Says it all in the title.
Because, unless all troops share a mana color, it won’t hit every troop. At least that’s my thinking on the subject.
But it’s going to be deadly in guild wars defense.
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Because it doesn’t always target damage to every enemy. Just like Shocktopus or Champion of Anu. Or Plague.
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The way I see it, because it’s spell effect can be less than four, it’s not considered true AoE. Your opinion may vary.
To me, AoE means all troops. It’s the same reason Tina or Infernus aren’t considered AoE.
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If this was the case for submerge interaction… hoo boy would that be annoying. Please, please lets hope it never comes to that.
Shocktopus is not considered AoE for the purposes of submerge, by the way.
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Yeah just tested it. You are correct. It appears I got caught up in the “all Enemies” text description. Thanks.
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The game is kind of wishy-washy with AoE damage. In terms of “video game logic” I agree with you that AoE and “multiple targets” should be synonyms. In GoW, only certain kinds of “multiple targets” are AoE.
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Perhaps we need to use different terms? I actually thought AoE meant all enemies, excluding things like splash damage (which is also unaffected by submerge).
Similarly, I find it wack that submerge works against mana burn (treated as a status effect for most purposes in the game).
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When have we been able to trust the text to be consistently useful anyway?
From a programming perspective, I have to assume this case (and Shocktopus) checks each troop individually. It goes “They chose purple, are you purple yes take damage then” x4. As opposed to checking all troops at once, which could be done but probably not as easily?
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It makes sense. Otherwise submerge should also block splashed damage.
There is no term as “AOE” in the game. If we look into list of status effects in the help center we can see that
" Submerged troops avoid all damage effects from spells that are targeted at the whole team (e.g. “all troops” or “split randomly amongst”)."
It was very clear even before release that submerge shouldn’t affect The Gray King cast in any way.
So if 4 fire bombs are on defense. And I use Gray King cast on red gems. 
As I already stated above. The “all enemies” part of his text. Tripped me up.
Perhaps it could say, “Each Enemy” instead of “All Enemies” to give less of an AoE feel.
Destroy all Gems of a chosen Color. Each Enemy of that Color takes 31 true damage and is Mana Drained, Silenced and Frozen.
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When you think about it, very few spells don’t target “all troops”. It’s mostly spells that affect allies that have a condition like “allied Mystics”. It’s only the like “an enemy of that color” offensive spells that have restrictions on what troop they can target. 