Server curing vs. Client curing

Best Answers

• Stuneree

  September 2014 Accepted Answer

  While I believe server side will eventually take over for the most part, as far as I know, client side is currently more reliable.
  
  A lot of people seem to be using Wundersys right now, which is sort of an addon for ServerSide.
  
  If I could toss some anecdotal advice out, I'd probably say use server side and focus on other things for combat instead.
  
  but I'm standing very open to correction as well. I prefer server side.
  
  back to sleep for me.
  
  

  
  

  
  

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• Naverre

  September 2014 edited September 2014 Accepted Answer

  I don't PvP much (except for the occasional raid or running from an angry victim/Mark), but I do hunt a lot, and most of the advice a lot of people here will give you will be geared to PvP, so I'll leave that to them and speak only about dealing with denizens.
  
  Server-side wins out big time by the fact that everyone, at some point in time, gets lag on their end of the connection. When that happens while hunting, you can be screwed pretty hard by even mediocre denizens because your sip commands aren't going through. Server-side takes care of that, so if you're lagging, it will sip for you, and if the server is lagging, it won't matter anyway, the denizen's going to be 'lagging' too. I've died to simple rooms that I wouldn't normally drop below 80% health just because I lagged and couldn't heal.
  
  There are some virtues to client-side for hunting (like diagnosing after enough loki hits, taking advantage of class skills to heal, etc.), but honestly, they don't amount to much in comparison to the above. The one thing I can think of is, recklessness might be an issue. I heard that recklessness doesn't affect server-side healing, but that was a long time ago and I'm not even certain it was true then. If it does affect it, then not diagnosing after some loki hits could lead you dying on accident. Client-side systems typically recognize recklessness and instantly assume you're very low on health and mana, until it's been cured.
  
  Any of the 'nice things' that client-side can give you, like "dor kill target" or custom prompts, can easily be coded standalone. You can probably find scripts for those sorts of things already floating around.
  
  So, if all you want to do is hunting, no real PvP, server-side is 1) free and 2) technically better than client-side.
  
  EDIT: Blergh. Stupid smilies screwing up my lettered-parenthesis lists.

  

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• Nylith Beaverton, OR

  September 2014 Accepted Answer

  Naverre said:

  The one thing I can think of is, recklessness might be an issue. I heard that recklessness doesn't affect server-side healing, but that was a long time ago and I'm not even certain it was true then. If it does affect it, then not diagnosing after some loki hits could lead you dying on accident. Client-side systems typically recognize recklessness and instantly assume you're very low on health and mana, until it's been cured.
  
  

  I just wanted to comment on this part. This is the only fatal flaw I have seen with the server-side curing when hunting. I have died who knows how many times because of recklessness. I've had to learn which denizens are likely to give it and then be prepared to diagnose and take care of it as it comes up. Other than that, for hunting server-side is all you need and does have that advantage of taking care of you when lag comes around. To be a serious combatant you'll need just a bit more though in my opinion, though the fact that server-side curing ignores illusions is nice as well.
  

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• Eld

  September 2014 Accepted Answer

  Server-side advantages:
     Immune to illusions (at least, many or most combat relevant ones)
     Potentially faster, if you have a slow connection
     A lot of work is done for you, if you're comparing it to the possibility of writing your own client-side curing.
  
  Client-side advantages:
     More flexibility, as you can customise your curing however you want, and add in whatever features you want, whereas the server-side curing is restricted to what someone else has implemented.
     Potentially faster, if you have an especially fast connection (probably a very small advantage for anyone who is actually at an advantage here)
      
  My impression (keeping in mind that I've been dormant since roughly when the server-side system was introduced) is that the trend is toward using the server-side curing as a base, with a client-side system that automates a lot of the switching between curingsets and so on. @Nemutaur's Wundersys is a client-side system built around the server-side curing; I don't know enough of the details to know exactly what it adds, but if you search for the name there's a thread about it, which I think has a fair bit of detail. I believe svo can also incorporate the server-side system, and offers a lot of extra functionality beyond curing, if you're looking to pay for more features and support. I have no idea about the details of either of those, but I'm sure others can fill you in on what I've missed.

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• Makarios

  September 2014 Accepted Answer

  The game supports custom prompts, for reference. HELP PROMPT has all the details.

  I'm of course somewhat biased, but I'm of the opinion server curing has the edge, if only because it scales with any changes we might make. If we were to release a new class with a bunch of new mechanics for instance, it'll work out of the box. Some people like that, some people are happy to wait on updates/make the changes themselves.

  As for PVE, I can't imagine many things more tedious than collecting all the denizen attack lines for dedicated PVE players, so being able to skip that is nice as well.

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• Strata United States of Derp

  September 2014 Accepted Answer

  Eld said:
  ...

  My impression (keeping in mind that I've been dormant since roughly when the server-side system was introduced) is that the trend is toward using the server-side curing as a base, with a client-side system that automates a lot of the switching between curingsets and so on. @Nemutaur's Wundersys is a client-side system built around the server-side curing; I don't know enough of the details to know exactly what it adds, but if you search for the name there's a thread about it, which I think has a fair bit of detail. I believe svo can also incorporate the server-side system, and offers a lot of extra functionality beyond curing, if you're looking to pay for more features and support. I have no idea about the details of either of those, but I'm sure others can fill you in on what I've missed.

  Hybrid systems like Wundersys might not have all the fancy bells and whistles in the likes of Svo, but they are WYSIWYG every time. Client-side systems, no matter how well designed, will always face quality problems that surface themselves usually mid-fight and cause you to shake your fist at PC and curse the author's name. Without getting too tinfoil-hat, I also believe server-side's emulated latency, while needed, has won out over Svo every time. Affliction classes suffer the most vs. server-side, noticeably. There's also bugs in server-side - many of which were addressed in a recent classleads - also there still seems to be quirks and rough edges that make server-side the better option for serious PKers. When many of the so-called "high-tier" are using it, there has to be some sort of advantage - an edge.

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