the area attack could still miss

The post quoted below is pretty accurate. This change to Hammer of the Righteous was a bug fix. Before the change, if the main attack missed the area attack also missed. If the main attack hit, the area attack could still miss.

Now, if the main attack misses the area attack also misses, but if the main attack hits, the area attack also hits.www.euwowgold.fr This means there is only one hit/miss roll for the attack, as opposed to two before.

We like that the design of this ability is different from other AoE attacks which have individual attack rolls. Hammer of the Righteous is a single attack with splash damage and we don't see a reason to change its design at this time. We just wanted to fix the consistency issue.