nijukyubi wrote:
ahh, i think i know what you're meaning... but aoe also doesn't work that way.
totems are no exception either, with more mobs comes more penalties, and i'm not entirely sure the formula but i bet the mage section has it figured out and it'd match you perfectly on the details, but basically after 10+ mobs, your spell damage is severely cut off and doesn't do max damage, every 10+ in addition to that severs it even more, i think it's something like 20% max (so 20 mobs you'd do uhh.. 64% -ish)
Quote:
Imagine an AoE spell that does 500 damage per target and costs 500 mana.
If this were a mage, this translates to a very expensive spell.
Now, if you had 50 mobs all snared from one way or another (Frost Mage grinding) and together in a clustered pack...
i will have to say that 500mana for 500 damage isn't too far off from blizzard, a frost mages main aoe used (if improved) (and to those about to correct me, i haven't forgotten arcane explosion or the fire ones, i'm just saying blizzard is the MOST used) which i think mine at rank 2? 3?... was 400-something damage and cost like 750 mana?
as for a damage cap, your ptr won't be the best you can get with all the gear that's coming out in Outlands (since they give you preset epics but not gear that matches personal preferences) and can continue to get higher, but as far as a cap goes, you'll have to experiment with the totems with different things. the ending formula will have a base on your total spell damage bonus though, still.
I try not to be a curt, low-patience person, but I really can't seem to be so on the shaman forums. I want your source of all this info. My main is a mage. I'm a regular on the mage section of the Allakhazam forums. I have Flamestrike, Blizzard, Dragon's Breath, Blast Wave, Arcane Explosion, Cone of Cold, and Frost Nova. I regularly run guildies through low-level instances and find myself using these AoEs in many situations. I've done testing for these things.
AoE Spell Damage Caps are
not based on the number of mobs, they're based on the damage you do.
Let's say that you have two AoE spells that have an identical Damage Cap of 10000. One of these spells does a mean of 1000 damage to a mob, the other spell does a mean of 2000 damage.
This means that if you were to use the first spell on 9 enemies, it would do around 1000 damage on each one. If you were to use it on 11 enemies, because of the cap, it would do 909-910 damage exactly on each mob.
If you were to use the second spell on 4 enemies, it would do around 2000 damage on each one. If you were to use it on 9 enemies, however, it would do, once again, 909-910 damage exactly on each mob, because it's the damage cap of 10000 divided by the amount of enemies done. This division of damage is not how AoE works
only if it doesn't hit the damage cap. With spell #1, you can hit 10 enemies without a reduction of damage. With spell #2, you can only hit 5 without a reduction of damage. However, the total amount of damage done is the same between the two spells when attacking more than five mobs at once because both have the AoE damage cap of 10000.
I'm really curious to where you got your information and how I could have been so horribly wrong after all this time.