Powers splitting on environment objects?

I only play as Fire, so I don't know how this works with other powers: are most powers' abilities supposed to split on environment objects? This is something I kept forgetting to ask ever since the April 15th Hotfix where it states:

Power

Munitions

Pump Action Shotgun will no longer split damage on environment objects.

As Fire, abysmal as our damage is already, all of our AM abilities--maybe even every ability in our power trees--split on environment objects and no damage is done to them. This is most easily seen in the League Hall: Malfunction duo and the Patrol Catastrophe solo operation.

In the duo, when I'm fighting bosses using Fire's AM, my partners are melting the bosses' health while I'm barely doing anything. It appears that their abilities are unaffected by environment objects while my damage is usually 1/4 or less than normal. If we clear the room, my damage goes up but many rooms are filled with tons of decorations and my partners rarely help destroy these objects before fighting. The same thing happens during Patrol Catastrophe in the big hall blocked by four large stacks before you meet Braniac's forces for the first time. If you destroy all of the stacks before facing the two Venom enemies, Fire's AM does normal damage. If you only destroy one stack, damage is cut to 1/4 of normal. (I'd post videos to illustrate but my PC cannot handle recording video while playing DCUO.)

tl/dr:

Are only small number abilities supposed to be unaffected by environment objects? All of them? None of them? I'm just wondering if this is a bug with Fire or how the game is supposed to work. Thanks for any insight you can offer.

Only a small amount of powers damage objects.

Fire AM sucks. I'm sorry, I try not to trash powers, but Fire... I want so much to like it, but all it does is break my heart and make me cry. (metaphorically, not literally. )

Fire's AM... so sad ;_;

The devs (or that one dev) need to work out a general rule checklist for powers and destructible environmental objects and decor. Even easier to test stuff now that we can create lairs and put all sorts of objects together in clusters. Burst damage abilities should feature a 'destruction' bonus vs destructible items, while dot damage abilities should not effect such objects at all. Sorcery's soul well and bad karma PI applications, for example, split and hit against these objects instead of hitting 'red target' npcs and similar entities (like the first crystal you come across in Brothers in Arms, which is a red target instead of yellow, allowing you to use full PIs to damage it from any power type).

Similarly, you can't cast poison/spread poison to yellow target items, which makes for an effective rule, especially when considering that you don't want dot abilities randomly detonating barrels prematurely (lookin' at you, soul well). Other times, you WANT your burst damage powers to blow up an item, yet this is not allowed for every power type.

Thanks for the replies so far. Unfortunately, anyone who plays this game knows Fire DPS (especially AM) is BY FAR the weakest power in the game as of GU47 (alarmingly so after this update). Hopefully the devs will fix this problem as soon as possible.

However, regarding the issue I'm trying to address (to see if there is a bug in the game for any of the powers, not just Fire), let me ask the question a different way:

When in areas with environment objects (like the League Hall: Malfunction duo and the Patrol Catastrophe solo op), do your power's abilities do less damage (50%? 25%? 12.5%?) to the enemies in the damage radius or do you inflict 100% of the damage you usually see? When running the go-to rotations for your power, are you just as effective DPSing as when there are no environment objects in the area as when objects are there?

For Fire, the answer is no: DPS performance is reduced by a factor of 2/4/8 depending on the number of environment objects in the vicinity. Given the hotfix note above, it sounds like Munitions DPS is not affected by these objects and does 100% damage regardless. (Unless Munitions DPSers out ther can refute that assumption.) What is the effect for your DPS power(s)? It'd be great if we could get a response from DPSers of every power to share their experience in these situations.

Thanks again.

Any input from people using other powers?