MECHANIC: Does Seed of Corruption cap at 9 or 10 mobs?

[Hathos]

The question is whether Seed of Corruption (SoC) counts the mob it is casted on towards the area of effect (AoE) cap of 10 or not.

SoC applies a damage over time (DoT) to one mob. Once that mob has reached a damage threshold or dies, AoE damage is done to surrounding mobs. The damage threshold can be reached by either the DoT, or any other source of damage.

There exists a cap on AoE damage in The Burning Crusade (TBC). For SoC, it is 13580. For example, if there were 8 mobs affected by SoC, each would take 13580/8=1697.5 damage at most, so that the total is not above the cap. How SoC behaved in TBC depended on how the SoC AoE was triggered. If the mob affected by SoC died before reaching the damage threshold, only the surrounding mobs affected by the AoE would be counted into the AoE cap. However, if the mob reached the damage threshold, then that mob that SoC was casted on would be counted into the AoE cap, effectively lowering damage.

In Wrath of the Lich King (WotLK), the AoE cap is changed from an amount of damage to be whatever 10 times the damage on a single target would be. For example, if SoC did 2000 damage to 1 target, then the AoE cap would be 20000. This allows the cap to scale with gear.

Will the mob affected by SoC dying to the damage threshold count towards the 10 mobs for the AoE cap? If so, this effectively means that SoC's cap is 9 mobs, due to SoC usually proccing from outside sources of damage.

[Hathos]

Found an undocumented change in patch 3.3.0 where the direct damage effect of Seed of Corruption now applies to the target as well. This makes the issue a moot point.