4.1 WoW Enh AoE is _____________

[Kelesti]

That's only potentially helpful, if your raid positions itself intelligently, on Halfus and Maloriak.

Okay, and positioning your raid to take advantage of cleave-type damage is "intelligent"? I thought this is why we don't PuG?

and I imagine this won't be the last time Blizzard decides to make adds that melee want to stay away from.

So... Howling Blast and Pestilence are pretty shitty here too. As is Whirlwind, Bladestorm, Sweeping Strikes, Divine Storm, Blade Fury, Fan of Knives, and Swipe! The fact that your spec has the ability to do damage under these situations, when other melee can't, should be a blessing, instead of being treated as a fucking death sentence.

[DrakeWurrum]

Okay, and positioning your raid to take advantage of cleave-type damage is "intelligent"? I thought this is why we don't PuG?

So... Howling Blast and Pestilence are pretty shitty here too. As is Whirlwind, Bladestorm, Sweeping Strikes, Divine Storm, Blade Fury, Fan of Knives, and Swipe! The fact that your spec has the ability to do damage under these situations, when other melee can't, should be a blessing, instead of being treated as a fucking death sentence.

Howling Blast is actually really freaking AMAZING here. Do you simply... not raid with DKs?

For starters, it doesn't require anything but runes to cast, and you can proc free ones. The devs even lets them use it in their single-target rotation, but hey, it's a 31-point talent. By *anything* I mean, it doesn't require having D&D down, it doesn't require diseases being applied, none of that nonsense that Shaman have to put up with. You even glyph it to APPLY diseases.
Second, it's got a 30-yard range (talented). That's pretty big for a melee AoE. By 30-yard, I mean, you hit a target up to 30 yards away with Howling Blast, and all targets within 10 yards of THAT target will ALSO take Frost damage. Less than the initial target.
Third: A DK, if he chooses to blow a 5-minute cooldown... can pop off FOUR Howling Blasts in quick succession. Five if he had a Rime proc saved up.

While you can claim Fire Nova has a 100-yard range next patch, you must first have Flame Shock on the target... which has a 25-yard range. Doesn't really add up, so there's no range advantage.

Howling Blast is the *ideal* AoE, and it's why DKs should always go Frost on fights involving adds. Howling Blast is how I wish Fire Nova would function. Out of all the melee AoE, Frost DKs have the absolute STRONGEST. All logs I've ever checked for fights like Cho'gall show that Frost DKs even often outperform ranged DPS on add damage, so it doesn't even compare to Fire Nova.

Pestilence isn't shitty, as it does the job it's intended: spread your diseases. It does this job. Most DKs only use it for meter-padding. Pestilence may only have a 15 yard (glyphed) "spread" aoe, and require melee range to cast, but Frost DKs can Howling Blast from a distance (which applies one disease), run in to Pestilence (possible using PS first), and boom... AoE add damage via dots. At that point he can then run away. No need to stick around if it's too dangerous for melee. The irony here is that Pestilence only benefits the Frost DK in spreading Blood Plague, cause Howling Blast already did it.
While the DK did, yes, just multi-dot, he did it without having to tab-target. He was able to apply two diseases to one target, and then spread it to EVERY nearby enemy. Enhancement Shaman won't be able to simply spread an existing Flame Shock, we have to actually tab target and manually track which targets already have a Flame Shock, and which one is about to run out, and if an add has enough HP to warrant reapplying Flame Shock, or if we should just apply Flame Shock to a new higher-HP target.

If you're talking about Blood Boil, that spell is SIGNIFICANTLY superior to Fire Nova, simply because a DK can cast it without requiring the diseases being up first. If they need quick, sudden burst AoE on adds, they can pop it off, and it will happen. A Shaman can't do that, because we will need to cast another spell first.
It's STRONGER if they have diseases rolling on the target, but it can still be used.

The difference between Blood Boil and Fire Nova is that... first, they can cast it on the move, exploding from around themselves. They don't need to worry about making the tank position around a specific area. Second, the increased damage of Blood Boil is dependent on a debuff that is applied onto the targets. So, it's fully mobile, and a DK can spam it at will, so long as it's safe to be in melee range.
So if you're talking AoE damage to targets within melee range, Blood Boil is far superior.

Now, if we could only explode Fire Nova from a SINGLE Flame Shock, Fire Nova and Blood Boil would be fairly similar. They have diseases on the boss already, hit Pestilence, then hit Blood Boil, BOOM, AoE damage without even changing targets.
We can do the same thing. Flame Shock is already up, we start spamming Fire Nova. That would be fine, especially since that means Blizzard would actually balance the damage of Fire Nova around only one Flame Shock being up.

The problem is that Fire Nova is, apparently, meant to fill the role of BOTH Howling Blast and Blood Boil, while being significantly inferior at both.

DKs have Howling Blast for ranged AoE and they *also* have Blood Boil for when they're capable of getting up close and personal, and they're not exclusive of each other. They also have Death and Decay, of course, which Unholy DKs use in their single-target as well, from everything I've heard.
So now look: Frost runes for Howling Blast. Blood runes for Pestilence Blood Boil. Unholy runes for D&D. A very nice bit of non-exclusive synergy for their AoE. (and if they're not Frost, they're compensated by having a third disease, making Pestilence+Blood Boil stronger)

Magma Totem + Fire Nova is superior for ranged AoE dps on adds, compared to the 4.1 Fire Nova change, with the one exception that we have to run up and place a totem first. At least right now, if I want to help on Cho'gall adds on, say, wave 4, I can run over, drop Earthbind, drop a Fire Ele, pop off Fire Nova as I'm running back out, and then pretend the adds don't exist, while spamming Fire Nova off CD. That set-up is FAR more effective than what we're getting. It's the set-up DKs currently deal with through adding diseases, tossing out Pestilence and Blood Boil. But they can actually AVOID that step altogether by relying fully on Howling Blast AoE, and then use their other runes to single-target Cho'gall! With proper positioning of Cho'gall, the only thing the DK will have to do is face towards the adds when he casts Howling Blast.
I don't like Totem-centric Fire Nova since it's 100% immobile... but it's still better for the situation of keeping distance from adds while AoEing them down.

The fact that we treat it as a "fucking death sentence" is because it's not a playstyle that appeals to us. If I wanted to sit back at distance, dot something up, and then explode them, I'd play a Fire Mage, or an Elemental Shaman, or a Warlock (Affliction even).
But I'm playing a melee Shaman.

So yeah. Great. Bigger numbers. If all I cared about was bigger numbers, I'd just roll a DK already.


Oh, also, since I didn't touch on it: In regards to the OTHER melee AoE abilities, such as Divine Storm, Swipe, etc, which are not able to be used at range? I would be perfectly happy with my AoE not being usable at range. Not even joking.
I would be even happier if my *total* AoE package was superior when in melee range, and I had one spell I could use for ranged AoE like on Cho'gall adds. The way DKs have.