Power Siphon on-kill visual effect is very inconsistent, maybe related to latency

Power Siphon has a lovely effect that happens on kill where there's some blue stuff that rises from the killed enemy and then the projectile returns to you, but it is very bugged and inconsistent right now. Here's a video of what it looked like in 3.7, and how it looked in every patch before now. Notice that the visual plays from every enemy killed: https://youtu.be/DHmz1nUdmpE?t=49

But in 3.8, it appears to be bugged, which makes the skill significantly less satisfying. Here's a video showing some of the 3.8 behavior: https://youtu.be/sCyZnKLDhL4

There are three clips in the video:
- The first one shows the effect only playing once after killing many enemies. I use a Discharge so I can keep track of how many power charges I'm gaining, which accidentally kills an enemy that I hadn't hit with the Power Siphon, and for some reason it plays the visual where the projectile comes back to me and doesn't grant me a power charge. This was a level 90 character with a couple of added damage supports and a decent wand, hitting enemies in Act 1, there should be basically no way that I hit an enemy and then missed or didn't kill it.
- The second one shows the visual not playing at all on any enemies, but I gain a power charge.
- The third one shows the visual playing twice, but I only gain one power charge.

My first thought was that the visual got changed to only show when a kill grants you a power charge, since the skill only grants one charge per use, but it still sometimes shows multiple times in a single use, or sometimes not at all when it it does grant a charge. The visual also doesn't play when rare/unique enemies grant a charge on hit, so that's definitely not it.

In summary, here's a list of problems I've noticed:
- The effect doesn't show on every enemy killed, only rarely
- Usually if it shows at all, it only shows once per pack
- Frequently the visual just doesn't show at all
- The effect plays every time if you hit the enemy more than once before it dies

Hopefully this can be fixed quickly and easily. I was looking forward to playing the skill again but it's really not as enjoyable without the unique visual it has.

So had you got an answer after posting in reddit?

https://www.reddit.com/r/pathofexile/comments/d9mdoj/power_siphon_is_bugged_and_is_not_granting_a/

Posting this as a reply just in case that affects how the support team looks for bugs or something, somehow. I realized I forgot to include a bug report number/screenshot the first time, though the screenshot isn't very useful.

Bug report number: 2,437,174,668

I think I found something useful about this bug! Or at least a lead of some kind.

So I went and tried the skill in 3.8.1d to see if it got stealth fixed, and of course it didn't because it wasn't in the patch notes. But randomly after a few tries, in one instance, the visual worked perfectly. Every kill, every enemy hit by Power Siphon would play the visual as it's supposed to. Then it suddenly didn't work in the next area and didn't work when I went back to the instance. After more tries, I'd estimate I could get a working instance maybe 10% of the time. I recorded a video of this behavior here: https://youtu.be/ehSzYH69hiY

While uploading this video however, I was testing it more while my ping was higher than usual, since the latency didn't affect the testing. And suddenly, the visual worked in every instance. I could go to The Ledge and it would work perfectly. I would go to The Climb from Ledge and it would work fine in The Climb. Back to the same instance of The Ledge, still working! Blood Aqueducts, just fine, Act 2 Crossroads, yep, on and on with a few other areas.

After the video was done uploading, it went back to the behavior where it works 10% of the time for one visit. With the lead about latency, I decided to try it out on various servers to see if that was related. Note that I live in Illinois in the United States and get 40-45 ping to both Washington and Texas servers, and 95 or so to California.

The visual did NOT work consistently on: Texas, Washington, California

The visual DID work consistently on: London, Frankfurt, Amsterdam, Australia, Singapore

I get 120-130 ping to the EU servers and 250 ping to Australia and Singapore.

The only thing I can conclude is that somehow, the extra latency is allowing the visual to work correctly. Maybe the client and server are somehow getting out of sync when the latency is too low, so it just never plays it? I'm really not sure. Hopefully this info can help someone figure it out.

Oh duh, I didn't even think about that. I had it on Auto when I was testing earlier. I haven't had to change the setting in a long time and I forgot it existed.

I tested it now, though. The issues I described above only happen on Lockstep. The visuals work properly and consistently on Predictive.

So when it worked in the higher latency servers earlier it was probably just due to it switching to Predictive mode. Good thing I kept testing while the video uploaded!

Slightly old bug report now but I just want to say that it still exists. I started another wander recently and noticed that it's still around. You can also see that Mathil's recent wander videos show this off, so it's not just me: https://youtu.be/kn70Xh-wuGs?t=597

Like I said in my comments from last league, switching to Predictive is what makes the effect consistent. Something I didn't notice last time is that even on Predictive, if you hit an enemy multiple times, the effect plays multiple times when they die. This makes using Barrage Support look pretty silly. Note the overlapping visual right over the enemy and that multiple siphon-y visuals fly to my character: https://gfycat.com/wearymasculineemu

Still hoping it will be fixed at some point!