running multi-boxing systems or AHK are getting banned.

I hope that clears it up, the hardware masks the clicks while the software like AHK does not. Hence why people are getting banned. Also if all of your using this for rotational purposes or a priority, it’s all in-game functionality meaning that the person is clicking on the spells on their bar or spellbook.

I never recommended in any of my macros to run at 50 ms, as you need to take the GCD into effect. 80-100 in GSE 2 was always the sweet spot. My macros also were not “fluff” macros as it seems you are mentioning, as mine were always high performance and always did everything they needed to do including the difficulty of Kill Shot for hunters. I sometimes would go 125 ms if it was a caster like a Fire Mage or Frost Page due to making sure that the modifier always did a Pyro or another spell. You can’t run a Mage at 100 or even 80 because of the procs, melee is different, you can run that lower due to how auto attacks work.

Running TSM for me isn’t an issue as I’m running an NVM with 32 GB of DDR4 RAM, though I can upgrade my sticks no issue.

From what I’ve noticed, the MS thing seems pretty dependent on the class, build or possible spec you are running. For hunters with little rotation, you can run 100ms or even just clear the MS box to be blank and click ok. Wow macros do not have a way to specify an ms. If you are playing a class such as War, Pally, Monk, and you have various loops, casting priorities and such, GSE seems to skip some skills unless you are running around 200 or 250MS.

Again, 250ms seems to work for pretty in depth macros, but 250ms on an MM hunter will cost you dps unless you are running no higher than 100ms… Different specs and/or the amount of haste the class has, seems to affect speed, casting or melee hits depending or haste / ms times.

This is merely my thoughts and opinions. I’ve been playing every class/spec since season 3 and this is just stuff that I’ve noticed along the way.

Chris

not sure what iLvl you are. but what you said is a good example of any macro will not be the same for everybody using it. For Elfyau’s BM macro at 250ms i get 12-15k dps at a 275 iLvl. it all has to do with what we are using to play the game and run the macros.

I’m 264 ilevel on my Hunter with a crappy 229 ilevel bow.

I do mostly Mythics and Mythic+, I tend to stay away from raids, as it’s harder to nail down issues like this.

With 250ms I was averaging about 5.2k DPS, this was tested on a dummy and a mythic+ boss too. With 100 ms I was averaging about 9.6k DPS, with burst spikes going up to 12k DPS and AOE going nearly 19k with Multi-Shot and Beast Cleave.

I also tried this with some other macros to run the full gambit of testing, and the same results. At 250ms my DPS was lackluster because 250ms is equal to 2.5 seconds. Can you imagine hitting the 1 key on your keyboard every 2.5 seconds? This is what was happening. At 100ms your hitting the 1 button on your keyboard every second, which is a good determination that 100ms is actually optimal hence why the higher DPS.

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Some basic math:

1000 ms = 1 second

250ms = 0.25 of a second or 4 clicks a second.

100ms = 0.10 of a second or 10 clicks a second.

The GCD is still 1500 to 1300 MS (1.5 to 1.3 seconds) depending on haste.

I may have found your performance problem at 250ms.

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I dont trust any of the words youre saying.

And i did have an insider on ireland then París .

What your saying is half correct.

And Last i Will Say most people here uses the macros for ourselves disability purposes and enjoy the game.

Not for showing LOOK MY MYTHIC !!ll and im 100 top in the World .

If you Say you are still in contact with Ion, tell him this is a lifesaver and why blizzard have never thought about it.

Atm Timothy > Ion by a LOT .

Have nice week @every one

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Hello @lloskka

I do agree, macros are perfect for the disabled community, and I also do suffer from a disability as well when playing WoW. I played a healer for nearly 12 years until my hand just couldn’t do it anymore. I transitioned to DPS to save my hands for work.

As for why the new hold-to-cast functionality is in, it’s due to new California law. While not directed to video game developers, there is a new law in California that websites and tools need to be optimized for disabilities. A former employer got sued for not agreeing to this new law. The law applies only to companies that have incorporated or have offices in California. The law if you want to look it up in California ADA law, AB 434.

Ion isn’t that bright, I used to work directly under Metzen, and we used to have conversations about Ion all the time along with other upper team members. Sadly the old regime isn’t there anymore and the WoW community (even here) has turned toxic.

The key thing I wanted to bring up here, and seems to have gotten a bit toxic.

  1. Improving GSE 3 to not have memory leaks, as it seems like this addon, Vuhdo and others are having issues with memory leaks. I’ve also tested this on an EVO 870 SSD / NVM drive, and the typical startup for WoW without GSE is under 10 seconds, whereas with GSE is closer to 30 seconds. This explains that there is some sort of memory leak going on, I don’t know if @TimothyLuke did any QA/QC on GSE with testing vectors to find the memory leaks.

  2. Improving the MS rate to fire more quickly, which gives you a boost of DPS.

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Bans surrounding people who have GSE installed are due to other factors and NOT GSE.
I dont care that you used 50ms, 100ms, 250ms ect, GSE has nothing to do with the speed at which the button is pressed, thats on w/e software your using to do so, and its the actions of said software that triggers a ban, pressing something at 50ms repeatedly over the course of a 5 minute fight is 6000 clicks. at a GCD of 1.3 and a cast time of 0.5 (just an example) that leaves a 5 minute fight, with 100% cast uptime at only 167 button presses needed (granted most spam click 4-6 times per second, but never the exact same timing or perfectly timed. a FAR cry from the 6k+ 50ms is doing. then thoes speeds repeated every time your in combat and pressing said macro, its not hard to tell theres software being used to click at thoes speeds. but even then no “speed” is a safe speed as its not the speed or GSE thats against TOS its the USE of the software your using to automate your button presses, toggle or held down, doesnt matter.

AHK, IQUE, razor, logitech ect doesnt matter. period. its ALL software that can automate keystorkes. razor/logi are less impacted because thoes are on a major portion of PCs, “safer” but still violates TOS, they just choose to not act on these or less of these due to the shear number of people they would need to ban as they are super common software vs something like AHK

either way you look at it, if you use GSE and mash the button yourself your 1000% fine, if you use ANYTHING to automate thoes keystrokes, your in violation.

knowing Ion has zero to do with it.

this is nothing more then a PEBKAC situation.
sorry not sorry.

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Let me clarify. It appears that your statement is incorrect. While you may not have experience in the development of World of Warcraft, I do have experience in this area as a member of the core team and also from my work at companies such as Razer. I can tell you that there are abilities that are on and off the global cooldown (GCD). When casting a spell, even at a rapid rate such as 100 milliseconds, the entire spell is cast before moving onto the next one. This action is not a bannable offense. The same goes for melee abilities. However, using a robot system to cast and move at the same time is considered bannable.

Certain addons, such as Carbionte, are also bannable as they automate movement and combat for the player. On the other hand, GSE (Gnome Sequencer Enhanced) is considered a rotation helper by Blizzard and does not allow for character movement. It simply pulls spells from the player’s spellbook using API calls.

While I have been critical of Ion, who is the current game director, I have known him for over 20 years. In my opinion, he is not a good game director, but I won’t go into further detail about why in this post.

I hope this clarifies any misunderstandings.

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