Since there's a lot of discussion about the AoE change in the latest patch, I thought it'd be relevant to make a thread specifically about the discussion of this change.
There's a lot of opinions, both positive and negative, but I hope we can have a constructive discussion to help us (and the devs!) understand how the changes have affected game play. Experiences with the changes are greatly appreciated here, although remember that everyone will have a very different experience so some people may feel heavily impacted by the changes while others not so much.

For those that aren't sure of how the changes work, AoE damage now does less damage to all targets hit as more enemies are hit by the AoE. The first target(s) are also affected by this damage decrease, so none of the enemies are exempt from the damage penalty.

The damage scaling is as such (After personal testing):

3 targets or less: 100% damage
4 targets: 75% damage
5 Targets: 50% damage
6 Targets: 40% damage
7 Targets: 30% damage
8 or more: 25% damage

So with this, I'd like to point out that after 4 mobs, AoEs will be doing less damage in total. You will do 300% of the AoE's damage if you hit 3 or 4 mobs, but when you hit 5 mobs you will start doing less damage in total (50% * 5 = 250%) all the way down to 8 (25% * 8 = 200%). Once you start hitting 12 mobs you'll be back up to 300% and further mobs will increase total damage.

From my personal experience, I thought that the nerf would be extremely limiting, but it doesn't seem that bad after some testing. However, I do feel like there are some strange quirks with how you start to lose damage as you add mobs, which seems counter intuitive. Although it's fair to weaken a single player who is trying to solo many mobs at once, I feel like the nerf causes some strange interactions in ordinary group play.
For example, in Gazluk Keep there are many rooms where there are a large number of non-elite "Trash" mobs clumped together and it's not uncommon for parties pull 5-10 mobs at once in this situation (whether on purpose or by accident). However, due to AoE's doing less damage with more mobs, AoE's end up doing so little damage that it's more effective to simply switch to single target instead as the AoE damage is unnoticeably small. This causes a strange situation where AoEs become valuable when fighting a few mobs at once, but become very weak if there's too many. While I can understand a sharp penalty to damage to hinder a single player trying to farm many mobs at once, I believe that a group of 6 players should be able to fight a group of 5-10 non-elites without such a large penalty.

I do appreciate that the AoE change has made these trash mobs more dangerous, as it makes the dungeon more interesting! (Before they would just fall over instantly and were completely ignored for the most part). However I think AoE's losing damage as mobs are added is counter intuitive and causes AoEs to only be useful in certain situations, as currently AoEs should actually be avoided when there are too many monsters due to their low damage (Unless if they have a good secondary effect).

My personal suggestion for the developers is to allow the primary target of the AoE (Whichever monster you have targeted) to always take full damage from the AoE and for two additional enemies to always take full damage or at least 50% damage minimum. This would mean that AoE would still be helpful even against large mobs as you'll be still be doing some noticeable damage to a few enemies and then the other enemies would take minor splash damage. This would allow groups to continue using AoE if they pull a large pack in a dungeon, but still make it very difficult for a single player to farm huge packs as mobs past the first three would still avoid most of the damage.

Please post what you think about the changes, your experience with it, and any changes you might like to see. Any suggestions are appreciated! Just make sure to explain your reasoning as best as you can. Not just for the others posting on the forums, but also so the developers can understand you!