Aoe rationale

jelliedsoup · October 2014

Can a proponent of aoe outline why it's required and not op in this game?

At the moment it appears that a grenade is on par with a musket.

Spottswoode · October 2014

Technically speaking, it is. A grenade is as lethal to an individual as a musket ball. (They also had grenades during that era of warfare, just fyi.) If the musket is as lethal to groups as a grenade, then we have a problem. The general nature of aoe damage is to deal with groups of enemies at the same time. But it's also used to deal with single enemies that are difficult to target. (Invisible, hiding behind cover, etc.)
If you are suggesting an AOE nerf, I might be willing to agree if you can specify a set of circumstances where it is OP compared to a single target skill.

jelliedsoup · October 2014

To an individual I agree, the issue is more that aoe will kill many. If one person goes into a group and kills one person, the rest will kill him/her. However with aoe everyone is dead, as it oddly seems to pack more damage than a single target attack.

Spottswoode · October 2014

The AOE is designed to kill many. If we are talking about nerfing AOE or if you believe that not every AOE skill should pack the massive punch we can talk about dividing AOE skills into grenades and shotguns. Generally speaking though, AOE's have a higher cost to output the same single target damage.
If we reduce grenade like AOE's to DoT damage, we can address the massive multikill spams. Adding higher cost can reduce the spam.
The shotgun AOE's are going to have higher instant damage but limited range. You get that close, you know the risk.

jelliedsoup · October 2014

I don't use aoes as I find them lazy.

Veil of blades, talons, standard, swarms, impulse and of course scorched earth.

If aoes were only effective in large groups then sure, but people use standard and swarms in single combat as well. With the use of talons, fear, bolt and the dot of these aoes, I will be dead by the time ive broken the stun.

I realise zos likes aoes, I'm not a fan at all. But then I prefer to move when fighting too. Each to their own I guess, I just don't like to reward laziness.

Spottswoode · October 2014

jelliedsoup wrote: »

If aoes were only effective in large groups then sure, but people use standard and swarms in single combat as well. With the use of talons, fear, bolt and the dot of these aoes, I will be dead by the time ive broken the stun.

Nature of warfare: Why approach when I can blast your a&& with a cannon from my ship? No risk to me and minimal effort. People use grenades in single combat for the same reason. Call it lazy if you want. Samurai will still get mowed down by gatling guns even if they philosophically reject the reason for their implementation.
DoT's are supposed to be lethal regardless of your strategy. (But read this first.) Swarms and Standard are ultimates as well. Rockets or cannons, as the analogy goes. If their damage wasn't significant they would be practically useless.

I'll agree we definitely need to up the power of muskets. Single ranged target abilities need more damage. I do tire of the firing line getting mowed down by some jackwagon approaching with Swarms active.
Bayonets, on the other hands, have a buff coming. Melee damage will definitely be getting better towards AOE spammers in the near future.

PBpsy · October 2014

You use AOE the same reason you use machine guns against infantry and expensive rockets and bombs against important dangerous targets. In this game up until now I still haven't been in fight where single targeting the healers at some point wasn't the best way to go. For pve if you are going to actually dps and you are actually going to try to be good at that role you need to me very efficient at switching between AOE for low priority targets and fast dps for high priority targets.People that only use AOE are almost as bad to have in a group as those people that only try to dps one at a time always.

What works best is to go in soften up the low health targets with AOE ,pick up your priority targets kill them then finish the rest up fast with AOE.

There are some problems though. In trial the pack are somewhat to large and it is not very easy or necessary to actually use AOE strategically. It is more like you need to use them or you will be overwhelmed.On bosses you kind of never actually have to use any AOE outside ultimates. For 4 man content though like DSA it is actually insanely fun and I need to switch between AOE and single target every 5 seconds or so to be an effective DPS.

It is strange and somewhat annoying however that ZOS decided to promote the use the 2 best AOEs in the game as finishers and not openers. You kind of want to kill stuff with impulse for destruction expert procs and with whirlwind since it is an AOE execute.

For PVP the problem is not AOE but mass AOE. For example1v1 I think one should be really bad to get killed by someone with impulse. I play in small groups and I rarely use AOEs since they are pretty infective in small scale pvp and when I do it is Sap eesence which is not that stellar AOE in pvp .The role of AOE in PVP should be that it would remove some of the safety provided by numbers. Unfortunately the safety in numbers with AOEs is just insane. I can't even begin to think of a actual good solution to this problem