Area effects in World of Warcraft are drastically limited. However, this also affects the gaming experience and brings new problems.
In World of Warcraft Shadowlands, the course of battles will change slightly. Gone are the days when large groups of enemies could be gathered and simply “bombed away”. The new AoE cap at least makes it more difficult. However, the gaming experience suffers from this. This is at least the criticism from many testers in the beta.
What is changing with Shadowlands? Many area spells and AoE abilities will have a cap on the number of possible targets they can hit in Shadowlands. Multi-shot from the Hunter or Divine Storm from the Paladin can now only hit 5 enemy targets at once. The Warrior’s Whirlwind and the Mage’s Frostbolt are also affected.
However, there are also “pure” AoE abilities, such as Blizzard or Rain of Fire, which will continue to hit all targets in the area. However, with a large number of enemies, the damage will decrease.
Why is Blizzard doing this? The reasons behind the change are primarily related to dungeon design, as this has been limited “on the side” in recent years. Mythic+ consisted of extremely large trash pulls during Legion, where dozens of enemies were gathered and beaten down.
In Battle for Azeroth, Blizzard made this more difficult and almost every mob group has been given one or two abilities that must be interrupted intentionally. Gathering huge groups became difficult, requiring much coordination, the right classes, and excellent gear – at least on the higher “Mythic+” levels.
Players have little regard for the AoE cap
Feedback is mostly negative: Many players wanted to wait and see how the change plays out before passing judgment. However, with the start of the Shadowlands beta, some time has passed. The feedback on these changes has been rather negative. Especially in the last days, when players were able to test the endgame of Shadowlands, the posts on Reddit have increased.
The problem is especially that players have no freedom over which targets their abilities can hit. Because with too many targets, it is simply left to chance who will be affected. This will likely become a problem in Mythic+, as Raikh describes on Reddit with much support:
The cap for targets is a brilliant example of design decisions focused on “fixing problems” rather than improving gameplay enjoyment.
If the cap is meant to prevent large mass pulls, which are the “problem”, then you simply can no longer form groups larger than the cap. Imagine 8 enemies in a group with a cap of 5 for abilities. Now imagine Convoke. It can only feel like garbage, especially when you have no control over which 5 targets you hit.
It is easy to see why the new limit will cause problems. Especially with nasty affixes, the “non-simultaneous” death of enemies leads to annoyances.
Are there solutions?
What alternatives are there? A solution to this problem is not easy to find. One alternative would be to have abilities deal damage (or healing) to all targets in the area of effect, but the damage decreases with an increasing number of targets. Many abilities in Shadowlands already feature this, such as the Mage spell Blizzard. It always hits all targets, but the damage per target decreases with a large number of enemies.
Whether it would be more sensible to treat all classes equally and impose a limit on all abilities – or to remove it again – needs to be tested. Already there are concerns that soon only players in dungeons whose classes have no cap on AoE abilities will be accepted.
There are also changes such as in PvP. Here Blizzard broadly steals players’ most important ability …
