[Breccia]

The most recent PTR notes have said the following regarding AoE:
"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."

I worry about two things:
a) AoE Tanking looks like it just got a bit harder on large groups. Any damage lost is threat lost, and people using single-target attacks will find themselves pulling more often because of it.
b) Some bosses throw out very large numbers of adds at a time. Onyxia, for example, supposedly drops 40 whelps at a time. Area Effects will probably do somewhere between half and a quarter of their original effect, meaning it takes two to four times longer (also mana spent) to get them to drop.

I sincerely doubt this change will affect the way bosses do raidwide damage. Is there an upside I'm missing? How can tanks react to such changes when AoE's are the standard for large groups of adds that need to be killed quickly?

Breccia

[Pruke]

You have to remember all aoe will be capped. So if you have a ton of mobs and are not able to do damage to all of them, then neither is your dps. Not to mention a pull that big will more then likely have 2 tanks. Just my initial opinion.

[Bashal]

a) AoE DPS will suffer the same penalty, so threat-wise, it's a wash. Single-target DPSers, as always, should not be attacking some random target glued to the tank. They should be assisting off the tank to hit his primary target (the one with the most threat built up on it). DPS get themselves killed all the time as it is for that very reason, so no difference there.

b) I guess they didn't like the current efficiency level of AoE DPS. :P We'll adjust.

[Liar]

Tanks aren't AoE damage capped now while DPS already is, I don't see why this would change in 3.3. The AoE damage cap change is just for DPS, not us.

[sam-rexxar]

I remember a time, aoe effekts behavior exactly like this.. Vanilla in later Ahn Qiraj I think. It was removed, and now it came out as an new change.. funny ,)

If it go online like this, the AoE Tank abilitys from the 2 tanking classes which are at the moment a little behind (Warrior / Bear) would fall even more behind.

Paladins and DK shurly will not be affected in the same way. Consecration ,Having Frost Fever and BP on a lot of Targets and Death & Decay will shurly not reduced. Like it is at the moment.

So it will be again: there where some tanks which tank the groups, and others where picking out the hard hitting mobs.

[Synapse]

On DKs: the "aoe" damage of diseases is not aoe, it's just an aoe application. That damage shouldn't be changed at all.

On AoE damage cap: That will actually increase aoe damage of large pulls. There's no difference between tanks and dpsers there, so it's a very small difference.
On Single targets against aoe: If they are not attacking the tank's primary target, they're doing it wrong. Nothing changes.


The only point of this change was to increase the total damage done of AOE attacks. Currently, there is a damage limit and it'll be spread evenly, so the more mobs, the less damage the aoe does per person. It's a true damage cap. This change will turn it into a per-mob damage cap, so adding more mobs will still mean the aoe does more damage.

[Breccia]

Source: Synapse The only point of this change was to increase the total damage done of AOE attacks. Currently, there is a damage limit and it'll be spread evenly, so the more mobs, the less damage the aoe does per person. It's a true damage cap. This change will turn it into a per-mob damage cap, so adding more mobs will still mean the aoe does more damage.

I'm not sure that's the case. Quoting the PTR patch notes, "the game now caps the total damage done at a value equal to the damage the spell would do if it hit 10 targets". They use an example that says a spell that does 1,000 damage to each of 10 targets would do 500 to each of 20.

From what I have seen and been told, the total damage cap on most AoE's is higher than the damage done on 10 targets. If that's true, the new damage cap would be lower than the current one.

[WarTotem]

The only change is that instead of a fixed number the cap now scales. The problem is that for some classes/spec, that hardcap was lying far higher than 10 targets.