AOE nerfed for everyone

[Fat Tire]

Area-of-Effect Damage Caps: We’ve redesigned the way area damage is capped when hitting many targets. Instead of a hard cap on total damage done, the game now caps the total damage done at a value equal to the damage the spell would do if it hit 10 targets. In other words, if a spell does 1000 damage to each target, it would hit up to 10 targets for 1000 each, but with more than 10 targets, each target would take 1000 damage divided by the number of targets. 20 targets would be hit for 500 damage each in that example.


http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/patchnotes/test-realm-patchnotes.html




Edit: no idea on this really. Just posting it.

[jettzypher]

interesting, i think though that this will really only affect PvP.

[Smoooth]

It shouldn't affect PvP much. When is there ever more than 10 players in range of 1 AoE? This will really put a damper on boosting though.

[blast3r]

It shouldn't affect PvP much. When is there ever more than 10 players in range of 1 AoE? This will really put a damper on boosting though.

When I run my mages in to protect galv i hit way more than 10 at a time! This sucks for me.

[heyaz]

Oh yeah that's going to ruin big pulls when boosting. Gonna consecrate for like 20 per tick

[asonimie]

I'll consecrate YOU for 20 per tick.

[Slats]

Like TOTALLY IN THE FASE amirite? :)

I might jump on PTR since I have it setup already tonight, I'll go pull SM Cath and see what happens.

At least if it takes 4 hours to kill them I wont die. :)

[Ualaa]

So basically, no target can take more then the maximum damage for the AoE spell.
And up to 10 targets will take the full damage.
But pulls in excess of 10 targets will result in less then full damage per cast.

Still, with 4x or 5x toons doing AoE, for example 4x Magma + 1x Consecrate, that's an awful lot of AoE in one area.
Not sure how many mobs at once we get.. with say all green slimes for the Neutralize the Plague quest in Icecrown.
Aside from boosting, how often do we have more then 10 targets in one AoE?

As far as our toons go, most of us will still take full damage from any type of AoE.
But, when we're bunched up with several other players, each AoE will hurt a lot less.

[Slats]

This could infact tie in with potential changes to block mitigating a % of damage vs blocking fixed damage amounts. They might allow this to scale with level so that you can still block a huge portion of incoming attacks and to balance out things like boosting or tanking every guard in a captial city they make it so you cant output big damage while doing it.

Just a thought.

[Eggy]

Well, that's going to suck for PLing.

[Otlecs]

Yeah, this is all about nerfing boost tactics rather than PvP. I'm not really sure why they feel the need to do that though.....

[Whowantstoknow]

This is potentially a buff depending on whether you are already hitting the aoe cap for a spell as now the cap will scale with gear. It is a little unclear if spells with no (or very high) caps (eg DnD, FoK, Cons) are getting capped or not

[Naysayer]

How are we supposed to handle it if we get knocked into the whelps after this change? minus 50dkp :(

[Jubber]

or trying for the LEEEROY title?

[Multibocks]

Wow this change is AWFUL for onyxia. Whelps might just overwhelm some groups that rely on a few casters to AoE them down. Like Onyxia wasnt already a caster fight, thanks to phase 2. Stupid blizzard.

[EaTCarbS]

yea this will suck... good thing I'll be done boosting before then =P

[Whowantstoknow]

Like I said for most raiding casters this will be a buff as they hit their caps pretty quicky. This change was made specifically with onyxia and icecrown in mind.

[Multibocks]

How is it a buff to hit your cap quickly? Sounds like a nerf to me, my PuG raiding rogue is not happy (FoKing not happy!)

Rogue could hit unlimited targets for the same amount, this now nerfs that into oblivion.

[Whowantstoknow]

Most AoE spells are already capped. If you hit the cap already then this will be a buff as the cap will now scale with gear ie the cap will increase as your gear increases. At the moment the cap is the same for someone in greens as someone in ilevel 258 epics.

This will be a nerf to AoEs that are currently uncapped eg FoK, DND, Cons if they are included in this change (which as I said before is not clear at this point as some of the uncapped aoes are important tanking tools)