Hello, I’ve played HOTS since Alpha so it has been roughly a decade. I have played this game on MUCH weaker computers and MUCH slower internet connections (15 MBPs back then) for years without any issue.
I started experiencing stuttering issues about 1-2 months ago (every 3-4 seconds, the game would freeze for about half a second). I was about to move to another province so I didn’t have time to look into it and was hoping it was ISP related.
I just moved and have an even better internet connection and it’s straight up unplayable (so much stuttering, I’m almost playing a slideshow at times).
The internet seems stable and running tests, I’m hitting about 1600 MBPs at 2 ms Ping. I am plugged straight into the modem through a CAT 8 ethernet cable so it isn’t a WiFi issue.
My GPU drivers are up to date (GeForce RTX 4070). All of the PC specs are obviously miles ahead the requirements for this 10 years old game.
Other people I play with have not been having this issue lately so I’m guessing it has to do with a somewhat recent patch and my PC but I really can’t figure out what it may be (I can’t imagine it having anything to do with game settings as it’s very easy to run everything maxed out with this current setup). I read something about how the game constantly uploads to the cloud for replays and maybe needing to delete a lot of old ones but I’m skeptical if it could be related to that in any way. I haven’t noticed any such issue on any other game than HOTS (tested Hogwarts Legacy, zero issue, tested Diablo 4 solo dungeon as well as multiplayer event with high mob density on maxed out graphics and I also had zero issue… so it’s something strictly HOTS related somehow).
Can be an issue between your computer and the HotS servers (which are not the Diablo IV servers). For example if a backbone network between your ISP and the server centre is overloaded. At some stage this was quite common in the USA, although that was years ago.
Same. I haven’t played for a few years and now have a brand new gaming PC. No issues in other games, everything is smooth. But in HOTS I have brief stuttering every few seconds, making it unplayable. Also on the character select screen. Tried different settings, low/high/fullscreen/windowed/driver update etc., with zero change in the stuttering.
Yea, the stuttering also happens on the character selecting screen for me as well (forgot to mention), it’s not only while I’m in-game with other players.
As DrSuperGood mentioned, it could be an issue between you and the HoTS server. It doesn’t really matter how fast your internet is if one of the hops along the route is experiencing issues. Try running a WinMTR while playing so we can see if it catches when and where your latency increases. I will post the steps below:
Download WinMTR
Extract the contents of the .zip file to your desktop.
Open the WinMTR folder, then open the folder that matches your version of Windows (32-bit or 64-bit) and run WinMTR.exe.
Enter the IP address you want to test in the Host field. Select a game from the dropdown below for a list of IP addresses.
Note: If multiple IPs are listed, run a WinMTR test for each IP address.
Click Start, then launch the game you’re testing. If no connection issue is found in the first 5 minutes, restart the test.
When a connection error occurs, play for at least 5 more minutes, then click Stop in WinMTR.
Click “Export Text” and save the .txt file to your desktop. Name this file WinMTR.
Reply to your ticket and attach the text file with your results to your reply.
Below are the IP addresses for various Heroes of the Storm Servers
I struggled with this issue for the past three months. The solution was so simple im just wondering how on earth it took me this long to find the solution.
Ctrl+Alt+F FPS-counter caused the exact symptoms you have described.
I hope it’s the same as i had. Didnt find any threads about the counter causing problems. I also have 2024 built 8000€ Pc AND 10g fibre.
I’m happy to hear things are currently stable and you are able to play Neo!
Thank you Spree for posting updates regarding your issue. The steps you tried are steps I would have suggested if the WinMTR came back showing no issues. It’s nice to know what you tried for those experiencing a similar issue.
Also, thank you Jarzki for posting what helped to resolve the issue for you. The FPS counter issue you mentioned has happened to players though this is the first I am seeing it in a long time. It was often DirectX related and re-installing DirectX usually resolved the issue.
A little update on my behalf. The fps counter is still bugged for me.
Things I’ve so far tried one by one.
Reinstalling Direxct12. You can only install this, I did not find any uninstall option.
Changing display Hz 360 to 240 and also adding 240 to variables
Deleting cache, though I dont know how this could affect anything since the problem occurred on day one using this pc.
Uninstalling and reinstalling Nvidia drivers.
Installing all latest updates, all latest drivers, including BIOS to MB and 10G networking card.
Reinstalling game
Using the “scan and repair” option for the game.
Trying WinMTR and seeing I have stable lossless 36ms connection to both European servers.
Disabling all Windows antivirus and firewall processess
Removing all unnesessary windows 11 processess and Microsofts own bloatware.
Tweaking the hell out of the insanely expensive and fast pc’s operating system.
Trying another networking card just to see it makes absolutely no change to anything.
Disabled BIOS memory training
Disabled all AI-performance boosts from MB and using stock-only speeds for memory and cpu.
Tried all graphical settings
The problem still remains. When I enable the fps counter I will have a major lag spike every second. Only thing that has ANY affect on this and what could be a clue for someone more knowledgeable than me, is that when I enable full screen, the spike interval increases from 1/s to 3/s. So in full screen I will have three quick spikes every second and having an absolutely unplayable game.
Though all this can be avoided just by not using the meter… so I dont know what im even doing here. Maybe this will help someone, who knows.