Frequent Game Stuttering

Technical Support
1

Over the last 3-4 weeks, I’ve been experiencing frequent and persistent mini stuttering that occur in-match only. The game pauses for 1-2 seconds at a time then resumes the action. This occurs sporadically anywhere from 1-10 times a minute. The strange thing is it only happens when I play HOTS. I don’t experience any stuttering on more graphically intense games and I don’t experience any latency issues in any multiplayer games. I haven’t made any changes to my computer, computer components, internet connection, ISP, or anything else. The game was running fine until 3-4 weeks ago when this issue started up.

This is what the stuttering looks like:

As you can see from the videos, the stutter happens frequently, my FPS never dips, and my ping never rises. What’s interesting is that although the action stutters, I can still move my mouse freely, click commands are rendered, scrolling still works, and highlighting heroes/objectives/minions still works during the stutter.

I’ve tried everything I can possibly google but nothing has helped. So far I’ve tried:

  1. updating display drivers
  2. disabling streaming in battle net launcher
  3. running “scan and repair” in the battle net launcher
  4. disabling v-sync
  5. deleting the battle net cache folder
    https://us.battle.net/support/en/article/34721
  6. disabling OneDrive
    https://www.reddit.com/r/heroesofthestorm/comments/7fh1rd/hots_and_onedrive/
  7. decreasing the number of sound channels
    https://us.battle.net/forums/en/heroes/topic/20765897089
    https://www.kotaku.com.au/2015/09/hots-has-stuttering-issues-heres-how-i-fixed-them/
  8. removing all firewall rules for hots
    https://www.reddit.com/r/heroesofthestorm/comments/92fytt/stutter_lag_i_have_tried_everything_goodbye_hots/e35l5hg
  9. changing hyperthreading affinity
    https://www.reddit.com/r/heroesofthestorm/comments/7ymhau/try_this_if_your_game_is_stuttering/
  10. tried changing graphics settings to low
  11. monitored CPU and GPU temps to ensure no overheating
  12. uninstalled and reinstalled the game from scratch
  13. followed the troubleshooting instructions on the sticked post including setting all game settings to their defaults

My computer is well above the system requirements. I’m running Windows 10 on a Ryzen 5 1600 with a GTX 1060 and 16GB of RAM.

Here are my pathping, tracert, WinMTR, and DxDiag.

2

you are definitely getting packet loss. you show 1% consistent packet loss over the entire WinMTR. this could be caused by wireless if you are using it otherwise there may be other problems in your home or ISP network.

make sure you have the newest firmware for your router installed as this often addresses different bugs, security issues, and sometimes performance problems that they may find.

also, power cycling your router and modem (turn off for 60 seconds and then turn on) is a good way to clear up things sometimes.

if you are using wireless, try connecting through an ethernet cable only to your modem or to the router if you have a combo modem/router. then retesting on WinMTR to see if you packet loss goes away.

edit:
since i seen you have a 1060 i looked around for recent discussions about it. they are still having driver issues with the 10xx series. so that is something as well. you have a few options there with it depending on the games you play.

v.388.13 is stable but breaks something like PUBG is what it says. plus if you play like Battlefield its not going to work on older than 400 series drivers.
v.391.24 or .35 these some say are stable as well and fixed certain issues like with PUBG… but broke GSYNC. nice right? …and for some ppl the .35 version stuttered.
v.416.81 if you really need it for stuff like Battlefield, Tomb Raider, Witcher, Far Cry… etc.

its something to look into. play around with your drivers maybe since they have been having issues with the 10xx series.

1 Like
3

Running a Ryzen7 1700X and R9 Fury myself.

This is a wild guess:
After starting the game and beeing in the main menu, tab out and open TaskManager (Crtl+Shift+Esc), then browse to the heroes.exe.
Right click > Go to details
Right click > Set affinity
Select the bottom 6 CPUs and click Ok.

Performance in game should not be affected by this (or even go up).

4

I got a similar issue but not that long as yours, maybe rarely.
I suspect you might have either a network issue or the overlay you are using for discord interferes somehow.
Generally disable all overlays first to check and eliminate that as a possible culprit.