Increased radius of firestorm and lightning warp

Since the 0.9.11 patch the radius of firestorn and lightning warp is greater. Is this a bug or a wanted effect? It makes the firestorm really weaker, espically with concentrated effect. Couldn't find it in the patch notes or missed it.

This is my current tree: http://www.pathofexile.com/passive-skill-tree/AAAAAQMABExkwwcmypYLCtJZDTEnnA4m5EUWCb_SG6KTXCF52nohnXQyMr1m1jLquew268VUOtyqFT-eX01JRzicTOM0CU0zvqtVyGzAViUX_1wLouhiEhoWYrvqlGM6v8hlpIcJZsc1229AT4d3ABYJfIbKGX-qyB6CqXRBgqopxIOGG9qFDkXvhnOLD4-7Cp2WHGVqmFSqZJzFRM2pvwdirnNxA7EoYKOx29P2uPV_7b0hu1bAcPSWwwcy58SzJ3nGIRMCyDkwActBHRHNymZjzdqoxtmbqBLbMyK47dl4SPU5uo_3ZjtJ-JMbnPxzusL9mG3T

I've made sure twice now that I didn't get an area bonus. Since I played with a friend and we both noticed it individually I am quite sure there was a change. First we noticed the larger symbol when landing from lightning warp and after that the firestorm radius increase, which for him is even worse since he does not have concentrated effect. We skilled both the same since he is quite new to the game and wanted to stick to my experience first. The only difference is that I am about 15 levels ahead.

Edit: I tested again with my level 52 witch and she is really weak now since the raining fireballs are so spread out now that she barely hits the enemy beneath it. Before the patch they would hit in a very small area. So the question remains, what caused this?

There is certainly a difference, I think the passive build has increased 10% in radius somehow. Seems like more though, makes firestorm much weaker as a main attack.

i also noticed this.
i cannot use firestorm as my main attack anymore now.
using firestorm with concentrated effect gem is like using default firestorm before patch.

the fireballs are so spreadout that the skill is borderline no longer viable.

I'm thinking about switching to big blasts of fireballs, but it would only take one extra skill point to circumvent 8% extra radius, and that might be enough, but then auras and curses would take that hit.

I also noticed this.

The number of hits that I get with a low level firestorm against 1 enemy used to be 2-4 now I quite often get none.

The fireballs are too spread out.

I came to ask about or report Firestorm being much more spread out too since I didn't see it mentioned in the notes. Like others in this thread, I have no area increasing passives in my build.

"

Mark_GGG wrote:

The base radius of firestorm has definitely not increased this patch. I have found what's probably the cause of these reports - a bug was fixed in firestorm where the fireballs were not falling evenly, and were biased towards falling in the inner part of it's radius (but could still fall over the entire radius). They now fall evenly over the area, as they were intended to. Carl will be looking at whether this warrants balance changes.

A bug causing them to fall in the center? I thought that was intentional. I'm certain I remember a dev specifically saying that you were changing them to fall in the center.

"

For reference, adding increased area radius passives to firestorm does not make it worse, since it increases both the area the fireballs can fall in, and the area of each fireball's explosion.

That's not necessarily true. Even if the fireball explosions are larger, it still means that any given enemy will be hit less often. For example, imagine hypothetically that Firestorm's area were the size of the map. Even if the individual fireball explosions are the size of a screen, many of them will fall several screens away and miss the mobs right next to you. It's very unlikely that any given mob would be hit by every shot, while with the previous Firestorm + Concentrated effect, it's very likely that a single mob will be hit by every shot.