Ladder weirdness

So..I'm noticing some weird, unexpected and/or just plain annoying things since starting ladder and I figured I'd see if I'm just imagining things or if you all are seeing the same. Also curious to see if there's other things standing out that I haven't noticed yet. So far, the list includes:

- Performance is just...ugh. Not crashing as much as initial release (albeit more than pre-2.4) but the lag and rubberbanding is massive. Almost feels like they never really fixed servers but just sold it as such when decreasing population made things less bad (which ladder now undid).

- Merc pathing/AI is ridiculously bad, WAY worse than it has ever been. My merc (A2) reliably gets lost 5 screens back to where he should normally despawn due to distance or at least

Teleport over but he does neither. He just gets lost in limbo and doesn't catch up for like 5 minutes. Additionally, when he is there, he literally just stands there not going after anything most of the time which for an A2 merc is somewhat unusual.

- FoH performance is significantly worse than expected. Mind you, it is still a very valid and strong build (started farming hell CS solo at 49) but nowhere near what it was on PTR (and yes, I did drop all gear on PTR to see how it'd perform without any). Specifically, on PTR, when you cast on a mob they would get hit with the light damage and then also get hit with the

Bolts that it spawned from them which made it a ridiculously good skill to kill a specific mob (boss) within a pack with. That seems to be gone entirely and the mob that is actually the center of it only gets hit with the lightning damage, resulting in him usually being left standing after the pack around him is long gone. The

Bolts then also seem to do less to the surrounding mobs than they did on PTR.

-

Charge pathing got improved. This one is probably the most confusing of all to be honest but for some strange reason, I hardly get stuck on things with

Charge anymore. It used to be that if you tried to

Charge down to countess for example, you'd get stuck on basically every grave due to horrendous pathing. Now? It still gets stuck every so often but I'd say about 5% of what it used to be, if that.

Curious to see how much of that just my imagination.

I don't play ladder but performance is not good on non-ladder either. Tried multiple times getting errors like "cannot create game" when solo playing, or "cannot join game, wait ..." or just plainly being DCed. You could be correct in assuming that Blizzard never really fixed the backend.

Merc pathing has always been ridiculous IMO. Unless you have

Teleport, he is useless most of the time anyway.

To me, performance has been pretty much the same as pre-2.4 with the only exception of a single "Cannot create game" I got earlier today. As for Mercs'pathing / AI, it's pretty mediocre. My A5 mercenary does the weirdest thing on

Baal (I can easily reproduce it as it seems to be caused by standing at a specific distance from the boss). Sigemund goes to

Baal, doesn't hit him and comes back to me, in an endless loop It's hilarious how useless he is. It's like he is afraid of attacking, bouncing between me and

Baal ) FoH has been brilliant for me. I pretty much obliterate CS on P8 with little to no effort. I've noticed that sometimes the initial target gets hit by both the FoH and the HB, but not always. I guess it depends on whether the target moves or not.

I second the follower issues, but been bad for a while.

Definitely seeing issues with connectivity. Takes 3 times to create a game sometimes, and NEVER had that problem before.

I'm noticing some merc pathing too on sorc. At times i feel like i have to telestomp with him more because he can't seem to figure out how to get to me, even in an obvious position. I don't know if this is me but i feel like

Teleport is acting wierd too. I can't seem to

Teleport smoothly especially " down" maps it feels like my mouse isn't registering that im trying to go down sometimes.

If there is even a single piece of wall anywhere in the room, my mercenary will hug it.
I swear if he does it again one more time, I'll kill him myself.

Zelym wrote: 2 years ago

If there is even a single piece of wall anywhere in the room, my mercenary will hug it.
I swear if he does it again one more time, I'll kill him myself.

I just threaten him. " next time i'm not taking you to see countess!"

Noticed another one..de seis almost exclusively spawns in the new spawn places, closer to the seal in my ladder games.

Yet, in non-ladder, he continues to spawn in his old position most of the time.

That just makes no sense..

About that... De Seis spawned right on my face 4 games out of 10 yesterday (ladder). I was right next to the seal every time.
Got my ass kicked, wouldn't recommend.

On the bright side, my mercenary's rez is staying at 11111 gold. Nice bug, I don't mind that one.

Zelym wrote: 2 years ago

On the bright side, my mercenary's rez is staying at 11111 gold. Nice bug, I don't mind that one.

How? Asking for a friend !!

+1 for performance-issues and dumb merc (have an act 1 merc on now)

Also Diablo did a weird thing on nightmare yesterday - wanted to do his

Firestorm but aimed in the wrong direction and only ventilated hot air. Several times in a row.

Alright, I figured something out..

Apparently, a mercenary doesn't consider

Charge movement. So if you want to not be slow AF and

Charge instead of walking, your merc believes you're standing still and hence neither follows you nor despawns because in his weird little mind, you are still right next to him even though you're 10 screens over.

Adding a few steps of normal walking in between charging takes him back to being his normal only half-bad at walking self.

Zelym wrote: 2 years ago

On the bright side, my mercenary's rez is staying at 11111 gold. Nice bug, I don't mind that one.

Skaijuice wrote: 2 years ago

How? Asking for a friend !!

I found the same, on new dual-wielding barbarian hireling. Data files confirm that: Rogues also have weird res costs: (The other mercs cost 50 000.)

There were no such columns in legacy D2.

Also , since ladder , ping went up, generally (non ladder and ladder)

+2 for performance issues and merc pathing issues.

Stupid stuff I’ve experienced since ladder dropped:

- Game crashed when trying to kill Dclone upon using the WP to a different Act (5 specifically)

- Terrible rubberbanding week 1 in both private and public online games.

- The game lobby. My god I thought it was bad before ladder started. It’s an absolute mess. Games are hours old, don’t show updated player counts even after refreshing 5 times. I can’t find consistent CS or

Baal runs because of it and it’s driving me nuts. I wish they’d just completely redo and overhaul the lobby system at this point. Sure it would be different and we’d have to get used to something new — but at least it would function properly