AOE Spell limit? What are your thoughts?

[jellmoo]

What in the world makes you think some classes having utter garbage AOE due to capped potential will result in a lesser delta than what we currently have, though? I'd have faith if they just left it the fuck alone and did some actual numbers tuning like they always say they're going to (one half-assed pass isn't enough, and never will be... looking at you corruptions). They literally never iterate enough for the delta to be noticeably different. This just another in a long line of "monkey throwing darts at a dart board" design choices where they hope "maybe this fixes it! This seems interesting and new, right!?" that will never pan out. THey need to stop with this crap and just do numbers tuning, while removing all extraneous (ap, covenets, etc) systems. Get the base game right first, then introduce new stuff once you prove that out, then tune that new stuff.

"Utter garbage AOE" is hyperbole though. Having no idea what the numbers will look like, or the encounters, you simply cannot say that.

There is merit to making choices have an impact. If the solution to everything is to just AOE it down, and there is no variation to it, then the best option will always be the same (making the class/spec that does this the best, well... the best). If they change this dynamic to include more variables (sometimes pure AOE is better, sometimes cleave is better) we may have a situation where the meta is less rigid. But when cleave is pretty much interchangeable with AOE, we end up with the situation where casters just get boned. Tuning won't fix that.

If you're instinct is to simply think "Blizzard can't do it right, they never do anything right!" well, it's kind of hard to argue anything. There comes a point where you either give them the benefit of the doubt to at least try, or you just have to accept the system and its flaws the way it is.

[Barzotti]

I can't wait to see MDI with those aoe changes, it will be glorious (hint: it won't).

[Xorzor]

I don't see why the changes were necessary. "Balance" as a reason is about as believable as Sylvanas secretly being one of the good guys.

[potis]

Not even sure why people are complaining.

Apart from the MDI and a bit higher key pushers, so maybe the 1-2% of the population (Not talking +20-25s, even the +17-20s are high keys compared to the 99%) this doesnt affect the 99% of the playerbase.

Sure, you will need to press 5 more buttons in your transmog run and it will last 3 minutes and 25 seconds instead of 3 minutes because you had to cleave separate packs.

At world quests? Big fucking deal, most mobs are placed miles apart, by the time you pull the 5th the first is dead by someone else.

And adds spawning in raids? If its a problem, they will adapt things, its not like you will be capped and they will add 30 adds suddenly when they never did before.

99% of the time in the game you are hitting 3 to 5 targets in any content, the 99% thinks M+5 requires anything other than having your monitor turned on and pulls pack by pack which is generally 3 to 5 targets ,what is the difference?

[Cyanu]

i think that seperating cleave from wild west aoe is a cool idea and allows more room to have different specs excel in different things, it will probably be good for M+ balance too

[Saltysquidoon]

If anything it needs MORE nerfing.

Look how the MDI played out - pull 30 mobs onto a boss, do 1m DPS with your UH DK AoE, gg. That's degenerate and detrimental to both balancing and the experience.

Target-capped AoE is a great way to address this. In many pulls it won't even be any different, which is exactly what you want: stop the bad stuff, don't impact the regular stuff.

Best part is the AoE changes don't even impact unholy's aoe, The damage all comes from the triple dip of dots, sores and epidemic all feeding back into each other.

[Huntingbear_grimbatol]

Not sure yet.
Still trying to figure out the reason behind this change.

I see they are, unfortunately, trying to somehow emulate wow classic in some ways, and I have to say that this worries me.

The reason? Blizzard wants to make CLEAVE mechanics (2-5 targets) and be stronger than AoE mechanics (6+ targets).
I'm not entirely sure why there are some abilities with 8 target limit, maybe trying to make some middle ground?

The goal, I think, is to make specs that are cleave specialists and that's their niche. That means these specs are better on hitting 5 targets than AoE and 8 target specialists, I do wonder where multi-dotting lands in this though.

Imagine you have a Fury Warrior , Unholy Death Knight and a Frost Mage available for a raid encounter which has 5 target cleave most of the time. Who best fits this niche? The Fury Warrior. But the next boss has full out AoE, so you bring the Frost Mage, the final boss has 8 targets that are important to dps down so you bring the Unholy DK for that.

Same goes for Torghast and Mythic+.
If you make a group full of Single Target specs, you build and pull around that.
If you make a group full of Cleave specs, you build and pull around that.
If you make a group full of AoE specs, you build and pull around that.


TL,DR:
Blizzard wants to bring back performance niches, end of the "everyone can AoE" design and back to a time where classes were different. (at least more different than they are now)

- - - Updated - - -

Best part is the AoE changes don't even impact unholy's aoe, The damage all comes from the triple dip of dots, sores and epidemic all feeding back into each other.

Unholy DK being full AoE is fine as long as they don't beat Cleave (5 target) specs on 5 targets... that's (as far as I understand) the goal of Blizzard with the target limit changes.
If you have a Fury Warrior (cleave 5) and a Unholy DK (AoE) in your raid then your Fury Warrior should beat the Unholy DK on every fight until there's 6 mobs available.
"But what about M+?"
If you have 30 mobs that needs to be killed and you have 2 groups (Gr.A and Gr.B):
Gr.A is a cleave group, they pull 5 mobs at a time and clear them in 2 minutes.
Gr.B is a AoE group, they pull all 30 mobs at the same time and clear them in 2 minutes.
...and there you go, suddenly you open high end M+ and MDI to a ton more specs and strategies. Is there still going to be a meta that everyone will play? Sure, maybe. But you'll see more diversity, which is always good!

[Boricha]

I think it's fine as long as they design around it. If we regularly have to aoe trash packs with 6+ mobs then it will be annoying. I wish it was more uniform rather than abilities ranging from 5-8 targets. Since tanks are uncapped for threat reasons, I could see the potential for another MoP prot warrior to rise up if not tuned right.

[Kalisandra]

Until legion these abilities were all target capped, legion is when it changed. There will still be able. But abilities that were once powerful Cleve are returning to such.

There is a difference between aoe that hits unlimited targets for 10k each. And Cleve that hits 8 targets for 20k each.

The cap was put in in MoP I think. Above the cap, the damage you'd do to the cap number of mob is divided between all targets, so going slightly over 'cap' was okay, but going a lot over it slowed everything right down. It was later removed, as part of the reason for the cap was to encourage smaller pulls to make life easier on the game engine (server, client, and connection), and with improving tech this became less important (this is also why WoD moved towards fewer spells using one-second ticks and back to the three-second ticks common in vanilla).

This time it's about cutting down the "round 'em all up, AoE 'em all down" tactics prevalent at the moment, and also trying to distinguish between 'cleave' (large melee), and 'AoE' (largely casters). Though 'cleave' now seems to mean 'up to five targets', when once it tended to mean 'two or three targets, maybe four'. I do also see a sort of middle-AoE category, where the spell is capped at 8 targets.

I'm pretty much 'eh' about it at the moment. How it's implemented will be the key - if the DPS per target of 'cleave' specs is made higher than that of 'AoE' specs, such that cleave wins on 5- targets, and AoE wins on 7+ targets (roughly speaking) and there are plenty of opportunities for both to shine, it'll be cool. If there's practically never a chance to mass-pull (so cleave always wins), or it's back to the current "all AoE, all the time" thing, it won't be cool at all.

[Saltysquidoon]

Unholy DK being full AoE is fine as long as they don't beat Cleave (5 target) specs on 5 targets... that's (as far as I understand) the goal of Blizzard with the target limit changes.
If you have a Fury Warrior (cleave 5) and a Unholy DK (AoE) in your raid then your Fury Warrior should beat the Unholy DK on every fight until there's 6 mobs available.

What you're suggesting is not as simple as you think, For example, Aff's new soul shard spender is epidemic (each doted enemy explodes damaging each other enemy near it). If what you're describing is even close to how balance shakes out aff would be a dumpster spec in every boss fight forever.

If you have 30 mobs that needs to be killed and you have 2 groups (Gr.A and Gr.B):
Gr.A is a cleave group, they pull 5 mobs at a time and clear them in 2 minutes.
Gr.B is a AoE group, they pull all 30 mobs at the same time and clear them in 2 minutes.

Unholy, BM (and affs now) damage is exponential with the number of targets (because each new target becomes a damage source for each other target). Under the situation you described the only way the cleave group could ever compete is if dot specs did like 1/4 of the single-target damage of every other class.
It would be far simpler to limit how many adds the tank can tank (since the limit on unholy, bm's and now afflictions damage is essentially the limit of how many adds the tank can stay alive through).

[tearsofflame]

I think it will suck in the short term, but be good in the long run. Changing the group em up and aoe em down mentality allows for more diverse groups to form.

Why fix something that isnt broken though

[Weeps]

I think this is more in response to M+ cheesing

[Duravian]

I think this is more in response to M+ cheesing

And this is why people are saying that min/maxers elite players are taking away the fun for most of the playerbase.

[Rilas13]

Why fix something that isnt broken though

Because it will allow for more diverse M+ group comps. No more stacking the obvious for the best runs making everyone want the same specs. Now there will potentially be optimal setups from dungeon to dungeon and affix to affix that vary widely.

[Stickiler]

Why fix something that isnt broken though

It's absolutely, demonstrably broken though.

[Cosmic Janitor]

And this is why people are saying that min/maxers elite players are taking away the fun for most of the playerbase.

Which is obviously a moronic statement, as the only cases where you realistically encounter >8 mobs is in outdated content or when cheesing m+, so the scrubs are barely impacted by this at all in the first place. In fact, this is mostly melee only class players whinging that they aren't absolutely best with zero effort anymore.

[Kagthul]

I just want every class to be capable of churning out the same total DPS numbers on every boss fight when played to the same level of competency. Is that really so much to ask?

Cant tell is srs, joking, or just handicapped.

Yeah, its too much to ask, unless you want all classes to have the exact same abilities and rotation with different color particles.

[schwarzkopf]

I like it - good to see things moving back to the good old days when low risk AoE had diminishing returns.

Get to start PLAYING the game again.

[Ragnarohk]

I personally think it's called AREA of Effect for a reason. I dont want my rain of fire hitting 5 people when its supposed to hit everything makes no sense.

Remove the limit of area of effect.

It's good. Finally cleave as a concept comes back.

Some abilities cleavr and some AoE

Good change

[Th3Scourge]

It wont happen, in the same way they wont ever nerf Blood DK self healing.

Dumbest comment of the day award goes to you. Bonestorm got a massive nerf to self-healing in 8.1, along with general Blood survivability in significantly reduced armour.