Talk: Area of effect

table

I think there should be a table representing all of the game's AoE's

Should I make it? --Mathspy (talk) 09:47, 20 February 2014 (UTC)

Change AoE classification

• Swipe: "Damage all enemy minions with primary target (single-targed effects with an AoE component)" is wrong definition for Swipe, cause it also affects hero. 78.88.65.171 12:57, 23 June 2014 (UTC)

AoEs offer the same effect for each target, without reducing or dividing the effect between them - that part also doesn't describe Swipe. Is Swipe an exception, like Brawl, where you have one target that's affected in a different manner or not affected at all? Card text can limit the AoE effect to Murlocks, non-damaged units etc. so swipe's AoE part is affecting every enemy character - apart from the targeted character - in the same way. Ysera Awakens's card text excludes Ysera from the valid targets, so I think swipe doing something similar is OK. -- Karol007 (talk) 11:44, 30 May 2015 (UTC)

• Baron Geddon doesn't damage itself. The article says Some AoE spells do not fall into a main type. For example, Brawl destroys all minions except one, so maybe Baron Geddon should be excluded as well? What about the Dread infernal? -- Karol007 (talk) 11:58, 30 May 2015 (UTC)
• Enhance-o Mechano doesn't fit the AoEs offer the same effect for each target definition. -- Karol007 (talk) 11:58, 30 May 2015 (UTC)

As you say there are quite a few cards like Geddon, Infernal, etc that exclude themselves from the effect. I don't think it's that confusing that we need to draw a huge distinction between the two. The important thing is that each new target does not reduce or divide the damage dealt to each of the other targets. Swipe is definitely an AoE for the same reason, although it's a little weirder because it's really two effects in one spell ("deal 4 damage to target" and "deal 1 damage to all enemy characters except target").

Enhance-o Mechano DOES fit the definition: the effect it offers equally to each target is "gain a random one of Divine Shield, Windfury, or Taunt" :) However we could probably rephrase it to de-emphasize the sameness and instead highlight the independence of the effect on each target from each other. - jerodast (talk) 21:22, 7 June 2015 (UTC)

"Broken" link

Main article: Advanced rulebook#Area of effect links to Advanced rulebook now, since that article doesn't have an Area of effect section anymore. Should I remove the link entirely? -- Karol007 (talk) 11:26, 30 May 2015 (UTC)

I guess the answer is 'yes, remove the link'. -- Karol007 (talk) 14:02, 6 June 2015 (UTC)

Let's make this page more comprehensive

I made a complete list of all the area of effect cards and sorted them into types in the "types" section, but i am not sure how to add them to the chart and add their images to the gallery. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 99.89.0.87 (talk • contribs) 16:45, August 9, 2015‎

Lists like this are auto-generated by the wiki software based on whether the cards have the "Area of effect" tag or not. You can change this by editing specific cards' wiki pages; on the top there is a template where you can add "Area of effect" to the "tags" section, or "|tags=Area of effect" if that section does not exist already. However, there is some inconsistency on what is considered AoE. There are some who might say that only damage and healing can be AoE. That may be why the AoE buff cards aren't tagged "Area of effect". I would also agree with those that say that a card such as Battle Rage which is affected BY the condition of multiple cards, but does not actually CAUSE an effect ON those cards, is not really AoE. In other words, there is a difference between "scalable" cards which have increased effect based on battlefield conditions, and AoE cards. Summon is a gray area, it's hard for me to decide if "Summon AoE" even makes sense. Yes, Unleash the Hounds summons more guys against more opposition (it's scalable), but it doesn't actually DO anything to the targets "in the Area of effect", so is it really AoE?

I don't know, I wouldn't stop you if you made all those changes, since knowing if things are scalable is probably more important than knowing whether they actually directly have an Area of Effect. But one of the other editors might disagree. Maybe we should allow for more discussion to try and pin down the definition. Or maybe you should go ahead and do it and discuss it later :) Up to you haha. - jerodast (talk) 21:14, 9 August 2015 (UTC)

Re: What exactly is an AoE, I would say that it has to have an effect in the area, in order to be an area of effect ability. Scalable things could indeed have their own tag (too many tags yet, Jerodast? ;) ) but they're not AoE - the effect is applied not to an area, but only to one minion. If a minion gave all minions on the board +1 for each other minion on the board, that would be a "scalable" AoE effect. "Scalable" is related to AoE, but it's not an AoE. FYI I also don't think "scalable" is the best name for it, since many other types of effects scale based on conditions :)

I can't think how "Summon AoE" would work. You mean like Onyxia? Again, that's more to do with minion limits, it's not really affecting an area. The same is true of all Summons, like Haunted Creeper if your board was already full; but you wouldn't call that an AoE. Mirror Image too.

It's not only damage and healing that can be AoEs, it's the behaviour - does an effect have an effect on every minion in an area and/or of a specific type? Then it's probably an AoE.

We have to apply some reason though; Taunt affects all enemy minions, so you could call that an AoE. It's obviously not though - it's a specific and very separate game mechanic.

Re: the table and visual list, Jerodast in correct in his explanation. The relevant cards should hopefully already be tagged, but if they're not, tags can be added. If a page is already tagged and not showing up, it might just need refreshing, ala Help:Missing cards. -- Taohinton (talk) 15:08, 11 August 2015 (UTC)

Ah, what an excellent opportunity to explain what is too many tags and what is not too many tags :P I would have no problem with a Scalable tag. (Although, agreed, probably not the best name.) What WOULD be too many tags is if everything tagged AoE was also tagged Scalable. People know what AoE means and if they don't they can easily find out. They therefore know that AoE is a subset of Scalable, making the additional tag a waste of space.

The summon AoE argument goes like this: Picture targeting an AoE circle on the ground in WoW. Now cast the spell that fills that area with dragon whelps. Congratulations, you are Onyxia and you just cast an AoE summon. In the Hearthstone world it's a linear area and not a circular area, but same idea. Unleash and Poison Seeds follow more of a pattern recognition line of reasoning, where if AoE damage does some damage for each target, and AoE healing does some healing for each target, and AoE buffs give some buff for each target, then maybe AoE summon can summon some guy for each target. To be honest, I find that the metaphor doesn't really translate in either of those cases, but I can see where it's coming from.

Oddly enough, Kel'thuzad, who at first seemed like the weirdest inclusion on the list, actually makes the most sense to me after some thought: He summons everyone in an area, and that area is the "recently killed" area. Still, probably too much of an outlier to try to call this an actual AoE.

I mentioned "only damage and healing" mainly in reference to the fact that AoE buffs (e.g. Savage Roar) are not tagged AoE. Not sure what the current tagging breakdown is based on.

Your Taunt example is a fascinating one. You say it's a specific and very separate game mechanic, but I say you can cast many, many mechanics as other mechanics. For all we know, Taunt IS coded as an ongoing AoE: "all enemy characters have 'cannot attack any character without Taunt'". Similarly, there are many effects we could define as triggered effects without changing their operation in game. But I would agree that we should NOT define Taunt this way (nor those other effects as triggered effects), because the developers chose to set Taunt apart by making it a keyword ability, so we too should treat it as distinct.

Um. Back to the matter at hand, do we agree Battle Rage and AoE summons should leave the list and everyone should feel free to tag everything that's left? - jerodast (talk) 23:56, 11 August 2015 (UTC)

Re: Onyxia, I still don't see that as an AoE summon. The area size is fixed; therefore you're summoning a fixed number of Whelps. The proximity of the summons are irrelevant. To some degree every summon would be an AoE summon, since they're always summoning into an area. I get how you could try to argue it, but I don't really see it, and I don't see the benefit of tagging such things, either. Poison Seeds is a much better example, but this is already an AoE. Unleash is simply checking an area in order to scale its effect, so it's really "scalable".

Just noticed the current "AoE summon" list! My opinion: Onyxia is worded as a scalable summon, but functionally just a 6-spawn Haunted Creeper; Poison Seeds is an AoE destroy, and scalable summon; Unleash is a scalable summon. Kel'Thuzad is actually a contender as a kind of AoE summon, but not by the current definition. Conceptually he's using a Resurrection-type ability to rez all friendly minions that died that turn; like Mass Resurrection, this is an AoE. In practice however, he's simply checking the list of recently dead friendly minions, copying the list, and summoning new minions to match the list. This is why multiple KTs can make doubles, etc. It's also why he's been officially admitted to as a summon card, not a 'resurrection' effect - the new minion is just a new minion of the same kind, not the same actual one. This is why Reincarnate is a summon and not a return effect.

What KT and Echo of Medivh might be included as, is an "AoE copy" effect. They then summon or generate everything off their "clipboard", which isn't AoE, but the Ctrl+C part *is* AoE, hence the variable numbers. This is in contrast to most copy effects which are single or multiple target.

So, I've removed Battle Rage (which isn't an AoE, just scalable) and the AoE summon list. Feel free to debate KT and Echo.

Other things: I've tagged Savage Roar. This was already correctly listed in the breakdown, and you'll see that other AoE buff effects were already tagged. There are probably still quite a few that have been missed, though (as you've been noticing!).

I agree Taunt *is* an AoE in nature. However, as you are very keen to highlight, the redundancy of tagging every Taunt card as an AoE is something to be avoided ;)

As a final comment, it should be borne in mind (if it's not already abundantly clear) the tag of "area of effect" is a fairly loose one. We're conceptualising based on the nature of the effect, to reflect its overall behaviour. But at the same time, we're trying to balance that with how the effect actually works. Games like WoW likewise mess with reality by allowing you to trigger a huge fiery explosion which kills any opponent in the area, but leaves friendly targets utterly unscathed. At this point we have transcended the real world definition of "area of effect", because we're combining area with specific eligibility.

More existentially, area in Hearthstone is itself not actually a spatial phenomenon - the position on the board is marked by a tag, string or order in a stack. There's no actual physical placement. So when we say "area of effect" what we're actually saying is "any character whose relevant variables fall within the specified ranges" ...which doesn't sound anything like an AoE. Nonetheless from the player's perspective, it's an AoE, and that's how it's intended to feel. This is fairly straightforward, until we get to cards like Reincarnate, where the concept is functionally very distinct from what's being described conceptually. Cairne Bloodhoof simply cannot spawn THREE copies of his son Baine upon his death - and then come back to life, and do the same again. But, in Hearthstone he can ;) Therefore there's a necessity to sometimes look beyond the fantasy to the functionality. -- Taohinton (talk) 15:01, 12 August 2015 (UTC)

Temporal rift

In my opinion the 'area of effect' tag should be given only to those effects that affect all targets of a certain type, which includes 'both heroes' but not (for example) Cult Apothecary. Cult Apothecary heal a single target and does it only once: instead of working like "here is a minion, heal 2; here's another, heal 2; here's another, heal 2; ...", it works like effect that look for the value of a tag (opponent's 'number of minions on the battlefield' or something like that) and heal twice that amount. It seems to me it works like Twilight Dragon (which queries how many cards you have in hand), Forbidden spells (how much mana do you have left?), Frost Giant, Solemn Vigil, Divine Favor, Edwin VanCleef, Everyfin is Awesome, Battle Rage, Sea Giant, Unleash the Hounds and all other scalable effects. I am pretty confident on this interpretation, thus I removed effects like Old Murk-eye and Cult Apothecary from the Area of Effect tag; however, if you think I'm wrong, undo those changes and let's continue with the discussion! Elekim (talk) 06:37, 18 January 2017 (UTC)

I'm fine with removing the AoE tag from Cult Apothecary, etc. You'll notice I've added the 'Battlefield-related' tag in place of some: this newer tag more accurately reflects what was probably the original intent; there is an area that affects the card's effect ;)

Re: AoE hero healing, it's probably worth noting here that we seem to be assuming that all effects that heal both heroes are considered AoEs? (E.g. healing both heroes at once, rather than healing each hero individually.) Given the technical note on how AoE healing functions differently from multiple target healing, this is significant. Ideally we'd test every new card like Mistress of Mixtures to check they work the same as Refreshment Vendor, for which the significance appears to have been tested. -- Taohinton (talk) 19:05, 20 January 2017 (UTC)

Choice cards

When there is a card like Wisps of the Old Gods, should it mention the collectible card or the choice card Bis Wisps? The same applies to cards like Kalimos, Primal Lord; Animal Companion (Leokk) or Kazakus. Somebody changed some cards to only show the collectible card but now the list is kind of inconsistent. I think it's better if the uncollectible cards are shown. Leokk for example can be summoned by Animal Companion and Call of the Wild. A solution could be to write it down like this: Kalimos, Primal Lord (Invocation of Air) - to show the collectible and the choice card. What do you think? 79.214.110.61 11:28, 2 May 2017 (UTC)

Good thought on using parentheses for the choice, not a bad idea. But, this wouldn't work for the auto-generated tables most card lists use. I'm fine with throwing it in here but probably something we can leave to editors' discretion. Let's definitely list Kalimos though! Mainly it's just not here because it's new.

The reason uncollectible cards like Leokk and Kazakus Potion are treated as different from choice cards, and in some ways similar to collectible cards like the fact that they're listed here, is that those actually exist as playable entities in the game, whereas choice cards ONLY exist as options for other cards being played. You can copy a Kazakus Potion or return Leokk to your hand, but you can't do anything like that with Invocation of Air. Also remember, this evolved from the original Choose Ones; there was certainly never any motivation to list Bear Form instead of just Druid of the Claw as a Taunt.

That said, I have thought (and wrote about it on Talk:Kazakus) that when too many choices exist it could be worthwhile to allow choice cards to have their own abilities and appear in lists. This would essentially mean a new "hybrid" card type on the wiki which is a choice card but with the "status" of an uncollectible card. This isn't as simple as it sounds though since the list query system is pretty complex, and I wouldn't want to start treating some choice cards special here until the same can be applied everywhere.

- jerodast (talk) 17:19, 2 May 2017 (UTC)