AOE hard-cap implemented to reduce server lag.

[Kumorii]

Sorry.

But making a cap on AOE will not automatically make ANY scenario more interesting.

Nope, it's not guaranteed indeed.

[Kaver]

There's always going to be "Random procs." WE've had RNG procs for awhile now.

But there are so so many now. It’s getting ridiculous.

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Nope, it's not guaranteed indeed.

To make trash more interesting they need to give it more mechanics are make it more challenging. And that will by itself be a natural “AOE cap”. It will effectively reduce the amount of trash you can pull without causing negative effects for the rest of the game. Blizzard can create any scenario they want just by manipulating the mechanics of the trash. They shouldn’t need to enforce a cap.

[araine]

Cool so less latency out in the world and more interesting m+ beyond just aoe. Win-win.

Anything that removes the nonsense of zerg 5 groups and aoe is a great change each group should by themself be dangerous enough that you want to keep an close eye on casters so no casts goes off and if you have CC you would want to use it as well. than we have good balance

[Kaver]

Anything that removes the nonsense of zerg 5 groups and aoe is a great change each group should by themself be dangerous enough that you want to keep an close eye on casters so no casts goes off and if you have CC you would want to use it as well. than we have good balance

Zerg groups are only a thing because people are doing too easy content.

[Pheraz]

Cool so less latency out in the world and more interesting m+ beyond just aoe. Win-win.

Yeah this AOE zerg fest nonsense needs to end. Imagine standing in front of a pack, CCing 3 out of 5? Like... in TBC heroics (pre-nerf). That would be cool (IMO).
The only downside is that clearing old raids needs a little bit longer but not all of them. For example in nighthold many of that damn horde-elves reset after 20 meters and run back.

[Blackrunner01]

There's always going to be "Random procs." WE've had RNG procs for awhile now.

3x Azerite Pieces with a potential of 5 rings of Random Procs (Probably 2-3 Average pr. Item)
4x Azerite Essences, most of which are random or do a check every second
Corruption Gear, most people have Stat corruptions, or multiple of the same (Rank 8-9 Twilight Devastation, but some have multiple different (X% chance to proc Y stat for Z seconds / Tentacle / Idk I only use stat ones).

It's an obscene amount.

Zerg groups are only a thing because people are doing too easy content.

The game doesn't incentivize you do to do anything above a 15, so why would most people, and Blizzard is hellbent on not making M+ an alternative gearing method to raiding so I don't see that changing.

[Jonnusthegreat]

Yeah this AOE zerg fest nonsense needs to end. Imagine standing in front of a pack, CCing 3 out of 5? Like... in TBC heroics (pre-nerf). That would be cool (IMO).
The only downside is that clearing old raids needs a little bit longer but not all of them. For example in nighthold many of that damn horde-elves reset after 20 meters and run back.

The current situation isn't CCing 3 out of 5... it's CCing 20 out of 20 because have have CCs that don't cap.

EDIT: I think I quoted the wrong person...

[huth]

We're seeing Issues on Classic too (albeit with much larger clusters of players), and that's with a larger GCD and fewer AOE abilities.

If you can double or triple the number of players before anything serious happens, you're already in a good spot. It isn't fully preventable, and data load grows faster with increasing player number(adding a player means both sending everybody the new players data, sending everybodies data to the new player and increasing the amount of data that needs to be sent due to the new player being an additional actor. Especially if they start spamming AoEs), so even being able to add a few more players without being significantly affected is a major improvement.

[CalamityHeart]

This is so obvious. Of course Blizzard are trying to claim it’s because of gameplay reasons. But that is BS.

Ion said himself in an interview that the server lag is mainly caused by all the random procs in the game especially in AOE situations. So what is the easiest and most lazy solution to fix this?.. an AOE HARD-cap.

If it was for gameplay reasons as Blizzard claims then they could easily have made an AOE soft-cap. But a soft-cap would not have reduced the random procs and therefore they are making hard-cap. It’s so obviously just a lazy solution to a problem that Blizzard have created themselves by making the gameplay of WoW based on a million random procs.

There IS an AOE soft-cap. It's 20. And it's currently been in place since MoP, when before, that soft-cap was 10. It's still in place for a lot of AOE abilities. There are much fewer uncapped abilities right now on live than there are soft-capped ones.

Also, there's no reason for this to be a one-or-the-other situation. It's completely valid for the new AOE changes to have been put in place for certain abilities both to reduce the prominence of AoE as a meta-defining mechanic and maybe with the added benefit of putting less stress on servers on the side.

It just sounds more to me like your "non-lazy solution" to the problem of AOE is to not do anything about it. Which is valid, I guess. Not everyone likes these changes, it's clear. I personally don't mind them, especially considering that my main spec, Demonology, has pretty much come out unscathed. But even on the other specs I play that are getting affected, the only thing that's really going to change in my gameplay is my damage numbers in certain situations that probably will happen a lot less now. And that, in itself, is fine. I was never convinced that this would actually heavily upset my gameplay, and I'm still not.

I just kind of wish people would argue about this stuff in better faith. Or at least in better-informed faith. Whenever I see people talking about the AOE changes, they make it sound like every single ability in the game with an AOE mechanic is going to be crunched down to only be able to hit a max of 8 targets, when that's not exactly the case.

For anyone curious or don't know about exactly what's changing or what AOE will look like tomorrow, here:

This is a list of all the abilities that are actually changing.

And this is a list of pretty much all the AOE abilities in the game and how they're capped. Most of the abilities on this list have always been capped this way; it's not a reflection of what's going to be changing with Shadowlands, just how it'll all look.

Just for clarification's sake.

[Blackrunner01]

If you can double or triple the number of players before anything serious happens, you're already in a good spot. It isn't fully preventable, and data load grows faster with increasing player number(adding a player means both sending everybody the new players data, sending everybodies data to the new player and increasing the amount of data that needs to be sent due to the new player being an additional actor. Especially if they start spamming AoEs), so even being able to add a few more players without being significantly affected is a major improvement.

Yeah I made that argument at the start of the thread too, but I can excuse you for not knowing that

[huth]

3x Azerite Pieces with a potential of 5 rings of Random Procs (Probably 2-3 Average pr. Item)
4x Azerite Essences, most of which are random or do a check every second
Corruption Gear, most people have Stat corruptions, or multiple of the same (Rank 8-9 Twilight Devastation, but some have multiple different (X% chance to proc Y stat for Z seconds / Tentacle / Idk I only use stat ones).

It's an obscene amount.

Exactly, we're having a very large amount of procs currently, especially ones that get checked on every target rather than, say, only on cast. And many of those are going poof this week.

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Yeah I made that argument at the start of the thread too, but I can excuse you for not knowing that

We already got a page just between me reading a post and finishing my answer, it's kinda hard to keep track of stuff right now.

[araine]

Zerg groups are only a thing because people are doing too easy content.

Like i said this fixes the problem Zerg and TD proccing was never about skill it was about who got lucky with the most procs

[bloomy]

They could have taken an easier route that would have also been better for the game by reintroducing snapshotting back into the game. It would increase the skill ceiling for any dot classes, make the game fun again from a dps perspective, and at the same time reduce the amount of calculations the servers need to make in combat.

The fact that they don't realize how bad removing it from the game was shows how out of touch they are and have been ever since the end of MoP.

[Kaver]

The game doesn't incentivize you do to do anything above a 15, so why would most people, and Blizzard is hellbent on not making M+ an alternative gearing method to raiding so I don't see that changing.

That's also a mistake from Blizzard in my opinion. But if they just implement the AOE cap without making the trash anymore challenging then it will just result in M+ being slower and more boring.

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Like i said this fixes the problem Zerg and TD proccing was never about skill it was about who got lucky with the most procs

I think this comment is pretty misplaced to be honest.

[Kokolums]

Was server lag a problem? Literally never had an issue at any level of raiding or mythic +

I just did some world pvp in nazjatar last night and everyone complained about massive server lag. Even I felt it badly. I would cast a spell and it would take 3-5 seconds for it to go off. Several times, I had to stop and do something else until the crowd of players thinned out. Blizz badly needs to upgrade their servers to actually offer an MMO experience but they don't care.

[Kaver]

There IS an AOE soft-cap. It's 20. And it's currently been in place since MoP, when before, that soft-cap was 10. It's still in place for a lot of AOE abilities. There are much fewer uncapped abilities right now on live than there are soft-capped ones.

Also, there's no reason for this to be a one-or-the-other situation. It's completely valid for the new AOE changes to have been put in place for certain abilities both to reduce the prominence of AoE as a meta-defining mechanic and maybe with the added benefit of putting less stress on servers on the side.

It just sounds more to me like your "non-lazy solution" to the problem of AOE is to not do anything about it. Which is valid, I guess. Not everyone likes these changes, it's clear. I personally don't mind them, especially considering that my main spec, Demonology, has pretty much come out unscathed. But even on the other specs I play that are getting affected, the only thing that's really going to change in my gameplay is my damage numbers in certain situations that probably will happen a lot less now. And that, in itself, is fine. I was never convinced that this would actually heavily upset my gameplay, and I'm still not.

I just kind of wish people would argue about this stuff in better faith. Or at least in better-informed faith. Whenever I see people talking about the AOE changes, they make it sound like every single ability in the game with an AOE mechanic is going to be crunched down to only be able to hit a max of 8 targets, when that's not exactly the case.

For anyone curious or don't know about exactly what's changing or what AOE will look like tomorrow, here:

This is a list of all the abilities that are actually changing.

And this is a list of pretty much all the AOE abilities in the game and how they're capped. Most of the abilities on this list have always been capped this way; it's not a reflection of what's going to be changing with Shadowlands, just how it'll all look.

Just for clarification's sake.

I agree with a lot of what you say.

I think introducing a hard AOE cap without doing anything else is lazy. I know there is a soft cap already but that had nothing to do with my point.

Blizzard have created a huge problem in the game by introducing a heavily proc-based gameplay. It causes a great deal of lag in AOE situations and now they are trying to fix it with a hard-cap which will have negative effects on other parts of the game. They should fix the problem by addressing the problem which is procs.

Another AOE based problem is the "brain dead" AOE pulling in M+. But this is caused by the trash being too easy which allows people to pull big. If Blizzard simply introduce a hard cap without making the trash any more challenging then dungeons will just become boring. And if they make trash harder then the AOE cap will not be needed because it will come naturally because the trash is harder.

[Stricks]

I'm SO ANGRY!

[Xjan]

So, they should just be honest about it.

Ah yes, the moral victory.

[Kaver]

I'm SO ANGRY!

Me too. Call Blizzard and yell at them!

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Ah yes, the moral victory.

You now what wasn't a moral victory.... BFA. That was a piece of shit.

[Asrialol]

But I mean, they have to make trash packs harder to compensate for the cap right? So I assume they are already doing it?

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I mean, there are some trash packs that are like.. Either overtuned or just made to be skipped. It really does feel like BFA season 1. However, I haven't done enough m+ on beta to be comfortable with every trash pack, every boss, etc. Plus I'm the healer so there are probably mechanics trash does that I haven't paid much attention to, etc.

For the average m+ player, it will probably feel a lot harder, mostly due to all the changes and the dungeons being new. Going to take some time before people get a feel for it.