AoE nerf rumor -- is it true?

#0 - Nov. 20, 2006, 3:15 p.m.

I've heard that there is going to be a severe nerf to aoe spell damage, specifically in the case of damaging more than 5 enemies at a time. Is this true? If so, why?

If it is true, then I will be closing my second account, which exists only to play 2 mages together. I will also not be playing my main (mage) anymore. A main feature of the mage repertoire is the ability to deal damage to huge groups and take them down solo... to reduce or take this away is pretty terrible, considering that the majority of this kind of activity takes place in a group setting (e.g. scholo, strat, ZG, etc. etc.)

I cannot see how this feature of the mage could be considered unfair, particularly because there are so few places where aoe'ing gives more benefit per hour than individual killing... and even then, it takes considerable skill to be consistently successful and not die.

Nethaera

#3 - Nov. 20, 2006, 3:20 p.m.

Here's a post on some of the mage concerns by Kalgan-

http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=47160568&pageNo=6&sid=1#106

Here's the particular bit that addresses the AoE concerns-

Q u o t e:
6. First, it's important to note that we've recently increased the spell damage coefficients on the affected AE spells (although this might not be in the version on the test realms yet). So, this change explicitly gave us the ability to improve those coefficients for the "normal" AE case, yet protect the spells against infinitely scaling against more and more opponents. Our desire is to tune the AE spells so that the damage doesn't cap out until you exceed about 10 targets, as our AE encounters are actually designed around an assumption of players AE'ing around 10 mobs. Any more than that, we consider unintended and/or exploitive. So, we're probably going to be bumping up the damage caps a bit to account for the now stronger effects of +damage gear and our desire for players to be able to AE around 10 targets without really feeling the effect of the damage caps.