Title says it all, why after 15 years are they gimping AOE? Seems silly that now, after all these years and their new quest to unprune things involves them putting a limit on how many mobs we can hit at once.
I just don’t get it.
22 Likes
Here has been some variation of an aoe target/damage cap from patch 2.2 in TBC until Legion dropped.
You could more easily claim why did 2 expansions out of 7 go away from it.
15 Likes
There are many reasons to change how aoe spells work, one could be lag, the other to make choices for aoe more than 1 spam button, or just to make it harder for people to mass pull (because people will still).
8 Likes
They did some goofy formula on how much damage you could do per number of mob, but never on how many you could hit at once.
This is new
2 Likes
Probably for balance issues. Or they may want to change the “flavor” of how we do dungeons.
1 Like
Mythic+ 
14 Likes
Chain lightning has worked exactly like those nerfs since forever.
5 Likes
And a lot of the abilities changed didn’t exist, or exist in their current state, before legion when aoe caps existed.
& Torgast 
4 Likes
I’d assume the mass pull thing they probably wanna curb the rush mentality in lower dungeons gonna be funny when the next time a tank tries that after the patch hits.
1 Like
Ah yes, it would have an impact on that as well. 
With this change, I don’t see why anyone would still want Demon Hunters nerfed. They were never OP and this change will just further that point.
2 Likes
Maybe if they wanted to throw 2-3 engaging mobs per encounter vs swarms of tank and spanks. I just don’t see how me or anyone pulling more than 5 mobs at a time was a problem anywhere.
4 Likes
Then you probably don’t understand why DHs were OP to begin with in dungeons.
Burst aoe was just a part of it
4 Likes
They aren’t OP.
You can still mass pull… you aren’t soloing MOST content. Other people will be in the group which make up for other enemies being hit.
This I believe does have some M+ mind set in it BUT I think it has something to do with the amount of calculations at any given time during those moments can cause bigger lag.
Tack onto that Shadowlands is upping their graphic and visual capabilities. It makes sense TO ME AT LEAST.
3 Likes
It’s an easy class with overloaded abilities (abilities that do more than one thing at once), there’s already a lot of nerfs. What those nerfs means is just that it won’t be as easy to play it as now. We don’t know if numerically they will still be as strong or weaker.
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What happened to aoe?
Maybe OP in freehold leveling spam, but that’s a dungeon design flaw vs a class OP issue. They should probably fix that mess before deciding to gimp the entire games aoe.
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And Ele’s AoE is incredibly mediocre when it comes to Chain Lightning’s damage. Almost all of their real AoE damage comes from Earthquake (with a MUCH higher damage cap if one is present at all) and Stormkeeper.