Shots Fired: A Machinist Guide

[Myon88]

I think it's when you're trying to spam a series of actions one after another, and because of latency they kind of end up tripping over each other.

It's most obvious when you're trying to consecutively chain a sequence of instant cast abilties (like BFB > HE > RS for example), and you rush through it too quickly.

You ever get those situations where, in this example, you hit BFB and it goes off, then you hit HE and it seems to go off, but then cancels itself a fraction of a second later and acts like it was never cast (no skill activation, cooldown doesn't start). You get the "Unable to execute that action" message as well.

As you know, even instant ability casts have short GCDs and in this example I suspect it's caused by hitting HE too soon after BFB. Because of latency you were allowed to execute the skill, but it gets to the server who goes "Nope, you actually hit it while still on the GCD after BFB" and you get stopped in your tracks.

There is another kind of anomaly I have seen on occasion where the skill will fire off but then reset itself as if you had never used it, a fraction of a second later. It's very obvious when it happens with something like Ricochet, because you see the obvious gigantic animation fire off, then look down at your bar and see Ricochet still off-cooldown and unused - if you press it again, properly, it will fire off for real, and something like your combat log will (correctly) tell you Ricochet only went off once in total, even though it looks like you were able to magically fire it twice.

Anyway, you'll generally know when this happens to you because the feedback is obvious, something won't fire and it very obviously messes with your rhythm.