ACT question

[Zoii]

I uploaded the new job icons here: http://imgur.com/a/nB5ER, they go in C:\Program Files (x86)\Advanced Combat Tracker\OverlayPlugin-Streamer\resources\icons and will need to be renamed Drk, Ast, Mch.

[BugsBuny]

Hey Guys i'm having some issues with the "Overlay" when i try to enable the Overlayplugin.dll it tells me that :
"Plugin initialization Failed : (An assembly is trying to load from a network location that would have resulted in the use of the assembly in Sandbox mode in earlier versions of the .NET Framework. This version of the .NET Framework does not activate the default CSA strategy that load may be dangerous. If this loading is not intended to be used in the assembly Sandbox mode, activate the loadFromRemoteSources switch.) Sorry for that guys i've tried to translate this with google translate because my english is not that good. i hope you can understand.

Thanks in advance if you can help me.

[Dammerung]

Latest update has everyone at 0 dps.

[Icarian]

Playing fullscreen borderless makes my Overlay an "Underlay" when I tab/click on the second screen, It used to happen before HW but having ACT on the active window made it pop back up, doesn't happen anymore, only resetting the parser makes it appear again, is there any way to avoid that?

[Sigmakan]

How is ACT calculating DoT damage now? Before, this damage was simulated, correct? That doesn't seem viable now because of skillspeeds impact on DoT ticks.

[Niiro]

SS doesn't have any effect on the frequency of the tics, it just increases the damage, nothing you can't simulate once a rough equation is worked out.

[Ravahn]

How is ACT calculating DoT damage now? Before, this damage was simulated, correct? That doesn't seem viable now because of skillspeeds impact on DoT ticks.

You may be surprised at how little effect this has with current gear levels. The effect of Crit % on Critical DoT tick damage is also small, but something I am working on adding.

Currently, DoTs are still calculated the same way as pre-3.0. That is:

When the DoT buff lands on a target, the FFXIV server sends the average tick amount and the crit rate at the time of DoT application. Actually, it only sends 1 byte of each, not the full value. The FFXIV Plugin takes this 1 byte, and then estimates the second byte. For the tick amount, that means it looks at your other hits to the target, subtracts any buffs/debuffs/crits from them, and averages it all out over time. It performs a similar process with crit rate. So, the plugin should be near-100% accurate on average tick amounts so long as it correctly estimates whether the tick is in the range 1-256, 257-512, etc. It does not simulate the +-5% variability on each tick.

To calculate when the individual ticks land on the target, the plugin watches for network or memory data that indicate when the ticks fire off on every target, and then decides whether it was a ground AOE tick or a combined DoT tick. If it is a combined DoT tick, it looks at all active DoT debuffs on the target and applies them. There are failsafes in place to ensure it doesnt tick more than once per 2.5 seconds, and there are not more ticks than the buff duration allows (3-second rule).

Lastly, instead of simulating individual crits, it adds the 1.5x multiplier to each tick, divided by the Crit rate from when the debuff landed. This makes parses more stable, instead of introducing additional randomness. For example, given a 100 damage tick and 20% crit rate, the final tick amount in ACT would be 110.

Skill/Spell speed scale the tick amounts, but at current gear levels it is very minor. At low gear levels, the tick amounts are even less than they would be using pre-3.0 formulas. However, the method above has enough room for error with the server tick amount that it is just as accurate.

Crit rating now affects critical damage amounts, but it still similar to Skill/Spell speed in that it is not a huge effect. Unlike Skill/Spell speed, the crit tick amount is not sent by the server, so this is something I am working on. It will take a while, and the effect is very small - say, 1.54 multiplier instead of 1.50 at level 60 with average gear.

[Niiro]

When the DoT buff lands on a target, the FFXIV server sends the average tick amount and the crit rate at the time of DoT application. Actually, it only sends 1 byte of each, not the full value. The FFXIV Plugin takes this 1 byte, and then estimates the second byte.

I'm slightly confused by this, if the server sends info of the average tick amount then why would you have to estimate it?

[Ravahn]

I'm slightly confused by this, if the server sends info of the average tick amount then why would you have to estimate it?

Here is an example of what it sends when I use the skill Phlebotomize, which has both an initial damage component and a DoT Debuff component:
70203:F5:8B2B11:77:0:0:0:0

the first two numbers represent the initial damage amount. The amount is 0xF5=245 damage. the 070203 indicates the type of damage (piercing = 02), the elemental aspect (unaspected = 07), and 03 indicates it was a non-critical hit.

the second set of two numbers - 8B2B11:77 - says that a debuff landed (Buff ID 0x77=Phlebotomize). the average damage per tick is sent as one byte, 0x2B=43 damage, and the current crit rate is sent as one byte - 0x8B = 13.9%

Since only one byte is sent to the client for the damage amount, if the damage amount exceeds 255, this number resets. so, for example, 300 damage would be sent as 0x2C, not 0x12C.

In order to accurately capture the size of the tick, ACT still simulates the expected tick amount, but only uses the result to determine if the damage in the range of 0-255, 256-512, etc.

[Niiro]

So.....if I'm understanding you ACT only needs to decipher whether the damage amount is supposed to be in the 0-255 or 256-512 range and once it does it essentially knows the exact amount?

[Ravahn]

So.....if I'm understanding you ACT only needs to decipher whether the damage amount is supposed to be in the 0-255 or 256-512 range and once it does it essentially knows the exact amount?

Exactly. But, that is the still just exact average tick amount, it does not include the +-5% damage spread or the effects of critical ticks / crit chance. And, it still has to simulate each individual tick from the combined tick event.

[Niiro]

I always wondered how DoTs were being measured so accurately, I thought it was just using a rough damage equation based off of potency amounts and observed damage.

[Ravahn]

It used to work that way, and in my opinion it was very accurate, but this method is more reliable - and its easy to tell if it is inaccurate, since it is off by 200+ damage per tick either way.

[Niiro]

Wondering, why would the SS changes disrupt the DoT measurements tho?

Wouldn't the average sent by the game already take any increase from SS into account like any other stat?

[Ravahn]

Wondering, why would the SS changes disrupt the DoT measurements tho?

Wouldn't the average sent by the game already take any increase from SS into account like any other stat?

Yes, it already does incorporate the SS increase.

However, every DoT tick has a listed potency per tick, as do most other abilities. To estimate the missing part of the DoT tick amount, the plugin takes all the previous damage hits from a player's other abilities, divides them by their potency, subtracts the effects of buffs from them, and averages them over time to get a measurement of how much damage that particular player should do for each point of potency.

Pre-3.0, it would then multiply that value by the DoT tick potency and reapply any buffs, to estimate what the tick should be and determine whether the DoT tick is 0-255, 256-512, etc.

Post-3.0 it works the same way, but the DoT tick is not just affected by known buffs - it is also affected by the player's spell speed. Since spell speed does not affect other skills/abilities, it is unique to DoT ticks, the plugin ideally would account for it so that it can have the most accurate prediction of what the DoT tick should be.

In practice, the effects of spell speed is just a couple of percent up or down from the pre-3.0 values, so the plugin is still able to determine the correct range for DoT tick values, and it has no effect. We'll see if this holds true as people gear up at level 60, though.

[Tsuki]

Since Ley Lines and the AST/Selene speed buff/food can significantly augment ones speed boost, wouldn't it be quite a bit higher than without those? And those buffs are common now its only going to get higher sooner.

[Ravahn]

Since Ley Lines and the AST/Selene speed buff/food can significantly augment ones speed boost, wouldn't it be quite a bit higher than without those? And those buffs are common now its only going to get higher sooner.

We'll have to see. I'll just throw some numbers out there - it would need to increase each non-crit DoT tick by 50-80 damage for it to really break things, I believe. What I saw at level 60 and 500-ish spell speed was a bump from 198 per tick to 202 per tick.

If you can email me a dummy parse (either raw log or ACT export that embeds the log data would be fine) with:
1) No special buffs/food, cast ruin 10-20 times and then bio a few times without any buffs
2) Then cast bio a few times (can overwrite each other, it's fine) with max buffs+food up
From that I can get some more detailed info. It Doesn't have to be bio / ruin, can be any DoT and non-DoT.

[Niiro]

Since Ley Lines and the AST/Selene speed buff/food can significantly augment ones speed boost, wouldn't it be quite a bit higher than without those? And those buffs are common now its only going to get higher sooner.

SCH buff is only 3% and AST is 5/10% (and not terribly frequent).

Considering how little SS seems to increase DoTs to begin with.....eh

[Tsuki]

We'll have to see. I'll just throw some numbers out there - it would need to increase each non-crit DoT tick by 50-80 damage for it to really break things, I believe. What I saw at level 60 and 500-ish spell speed was a bump from 198 per tick to 202 per tick.

If you can email me a dummy parse (either raw log or ACT export that embeds the log data would be fine) with:
1) No special buffs/food, cast ruin 10-20 times and then bio a few times without any buffs
2) Then cast bio a few times (can overwrite each other, it's fine) with max buffs+food up
From that I can get some more detailed info. It Doesn't have to be bio / ruin, can be any DoT and non-DoT.

I can do that, it'll give me a chance to reply to your request on reddit anyway (thanks btw, awesome reply)

For the parse do you want them merged or two separate instances of buffs/nobuffs?

SCH buff is only 3% and AST is 5/10% (and not terribly frequent).

Considering how little SS seems to increase DoTs to begin with.....eh

sch buff is 3% overall attack speeds, its much more than just 3% of your sspd stat. I assume AST is the same (will verify later) and its as frequent as any other buff ast rng calls for, lol.

[Ravahn]

I can do that, it'll give me a chance to reply to your request on reddit anyway (thanks btw, awesome reply)

For the parse do you want them merged or two separate instances of buffs/nobuffs?

They can be merged, I'll just pull it all into excel and copy/paste to split. Thanks, I'm curious myself about how big an effect it has.