Shadowlands Class Changes - AoE Capped Abilities

[Assumi]

Change the AoE for every class in-game because of MDI mythic+, what a great idea.

This is a game that's always been screwed because of balance changes to 1 aspect of the game being applied globally, be it Arenas, M+ or whatever else because the devs absolutely refuse to differentiate ability performance between content types.

[loras]

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".

I didn't play during MoP, so that explains why i was unaware of that attempt, kinda happy that they give it another shot but yeah the apparant randomness of it is just striking.
Even just from a communication standpoint you'd want people to be able to develop some kind of feeling for what abilities will do, so the random inconsistency just seems... bad.

[Pury]

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.

[Nevcairiel]

"This change aims to broaden the field of tactical options in Mythic+ and more clearly differentiate the strengths of classes in a variety of AoE situations."

I don't know how this is the perception when the majority of them 5 target cap. It'd be different it was like Rogue 5 target and Ret Pally 10 targets, but when they're the same value there is no way to "differentiate" because they're all the same(exactly the same way now) and you go off the utility of the class(exactly how it is now).

There are abilities that hit 8, and there are abilities that are still full AoE, not listed above. So the entire theory works out fine.

[Baneto]

This is a game that's always been screwed because of balance changes to 1 aspect of the game being applied globally, be it Arenas, M+ or whatever else because the devs absolutely refuse to differentiate ability performance between content types.

Yeah, instead of putting the AoE-cap just for the MDI tournament they decide every player has to be affected by it.

Makes zero sense.

[TheWorkingTitle]

They are dictating how we will play which is horse shit. If I want to attack 50 mobs, I should be able to. What will happen in 40v40 battlegrounds? What a fucking joke man.

[kaintk]

what a stupid concept seriously, you see your aoe, swing whatever go throught a mob who is over cap the change and he feel nothing

blizzard are just stupid monkeys at this point who dont care about one single thing like logic gameplay, at least make them take less dmg or something, but visually, a aoe spell who touch a mob should do dmg lol

[Unlimited Power]

I still don't think a hard AoE cap is the right direction. Split the damage out among the targets hit if you have to do something, it's basically how abilities worked since patch 2.2 with a 10 target softcap that was increased to 20 in 5.2, and this remained unchanged up until Legion, at least as far as I'm aware. Doing legacy dungeons with any class that doesn't have an ability without a hard AoE cap is gonna be severely hindered by this change.

[Sinaa]

Mop's soft cap was WAY WAY WAY better..

[Lazuli]

Yet another garbage change.. and really 5 targets on divine storm LOL cucked

[Sentynel]

Ah yes, Shamans and their Meteors

Shaman's Fire elemental has a Meteor ability.

[Raugnaut]

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!

[Eapoe]

What I’m mainly curious about is numbers tuning. If Blizzard is trying to make things more equal and balanced with capping AoE targets are they going to actually adjust numbers so a DH does roughly the same amount of damage from an Eyebeam window that a Hunter who spams MS with Beast cleave will do?

[barackohmama]

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.

"Muh casters require so much more brainpower than melee"

[playplayplay]

You guys realize in that most scenarios this will be a damage increase? Damage modifiers have gone up alot(100%)in some cases. The only time it's less damage is in those few instances where a raid boss has a crap ton of low hp adds that die in <5-10 seconds anyways. Overall whenever you're switching to AoE rotations of 5+ targets you will be doing more damage. Chill

[kubuntu]

So Eyebeam (aka the biggest AE Clusterfuck) stays the Same?

no there is DR on Eyebeam, every target after 1st one is hit for less less and less, there is graph for that, Eyebeam hiting 20 target with that DR do same damage as if it hit 5 target with no DR

[Zka]

So they nerfed aoe to rebalance m+ but noone will farm m+ now that the rewards are poopy?

[lunethzero]

Yet another garbage change.. and really 5 targets on divine storm LOL cucked

And since thats pretty much all of their AOE outside of consecrate which does terrible damage to begin with I'm not sure how they'll compare to classes that can hit 8 targets like warriors.

[Vilendor]

It feels like Ion's design philosophy is "how can we make the gaming experience more miserable and restricted"

When a whole expansion's main theme is "how we want/let you to play the game" there needs to be changes.
They literally suck out the fun and interesting ways of the game

[Kaver]

don't give them idea's, before you know it whole of orgrimmar/stormwind is full with pink bunnies

It’s just such a typical Blizzard solution to a problem. Imagine if Blizzard was a personal trainer:

- Problem: Person being overweight and wants to get more fit.

- Blizzard solution: Put shit in their food so they eat less.

Blizzards solutions somehow always end up making the game less fun.