PSA: Multi-kill limit.

[radioactive_lego]

I dont think so. We tested with Circle of Scorn (and other DoTs) and the skills/spells would only infect a maximum of 16 mobs, even if their deaths were not instantaneous. I'm thinking there's a limit on how much any skill/spell/action can "spread", and that limit is 16 mobs ant any one time.

As for being an oddly arbitrary number; well, no. It makes a little sense. The enemy list has a maximum of 8, and 16 is double that.

[Zfz]

Did you check if multiple actions would affect only the same 16 mobs? Say aggro 16 mobs then bring them to a new mob and Flash/Circle of Scorn?

[radioactive_lego]

Did you check if multiple actions would affect only the same 16 mobs? Say aggro 16 mobs then bring them to a new mob and Flash/Circle of Scorn?

Yes. There doesn't seem to be a limit (or, at least, it's higher than 33 or 34) to how many mobs you can aggro. We scouted a few locations with dense populations of low level (less than level 20) mobs and tried to triangulate the best point inbetween the groups to get all of them on a single Pally spamming flash. 31 was the highest count we found (pardon me if I dont divulge the location) on a point where we could "hold" mobs. Additional mobs would come in flash range of that point, but the mobs would reset before they would physically attack the pally.

So to answer your question more completely: Flash, specifically, doesn't have the same upper limit that a damage spell does, OR it's hitting a different set of 16 mobs each time you cast.

My gut tells me the latter is true, and that dmg spells are hitting the 16 mobs that have the highest emnity to the caster, while flash is hitting mobs that have the lowest emnity to the pally. The only way to set this is to have a BLM/WHM sleep 16 mobs and mark them with various tags, thus receiving direct emnity. THEN have a a pally flash them (as well as having a group of mobs that the pally aggroed) and see which mobs die in the ensuing Holy/Flare. If the tagged mobs die, it's emnity related. If not, it's random or using some other unseen metric.

Because science.

[Sadana]

31 was the highest count we found (pardon me if I dont divulge the location)....

Because science.

O.o
Then, sadly, this is bad science if you don't allow others to test your theory with the exact same parameters.

[Amelia_Pond_Behemoth]

Where did you find an area that had enough mobs that didn't just turn invincible after straying too far?

[Ghishlain]

I can confirm similar results, but will admit I didn't count exactly how many was killed.

Easy way to see is to do the biclops alexa map and let all the puk adds spawn. As a WHM I aggro both massive groups via regen then pop a holy. Only about 2/3 of them will die and I'm pretty sure there are at least 10 mobs per pack spawned.

[KitanaiKoneko]

Yes. There doesn't seem to be a limit (or, at least, it's higher than 33 or 34) to how many mobs you can aggro. We scouted a few locations with dense populations of low level (less than level 20) mobs and tried to triangulate the best point inbetween the groups to get all of them on a single Pally spamming flash. 31 was the highest count we found (pardon me if I dont divulge the location) on a point where we could "hold" mobs. Additional mobs would come in flash range of that point, but the mobs would reset before they would physically attack the pally.

So to answer your question more completely: Flash, specifically, doesn't have the same upper limit that a damage spell does, OR it's hitting a different set of 16 mobs each time you cast.

My gut tells me the latter is true, and that dmg spells are hitting the 16 mobs that have the highest emnity to the caster, while flash is hitting mobs that have the lowest emnity to the pally. The only way to set this is to have a BLM/WHM sleep 16 mobs and mark them with various tags, thus receiving direct emnity. THEN have a a pally flash them (as well as having a group of mobs that the pally aggroed) and see which mobs die in the ensuing Holy/Flare. If the tagged mobs die, it's emnity related. If not, it's random or using some other unseen metric.

Because science.

I believe the reason why it might hit different mobs every time is because of how AOEs work in this game: The closer you are to whatever casts an AOE the faster you will be hit by it. A good way to observer this is in Titan, where you have lots of unavoidable going out (tumult) combined with lots of AOE healing from succor/medica/medica II. It's also the reason why if you precast a big hit too early you can still heal up some of the players.

So if you had 31 mobs that are all fighting for a position close to one target ala DD first room pulls, they might be moving in and out slightly so that different ones get hit every time.

Just my thoughts on the matter.

[Magis]

16 mobs at once?
That's kind of an arbitrary number for a multi-kill limit...wonder if there's some kind of logic behind it.

Doesn't sound too arbitrary, it's a power of two which most data maxes out at.

[raelgun]

This is true to some extent even in other mmos, theres a reason for this.

Any damage action is taken to the battle log, so lets use this example, 24 players, all aoe at the same time on a pack of 30 mobs, do you know how aggravated the battle log will be, the info will need to be processed locally on the memory and cpu (ps3 limitation).

Other mmos employ a damage reduction but you can get a truck ton of adds but the damage evenly spreads after a point in order to clam down this process. Any one thats done the Onyxia many welps handle it achievement will understand XD.

[Alberel]

So what you're saying is that there's a hard cap of 16 targets on AOE skills? That's really not surprising... Did you try having two players cast AOEs simultaneously? I imagine you would see more than 16 mobs drop at once in that scenario...

This is likely just a limit to minimize excessive server processing.