Sentinel's biggest problem: Ability Stuttering

[Blaaat]

Ability Stutter video:

 

After checking the video, I personally don't associate that with the term ability stuttering. For me ability stuttering is when your ability animations starts over again while in the middle of an ability animation this happens especially when you spam an ability and/or you have ability binded to a multi key combination (e.g. alt-1) For example I have Force Sweep binded on Alt-Q so sometimes when I want to do Force Sweep my character jumps in the air, and while middle of the jump it restarts the jump animation and then executes Force Sweep doing the damage.

 

What's happening with you Vibeth can be described as ability cancellationn IMO because that is exactly what happens, your ability gets cancelled and to make matter worse the GCD goes off so you have to wait 1.5s before using it again.

It is also easy to explain why it happens and it has already been figured out by various people on these forums, and you can clearly see it in the first example (although it's impossible to see in the other examples). Your Zealous Strike gets cancelled because your character has to do a dodge animation! So during an ability cancellation your ability's animation gets overridden by a different animation usually a dodge/parry/reflect animation.

 

And yes other classes are affected by this and I have seen this happen on my Trooper once: my channelled attack got cancelled because my Trooper did a dodge animation. However they're less affected (or nearly none at all) because other classes don't have big wind up animations with their attacks unlike with Jedi Knights and Sith Warriors.

Edited January 15, 2012 by Blaaat

[Vibeth]

After checking the video, I personally don't associate that with the term ability stuttering. For me ability stuttering is when your ability animations starts over again while in the middle of an ability animation this happens especially when you spam an ability and/or you have ability binded to a multi key combination (e.g. alt-1) For example I have Force Sweep binded on Alt-Q so sometimes when I want to do Force Sweep my character jumps in the air, and while middle of the jump it restarts the jump animation and then executes Force Sweep doing the damage.

 

What's happening with you Vibeth can be described as ability cancellationn IMO because that is exactly what happens, your ability gets cancelled and to make matter worse the GCD goes off so you have to wait 1.5s before using it again.

It is also easy to explain why it happens and it has already been figured out by various people on these forums, and you can clearly see it in the first example (although it's impossible to see in the other examples). Your Zealous Strike gets cancelled because your character has to do a dodge animation! So during an ability cancellation your ability's animation gets overridden by a different animation usually a dodge/parry/reflect animation.

 

And yes other classes are affected by this and I have seen this happen on my Trooper once: my channelled attack got cancelled because my Trooper did a dodge animation. However they're less affected (or nearly none at all) because other classes don't have big wind up animations with their attacks unlike with Jedi Knights and Sith Warriors.

 

I guess you're right, it's more of a cancellation than "stutter". That being said I notice stuttering quite often too (you can also see it in the vid if you look closely!) aka press the ability once and see the animation "restart" (double execute in other words).

 

Anyway, renamed thread appropriately.

Edited January 16, 2012 by Vibeth

[PreDestined]

I agree this is the main issue for our class at this time.

 

To run to a target, as combat with the skills for improved master strike, use it, get stuck in place doing the animation while the target walks away unharmed.

 

Leaping to a enemy > into a overload saber, and attempt todo a zealous strike, but it wont execute until 2 seconds after which the target has escaped or returned fire by then.

 

Lining up the correct cooldowns and ready for a big hit, then zealous leap/sweep combo fails because the target has escaped the tiny 1m required range if they are moving away when these are used.

 

I didn't experience this ability stuttering until I spec out of Focus and tried the Watchman tree. For me, it appears that overload saber is the cause for my stuttering. It tries to complete the animation for OS before I am allowed to execute my next ability. It happens all the time when I leap > OS > Cauterize but Cauterize won't trigger( does a half jump and nothing). Same with the same combo but with Blade storm in the end. The only way to work around this is to spam my button until I see the actual Cauterize animation before I continue with my rotation.

[PreDestined]

Didn't read the entire thread before i posted but Vibeth's video shows exactly what is happening to my sentinel.

[Shai-Huluud]

ive been having all of these problems too, ive noticed it more lately however and i dont know if thats because its gotten worse since a recent patch or if im just more aware of it now because my rotations are better....

 

in any event its making the game harder...

 

has anyone submitted a ticket and what response did they get?

 

im going to submit one in the meantime.

[Lammy]

I have this problem on my sentinal, but I've noticed something strange:

 

it only seems to happen against silver bosses, and then the only way to make my abilities work again is to get directly behind the enemy. I have no idea why this is but after fighting 40 silvers with this phenomona occuring EVERY SINGLE TIME in the same way, there is something very weird going on.

 

For the record, I am having the same problems on my Imperial Agent, though it occurs (only slightly) less frequently.

 

 

it's frustrating to say the least

[Shai-Huluud]

now you mention silvers i think that would make sense and possibly explain why people experience it more recently...they are now facing more silver mobs because they are now in higher level zones.

 

worth more testing methinks.

Edited January 16, 2012 by Shai-Huluud

[Ruskyandrei]

I am experiencing this constantly in pvp, zealous slash seems to refuse to go off 1 of 3 times i use it >.>

[Vibeth]

I am experiencing this constantly in pvp, zealous slash seems to refuse to go off 1 of 3 times i use it >.>

 

I'm experiencing it a lot with Zealous Strike too. I could even say that Zealous Strike is the ability that cancels the most for me.

Edited January 16, 2012 by Vibeth

[MBirkhofer]

because its the ability you use the most, without cc on your target, you need it to build up focus.

 

and if someone breaks los, steps through you, desycs, kbs, etc, it cancels.

 

Frankly, Im now moving to sentinal is plain broken camp, with this.

My patience is running out.

[Vibeth]

because its the ability you use the most, without cc on your target, you need it to build up focus.

 

and if someone breaks los, steps through you, desycs, kbs, etc, it cancels.

 

Frankly, Im now moving to sentinal is plain broken camp, with this.

My patience is running out.

 

Actually, all the stuttering/cancellation that happens on my Zealous Strike is all on stationary PvE mobs.

[jbrunken]

Just for the record - I have the very same problem.

It's very obvious in pvp, where a lot of buttons are pressed, well, let's say, very fast. I noticed that this stuttering occurs if you press any ability button before the previous ability finished. So now I have to be not precise in what order I press the buttons, but also be precise not to press any buttons before the animation ends and the hit lands.

And did I mention that I love the way that when ability animation is almost done, I get suddenly interrupted, but the ability used is already on the cooldown?

 

This has pretty much been my experience as well... The more quickly I try and do things, the more it happens. If I very slowly press one button at a time waiting for each to complete, the "stuttering" seldom happens. If I do things to quickly, it happens constantly.

 

I see it occasionally in PvE, but only when I'm playing like I would in PvP (quickly). In PvP, it's constant.

 

I'm glad I found this thread, it at least makes me feel a little better.

[FobManX]

Zealous Strike, Cauterize, and my off GCD abilities are the biggest culprits of ability stuttering for me. But it's happened with every ability at some point.

[Vibeth]

This has pretty much been my experience as well... The more quickly I try and do things, the more it happens. If I very slowly press one button at a time waiting for each to complete, the "stuttering" seldom happens. If I do things to quickly, it happens constantly.

 

I see it occasionally in PvE, but only when I'm playing like I would in PvP (quickly). In PvP, it's constant.

 

I'm glad I found this thread, it at least makes me feel a little better.

 

Yes, I also noticed that stuttering/cancellation can be avoided to a certain point with "slow play". Ofcourse I don't want to be a slow player

[thanealpha]

Like I said already, I believe this pretty much happens only to fast players (aka spamming ability to get max rotation speed). And somehow with spamming the ability gets stuck.

 

So for a clicker, who can't execute abilities fast enough one after another, this doesn't occur (as much or at all). This is my explanation atleast.

 

 

There you go lads, a video of 3 cases of ability stuttering in slow motion. Watch in 720p enlraged window so you can better see what's going on. You can see my connection is fine and I asure you my PC is more than capable of running SW:ToR.

 

Ability Stutter video:

 

EXACTLY what I see. PvE, PvP, beginning, middle, end of a fight, almost all skills but most noticeably blade storm. Virtually non stop.

 

I'm Positive this one bug accounts for a LOT of my lost dps and feelings of being broken and gimped compared to other classes.

 

This is definitely my #1 issue with the game right now.

[Arharus]

Hello everyone. I noticed the same issue long ago and the simplest answer I have why this is happening is connected with slow animation of our skills. Just compare our animation of zealous strike and some shooting ability of trooper etc.. Thing is, especially in pvp, due to this slow animation and people constantly moving our ability can't fire out because at some moment of moving we don't meet the condition for executing (4 meter distance as an example). Though this is IMHO, at least I tend to think so.

[lensX]

Prior to today patch 1.1 I have no issue of skills/ability stuttering at all, both pvp and pve. PvP with my level 46 Sentinel was the most fun out of all classes in this game and I can win almost all 1v1 fight.

 

After to day patch, however, MOST if not all my skills have to be press like 4-6 times before it went off, especially abilities like Overload Saber, Zealous Strike, and Cauterize. Some time activation ability like Force Camouflage refuse to go off even I keep hitting my hot key till I die. Together with the new effect to our abilities cool down make this class even harder to play, because it's so confusing which ability is on long cool down or which is just on GC.

 

So after today patch, I might call it a quit for the class or even this game. Shame, I was hoping to have fun play SW trade mark class- the Jedi Knight. What I've got instead was more hair lost from frustration of poor pve performance before Doc.

 

 

 

P.S: sorry for my poor English, it's my fifth languages

[Kovaos]

I rolled a new Jedi Knight Alt at the start of he week as I was finding the game a bit awkward with my Guardian and wanted to try Sentinel to see if that made things a bit easier going, I found that the Sentinel was more suited to my play style, I have never come across this so called bug in over 40 hours of gameplay with my character, I press the button for the attack and she performs the action, carries out the attack and does damage as she is supposed to. It is possible guys that the problem could be with your computers and not with the game itself as surely if the problem was with the game then I and many more people would be experiencing it as well.

 

You started at the beginning of the week and have 40+ hours logged on that character? Did I misunderstand you? If I played 40+ hours by mid week I wouldn't have a wife, job, or friends.

[jbrunken]

You started at the beginning of the week and have 40+ hours logged on that character? Did I misunderstand you? If I played 40+ hours by mid week I wouldn't have a wife, job, or friends.

 

LOL, I'm pretty sure a lot of the "L2P" crowd on here have no wife, job or friends...

[Ovarf]

I have noticed it much more in PvP since the patch. I rarely notice it in PvE but in PvE I'm generally standing rock still and so is the MOB.

 

Mostly for me it effects Merciless Strike but some of my others will do this a few times per WZ it is rather irritating.

[SteveGarbage]

It only happens to me occassionally, but it's never been that huge of an issue for me. It will happen maybe once or twice and then be fine.

 

I see it from time to time with Cauterize, but I most often run into it when using Force Stasis.

[Vibeth]

Well, still happening in 1.1 for me, delay, stuttering and cancellation. I think no change was made to about this in this patch.

Let's hope there will be some fix to this next week, like they said.

[Wyiizek]

Yeah, stuttering is pretty horrible, i find especially with zealous strike. Want to be good and strafe by as you hit a melee skill to disorient or a number of other things? lol nice try, won't go off even though it looks like it's starting to!!!

[Vibeth]

Another video of this happening:

 

Not by me, this time it's our mirror class, Marauder.

[darthtoph]

Ability stuttering just skyrocketed with the 1.1 Patch. Way to go, BW...