PSA: How to properly AoE

Aloha all it's time for another public service announce from yours truly. Today's lesson in how not to fail is on the subject of AoE dps and how to do more than hit your channeled spell and scratch your balls. What's that? Why yes there is far more to aoe than just that. And before it gets brought up, I am fully aware that some classes are rather limited in their choice of aoe. For some of them, such as some rogues in wow, your only aoe is an on/off switch. By that I mean that either you're spamming aoe non stop or you are doing zero aoe with nothing in between. Bear this in mind with your class if you have the capability to do more than mash one button.

In fact, there are several different types of aoe "styles" to pick from. Choosing the right one for the situation is what will separate you, the super cool johnny awesome player, from the power drooling inbred mongoloids you'll come across in randoms. I'll start by listing a different style of aoe and then explain exactly what it is.

After that I'll go over when to use it and why it's important that you use that style instead of smashing your single "enemies explode" spell. The goal essentially is to get the best of both worlds. Aoe does more total damage, but won't kill a single mob as fast as focused fire will. Adopting these different aoe styles will do the most to have great spread damage while still focusing on the primary objective for the given situation.

You might ask why this is important or wonder why it is at all. Yes, yes I know, aoe dps are srs bsns! But when a fight requires good aoe, guess what? It is very serious business. Any time that I've seen aoe as even a slightly of an important factor it was always VERY important and was literally a pass or fail. If you couldn't do enough aoe in the right place the right way then it was a guaranteed wipe without question. Hence the PSA on aoe.


Full on AoE.
Obvious one comes first. This is where you're supposed to hit you're single enemies explode spell/attack, lean on back and scratch your nuts. The only time to do this is when there is a shit load of mobs all in the same spot. The amount that is needed to make this worthwhile varies greatly from player to player. This is because different classes have different aoe abilities and different groups of mobs might really need one focused down like a healer before aoe even matters. However I think that a good rule of thumb to follow is anytime there's 5+ mobs that do not have a high priority target (such as a healer) is when you should spam your big bombs non stop.


Cleave based AoE.
If you're not familiar with the term it means to replace your primary spam attack with one that hits multiple targets. Now you don't spam this attack and only this attack, it just replaces your standard filler ability. Meanwhile you continue your usual single target dps rotation on the marked target. One example of where this style should be used is when you have a pull that has 1 elite mob and 5 non elite buddies. Your single target priorities will bring down the elite almost as fast as normal, but all of the little buggers will drop rather fast which will greatly reduce tank damage.


Emphasized AoE.
By this I mean that you still want to focus on your single target, but throw in as much aoe as possible at the same time. Let me give you an example of what I mean by this. Lets say your mega aoe spell is a big fire nuke you cast a ton and also have a talent that makes your 4 second cast meteor spell instant. For prioritized aoeyou'll spam your aoe until you get that instant cast proc and use it on the primary target. Or if you build up a buff on yourself with aoe skills and have a big nuke that consumes that buff this is another example of where this comes into play. Now the time to use this is once again when there are a lot of mobs around. There's no point to spamming aoe on only 2-3 dudes, that's a waste.

The proper time to use this depends entirely on your ability to do it and the group of mobs that you're facing. One easy example is another pull with a single elite and 50 little ones that die fast. Another good one is if you're facing a boss that summons swarms of mobs that get killed in 2-3 hits from aoe. Those types of fights are fairly common and it's always important to keep at least some focused dps on the boss at all times. If there's any sort of time limit on the fight with swarms of aoe adds this is imperative to downing the boss before you get eaten.


Thanks for stopping by!