A decent example here is Destruction Warlock, with Fire and Brimstone duplicating every cast of Incinerate onto nearby targets (for reduced damage). Though, even this suffers from the problem I have with AoE encounters generally, because you start having to ground-target Rain of Fire over and over and over again as a followup.
I think the divide between single target and AoE fights has become a major point of annoyance for me over the years. Now that every pull in a dungeon consists of the tank sprinting as fast as they can to pull the highest number of possible mobs to kill, the single target rotation of any given spec only ever seems to matter during boss fights.
I don’t really like spamming a sequence of AoE abilities for the entire dungeon run, to be honest. I’d love to see more options that create cleave/multi-target without needing to switch my button stance back and forth depending on how many targets my tank has decided to pull.
Compounding onto this issue is the fact that manual ground-targeted AoE spells are simply not fun to use in fast-paced encounters. Finding my mouse cursor in all the chaos is a chore, and ensuring that it lands right where I want it can sometimes be complicated by environment layouts, latency issues, and unpredictable tank movement (because some of them just can’t sit still).
I want more options that provide decent AoE/Cleave without the need to completely shift between two distinct rotational playstyles.
I love Arcane Mage as a concept, but when it comes to AoE I’m not that enamored with standing there spamming arcane explosion. It doesn’t feel nearly as satisfying as managing Arcane Blast stacks and feeling the increased impact from each subsequent charge. Arcane Explosion feels like a weak button, but it’s still optimal when there are enough targets compared to the main draw of the spec–which is building up damage with Arcane Blast.
I want to see more options that cleave my primary damage dealers to nearby targets in some fashion or another, passively and without the need for another round of buttons to set it up.
Outlaw rogues have Blade Flurry, which provides a nice AoE spread for your standard rotation–but it’s on a 30 second cooldown with 10 seconds of effectiveness, so that’s just another clunky button with a short cooldown to keep track of.
I want to see Blade Flurry become either a toggle (like it was in the past) or just a straight up passive that always hits nearby enemies for some percentage of the damage dealt to the primary target.
I want to see Affliction Warlocks get a talent which causes their DoT spells to spread around like a disease of some kind. Maybe every tick of Corruption and Bane of Agony will spread it to another nearby enemy, so it has some ramp-up time but each tick spreads it to twice as many enemies as the last one until there’s full coverage.
I want to see Trick Shots become a Marksman hunter passive, where Aimed Shot and Rapid Fire always hit extra nearby targets without the need to clunkily cast Multi-shot before every round of it.
I want to see Flame Shock spread the same way as corruption and bane of agony above (can reduce the proc chance for instant lava burst on additional targets if you want), I want Lightning Rod to be a passive cleave effect rather than something that requires additional setup, or at least let Chain Lightning tag things with the effect.
Give me splash damage on Arcane Blast, give me ways to choose and enjoy my class’ main rotation without having to account for how boring it is to switch to its AoE spam variant for 85% of a dungeon run.
There are classes I love to play single-target, but I dislike them a lot during AoE sections, which means that more than half of the time I’m playing a class that I dislike just so I can play the “other version” of the class which I like during single target encounters.
It’s just such a strange forced dichotomy where every spec has two forms, and sometimes one form is vastly superior to the other, but if you’re not using AoE during huge pulls you might as well not be playing the game at all.
Obviously all of these passive AoE options would be on choice nodes with significant power attached, and I would be content if the “easier” talent choices performed less efficiently than their more complicated alternatives (~5-10% difference, not much more than that)
I just want to play my classes the fun way, not the AoE way.