So, recently our diligent workers have unearthed a particularly shiny nugget in the datamines. It isn’t much, but apparently in 11.1.7, the tooltip will be adjusted from:
Strike with both fists at all enemies in front of you, dealing [(305.9% of Attack power) + (184% of Attack power)] Physical damage and reducing movement speed by 50% for 6 sec.
to:
Strike with both fists at all enemies in front of you, dealing [(305.9% of Attack power) + (184% of Attack power)] Physical damage and reducing movement speed by 50% for 6 sec. Deals reduced damage to secondary targets.
This is potentially great news, and potentially a devastating disappointment. Since no other change to the spelldata was detected (though mind that not all spell changes can be datamined, and further changes are of course always on the table), it is possible that this is only a tooltip change, and nothing else. This would address arguably the least important aspect of the complaints against Strike of the Windlord’s target scaling, namely its misleading tooltip. It is something I have personally brought up as a complaint, but I wish to be crystal clear:
The inaccurate tooltip is merely the salt that was being rubbed in the wound. The actual problem is obviously how bad SotWL’s target scaling currently is. It is, without hyperbole, one of the two worst target scaling “aoe” abilities in the entire game at this moment, at least to my knowledge. The other one, fun fact, is Celestial Conduit. Lucky us.
Specifically, SotWL’s aoe formula splits a portion of the base spell’s damage over all secondary targets. The exact portion increases as target count goes up, but never exceeds the base damage. Therefore, the maximum amount of total damage that the spell can deal is less than 2x the base damage. It quite literally scales worse than any hardcapped ability. The tooltip, being phrased as one would expect from an uncapped spell, did indeed rub me and others the wrong way. But I shouldn’t have to point out that removing the salt from the wound doesn’t even rise to the level of a band-aid.
Now, it is possible that changes to the target scaling are already slated for implementation, and either have not yet hit the PTR or haven’t been caught by the datamine. If that is the case, I will be happy to have wasted my time with this post. If that is not the current plan, I beg of you to reconsider, devs. Don’t let the glittering nugget be pyrite.