FPS halved by anima conductor graphics on Intel Mac

Support Mac Technical Support
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I am on an Intel Mac, and starting a new thread to split away from the M1 thread that exists in this forum. The “anima conductor” graphics that appear when you have an anima conductor unlocked, along with the anima graphics in Oribos, are extremely problematic. All characters with anima conductors unlocked in Ardenweald and Bastion experience halved FPS and stuttering in these zones since 9.0.5 and it has not been resolved with 9.1. This means main characters experience problems, while alts do not. All characters in Oribos experience the drop in FPS given the anima flow through the center.

UI resets or removing addons, as well as adjusting multiple suggested settings, does not correct the issue. Most settings are on low or disabled. Changing resolution does not help. Disabling Vsync does not help, but may make gameplay worse. Graphics quality is set to 3. This issue occurs on both Intel machines: iMac and MacBook Pro.

This same behavior occurred with the devouring tears in Korthia, which they quickly hotfixed, and no longer affects client performance in this manner. An example of this behavior is running out toward the adventure table in the Heart of the Forest at 60FPS. Turn around to run back towards the sanctum 30-40FPS. Sometimes just running around the center of the Heart causes the FPS to go up and down in succession. Sometimes just turning 5 degrees in the other direction fixes it. Running up towards the flight master is particularly bad. To again stress, characters without the anima conductor active do not face this. The same occurs all over Ardenweald and Bastion. Facing the ring of transference in Oribos is bad. Running on the floor texture in this city at this frame rate is nauseating.

Some graphics cause issues for all, like the blue flame braziers in Bastion, but to have entire zone wide stuttering depending on which way you turn is the most problematic, so that is what I’m focusing on. In the case that the blue flame brazier and anima graphics have something that overlaps, maybe that can help.

This particular graphical element may severely lag any attempt to do anything else on my machine when the issue is at its worst. I am sure to close down as many applications as possible, but this issue is still present regardless. This whole-computer lag only occurs when some anima conductor graphics are present, never while playing any other aspect of WoW, however this is just an aside to further display the problem with this graphic in particular. The Kyrian sanctum seems to be the worst offender.

I hope that you are able to address this problem that is causing issues on many Mac and PC clients, or offer some type of workaround. We are unable to remove this graphic element and also cannot remove anima conductors once activated.

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Heya Marwenna,

Question I wanted to ask when you brought this up in the other thread - what build of Mac OS are you on? We’ve seen some Big Sur issues lately for Intel users that might be somewhat related.

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Thank you for following up! I am actually still on Catalina on both machines. I typically wait a bit to upgrade till the kinks are worked out, and saw some threads of issues with WoW on Big Sur, so I haven’t yet upgraded.

Edit: just checked and it’s 10.15.7

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Okay, I wonder if it’s nonetheless related in some way. From what I see here, we reproduced that other issue with peripherals attached. Do you happen to be on a laptop? If so, does the stuttering/performance issues persist with both the onboard mouse and a peripheral, or just while you have things connected via USB/thunderbolt?

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Hi Drakuloth, I tested both machines this morning and seem to have the same issue with and without peripherals, give or take a few FPS. The 2020 MacBook Pro using a built-in keyboard and the 2019 iMac with a bluetooth keyboard and mouse both experience the same drop in FPS in these areas, so unlikely to be my issue.

Just to be extra sure I’d covered all my bases, I ran some scans, cleared up a good bit of disk space on both machines, shut down all other applications during the tests, and did another temporary UI reset just to rule out any issues on my end to no avail. Let me know if I can provide more info to help you troubleshoot this problem.

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Thanks again for coming back to us about this.

I have an M1 Mac and, just as Marwenna points out, the anima flows from the conductors are quite heavy on the performance levels. The performance degradation only happens while playing on my main, which is the one with the anima conductors active. If I visit the same zone with an alt, looking at the same spot, performance is alright.

In my opinion this behaviour is not only very simple to reproduce, but also well-documented in these forums. After 9.1 went live, I did a fresh install on the application and observed the same performance degradation with the anima flows.

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Maybe the team can offer an option for us to reduce polygons or simplify the animation somewhat. I’m using a 2020 M1 Mac and am experiencing the exact things.

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Hey again all,

If all of you are specifically having the issue with Anima Flows, that sounds more akin to something optimization related and might be better reported at #support:bug-report or using the in game tool. Sadly with that kind of issue it’s typically driver-level and there’s not a lot we can do other than collect reports. I’d encourage anyone else who is seeing this problem to please report it in this thread so that we can try to gauge scope and see if our compatibility team can figure out why it’s happening this way with Apple.

The information that is most relevant for people who want to add reports would be:

What behaviors in game you’re seeing the FPS dips with:
PC Year/Model: (You can find this with the system profiler https://battle.net/support/article/12988)
Graphics card make/model:
OS Version: (This is also in the system profiler report)

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Thank you for coming back to this thread, Drakuloth.

System info
iMac Retina 4k 27" 2019
3.6GHz 8-core Intel Core i9
16 GB RAM
Radeon Pro Vega 48 8GB
OS 10.15.7

Behaviors
Behaviors mainly include navigating while facing various directions while in Oribos and the zone where you have an anima stream activated particularly Ardenweald and Bastion but also others to a lesser extent. I do not have a character with an anima conductor active that does not have a Stream reinforced, so all of my examples have permanent anima streams. As soon as I enter the path towards the portal to Korthia, away from the central anima stream graphic, the stuttering is removed from Oribos.

Relevant troubleshooting info
Things to troubleshoot that may help pinpoint why these graphics are an issue:

  1. This issue was not present in 9.0 but appeared with the 9.1 patch, same operating system, no change on Mac end. What may have changed in the way you modified this graphical effect?
  2. The same exact drop in FPS happened with the devouring tears sky effect in Korthia but was quickly hotfixed and is no longer an issue for Mac or PC. Possibly could help reduce system load on this element if they compare what was done to fix this? (From July 6th hotfix notes)
  1. Separate issue but potentially related - Tarragrue Hungering Mists in SoD raid brings FPS down to 15 when the black effect is all over the floor and is unplayable even with massive reduction in graphic settings. Could something used in this effect relevant to the anima stream graphical issue? (Have only done first three raid bosses, there may be more issues that I can add) Mac FPS down to 5 during taragrue hungering mists - #9 by Inphernal-bronzebeard
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Hi Drakuloth, I was wondering if you’d heard any updates on this. I attempted to do a Spires of Ascension mythic dungeon (which has this same anima thread graphic) and had the same 50% FPS drop. It was difficult to dodge mechanics and cast spells in a timely manner. I would appreciate any additional information. Thanks!

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Sadly, looks like if this is not fixed my entire WoW experience in Shadowlands will be ruined, given it looks like this graphic will be added to the Maw as well :frowning: The only saving grace was that Korthia and the Maw were free of this pain, and was where I spent the most of my time.

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it’s pretty much all gpus, even my 6900XT drops from 120fps to 90fps just by facing a conductor. I’ve reported the issue many times and even sent that article literally proving 9.0.5 caused these regressions but have had no luck getting anyone to look into these issues. Truth of the matter is they are just too understaffed/overworked to keep up with issues like this and end up focusing on just having game running at all with all the latest needs of design even if it means leaving stuff broken for ages.

What they need is a larger team to handle old AND new issues instead of always been too busy with new tasks to ever finish fixing old ones.

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I will add I don’t have this problem – I can fly around Revendreth with impunity with the conductor graphics flowing away at max settings and my system doesn’t care, but I have my fps capped at 60 due to the limitations of my monitor.

That said, I don’t think this is a Blizzard bug, but rather an Apple/AMD one – Blizz is probably making a metal call that is poorly implemented on some level, be it on Apple’s or the AMD driver end (or both). There’s a few of these floating around. All we can do is report them and hope they get fixed.

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I mean if i cap fps at 60 i wouldn’t have issue either. 120 (my actual cap) dropping to 95 is still above 60. you likely have enough power to outspec it.

Also, this only changed in 9.0.5 plus,a nd on windows and macOS so that doesn’t make it an apple/amd bug. it was thoroughly analyzed in fact on windows. Macs just suffer more because most mac users are on lower end hardware pushing higher end resolutions.

you won’t find many windows computers running a mobile gpu that’s pushing a 4 or 5k display, so yes a mac user tends to notice performance issues a bit more.

at the very least 9.1.5 will let users (especially mac) bandaid around it with FSR and DSR features. the low end will benefit most from FSR because they’ll be able to push 4 and 5k displays with Fidelity Super Sampling so they hava a sharp output even when using a render scale that’s half that render resolution.

Higher end machines that actually can run at 100 render scale most of time at high resolutions, or even higher than 100 resoltion will get more benefit out of DSR because that automatically scales render scale down based on target performance. I tested those spots that drop my fps from 120 down to 95 and I’m able to prevent the drop or at least make drop only down to 117 with DSR. it just has to lower render scale from 200% down to 100% to achieve that, but does so automatically, and raises it back to 200% when i face camera away from conduits.

Does it fix the dumb bug, no, but at very least makes me not suffer frame rate drops from it, just temporary fidelity drops.

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I want to reiterate that my problem is not evident in Revendreth or Maldraxxus as my characters with conductors there do not see this extreme drop. See my post above, as I mention it’s primarily in Oribos, Ardenweald (with conductor), and especially Bastion (with conductor) and Spires of Ascension dungeon. Possibly the green and red tinted anima does not have the same intensity as the white/blue thready ones in these other areas, or the interaction with the environment particles is more extreme. I cap at 60FPS and drop to 30 in these areas. Again, it only occurred after the 9.0.5 patch with no changes on the Mac end, and was not an issue prior.

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This has been a problem for so long. People started reporting it when 9.0.5 hit, in early March.
I’m pretty sure everyone is being affected by this, but only a handful of people report it as an issue. There exists enough evidence to suggest the problem has nothing to do with Metal APIs or anything software related.

I have a very simple solution:

  • Give us the option to turn off reinforced anima flows.

They look cool, you need to have them on for some mats and quests and whatnot. To those of us who reinforced them 6 months ago, there is no way to turn them off (asides from switching covenants).
This problem won’t get fixed I’m afraid, it’s been too long. Maybe it can’t be fixed? It is plausible that the anima conductors require more resources to render. That’s fine with me.

Allow us to turn them off. To those who are unaffected, nothing will change. To those of us who spend a lot of time on Elysian Hold (or Ardenweald, or anywhere else affected), it would mean a lot.

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I get great fps everywhere but in Spires of Ascension it bogs down to 5 fps, even on lowest graphic settings. It has something to do with the sky somehow, because when I zoom out to max camera angle and point the camera straight down, I get all the fps back. This has been like this since launch.

I have iMac (Retina 5K, 27-inch, 2019)
3 GHz 6-Core Intel Core i5
16 GB 2400 MHz DDR4
Radeon Pro 570X 4 GB graphics

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I have the issues as well on that boss in hungering mists, and in PF dungeon when the slimes on first boss area die and leave green slime on the floor. Its just a simple looking green patch , but it crashes the framrates.

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I wanted to add one further thing: The green slime that appears on the ground in legion raids when you fight Trilliax doesn’t do anything to my frame-rate at all, but in Plaguefall shadowlands it wrecks. SO I don’t think it’s my mac or the system, its somehow in the layers and coding of what was built in shadowlands. Again, in Cata if I go to Throne of the Four winds with sky and textures in the sky, or Netherstorm in BC, nothing happens, but somehow just being in Spires of ascension with the “sky” in the background somehow reduces my framerate to being unplayable- i have to point my camera straight down to get framerate back.

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In shadowlands they use compute shaders, instead of particle ones. they are far more demanding. problem is designers like to over use new tech even when it’s not actually needed to achieve visual goal. it’s like when vehicle tech was added in wrath designers are like “OMG lets put them everywhere” andd in cata it was something else etc etc. give a designer a new toy and they misuse it every time.

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