WotLK Wandering Plague

[angrylol]

Today I was raiding and noticed my Wandering Plague does less damage per target than my disease ticks. Happens only in AoE situations, you know mobs in ICC/LK. On single target it does good precise same damage as disease ticks.
Is that how it is supposed to work? I was under impression from tooltip that it will do exact damage of disease tick to target and all targets 8 yards around it.
Searched for this information, but I cant do so much digging, so maybe someone here have some good info?

[Lynea]

Are you talking about the AoE effect of it specifically? Because if you don't spread your diseases around and are checking the AoE effect of it by applying diseases to only one target, that AoE disease damage isn't going to be affected by Crypt Fever or Ebon Plaguebringer.

[angrylol]

I did not test or anything, I just damaged as usual, spread diseases. Jut at end of fight Wandering Plague average tick was waaay lower that average disease tick, minimum ticks were even around 60% lower. That is why I'm making this post, to gather some information how it works to understand those numbers.

Damaging abilities was:
1. DnD
2. Blood Plague
3. Icy fever
4. Wandering plague
Isn't wandering plague supposed to be right after DnD or even ahead? I got around 40% crit chance.

[Lynea]

How high your Wandering Plague depends on crit chance + number of targets. If you had 50% crit chance and 2 targets, then your Wandering Plague could be on level with your diseases. The number of targets required is higher with lower crit chance. Up-time on your targets, length of the encounter, how strong the disease ticks (procs and other effects when refreshing the diseases; snapshotting) are at the time of the Wandering Plague proc, and RNG are all contributing factors.

That's also not how you should evaluate if Wandering Plague is working properly or not. Test it out on a single target with any number of nearby targets. Don't spread your diseases, just let them tick. You can then check the AoE damage per proc VS. the tick damage of your diseases. Don't check it by recount ranking.

http://imgur.com/dIa1yGn
Here's a screenshot; Wandering Plague is doing the right amount of damage for me.

[DarkenedHue]

In 3.3.5, there's an AoE damage cap that most AoE spells are subjected to which limits their potency on very large packs of mobs.

On a large trash pack of10 or more targets, the damage of a spell like Blizzard is calculated by checking how much damage Blizzard would do on 10 mobs, and then dividing that over the total number of mobs actually present. Let's say each tick of Blizzard would normally hit for 2k. On 10 mobs, that would be 2000 x 10 = 20k per tick. So on a pack of 40 mobs, Blizzard would actually hit for only 20,000/40 = 500 damage per tick. That's the gist of the concept of the AoE damage cap. The issue you're seeing with Wandering Plague's lower damage is because whereas Wandering Plague itself is subjected to the AoE damage cap, the damage of your diseases is not, because your diseases being on several targets doesn't count as "true" AoE.

Whether Wandering Plague's damage should indeed be subjected to AoE damage caps or not is another issue of which I don't have much certainty either way.

You're seeing Death and Decay do crap tonnes of damage no matter the situation because unlike Blood Boil and Wandering Plague, Death and Decay is not subjected to AoE damage caps either, just like your diseases. The same goes for plenty of other class mechanics that involve leaving some kind of damaging aura on a targeted area on the ground (Consecration, the periodic damage components of Flamestrike and Explosive Trap).

[angrylol]

Yeah, that must be it, on few targets it ticks same damage, but when there is big bunch of mobs Wandering Plague damage per tick goes down.
Thanks for discussion, now I see.

[Jakkre]

In 3.3.5, there's an AoE damage cap that most AoE spells are subjected to which limits their potency on very large packs of mobs.

On a large trash pack of10 or more targets, the damage of a spell like Blizzard is calculated by checking how much damage Blizzard would do on 10 mobs, and then dividing that over the total number of mobs actually present. Let's say each tick of Blizzard would normally hit for 2k. On 10 mobs, that would be 2000 x 10 = 20k per tick. So on a pack of 40 mobs, Blizzard would actually hit for only 20,000/40 = 500 damage per tick. That's the gist of the concept of the AoE damage cap. The issue you're seeing with Wandering Plague's lower damage is because whereas Wandering Plague itself is subjected to the AoE damage cap, the damage of your diseases is not, because your diseases being on several targets doesn't count as "true" AoE.

Whether Wandering Plague's damage should indeed be subjected to AoE damage caps or not is another issue of which I don't have much certainty either way.

You're seeing Death and Decay do crap tonnes of damage no matter the situation because unlike Blood Boil and Wandering Plague, Death and Decay is not subjected to AoE damage caps either, just like your diseases. The same goes for plenty of other class mechanics that involve leaving some kind of damaging aura on a targeted area on the ground (Consecration, the periodic damage components of Flamestrike and Explosive Trap).

Just out of curiosity. Does this AoE damage cap even exist on Warmane? U can never know on private server....

[DarkenedHue]

It does to the majority of AoE spells. The only hilariously broken spell this doesn't apply to that I can think of is a kitty Druid's swipe, which leads to some absurd numbers on trash packs.

[taralej]

Immolation Aura from metamorphed demo locks is another example too. I have yet to see anyone beating a demo lock's AoE (beyond cat druids, yeah). Wandering Plague is extremely potent, but from what I know it should be subject to AoE diminishing as the proc from Wandering Plague is calculated as AoE.

[Jakkre]

When I was raiding as fire mage I was always topping the aoe dmg charts by spamming just flamestrike.
The initial dmg of flamestrike is crazy.
Not sure if its still the case.

[taralej]

The initial damage is actually not the deal. Flamestrike's lasting AoE on the ground can stack and is not subject to AoE diminishing, the initial damage can also crit and trigger Ignite, Master of Elements, and Arcane Concentration.

Frostfire's way of doing this is Blizzard, which benefits from Ice Shards & Piercing Ice.

Arcane spams Blizzard, which benefits from Arcane Concentration, which basically makes Arcane's AoE free-to-cast.

[Jakkre]

Frostfire's way of doing this is Blizzard, which benefits from Ice Shards & Piercing Ice.

Ffb does more dmg with flamestrike spam.
Atleast thats what I have noticed because all the other ffb mages spammed blizzard and I outdamaged them easily with flamestrike spam.

[taralej]

Hmm, I can't really tell. I haven't tested that. Flamestrike does benefit from Ignite, Master of Elements and Fire Power on one hand, but Blizzard gains from 2/3 Ice Shards and 3/3 Piercing Ice. Both Flamestrike and Blizzard benefit from World in Flames and Burnout.

But I guess you're right. Blizzard is a far more consistent spell whereas Flamestrike can get huge spikes the better your gear is.

[DarkenedHue]

I can't confirm the thing about Immolation Aura not being subject to damage caps. We watched our Demo Lock's damage on Sindy trash in a random 10n we did, and we saw Immolation Aura ticks of less than 1/4th their typical damage.

[taralej]

OK, I got really curious now as to which spells are actually not affected by the AoE dmg cap. I was only able to dig out this though:

Most AoE spells that deal damage from a debuff placed on the target (example: [Shadowflame]), rather than direct damage or a debuff from a ground-effect damage over time AoE, will not have an AoE damage cap.

So both D&D and Swipe(Cat) should be subject to AoE diminishing. To be honest, I've also noticed that D&D is behaving strange in big mob situations. I have no observations on Swipe(Cat) though. And yeah, I think you're right about Immolation Aura, my bad.