No, or mages would pull mobs through the ceiling in BWL and scholo all the time.

It's even easier to test than that. Grayson already brought up the example I thought of when I read the original post- go stand on the zeppelin tower outside Orgrimmar. I guarantee you that you won't be able to melee, demo shout, arcane explosion etc anything on the ground below you, but you can barely lightning bolt something in perfect position, and a mage or hunter will have a bit more leeway in what they can hit.

Arcane Explosion, like its graphic, is a sphere. The radius of the effect is the same in the Z-axis as it is in all the others.

Player melee attacks are similar, melee range radius extending from all points of the player hit box (which can gave tauren and their large hit box an advantage in certain circumstances, since I think some mob ability ranges are calculated to the centre of player hit boxes; see the Fankriss bug).

Not being a warrior and not having seen anyone test it, I can't speak for the behaviour of demo shout mentioned above, but I can say empirically it's not an infinite Z-axis cylinder either (again- doesn't tag mobs on a floor above which would otherwise be in range but for the Z-axis distance). My educated guess would be that warrior shouts are like arcane explosion, they affect a sphere of a certain radius in all directions.

If you get up on the arches above the canals in Undercity (nevermind how you get there) you can't shoot people down below. Hunters can shoot people standing at the highest point on the bridges over the moats. Maybe the range box (for lack of a better word) isn't exactly spherical, but I know it's human perception to feel vertical distances are larger than horizontal - if you were to stand on top of a 10 story building the ground would feel pretty far away, it's only a little over a hundred feet.

An interesting test to that would be to go out in to the middle of Lake Everstill (Redridge) or a similarly deep water area. Hopefully it will be more than (Demo Shout Radius) in depth. That way you can control your altitude relative to the target. Better still, do it with two warriors, keep them at the same horizontal position and only vary their altitude. I imagine the system for positioning in water vs in air is fairly similar and allow for a bit more control in that case.

I find this more indicative of blizzard's style of development. They say "oh shit we screwed this up, let's make sure we don't do it again next time we make a flying boss!".

On using examples such as BWL and Scholomance to prove that AE's aren't infinite on the Y axis - does arcane explosion check for LoS? If not then the BWL examples would have been null. I seem to remember having some strange results with the spell previously that seemed to indicate that it does check for LoS, though I could be wrong.

Any mages happen to know for sure if arcane explosion ignores LOS or not?

However, the aforementioned Durotar zeppelin tower example still holds. Casters can get LOS to throw a nuke, but an arcane explosion from the same place won't hit anything on the ground.

No pretty much every game/demo/engine/whatever that i've ever seen that was in 3d used the convention for the Y-axis as the altitude. The X-Z plane ALWAYS refers to the floor from what I've seen. Also, I do believe changes were made so that y axis affects stuff like autoattack, but appears to have no effect on things like specials (Rend on Onyxia phase 2 anyone?)

Every AoE effect works that way even for heals.
Simple test: if someone were to get impaled 20 feet in the air, they should still be healed by a priest who spammed holy nova next to their hitbox.

An odd thing to do during an attempt though.

I didn't notice anyone answering this, but there's pretty obvious difference between hunter models when you shoot at Lucifron.

When every hunter shoots luci from max range, tauren hunters can shoot further than orc hunters. As luci fight is shooting uphill, this means that at least hunter range has to be calculated from the head of model.

There's no other way to explain why my female tauren can shoot further away at luci than orcs, and why male taurens can shoot further away than me.

While I agree that there's probably a Z-axis check on PBAE's, this wouldn't be what's stopping it. Line of Sight is the block here - same as you can't PBAE through walls, you can't do it through ceiling's either.

But you can PBAE through walls. Wanna test? Go have a mage blizzard Chromaggus' gate and see what happens.

That isn't a "wall" though. By walls I mean solid walls like the ones in Ironforge.

A good way to test LoS thing would be to get improved range on AE(3pc netherwind isn't it?) then go AE in a house. Houses are very small yet LoS dependant, you can walk in without aggroing various mobs(lots of houses in eastern plaguelands). Then you could try to AE a mob upstairs(doesn't work afaik) or from outside(doesn't work either I think). As far as I know, AEs are LoS dependant, but can go thru "movable" objects, like doors and such. Pets can usually go thru if you tell them to attack something on the other side too.

As for original topic, there's definitely no limit to mob hitting you when you're over them(go try it in a lake, aggro a mob at the bottom when over it, it'll hit you while swimming up) but there's on when attempting to melee it back(same test, you can't melee the mob while still getting hit). I think it's a direct line to the middle of the box, and range is defined when you hit the surface of the model box along that line.

This is 100% correct. I run into the exact same issue, on Anub.

I think the ceiling thing is just that, a ceiling. It doesn't prove anything about the cylinder like nature of pbae's... you would obviously need to test from a steep ledge, not a roofed corridor.

Also, perhaps the act of flinging is unusual.

Most tanks have experienced the onyxia effect - where they're using sunders and shield slams 30 yards away from the target because its not chasing you, clearly out of range of the defined ability. Perhaps its just this antikite / positioning "feature" in the game that demo lands from way up there on anub. On anub for instance I stand a good 15 yards away from him while tanking... too far to demo shout normally, but my regular abilities work just fine - and this isn't a hitbox thing, warriors can tank far outside of a mobs hitbox by slowly pulling back, being knocked back, or the mob doesn't wanna chase (you can tank nefarian across the room.

I remember this has bugged out so badly in aq40 before that mobs would antikite away from me until they were 30 yards away... was pretty messed up, anyway, perhaps thats all it is with demo that i'm seeing, a default test on top of orgrimmar gate or something would be a nice proof of principle.

Has anyone else aggroed mobs on another floor with Earthbind? It happened to me twice in LBRS. It's conceivable that someone else aggroed using some other spell, but we couldn't think of anything at the time. Earthbind seemed to be the only culprit.

So would this work the same when you are trying to melee someone? For instance, if I'm slightly elevated over a gnome, would I be able to melee them the same distance as I would a tauren. Is the hit box wider for a tauren than a gnome as well?

Reminds me of Goldeneye for NU64, where choosing the little man (Oddjob?) would be such an advantage in PvP because he was so much harder to shoot.

Yet Blizzard, by definition, is in fact not a PBAE.

Targetted AoE most likely have different machina than PBAE, and its quite possible that the "rain-like" AoE spells act differently than even other targetted AoE (grenades for instance), since they supposedly come from the sky.

In AV horde towers, a mage can stand next to a wall outside of the little flag room and AE everyone inside. Haven't been in AV in a while though.

This is incorrect, as of the past couple of months at least.

Sorry, my bad then, like I said it's been a while, but you could do that.

My experience in jumping down from the horde balcony and roof in WSG leads me to agree that it's based on straight-line distance rather than distance along the lowest floor.

My experience using AE near the horde flag room entrance (GY/ramp side) leads me to say that AE does have a LoS check although due to lag it may seem not to on occasion.

My one contribution to the mob melee stuff is that the Emperor in BRD has hit me from under the overhang while I was on top of it (I was kiting him using blink and ramp jumping)

If you stand at max heal range and your MT gets impaled, he gets further away from you. Think of a right triangle: the hypotenuse is a longer distance than the distance of the long arm. The short arm is how high your MT gets flung into the air. So this doesn't prove that Z-axis affects range.

I know for a fact that you can ressurect at any height away from your corpse though. This was how I completed the level 20 rogue poison quest in the Westfall tower at level 20.

Another thing would be how rogues can use special attacks on Onyxia during Phase 2, but how white hits don't connect.