Are 7.2 aoe changes some kind of joke?

[ThurinTurambar]

Reading through patch notes i noticed a general trend: Huge nerfs to base/filler aoe
(look at mch "Spread Shot - Potency has been reduced from 140 to 110.")

Devs, are you really so intimidated by some braindead parsers who screamed that paladin is too strong *in an ultimate* because it has cleave attacks?

To the arguement that the change is aimed at dungeons so people actually use their kit instead of just filler: Those players will ignore the changes and continue in their ways, as the reason is lazyness and not misunderstanding the skills.

Im particularly annoyed at machinist, which was by no means performing well in aoe in first place. Now it will perform even worse in majority of content, as buffs only affect 90-100 level range and below we get a major nerf.

Please rethink the changes again and try to filter the complaints better!

[Exmo]

I always have trouble understanding the wording of the changes for AOEs.

Reduction in potency after the first target has been changed from 70% to 50%.

Does this mean an attack that used to deal X potency to target and ( X * 0.7 ) to nearby enemies now deals ( X * 0.5 )?

Or is it a 70% drop off? ie. ( X * 0.3 ) -> ( X * 0.5 )

[Supersnow845]

A reduction in drop off percentage is actually a buff

So if it’s going from 70% to 50% drop off on say a 1000 potency attack it’s going from 300 potency splash to 500 potency splash

So the chainsaw changes mean it’s doing more damage to any enemy not the primary one

[ThurinTurambar]

I mean it more as a protest against transfering damage from old level ranges to 90-100.
We've seen that before, look at drk: plunge was a lvl 55 skill. After change to shadowstride there is a 300 per minute hole all the way to 90s, same with the missing 2 stacks of blood weapon.
Even before removal of plunge drk was behind other tanks in untill like endwalker content, unless very specific logging optimisation happened (full raidbuffs, kill happening right after 2 minute window)

With mch as well: 30 potency per gcd in aoe taken so that skills in 90+ could have bigger splash damage.

Being able to do old content was supposedly a cherished advantage of this game, why then is it trampled over?

Please if u are so bent on 'balancing the buff out' do it on dawntrail skills, unless skills in similar level range get the damage.

[Darkstride]

A reduction in drop off percentage is actually a buff

So if it’s going from 70% to 50% drop off on say a 1000 potency attack it’s going from 300 potency splash to 500 potency splash

So the chainsaw changes mean it’s doing more damage to any enemy not the primary one

This. Most of the AoE changes reduced the splash damage penalty, resulting in higher AoE damage overall.

I was also annoyed to see any nerf for Machinist, but it seems the damage has been shifted from Scattergun to Chainsaw, Excavator, Full Metal, Double Check and Checkmate.

[AvoSturmfaust]

The AoE Adjustment means probably the Savage Tier will have a Addphase so they adjusted the AoEs for it, and yea you Balance around Highend Content not around Dungeons.

[ThurinTurambar]

The AoE Adjustment means probably the Savage Tier will have a Addphase so they adjusted the AoEs for it, and yea you Balance around Highend Content not around Dungeons.

If that was the case, they could reduce the potency of chainsaw, excavator and fmf, make their splash better and transfer the potency to single target skills.
Im not complaining about the direction, but the execution of the changes.

[Valence]

For jobs that got nerfs on base AoE GCDs, this is probably going to help lower level content feel less like everything melts under 5s tbh which i'm all for. Make those dungeons a little less resident sleepers, with hope?

Notable outliers are BRD that got nerfed on their nukes and buffed on their base GCDs instead, which is odd. DNC got both nerfs to nukes and buffs to Steps all across the board.

To the arguement that the change is aimed at dungeons so people actually use their kit instead of just filler: Those players will ignore the changes and continue in their ways, as the reason is lazyness and not misunderstanding the skills.

I read on fan translations that Yoshida specifically said those AoE balance changes are aimed for raids primarily (which implies there is going to be AoE in there), and not dungeons, which weren't part of the thought process.

[Rithy255]

It's because Paladin can't be good for one ultimate raid always gotta have Gunbreaker and Dark Knight as the top dps tanks, don't worry paladins you get cover! it's so good and useful

[ViinaS]

MCH already being that bad and now nerfed even further.
It sure is clear whoever is in charge for class design just hates the classes they dont play themselves and hate MCH more than the others.