ADVANCED UI HACKS

WHY SOUNDS MATTER

Let's test your game knowledge. I'm gonna play a sound from wow and it's your job to tell me what it is.

Ready? That should have been really easy but what about this one?

Slightly harder but you should know what that was. But what about this?

Well, that's kinda weird. Anyway, today's video is all about sound and how it's more important than you might think.

So stay tuned as we show you how to hack your own biology, boost your reaction speeds and become a better player. Let's start with debunking one giant misconception.

That game sounds don't matter. You might think they're pointless since wow is such a visual game.

Why would you need sounds when you have countless add-ons giving you all the information you need? Well, you already know how overwhelming the pace of arena can be and relying on visual information alone might be causing you to lag.

Literally. There is plenty of research suggesting that reaction time to sound is actually faster on average compared to visual cues.

There are a few explanations for this and it might have something to do with our early ancestors. Before we all lived in our parents' basements, we all had to live outside.

And although the graphics were better, that meant dealing with things that could gank us IRL. Combine that with the fact that our night vision is severely nerfed and you can start to see why it would be important to be good at hearing things.

But you might be asking, what could be important to hear in wow? Well, a lot of things.

Each spell in the game has its own unique sound profile, which means even if you can't see a spell happening, you can still know it went off. But some abilities, like interrupts, cc, and cooldowns, can be tracked using audio cues.

Instead of paying attention to addons to tell you when a paladin uses hammer of justice, you can simply hear the sound effect go off in order to understand the game's state. It can be hard to notice enemy CDs with addons alone, but once you hear this noise, that should make you more prepared to react to the cooldown.

At least, we hope. End of video.

So, by paying attention to audio profiles of different spells, you can use your own biological advantage, having faster reaction speeds to sound.

SOUND ADDONS

In fact, one of the most popular arena addons can already do this for you. By now most of you are likely using weak auras.

Love it or hate it, this single addon has come to define what shadowlands pvp is all about, which is to have the fastest reaction speed possible.

We've shown you time and time again how to set it up, and if you want to really push the addon to its full potential, we highly suggest assigning sounds to some of the most important cooldowns. This is important for some spells that don't have obvious audio cues.

Take warbreaker as example. This is what it normally sounds like.

It can be hard to distinguish with every other melee attack, but with weak auras you can add an effect to make it sound like this. What that means is that no matter what's going on in arena, you can be prepared to disarm warbreaker once you hear its audio cue.

This does have its limitations though, and some of you might already be asking why we don't suggest addons like gladiator losa. This addon uses repeated sound effects for nearly every spell that is being cast at every moment.

This is a good example of how you can use a warbreaker to make it sound like this. This addon uses repeated sound effects for nearly every spell that is being cast at every moment.

This is a good example of how you can use a warbreaker to make it sound like this. This addon uses repeated sound effects for nearly every spell that is being cast at every moment.

This adds on a lot of fun. I'm hoping to follow.

Careful, careful. I'm locked.

This winds up being incredibly overwhelming. Like trying to have a conversation in a crowded bar or at a concert.

There is just too much going on to pay attention to what actually matters. So while it's important to have audio information for some spells, it doesn't necessarily mean all spells.

Cooldowns are probably the most important, since they really dictate how every game is played no matter what. And if you're not fully convinced.

Think about one of the main difficulties when playing LFG. One of the hardest parts is the fact that you're usually playing voiceless, which means you have to pay extra attention to your partner's cooldowns.

This can make it more difficult to focus on what actually matters in the game, and in turn can snowball a mistake into a complete loss. By using audio data to track enemy CDs, you can pay closer attention to the actual game, and in turn make better decisions.

WHAT IS SPELL QUEUING

Can you tell the difference between these two damage videos? Unless you have a galaxy brain IQ and zero lag eyeballs, probably not.

So what is the difference? Today we're going to be introducing a topic that many players don't even know about.

It's called the spell queue window, and if you don't have it set up properly, you're losing out on a lot of damage and healing and your own keyboard might be causing delays in your cooldowns and CC.

In today's video we're going to get nerdy in the lab and show you one quick fix to increase your damage, healing and reaction time in Shadowlands PvP. Alright so what the heck is the spell queue window?

Sounds pretty intimidating. Let's break it down.

Spamming an ability on your keyboard doesn't always mean the ability will be used instantly. There are a few things that can get in the way.

Some of these things we can't really control like the latency on our USB ports or the pulling rate of your mouse and keyboard. And of course there is lag, which is the cause of all my losses in arena.

Ahem. Yeah.

While we can't really control how much we lag, we can tell our game to predict what ability we want to use next. Enter the spell queue window, sometimes called lag tolerance.

In simple terms, the spell queue window will memorize what buttons you pressed in the past in order to preemptively press that button in the future.

The spell queue window is based on latency, meaning if you have a lag tolerance of 100 milliseconds, the game will perform whatever action you pressed 0.1 seconds in the past once the ability can be used. That's pretty cool.

If you can defy the laws of physics, you will have some lag between abilities because the game takes time to register your keyboard inputs. But with the spell queue window, you can tell your game what spell you want to cast next even before your current cast finishes.

This effectively bypasses any lag because the game already knows what ability you want to press even before you can actually use it. This isn't some spooky hack that can get you banned from the game.

In fact, many other games use even more complicated technology to avoid input delays. In WoW, having delayed inputs means you aren't preemptively pressing the button in the first time you press it.

This is a problem. You can't perform to your full potential, which is a problem, no matter if you are trying to get a world first boss kill or if you are trying to compete for that sweet blizzcon trophy.

But even for regular players, every missed input matters. Here we are spam casting wrath on a target dummy.

On the left I have my spell queue set to 0, meaning any latency I have will cause a delay on my next cast. On the right I have my spell queue cast to 200, meaning that my next wrath will be queued 200 milliseconds before my previous cast finishes.

I've also set my spell queue to 0, meaning I can cast it to any time I want. I've casted wrath a total of 10 times.

But if we look on the left, where I have a spell queue set to 0, it took 12.82 seconds. But on the right, where the spell queue was set to 200, it took 11.29 seconds.

That is nearly a 1.5 second difference to cast the same amount of spells. But it's not just casters that have to worry about this problem, because all globals, even physical attacks, can take advantage of spell queuing.

Here we have a rogue with 0 lag tolerance trying to fit a shadow strike eviscerate marked for death eviscerate. In between two cheap shots.

Because of lag based input delay, a small gap is left in between the stuns. This makes it impossible to keep the target stunned while doing damage.

But if we set the lag tolerance to 150, our laggy inputs go away. And even when we press the exact same rotation, you can see that there is no longer a gap in between cheap shots, allowing us to keep our target stunned while we burst.

So it's not just casters that have to worry about the spell queue window, it is every player in the game. Regardless of whether you play or not.

You can also set the lag tolerance-intensive or banishable option to 0. To be honest, I hate how another player can take advantage of a certain comp.

In the game itself, there are a few things you can do to improve your playstyle, especially in Korthia. But I'm going to be weeping over the fact that it's the same rule as anyone else since it was only spawned for Servant.

While it's the same rule as anyone else, it is the same rule as anyone else in any other game. In the end, if you take damage to the card you can use it to get the card back, you can go to the game and just be able to use it.

But not every player will be able to do that. That's the reason.

And I would say every player should be aware of that. Because you have to remember the fact that it's just a trick.

WHY DOES THIS MATTER

You might be saying by now, okay cool, all this is great, but why is Skill Cap talking about it now? The Season 2 meta is unlike any other arena season we've seen so far.

There are two factors contributing to this. For one, as Brian Holinka mentioned in his interview with Venruki, the game is becoming more lethal.

This should be apparent to anyone who has played a single arena this season, or watched any popular stream. People are dying at rates we've never seen before.

Did you even see the monk die in this clip? Let's rewind for a second.

The monk dies from 50% to 0 within a single global. Sometimes this just happens, there isn't much you can do about it but queue next game.

We're not suggesting you will become some unkillable god once you have proper spell queuing, but with less input lag you have a higher chance at reacting with defensive cooldowns, especially now when damage happens so fast.

And this leads to the second reason why Shadowlands Season 2 is so different, because damage has become disproportionately more valuable than anything else. Even for comps like RMP that are focused almost entirely around control, complicated CC setups aren't always necessary.

Sometimes all it takes is damage and a single short CC like silence to force kills, which is one of the reasons why Shadow Priest is so good right now in the meta, because they can burst with an on-demand CC.

So because the game is more lethal and damage is the most important part of the meta, it is crucial that you have the smallest delay possible between your globals, something that is only possible with spell queuing.

CANCEL SPELL QUEUE

We're not done yet though because there is one issue some of you may be wondering about. What if you don't want to use the ability that has been queued?

What if you queue up a damage ability but change your mind because you need to CC or use a defensive? How do you solve this problem?

This is where a secret macro command comes in handy. One so uncommon that many of the best players in the world don't even know about it.

Slash CQS. This stands for cancel spell queue.

By putting this command into a macro with an ability you can cancel your queued spell. This is useful for CC and any defensive cooldowns since these are high priority spells and you usually want to use these with the fastest possible reaction.

Here we have MVQ one of the best demon hunters in the world who is one of the few players that actually uses this command in his macros. He puts slash CQS into his fell eruption, imprison, and darkness to name a few abilities.

Once again allowing him to cancel his queued spells in order to guarantee that he can cancel his spell. Luckily CQS is automatically built into the game for any interrupt effect so you won't need to macro it with your kicks.

CHANGING YOUR SPELL QUEUE WINDOW

Alright, so now you know why spell queues are so important, you're probably wondering how to check your own. Unfortunately, like many good things in WoW, the option was removed from the game.

Well, kinda. You used to be able to set your spell queue window with the default interface settings, but the option was removed for some super logical reason...probably.

One of the easiest ways to configure your spell queue is with the add-on called Advanced Interface Options. This add-on allows you to configure a wide array of WoW settings, the vast majority of which cannot be modified using the default interface options.

The spell queue window can be changed by going to the Combat tab of the add-on and adjusting the Lag Tolerance bar. This value should be at least the same as your latency, but we highly recommend going around 100 milliseconds higher.

You can also modify this value in the Cvar browser by searching spell queue and then setting the value to whatever you'd like. There is no magic number for your spell queue window, but there are problems for both extremes.

On one end, having your spell queue window too low means that you'll have to change the value of your spell queue window. This means you might not press your next cast fast enough in order to instantly queue it.

On the other hand, if it is too high, you will start to experience problems when you get super high haste values, since your spell cast might be less than a second long, meaning a 400 millisecond lag tolerance might take up almost half of your cast time, making it harder to do a proper rotation if you're mashing your keyboard.

This is why we recommend setting it to your latency plus around 100 to 150, but we highly suggest playing around with different values to find what feels most comfortable to you. Thank you for watching!