2.6.0 Area of Effect Changes

Rip AoE.

Static strike from 16 to 19.

From patch 2.0 The Radius of the explosions has been reduced from 18 to 16 and the explosions now have a 20% variance in area of effect.

so it's just going back to how it was before? but with +1 range buff.

It's issue is damage, since any other skill can do it better.

Comparing Cleave and Reave's range, makes you wonder why is Cleave still there.

Looking at Melee splash, why did it get nerfed?

Like why?

Why?

Players complaining every time since ever that melee sucks isn't enough?

Next patch notes:
-Reduced damage of all melee skills by 15%
-Reduced your elemental resists by 60 for every melee gem you have socketed
-im going to kill myself

why do u hate melee so much ggg?

Could someone smarter than me clarify Blade Flurry, is it nerfed or buffed AOE?

It got increased range, but what does that mean with the new AOE mechanics?

All I can see there is that a mere Inc Area of Effect gem alone creates a significant diminshing returns already compared to the past.....isn't that too punishing for just a support gem?

I mean, builds that heavily invest in aoe usually take Inc Aoe, a good part of the two aoe clusters, plus unique item bonuses and helm enchant where applicable, I can see reasons to tweak this, but what the manifesto pretty much says it's "if you don't use your base skill/spell radius you'll end up being punished significantly compared to the past"

RIP my EQ slayer build for next league, spent some time practicing and everything. Thanks ggg.

"

The goal of this change is to make investing in the size of your area skills to be less rewarding the more you invest, so players don't feel like they need to gather every single point of area radius to reach their character's full potential.

I don't think enough thought was put into this change.

There was already diminishing returns to investing in increased radius for skills with area of effect. The reason is because as you increase the radius, you are only increasing the chance that your target(s) are within the radius, and this chance can never be above 100%. It asymptotically approaches 100% as you increase the radius. So, if I double the radius of my auras to buff my friends, I quadruple the area, but if my friends were already within the auras, I've gained nothing. Likewise, if I'm attacking Izaro with an AoE skill, he's either in the area or he's not. If he's not, I can just move a little closer. If he's within the area, it doesn't get any better than that, and any extra area is wasted. If you could double your damage or double the area, you would certainly double your damage. In fact, if you could double your damage or double your radius, you would still usually double the damage rather than the radius, even though the radius is squared in the area calculation. This is similar to increasing your accuracy - if you hit, you hit, and any extra accuracy (or in this case, area) does nothing for you.

Yes, an increased area of effect may allow you to affect more targets at once, but here too there's diminishing returns. If I am trying to affect my minions with a buff, eventually the area is great enough that most or all of them are targeted, because they are clustered around me, and not randomly distributed over the entire map. Likewise, when I am targeting monsters, the ones that I am concerned with will tend to be near me. I don't care much about cursing monsters that I can't even see. Doubling the area that you affect will often not greatly increase the number of targets that you affect, because the targets, whether aggressive or friendly, will tend to cluster around the player. If you make a heat map around the player to account for density of targets, it cools off quickly about half of a screen from the player. For this reason, AoE needs to be nonlinear to counteract the nonlinearity of the placement of targets.

A final point, I hope you've taken into account the effects that rounding will have. I can picture a number of situations where the area bonuses will round down to nothing or almost nothing, depending on how your calculations are done.

"

rocketlauncher wrote:

Why wasn't a formula posted? I'd like to know if "increased area" truly means increased area so that abilities that are circles gain less radius per increased area point vs something like Ground Slam/Cleave/Flame Surge which are just small arcs/parts of a circle, and will thus scale and get greater radius per increased area points.

This is not correct. A circle, a cone, a square or any other shape will have all lines within it incrased by the same ratio when the area is increased. I know, math is hard...

Looks like a nerf to me
Thanks