Feedback:User/MadSkillz1o1/A better AoE system

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I propose a different AoE system. This thought probably already occurred to the developers, but if not, I think it's a good suggestion. I think that these changes should only apply to spell AoE damage.

Currently, the spell AoE system looks like this: for x seconds, all foes in y area take z damage every second. My proposal is that we change the system so it doesn't deal a fixed z amount of damage to every foe, but that the z amount of damage is divided between the foes (and appropriately increased). AoE spells in GW1 are horribly inefficient against single foes, but extremely efficient against a cluster of foes. This forces a Tank-Nuker style of gameplay.

For example (courtesy of Arngrim), how a skill would work: <Skill name>: Cause <skill name> at target foe's location. For 4 seconds, 30 damage is divided between foes near this location each second, plus 20 damage each second. This rewards intelligent usage of the skill while not being too powerful. Here is a table to show how the damage would diminish (or more accurately, increase) with multiple enemies:

# of foes 1 2 3 4 5 10
Damage to each foe 50 35 30 28 26 23

While this is a change at the very core of AoE, it would still be 'in the spirit' of AoE.

If the system I propose is implemented, the following changes will occur:

  • AoE spells could be used in every scenario, not just missions which have lots of clumped enemies
  • No lame creep scatter, which can aggro more enemies and potentially overwhelm the party
  • Better balance of skills
  • No more builds with 'just AoE' or 'just not-AoE spells'.
  • Comparability between physical AoE and spell AoE
  • Severely reduced farming


If you are a player and find that this would be a welcome improvement, please state so on the discussion page. If the developers see that this idea has many supporters, they might just make this suggestion a reality. Also, if you dislike parts of this idea, or find any cons to this change, please state so on the discussion page, so I may rework the idea. Sometimes it's better to tweak something rather than completely axe it. If you find something really crippling which I have not thought of, say it too and I will update this page.

Thank you for hearing me out :)

---Update--- If there was a really big bunch of enemies, so that a spell would basically do only 10 damage to each foe, something would have to be done with the armor. Otherwise you would just see yellow zeroes... Example: if you use a spell which deals 50 damage to one armored foe, you would still do about 30 damage. But if you use a spell which deals 10 damage to 5 armored foes each, that 10 would be reduced to 0... What are your thoughts ? Resolved with the z1 + z2 skill style.