Shadowlands Class Changes - AoE Capped Abilities

[Grimbold21]

So is Blizzard giving Mages' meteor to shamans?

[Kveldulv]

This game is getting worse.. every day there's a new nerf.. I can't see the point of these changes

[Tyrathius]

Making a huge change that negatively impacts the entire game to fix an issue with one single portion of the game nobody really cares that much about. Great work, Blizz.

[apelsinjuice]

Braindead melee mongoloids were dominating M+ scene whole BfA (Fire mages and BM hunters in 8.3 don't count, corruption vendor broke the game completely) and something had to be done. Either giving casters fast burst AoE as well, but for some reason absolutely moronic "homogenization bad" is everywhere, sooo...enjoy your target caps then.

yes like braindead range mongoloids have been domination raiding for 15 years, cant let melee be good in anything.

[schwarzkopf]

I like this change, give harder to use AoE an advantage. Just sitting there spamming 20 targets with zero risk or skill - is silly.

[apelsinjuice]

If done right, this change could have been good. If classes with an AoE cap deal damage on 5 targets, with uncapped classes needing 10 targets to equal said damage, then it would be good.

But this is not the case. It's not anywhere NEAR the case.

First, it's essentially uneven across range and melee - Every SINGLE melee is now capped to a few targets, with some exceptions. However, for range, Hunters are capped, Frost Mages have Frozen Orb capped, Destro Locks have Felstorm capped. That's it. Basically every single caster has uncapped AoE.

Following this up is the damage difference - Casters are currently just as effective at fighting 5-8 targets as melee are. But as soon as you add that 9th target, casters begin to pull ahead until they hit the final AoE cap of 20 targets (At which point damage dealt is split between every new target added).

Then there is the mechanical difficulty - In large groups, melee are always at risk of being gibbed by whatever mechanics the mobs have. Not only do you have significant visual clutter going on, but there are so many AoEs in the game based in a short distance around the mob that you have to get out of or you just die, and when you have 4-5 of those mobs in a large part of 20+ mobs, melee are at significant risk of just dying.

The funny thing is that in raiding this is essentially a change that will only matter on maybe 3-5 bosses the entire expansion.

Overall this just helps to indicate how far removed the Blizzard development team is, not only from their playerbase, but from their understanding of the actual game itself.

What's even worse is that the AoE cap is only applied to 3 of the tanking classes. And even then, it's only brutally applied to Prot (Who won't be able to do M+ at high lvls because of this change), decently applied to Vengeance (While Vengeance has other AoE tools, Soul Cleave is still a significan portion atm), and just barely applied to Blood (Predominately Bone Storm picks - Not that it matters).

So, yea - Hope all the tanks like BrM and Guardian, because that's likely all you'll be able to play in high-end M+ next expansion!

aoe melee cap is only litteraly done because of MDI m+, which in itself only pulls about 5k viewers at best on twitch/youtube and the people who actually push for high m+ keys is an extremly small minority of a minority.

[Codah]

Making a huge change that negatively impacts the entire game to fix an issue with one single portion of the game nobody really cares that much about. Great work, Blizz.

I mean there's been a pretty strong campaign for months by the players to get them to change covenants. I wouldn't say it's strictly a Blizzard problem.

[Aflakk47]

MoP had an AoE soft-cap, where if you hit targets over the cap (8 or 10 targets) damage to each target was reduced so that the total damage equalled what you'd get hitting the cap number. At least with the current system the targets you do hit take decent damage.


That would be nice. As it is, it's kind of "AoE caps on most melee & Hunters, none on most ranged, but random exceptions".

AoE softcap is perfectly fine, bring that back. Now try going into a 10 year old raid, pulling all the trashmobs up to the first boss (lets say spawning Shannox in Firelands) and having to spend 1 minute spamming 1 ability just to kill everything because your ability now only hits 5 targets. This is a massive inconvenience for trying to play in old content.

[Darkke]

AoE softcap is perfectly fine, bring that back. Now try going into a 10 year old raid, pulling all the trashmobs up to the first boss (lets say spawning Shannox in Firelands) and having to spend 1 minute spamming 1 ability just to kill everything because your ability now only hits 5 targets. This is a massive inconvenience for trying to play in old content.

I wouldn't say it's a "massive" inconvenience, but it's definitely annoying. I think you are exaggerating a little bit how much more time for example spawning Shannox will take. We just have to start clearing trash packs while moving and it will be fine.

That said, I think a better solution would have been to add a soft cap with a large damage drop off after 5 or 8 targets. That way AoE beyond those target counts would still be mostly useless in M+ etc. So the fix would still do what they wanted, but you would still be able to one shot most trash in old raids.

[Nnyco]

Making a huge change that negatively impacts the entire game to fix an issue with one single portion of the game nobody really cares that much about. Great work, Blizz.

AOE unbalance was an issue since... well forever. It was required like 10 years ago.

[Aflakk47]

I wouldn't say it's a "massive" inconvenience, but it's definitely annoying. I think you are exaggerating a little bit how much more time for example spawning Shannox will take. We just have to start clearing trash packs while moving and it will be fine.

That said, I think a better solution would have been to add a soft cap with a large damage drop off after 5 or 8 targets. That way AoE beyond those target counts would still be mostly useless in M+ etc. So the fix would still do what they wanted, but you would still be able to one shot most trash in old raids.

So we should dismount, kill, and loot EVERY trash pack? How is that a solution? The scorpion groups alone have 8 mobs, so that's 2 GCD's for most classes. I'm not exaggerating anything by mentioning this, and it basically makes all melee classes useless for farming old transmog. Guess I'll just have to laser chicken sunfire everything like the multiboxers to get transmog for my rogue now.

Edit: Just went on the Beta, and with the exact same pull on live that takes me 2 abilities to do, it took 40 seconds to kill all the mobs to spawn Shannox.

[dewd]

this limit better only be for shadowlands and not make farming old raids a nightmare

[Masternewt]

this limit better only be for shadowlands and not make farming old raids a nightmare

How is it going to be a nightmare? Trash is old raids (Firelands, for example, as it was mentioned above) dies in one hit. Meaning if you press AoE ability once, 5 mobs die, press it again 5 more die. So it'll take 3 GCD to kill 15 mobs instead of 1. We're talking seconds here, if it even saves any actual time since gathering all the mobs that barely aggro unless you run through them and just AoEing as you run, isn't that different anyway.

[Rezark]

So is Blizzard giving Mages' meteor to shamans?

No, Shaman already have meteor on their fire elemental.

[Aflakk47]

How is it going to be a nightmare? Trash is old raids (Firelands, for example, as it was mentioned above) dies in one hit. Meaning if you press AoE ability once, 5 mobs die, press it again 5 more die. So it'll take 3 GCD to kill 15 mobs instead of 1. We're talking seconds here, if it even saves any actual time since gathering all the mobs that barely aggro unless you run through them and just AoEing as you run, isn't that different anyway.

And then another 2 sec to mount after every attack. Then another 2 sec to loot after every pack. Seconds add up, fast.

[Kumorii]

Hopefully this lead to a more interesting m+ experience.

[Cren]

So we should dismount, kill, and loot EVERY trash pack? How is that a solution? The scorpion groups alone have 8 mobs, so that's 2 GCD's for most classes. I'm not exaggerating anything by mentioning this, and it basically makes all melee classes useless for farming old transmog. Guess I'll just have to laser chicken sunfire everything like the multiboxers to get transmog for my rogue now.

Edit: Just went on the Beta, and with the exact same pull on live that takes me 2 abilities to do, it took 40 seconds to kill all the mobs to spawn Shannox.

You do realize that you dont have to kill the scorpions to summon Shannox right?

Also it's kind of fun that in the same sentence you say that you don't exaggerate and it makes melee classless useless? You don't see any exaggerating there at all?

So instead of one GCD it will take 5 or 6 if you pull like 30 mobs at once? That's like 10 seconds.....

- - - Updated - - -

And then another 2 sec to mount after every attack. Then another 2 sec to loot after every pack. Seconds add up, fast.

Then just gather them all at once like you always do? The only difference is that you need more GCD to kill alot of mobs.

[Loreclaw]

I like this change, give harder to use AoE an advantage. Just sitting there spamming 20 targets with zero risk or skill - is silly.

Of course you do. Any unpopular change seems to be fine with you when Blizzard makes it. Just adds to amount of false and misleading statements you make on this board too.

[bajcli]

I like this change, give harder to use AoE an advantage. Just sitting there spamming 20 targets with zero risk or skill - is silly.

you're completely disregarding the fact that it takes a lot of risk and skill to enable your tank to tank 20 targets and/or keep them in place without dying while the DPS can AoE them.
obviously this only applies to decently difficulty content, but clearly the change hasn't been made with easy content in mind; easy content is easy no matter what your AoE cap is & you don't need a tank to pull 20 mobs for you to clear a +4 dungeon easily.

[Orwell7]

AOE unbalance was an issue since... well forever. It was required like 10 years ago.

Okay, okay, BUT
do we really need new systems AND systemic changes to handle this?

A simple old-school revamp of 3-4 specs per new raid tier/patch could easily handle this. If the devs wanted to make the game FEEL good to play, oh the dream.

In theory, theory and practice is not different at all. In practice, they are.
Blizz tries to do ANYTHING but redesign or "modernize" specs. They try to solve basic issues by obfuscating the problems with other, convoluted systems.