This post was meant to go with the post on crowd control, but as that post grew I broke it up into this second post. I briefly touched on area of effect (AoE) usage at the end of the CC post.
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| Death From Above |
The screenshot shows some Bounty Hunters using the Death From Above ability on me. This AoE is quite powerful and BH’s get it pretty early on in the leveling process. This AoE is also a notorious CC breaker as every BH seems to feel that urge to use Death From Above no every multi-mob pull regardless if there are only two mobs or six.
I have found a growing trend in not only the increase in classes in MMORPG that have AoE abilities but also an increase in the number of AoE abilities. It used to be that only certain classes and even then only certain specs were strong in AoE damage or healing or tanking. This was at a point in gaming where CC was not only useful it was required for most pulls. Only specific fights were set-up to require AoE. Fast forward to more current MMORPG and expansions; the tank pulls everything and begins to AoE tank, if there was CC either the tank broke it trying to grab the other mobs or a dps jumped the gun to AoE (i.e. Death From Above) shortly after the pull started. This generally leads to the tank tanking a few guys the dps tanking others and hopefully not, but commonly the healer having to tank mobs from his healing threat. This common and chaotic pull results in nearly everyone in the group taking damage, which in turn results in a common practice of throwing more AoE heals to keep everyone up.
Game designers have tried to set up AoE abilities to cost more to use. However this has not stopped the rampant use of AoE. I find it takes less skill and strategy to use AoE all the time. I personally enjoy coordination, strategy, teamwork, focus targeting and single target abilities.
Side Note: I do not have a problem with tanks using or having a swipe/sweep move that hits three targets. This is just a standard tanking ability. I was a tank back in WoW when this was the only way to grab mobs. There was a long cooldown oh crap AoE taunt but even that taunt was quite limited. Now there are multiple AoE abilities that hit everything within 10 m.
Honestly, what was wrong with single target dps? I mean sure you had to pay attention and focus down targets, but how hard is that? Is it that people don’t want to have to coordinate? The last thing I would want to see happen to MMORPGs is that they start playing like First Person Shooters where you only talk to your friends and do your own thing independent of your objective and maybe this is the way PvP is going. In swtor only four people can group together to queue for a warzone.
Maybe AoE is just the trendy abilities to put in the game or maybe I am coming from way out in left field. What are your thoughts on CC and AoE use? And thanks to Tor'bac for helping me with the screen.
I've often thought this too. That AoE is too prevalent in MMOs these days. I wrote a post on it back in 2010: AoE and Crowd Control.
ReplyDeleteMy solution was to make strong mobs significantly less susceptible to AoE. That way you could still clear out weak packs with AoE.
In swtor, Bioware went for something like you explained with mixing elite/strong mobs in with weak/normal mobs in flashpoint pulls. They carry this over to the open world where at a minimum you are only pulling two mobs.
DeleteGone are the days where you crept around the outside of the quest zone and tried to siphon off one or two mobs max. They seem to only encourage the use of more and more AoE. There is no elite mobs having AoE resistance buffs like you talk about in your post. I like the idea but even if it gimps players I would like to see getting back to some more practical CC and AoE use.