Because this is nothing to do with making M+ harder, and everything to do with reducing server load and bandwidth so they don't have to buy more kit to run WoW...
Because this is nothing to do with making M+ harder, and everything to do with reducing server load and bandwidth so they don't have to buy more kit to run WoW...
AoE cap is a ridiculous concept from perception. Am I supposed to believe that my Whirlwind only hits 5 targets out of 25 when they're all around my Warrior? Same for Eye Beam and Fan of Knives. It just doesn't make sense. Also I'm not sure what world you live in, but Demon Hunter was not used in "every single bfa m+ meta". All of Season 2 the meta was either 3 rogues or 2 rogues and a windwalker. Also the reason why Demon Hunters were in M+ the last two seasons was not because of their own damage, it was because of the unique buff they brought into M+ for casters. Rogue, yes. Demon Hunter, no. Demon Hunter has been pretty balanced on the damage front for pretty much the entire expansion.
The reality is there are better solutions than removing player's abilities. If you have a problem with the fundamental way that M+ is run, then fix the multi-pulling problem within the instances. Don't limit players by what they can/can't do, especially when the game has never been designed in such a way. This is going to be the next GCD thing, and mark my words, this will be reverted after Shadowlands.
Should i believe that your weapons can hit an unlimited amount of targets standing around you? How can an unlimited amount of targets even stand around you... and how can your strong hands not loose momentum hitting each of them without being just a tickle on the last guy?AoE cap is a ridiculous concept from perception.
Some specs already had limited aoe for several expansions.
People whining that they're now limited and brought in line with other specs are epitome of entitled whining emotional assholes.
Its the Dunning–Kruger effect in action, instead if sitting back and letting smart people, the one with analytical skills and knowledge doing the thinking they have this obsession so spew their emotion like they're important or matter
You really don't notice it too much in regular play.
I think the solution has to involve the tank either struggling to handle the incoming damage of 5+ mobs, whether that be through their natural damage or something else, or having threat problems. bringing back mob abilities like sunder armor may help. I much prefer keeping AoE uncapped, and as it stands the dps with bigger AoE caps are consistently outperforming those with lower caps, often even with 5 or less mobs pulled. It isn't balanced at all.
why is it a problem that hard but current content will have to be played differently than the old expansion content when it was current?
It is an intended change for multiple difficulties... with the only unintended side effects to old expansion trivial difficulty content.
Is it not okay that the difficulty of the highest m+ keys is not around how many mobs the tank/group can survive with interrupts and stuns but also how efficient they can AoE them down? Opportunity cost is a bit more complicated to calculate...
Not only do you have to have enough interrupts and stuns to control the big group, but also how efficient is it to just go bigger with a group if your damage does not increase linearly with the amount of mobs...
As long as a standard but experienced group can time a 15 with one group pull at a time.... all is fine at the lower end...
it might do the overall system good, if the timer does not reflect or revolve around the assumption that even in high end it is always the correct solution to pull 3-4 packs of 20 mobs together... affixes try to change that behaviour as well...
There is a reason why there are some "dangerous" mobs in most trash packs. AoE Cap is a different way to not just add 5 dangerous mobs per pack so you will die if you pull 2 let alone 3 groups... without affecting the difficulty curve as much if you play one pack only...
Last edited by Hyrican; 2020-10-28 at 04:57 PM.
To a certain extent, yes.
AoE was a more niche thing, because only one tank in the Pre Wotlk era was capable of handling AoE tanking properly, hence it made sense to keep AoE more niche.
However, i think there is also a line between "threat management" and AoE tanking, threat management at least implies that you were capable of not losing threat if you played properly, Feral and Prot Warrs just didn't have a proper path to AoE tank.
This whole "AoE tanking" niche was extremely tricky, because people started to pick on it in TBC and realized that having a prot pally was extremely valueable, which would have most certainly pushed both Feral and Prot Warr aside if Blizzard had not acted on it.
Another, rarely discussed issue, was that introduced in Wotlk, cooldowns, both offensive and defensive became more widespread.
If your tank started take a ton of damage in Classic or TBC, you could just heal and hope they survive, since Wotlk, they just pop a defensive CD to survive a big pull.
In a world where a tank wasn't capable of tanking an entire pack by popping a def CD to survive a damage intensive moment, you'd have more reason be a bit more reluctant to AoE every single pack.
It's something that you even have in Classic right now, if you pull 10+ mobs in the outdoor on retail, even as undergeared character you just pop CD's and most likely survive, pull one mob too many in Classic and you struggle already because you don't have CD's that significantly boost your damage / reduce damage taken.
However, it need to be said that as far as recent history is concerned, M+ is the biggest culprit, before that, AoE was in terms of dps just a niche like multi dotting, where some classes were just far better than others.
Now it's something like Single target dps which where every class must be good at else they suck for M+.
Which led to the arms race of "burst AoE" which further amplifies the issue because if one person nukes a pack into oblivion with burst, there's nothing left to AoE for other people.
To be honest, they could have implemented the very formula of their own WC3, which was a soft cap of sorts using a damage penalty for AoE: 0 penalty for <6 targets, 30% penalty for 6-8 targets, 60% for 9+. It's frankly more elegant, less clunky and at least as easy as the crappy 5 targets hard cap they went for.
Because that wouldnt solve the problem of some classes doing extreme dmg in aoe, but rather just put more weight on the tanks shoulders. Which then would cause a problem with certain tanks like blood getting 1shot while monks for example just shrug it off, which would narrow the meta even more.
So grats, you didnt solve a problem but rather created a new one aswell!
Originally Posted by Blizzard Entertainment
Instead of messing with AoE, they should have went back to requiring CC and making mobs hit too hard to group them up and AoE them down. Where using too much gratuitous AoE would break the CC and wipe the group. Basically like how vanilla and TBC were, before the Wrath AoE fest dungeons became a thing.
I have a few questions about the cap in regards to Barrage, because it's one of the abilities that I see as being most impacted by these changes. It has been, since it's inception, a wildly sketchy ability that is best used only in scenarios where you have no fear of pulling up extra mobs. With it being reduced to only 8 mobs now, how would Barrage choose which 8 targets to hit? Assume I'm aiming down a hallway lined with trash. If I have 20 mobs that are within Barrage's massive cone, does it choose the 8 targets closest to me and ignore the rest? Or does it pick random targets within Barrage's AOE? Assuming it does damage the 8 closet mobs, does it still cause threat to all mobs within it's cone?
Even if the ability does smartly damage the 8 closet mobs, and doesn't cause threat to other mobs within it's cone, you're still risking pulling that extra mob in a distant pack once you fall under 8 mobs in what you're fighting. It just seems like such a downgrade for Barrage, even considering this is an across the board nerf for AOE. The ability was always such a mixed bag, with it's drawback also being it's strength. It will tag everything in a 40+ yard cone. Now with a limited number of mobs it can damage, and still having this absurdly big AOE, it's looking like the drawback will far outweigh the reward.
Last edited by Joti; 2020-10-28 at 08:35 PM.
Horrible idea, the game would just kite-city and tanks getting global'd. Fixes absolutely 0 issues but creates far more of them.
The best solution would be Static Damage to the hard cap Say 100 dmg to 4 targets so 400 total any targets beyond that split the damage. So for 8 targets it hits them for 50 instead of 100....and so on and so on.
FF14 version of 100% to the first 75% to the second 50% to the third and 30% to all other targets would work too.
Nah, Cap is fine. It stops certain classes being too dominant in AoE situations.