Why the AOE cap is a bad thing

[Argorwal-ysera (Argorwal)]

@Aveldruid-frostmourne

I meant it will change nothing about how the mdi pulls go. They will still pull huge. It will just change which are the 4 classes we see not actually broaden the classes used.

Then it will be less fun for the occasional pulls we do get to go big on which is fun. There is a reason reaping was liked more than infested. It was a stupid easy non-affix that was really fun if you were one of the few amazing aoe classes or your stood around being useless if you weren’t.

A little bit of fixing required.

[Aveldruid-frostmourne]

Don’t edit my words. That’s not what I said. Qoute me then add after so not misrepresent what I said. Blizzard should not allow the editing of “Quotes”

[Argorwal-ysera (Argorwal)]

It’s is a bit funny that they let quotes be edited but you can’t actually edit their actual post so can always go back to the source.

Anyway of course reaping was super fun when you play a burst aoe class and get to see a bunch of numbers pop up 4 times a dungeon (because who does the 5th lol?).

Almost no thinking required, set places to trigger it every time with 99% of them a joke and non-threatening except shrine which they then nerfed.

[Aveldruid-frostmourne]

Isn’t this a game which is supposed to be fun though? They can bring the others up without chopping down the best classes. Give shadow something more busty and let them have fun too. Don’t stop it for everyone else so they don’t feel left out.

It’s like your mum (spelt correctly with a u in it ) taking a toy off you because your brother wanted it and was crying so she made it fair by taking it away.

[Anansi-quelthalas]

Some classes have to make a choice when dealing damage. Take Balance druid as an example: you can either make a large amount of cleave damage through empowered Lunar Strike/Solar Wrath by dumping your astral power into Starsurge or you can deal a smaller amount of damage in a large area by dumping it into Starfall.
The problem comes from most melee classes, they don’t have to make any meaningful choice: their cleave, aoe and single target rotations are all the same.
This change is good for the game, it should balance the classes a little.

[Warzug-mankrik]

Hopefully they scrap this “target cap” nonsense before it makes it to the final product, gonna take a lot of the fun out of Mythic+. Imagine “every” dungeon playing the same as Violet Hold

I’m predicting a lot of backlash once pugs figure out that “just pull everything and AOE it down” is no longer possible. I just don’t see this proposed change going over very well with a lot of players.

Let us keep our giant AOE pulls imo, let players play how they want. Most importantly, giant giga-pulls with AOE are FUN.

No on “target cap”, it’s a bad idea. Just leave AOE abilities “uncapped” imo.

[Stabs-moknathal]

Sounds like Cata dungeons that people mostly hated.

[Argorwal-ysera (Argorwal)]

@Aveldruid-frostmourne

Isn’t this a game which is supposed to be fun though? They can bring the others up without chopping down the best classes. Give shadow something more busty and let them have fun too. Don’t stop it for everyone else so they don’t feel left out.

It’s like your mum (spelt correctly with a u in it ) taking a toy off you because your brother wanted it and was crying so she made it fair by taking it away.

Some people consider the more this game (d)evolves into a diablo style aoe clone it’s actually worse game.

And no, balancing gameplay with various damage style patterns is not the same thing at all as a mum taking a toy off someone else because someone else is crying. Or do you view every single nerf/buff/change in the history of the game in this manner?

[Aveldruid-frostmourne]

@Argorwal-ysera

Some people consider the more this game (d)evolves into a diablo style aoe clone it’s actually worse game

Must be why infested was more popular than reaping then… Oh it wasn’t? Nvm then.

@Argorwal-ysera

And no, balancing gameplay with various damage style patterns is not the same thing at all as a mum taking a toy off someone else because someone else is crying. Or do you view every single nerf/buff/change in the history of the game in this manner?

No just the ones where people are trying to justify it by saying some classes don’t have it and others do. Like this change for example.

[Argorwal-ysera (Argorwal)]

People favor easy things (especially when the rewards are high) what can I say.

Reaping was a joke. It’s “better.”

Wrath heroics were aoe joke fests.

Again, “better” than TBC or Cata around it.

Emerald Nightmare was by far the most successful and popular mythic raid basically ever. It must be “better” as well because why else would more people do it???

Maw of Souls was the favored Legion dungeon. Probably because it’s “better” than the others.

[Nippyss-barthilas (Nippyss)]

We all wanted unpruning

So they unpruned the target caps we used to have, this was just reverting power creep

Combat rogues went from cleaving an extra target every 2 minutes to cleaving everything almost all the time

Mages AoE used to consist of blizzard and arcane explosion into half a million different aoe damage sources

I think it makes the game interesting, for instances warriors can be good at cleave damage until they blade storm which can be a fully fledged aoe which makes blade storm a more interesting button to press

[Corbenzos-zuljin]

Infested was despised because it slowed down gameplay to where you never pulled more than one pack… you cc’d the mob and killed everything else. It was slow, incredibly boring and incredibly easy. Anyone who thinks infested was hard…

Reaping was fun because a few times a dungeon you got to do these massive pulls that were easy, you’re right, but you also got to see huge numbers pop up on your screen, which is fun.

Beguiling, once again, slowed down gameplay and made you pull a pack at a time while cc’ing one add. It wasn’t hard, it was just boring.

I get you enjoy the slow playstyle of old dungeons, where you would be forced to pull 3 mobs at a time and keep one cc’d… But again, it’s not hard to press polymorph once a minute. I would wager most people don’t enjoy that playstyle though, because people enjoy fast paced, hard games.

In the current game, unless you’re pushing the highest level of key, you can still use the strategy of pulling one pack at a time and time the key with time to spare. With the aoe target cap, it takes away the option of pulling several packs if you want.

Despite what you may think, target caps objectively lower the skill ceiling of dungeons by a substantial amount. There is no debate about this point, it’s a fact.

[Rahkeetahp-aerie-peak]

@Paranoia-proudmoore

But at the same time, it’s like playing D&D with that dungeon master. Your group finds a fun or clever way to deal with a mechanic or boss fight and the DM just goes “heh. NOPE. You’ll have fun the way I IMAGINE you having fun and like it!!” And then just arm twists the party in to changing their strategy because what he says goes.

hey…I know that guy! lol
He always like to pull you kicking and screaming thru his storyline that makes absolutely no logical sense whatsoever.

I turned him loose to GM our Middle Earth campaign years ago.
His idea of fun was to have Sauron enter and destroy Rivendell
I had to roll it back next session by saying it was a dream our entire party had, some sort of prophetic thing, just to keep my players playing.

[Lïncstyle-illidan]

Junkyard is the worst possible dungeon to balance around; it is widely considered the joke of this tier. You can die 20x and as long as you get shockbots and your damage is good otherwise, it’s timeable.

Pull size and chain pulling are 2 different things, the speed at which you have to move and pull is the point. I regularly pull 2-3 pulls in AD, TD, shrine, siege(although spotters solve any aoe cap problem here), ML, temple has several big multipulls, WCM it’s not uncommon to pull the entire hallway and then the entire room, several places in FH etc.

It’s very common for a pull to be beyond 5 mobs, aka a cap, and if there’s a cap blizz will have to rework things around the cap to allow for the time difference.

Like I said, I see both sides of the argument, but to pretend uncapped isn’t a huge favoring factor right now is just being ignorant; DH, mage, rogue, hunter < all fully uncapped with no DPS change to ST from their uncapped AOE, and they are on the top of every single high clear currently. The reason is because of their uncapped AOE and the sheer pull size/speed/chain requirement of high keys.

My guild has people in the MDI and several of the 5k/top rated guys, they admit they can’t bring several classes due to pull size.

[Warzug-mankrik]

I just don’t see how an “AOE cap” would even work in practice:

• on Bolstering weeks, what if your artificial “5-cap” hits a bunch of yellow mobs, thus Bolstering the tougher elites in the pack? (could be fatal in higher keys)
• the entire nature of Mythic+ (beating a timer), is not really conducive to pulling only 1 mob/1 pack at a time… will they be increasing M+ timers across the board to offset the new, slower 1-pack-at-a-time pulls?
• are MDI caliber players really going to be forced to pull 1 pack at a time like Violet Hold? That’s not entertaining at all, it actually sounds so boring to watch Zzzzz
• in random bgs, what if your “5-cap” hits random Hunter/Warlock/Death Knight pets or summoned minions instead of enemy players? This is especially relevant to the 40-man bgs, where there’s tons of non-player minion/pet NPCs running around at any given time… imagine doing 0 damage to enemy players, as your “5-cap” limit gets soaked by a bunch of random pets/minions

Most players obviously prefer the “pull the whole room and AOE” pulls, obviously it’s FUN or else so many players wouldn’t be doing it (where possible, anyways).

As a the owner of a Guardian Druid, Prot Warrior, and Prot Paladin, the most positive compliments given to me by pugs have been when I’ve done the giant “giga pulls” with 15+ mobs. That’s what pugs like to see, judging by the praise that you get after said pulls.

The most negative comments I’ve gotten while tanking pugs, the accusations of being slow or bad, have come when I “only” pull 1 pack at a time. Obviously a lot of pugs “look down” on such a slow pull pattern and have a negative opinion towards it.

[Wariya-stormrage (Wariya)]

This cap would suck on tanks

[Aveldruid-frostmourne]

@Lïncstyle-illidan

they admit they can’t bring several classes due to pull size.

I guess what I don’t understand is why they don’t. Fix them instead of caping everyone else. They see operating with a chainsaw instead of a scalpel.

[Marla-westfall]

@Adrot-tichondrius

First off, there are a lot of specs that already have minimal AOE abilities as their primary source of damage.

Not all class/specs are affected by this change. Some it will be business as usual.

@Kaivax

In situations where a target cap doesn’t make sense, we’re adding a new kind of damage falloff that causes the damage done to each target to be reduced gradually as the number of targets increases.

Most players who are used to fighting 3 to 5 enemies at a time will notice very little difference with this approach. On the other hand, players who are accustomed to pulling 10-20 enemies at a time will experience longer, more threatening engagements.

[Adrot-tichondrius]

@Marla-westfall

Not all class/specs are affected by this change. Some it will be business as usual.

The point is more that some specs already mostly ignore this. This change targets specific specs and abilities. For specs already doing well with little or no cleave, this will simply prop them up.

[Marla-westfall]

I agree that DH shouldn’t be able to pull entire dungeons. That is the problem blizzard is mostly trying to fix.