Instead of the AOE limit, why not add a sort of enrage mechanics to the mobs ?

[Tinary]

Affliction Warlocks ARE affected, because tanks are affected. I am not sure why you think that the randomization of aggro generation does not affect a certain class, but I am willing to learn.

Few tank skills were affected, not alot. By the time affli gets his dmg rolling, tank has more than enough aggro on those mobs. Only thing that changed for tanks that i felt was that i tend to switch main targets more than before.

[huth]

It was added because of what people did in MDI, that it the reason.

Blizzard thinks balancing AoE around what the top 1% do during a mythic+ tournament is the right way to go about things, because a tiny amount of groups are able to pull 15 mobs + a boss and destroy everything (because of DKs), Blizzard invented M+, they created the win conditions so what the hell are competitive groups going to do? pull tons of mobs because you need to kill a certain amount then they are going to take those tons of mobs and pull a boss with them because this entire thing is timed as well.

So what do you want them to do? Leave the "bomb everything" meta as the go-to way for M+, leaving anybody who can't compete with the few specs that can do it in the dust?

They do this all while loading dungeons and raids with so much trash and are supersized when again the top 1% find ways to clear it as fast as possible.

Well, duh. That's why they're the top 1%. You don't get there by sitting around idly considering if you should maybe pull 1 mob more.

[StillMcfuu]

Mob packs are smaller overall in shadowlands. If you pull multiple of them, thats on you and not a limitation imposes by the aoe cap. Thats a pretty decent balance. I think they are attempting to reign in pace of play, but who knows.

My main concern would be how it affected tanking, ie prot warrior and paladin, and Brewster have largely capped abilities, where dk, dh don't and for druids a lesser extent dont

[ReleaseDay]

No to your idea, no to aoe cap.

[TimAhKin]

This is a stupid change and will affect most of the player base. It makes no sense to hit 15 mobs and only 5 to actually take damage. What are the rest doing? Dodging like Neo in Matrix?
Hopefully they will reverse this.

[Nynax]

for decades, caster were superiour when it came to aoe -.-

We are a long way away from the rock, paper, scissors style of balance.

Sad thing is, idk if that is a good thing or a bad thing. I originally rolled shaman because of it's utility support role. That kind of thing no longer exists and probably wouldn't even be tolerated anymore. You either keep up with the group DPS/HPS and bring nice buffs/utility or you're trash.+

I no longer play a shaman.

- - - Updated - - -

This is a stupid change and will affect most of the player base. It makes no sense to hit 15 mobs and only 5 to actually take damage. What are the rest doing? Dodging like Neo in Matrix?
Hopefully they will reverse this.

No no no, they're using the 5 as body shields

[Varaben]

I don’t know why they don’t just do the 20/6 target capping or the sqrt capping or whatever. The 5 cap max seems so weird to me. Like I’m using divine storm and the animation is a spinny thing, yet it only hits 5? Seems odd.

[Kralljin]

It was added because of what people did in MDI, that it the reason.

Not necessarily.

Blizzard has simply developed this weird fetish for taking ideas from Classic / TBC / Wotlk and throwing them into the game without any care why this specific thing "worked" in that era.

Back in the day, it was pretty simple, Melees were king for "Cleave" Situations (2-4 Targets), while casters started to take over at 5+ Targets, because their damage is uncapped (altough a upper cap also existed since TBC / Wotlk, which capped your damage whenever you hit 10 or more targets).

Difference is, back then, AoE wasn't that super common, not a sizeable chunk of your raid encounters featured AoE (it was actually rather rare) and on top of that, not every class was capable of doing solid AoE dps.
Some simply had to live with the fact that their dps sucked when a AoE situation occurred.

And 5man dungeons were just flyover content (in Wotlk at least), you didn't give a shit whether your daily heroic was cleared within 15 or 20 minutes, you just tried to be faster for the sake of saving time.

10 Years forward, AoE is now super common in raids, M+ is a staple part of the game and basically every spec can do a modicum of AoE, not to mention that a ton of specs have so called "Burst AoE" abilities to mow down entire trashpacks.

It just doesn't work, you can't take a philosophy from 10 years and throw it into the current game, AoE simply has become far too common within the game to make it subject to a philosophy where this whole thing was far more niche.

Ignoring the fact that some minor things such as clearing old raids (where said AoE cap is a real pain) wasn't a thing back then, at least not to the point where everybody expected it to be soloable by a fresh max level character.

[killimage]

The AOE capping is a typical example of 'Nerfing Fun'
Pulling a big amount of mobs (15+) and destorying them with your CC and damage cooldowns feels good! You will do everything you can to try to kill them ASAP, while still worrying that those mobs could kill the tank and than the whole group. It is fun, and it fseel great. It even makes adrenaline soaring, this is we want to experience in a game.
In 9.0, we will fight 4/5 mobs in a row, yeah, very RPG in 2020!
But the tension and excitement is gone.

[VinceVega]

When you pull more than 5 mobs, they become enraged and the more you pull the more powerful that enrage will be, so :

- current content will stay challenging for those that like mass pulls
- no more awkward to hit 20 mobs but only 5 are injured / killed
- the enrage can be disabled for old content so it won't screw farmers

Nah i am fine with it as is. Melees have just been to dominant.

An dpeople commplaining about realism of aoe abilities: It is also highly unlikly, that 50 poeple stand in your personal space together

[Hitei]

This is a stupid change and will affect most of the player base. It makes no sense to hit 15 mobs and only 5 to actually take damage. What are the rest doing? Dodging like Neo in Matrix?
Hopefully they will reverse this.

Standing behind the others, not happening to be hit by projectiles, etc.

[Ophenia]

An dpeople commplaining about realism of aoe abilities: It is also highly unlikly, that 50 poeple stand in your personal space together

But when you throw a fiery meteor which will burn the ground, it doesn't make sense that enemies standing in the area of effect are not affected. I can get the explanation for "physical" attacks, but most magical should hit all enemies within the area of effect.

But I think nobody, not even Blizzard, thought about realism when implementing such caps. Otherwise they'd have implemented Friendly Fire on AoE spells a long time.

I understand the reason behind such change, but there were other solutions. More complex to implement, sure, Blizzard would have needed to think a bit more than adding a number in the code, but it was feasible. All that using existing game mechanics which would actively prevent you from pulling two packs at the same time because you'd get rekt by an enemy.

AoE pulls are optimal for few reasons.
- Big AoEs are fun/challenging, more than the slog of hitting a walking HP sponge
- Big AoEs are made possible by Blizzard themselves when they fill the instances with trash mobs
- Big AoEs are actually encouraged by Blizzard because they actually said that the key to succeed in Mythic + solely relies on a timer. If you could "3-chest" a dungeon by having a variety of criteria, that would change the gamestyle. Let's say "one chest" for timer, another for no death, another for achievement-like criteria (not failing to cut X ability from X mobs...), then you'd have to play more carefully and ensure you don't miss any cut for example.

[Dalheim]

Nah i am fine with it as is. Melees have just been to dominant.

An dpeople commplaining about realism of aoe abilities: It is also highly unlikly, that 50 poeple stand in your personal space together

*casts Rain of Grenades!*

[Ange]

We are a long way away from the rock, paper, scissors style of balance.

LEGIONs meta was 2 casters + 1 melee (read: ROGUE).
There are more melee players in the game and raiding is since a few years heavily shifted towars more range compositions with no hard punishment for full range compositions. LEGIONs M+ balance with overtuned range DPS, with overtuned affixes that could be cheesed with range compositions was just another insult at PVE balance.

BfA M+ was not melee dominated it was DH/Rogue dominated. People did not ask for enh shaman or ret paladins, they asked for ANOTHER rogue/dh for groups (weekly-push).

Raiding in shadowland did not turn overnight into the melee friendly environment and if M+ goes back to another range-only PVE mode, all we get is another LEGION for PVE.

BfA had more accepted group compositions as LEGION, I am not sure why people want LEGIONs limited options back.

[ClassicPeon]

This is a stupid change and will affect most of the player base. It makes no sense to hit 15 mobs and only 5 to actually take damage. What are the rest doing? Dodging like Neo in Matrix?
Hopefully they will reverse this.

I guess you didnt play a lot of the earlier expansions then

[Kithelle]

When you pull more than 5 mobs, they become enraged and the more you pull the more powerful that enrage will be, so :

- current content will stay challenging for those that like mass pulls
- no more awkward to hit 20 mobs but only 5 are injured / killed
- the enrage can be disabled for old content so it won't screw farmers

So you want them to develop a new system when a simple balance was done?

[Kaver]

for decades, caster were superiour when it came to aoe -.-

Not to mention being superior in raiding in general... but still they complain about melees.

[huth]

I understand the reason behind such change, but there were other solutions. More complex to implement, sure, Blizzard would have needed to think a bit more than adding a number in the code, but it was feasible. All that using existing game mechanics which would actively prevent you from pulling two packs at the same time because you'd get rekt by an enemy.

But would it really achieve the same goal without unnecessary effort and complexity? Remember that the goal wasn't to make AoE impossible in general, which is why it doesn't apply to all AoEs. In fact, any solution that isn't playerside wouldn't work for this reason, since it isn't meant to affect all abilities and specs equally.

For one, Meteor isn't hardcapped, it still works the same as before.

[Hyrican]

AOE stuff can be balanced around
- cooldown
- overall damage
- affected targets (and hard / soft cap)
- damage distribution (main target/secondaries)
- set up time due to needing debuffs on targets before (this can be like a soft cap as well if you need to apply with gcds)
- setup time due to resources (cp, energy, class ressource)
- duration
- damage profile (upfront, overtime, consistent, variable)

If the "easy to use, low cooldown, no setup, unlimited target cap, with upfront damage and few resource requirements" AOE is stronger or even just as strong as the "long setup time, damage over time" AOE.... people will jump to the easy AOE classes just because it is more rewarding for similar results.

You see this especially in Mythic+, not so much in Raiding.

No matter how it is brought in line... people will complain because it was stronger before for some specs especially compared to other specs.

I prefer keeping the feeling of the AOE the same (easy to use for example) but restricting the affected targets, so other AOE can feel rewarding as well if they are not so easy to use or optimize

[Nynax]

Not necessarily.

Blizzard has simply developed this weird fetish for taking ideas from Classic / TBC / Wotlk and throwing them into the game without any care why this specific thing "worked" in that era.

Back in the day, it was pretty simple, Melees were king for "Cleave" Situations (2-4 Targets), while casters started to take over at 5+ Targets, because their damage is uncapped (altough a upper cap also existed since TBC / Wotlk, which capped your damage whenever you hit 10 or more targets).

Difference is, back then, AoE wasn't that super common, not a sizeable chunk of your raid encounters featured AoE (it was actually rather rare) and on top of that, not every class was capable of doing solid AoE dps.
Some simply had to live with the fact that their dps sucked when a AoE situation occurred.

And 5man dungeons were just flyover content (in Wotlk at least), you didn't give a shit whether your daily heroic was cleared within 15 or 20 minutes, you just tried to be faster for the sake of saving time.

10 Years forward, AoE is now super common in raids, M+ is a staple part of the game and basically every spec can do a modicum of AoE, not to mention that a ton of specs have so called "Burst AoE" abilities to mow down entire trashpacks.

It just doesn't work, you can't take a philosophy from 10 years and throw it into the current game, AoE simply has become far too common within the game to make it subject to a philosophy where this whole thing was far more niche.

Ignoring the fact that some minor things such as clearing old raids (where said AoE cap is a real pain) wasn't a thing back then, at least not to the point where everybody expected it to be soloable by a fresh max level character.

Would you agree that the growth of AOE is directly related to the changes in Tanking design and the removal of threat management?

One of the biggest reasons groups tended to avoid large AOE situations was, imo, because it was harder to keep a tank alive and it was harder for the tank to keep the group alive. A mage going full aoe was a good way to get punched in the face by an angry mob. So there used to be a lot more focus on priority targets and passive cleave was really valued.