Are you using VRR on KDE plasma? I've been having that issue with VRR on since a year or two back when playing wow. Turning VRR off fixes that, but also since VRR is off framerate feels less smooth.

No, i don't use VRR.

When you disable "Compute Effects" in graphics settings seems to solve the freezing issue.

I'm going to have to say never mind on my issue that was transferred here. I'm pretty sure it's a compositor issue. I was using Niri when I reported the bug - I switched over to KDE as a sanity check, and the bug does not seem to happen there, which suggests it's an issue in how Niri interacts with some (but not all) games.

EDIT: Did further troubleshooting. xwayland-satellite issue. I've created an issue over there instead.

Hi. I am having the issues with WoW using GE-Proton (latest or 10.10) that the game wont open in Fullscreen anymore. It opens just under the Gnome top bar and I always have to go into the game Video Settings and select my monitor's resolution. After that, the game works without any issues. This started to happen just recently, I hadn't had that issues before. Running Fedora 42 Workspace (Gnome) with Wayland. A friend of mine with exact same hardware setup, but KDE, doesn't have this issue at all. Unsure how to debug the issue at all, Lutris doesnt show any exception at all - other games work fullscreen without any issue. Reinstalling battle.net and Wow didn't fixed the issue. Running on Radeo 9070 XT.

EDIT: This was caused by a kde window rule "Allow tearing", not related to proton, my bad.

In kde, and probably others too, proton breaks direct scanout.

When you right or left click in wow, cursor dissapears, direct scanout gets activated.
When you release, cursor comes back, proton does something, direct scanout gets disabled.

You can use regular wine or disable direct scanout if you are using kde, with KWIN_DRM_NO_DIRECT_SCANOUT env.
Here is a demo; https://youtu.be/JQ4IWw8QSj4

Chatgpt says game will stutter if direct scanout keeps getting enabled and disabled;
https://chatgpt.com/share/68a7ddf9-d228-8004-ac90-a5e2a70257ac

I can confirm this issue is still happening with all versions of proton, on KDE it crashes plasma.

I can also confirm this issue happening with latest Proton Experimental however, using the GE-Proton10-11 doesn't produce the issue. Additionally, the no-full-screen bug is still present in the game (and only world of warcraft, but not diablo4 or world of warcraft classic!).

Running Fedora 42 with Gnome.

I can confirm that the original issue of this thread, compositing flipping on and off and causing a big stutter is still happening on Proton Experimental, using Bazzite's current Plasma version of 6.5.1.

compositing flipping on and off when cursor hidden and appears is a plasma 6.5.x bug

Here is the logs on Faugus + Proton Experimental + UMU (strictly the same issue)

steam-0.log

umu.log

same same, intermittent black screen with WoW under Battle.net / Faugus prefix

Same behavior as others: sometimes WoW works, sometimes it doesn’t.

Steps I tried:

Delete and recreate the Faugus prefix. (I never deleted battle.net into faugus because it will delete all WoW ffs and 130GB gone forever)

Reload the prefix.

Tried with no variables then adding variables like PROTON_USE_NTSYNC=1

now works with just PROTON_USE_NTSYNC=1 inside GLOBAL variables (faugus) and battlenet has inside its prefix WINE_SIMULATE_WRITECOPY=1 PROTON_ENABLE_WAYLAND=0 while WoW has nothing is clean

Switch between D3D11 and D3D12 in the WoW WTF/config file.

With D3D11: screen black, flickering.

With D3D12: screen completely black, only the mouse visible.

Tried launching WoW directly using Proton CachyOS and then Proton GE — nothing works.

Launched Battle.net via Faugus, then tried WoW — same black screen.

At one point, I launched only Battle.net with wine, no variables just wine, and it prompted me to install Wine Mono. I isntalled, battle net stuck i closed Battle net. After installing it, launched battle net via faugus worked and then launched WoW via battle net as usual, actually started. Not sure if this is a proper fix or just a temporary workaround or just luck boh.

Additional info:

The prefix are inside Faugus.

Behavior is inconsistent and seems to depend on the D3D version.

Happens across multiple Proton versions.

OS: CachyOS x86_64
Host: ROG Strix SCAR 18 G835LR_G835LR (1.0)
Kernel: Linux 6.18.8-1-cachyos-bore-lto
Uptime: 1 hour, 4 mins
Packages: 1510 (pacman)
Shell: fish 4.3.3
Display (NE180QDM-NZC): 2560x1600 @ 1.4x in 18"
DE: KDE Plasma 6.5.5
WM: KWin (Wayland)
CPU: Intel(R) Core(TM) Ultra 9 275HX (24) @ 6.50 GHz
GPU 1: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5070 Ti Mobile [Discrete]
GPU 2: Intel Graphics @ 1.90 GHz [Integrated]
Memory: 9.43 GiB / 30.70 GiB (31%)
Swap: 3.21 MiB / 30.70 GiB (0%)
Disk (/): 175.20 GiB / 455.41 GiB (38%) - ext4
Proton version: GE 29 proton-cachyos-slr 1:10.0.20260127-1
nvidia: 590.48.01

Prefix location: inside Faugus

tried with a laptop with a GTX 1060 legacy on EndevourOS, installed the legacy 580xx via yay aur, Proton-GE worked like a charm, so dont really sure if there is a regression in newer driver or i have just to try over and over again to repeat the behaviour with that video card and drivers. Actually with that video card and drivers never happened d11 and d12

Update: i thought was fixed, or did some sort of workaround, i just wanted to try, i restarted the system again black screen with d12same behavior only mouse working and d11 nothing works black flickering and no mouse

Update: deleted faugus and all his prefixes, installed Lutris, used last wine-cachyos to start battle net and created a prefix for WoW.exe inside Lutris, using last proton-cachyos, Proton-GE and Proton-EM to start WoW.exe after pressing on play via Battle.net.
All works d11~120fps --- dx12 ~90fps

so i don't know if there is some faugus->umu launcher issue

I think my issue seems not related, as my issue is not Faugus related (it also happens with Heroic Game Launcher) with Proton GE or Proton ME .

Heroic game launcher and Faugus launcher use UMU Launcher

Heroic game launcher and Faugus launcher use UMU Launcher

Heroic can use anything, I use it with CachyOS-proton

Mmm Nope faugus heroic even lutris use umu launcher. Cachyos Proton or cachyOS Proton slr?

Mmm Nope faugus heroic even lutris use umu launcher. Cachyos Proton or cachyOS Proton slr?

I'm not sure what you're arguing here, I'm using it right now to play...

It's not using umu.

Using slr.

Lutris / Heroic / Faugus (frontend meta launchers [like a GUI])
↓
UMU (lancher) ↔ Proton (translator DX) (launcher wrapper + runtime working together)
↓
Wine (engine)
↓
Game

#########

Steam
↓
Proton
↓
Wine
↓
Game

• Steam already implements the wrapper/orchestration layer internally.
• Proton is designed to be run inside Steam, not as a standalone tool.
• External launchers (Lutris, Heroic, Faugus) lack that integration.
• UMU provides the missing launcher/environment layer, allowing Proton to work outside Steam.

If you are not launching the game directly from Steam,
you are using an external wrapper layer — and that layer is UMU.

That’s Wine-CachyOS. Try launching Battle.net without any environment variables, just wine not winecachyos is modified, or try launching WoW without UMU installed, unistall it, dont launch via Steam, see if it actually runs, or if it’s all buggy with just Proton.

I m getting flickering as well, to me it seems connected to rendering of certain UI elements.
For example its very notisable on loading screens. And also more noticing when i have menues open,

One workaround that seems to fix it for me (until i close the game) is:
Switching between Graphics API:s ingame. (Options -> Graphics -> Graphics API:s)
I switch from DirectX 12 -> DirectX 11, flickering persists
Switch back from DirectX 11 -> DirectX 12, flickering fixed.

Running Battle.net in Proton-experimental directly under Steam as a "Non-Steam game"

@ageh3910 Which graphics settings are you using when you get those glitches on the launcher screen?

I could reproduce glitches and GPU hangs on RX 7600 with Mesa 26.1.4. The instant GPU hangs I had were ray tracing related and should be worked around with this PR: https://github.com/HansKristian-Work/vkd3d-proton/pull/3157. If you're not using mesa-git it'll need RADV_EXPERIMENTAL=heap as well until descriptor heap is default on Mesa stable as well.

I managed to reproduce the glitches in both retail and classic with SSAO ultra and CMAA, but only with that combination so far. I also had a separate GPU page fault that happened randomly in both retail and classic, so those are still work-in-progress.

@ageh3910 Which graphics settings are you using when you get those glitches on the launcher screen?

I could reproduce glitches and GPU hangs on RX 7600 with Mesa 26.1.4. The instant GPU hangs I had were ray tracing related and should be worked around with this PR: HansKristian-Work/vkd3d-proton#3157. If you're not using mesa-git it'll need RADV_EXPERIMENTAL=heap as well until descriptor heap is default on Mesa stable as well.

I managed to reproduce the glitches in both retail and classic with SSAO ultra and CMAA, but only with that combination so far. I also had a separate GPU page fault that happened randomly in both retail and classic, so those are still work-in-progress.

Changing AA to CMAA2 resolved both flickering on Proton 10 and the crashes on Proton 11/Experimental. Thanks for the pointer!

I tested on Windows with RX 7600 and drivers 26.3.1 and 26.7.1, and it turns out CMAA glitches and GPU hangs are also present on Windows, as well as GPU hangs related to ray tracing. It's not practical to add more workarounds until the situation improves there first, so for now it's probably safest to avoid CMAA and ray tracing until those issues have been fixed.