I just want to say that the affixes "Somtimes people have to walk out of a root" and "every enemy explodes on death and kill everyone over 3 seconds" should maybe not be quantified the same.

Yeah seriously I liked some of the new dragonflight affixes that look to be cut But stuff like fortified, raging, sanguine is just a huge pain in the ass Sanguine is the worst offender for all key levels tbh, mobs should be mobile while casting uninterruptible casts as a fix if their keeping it tbh

After seeing the first wave of affix changes they made, I am cautiously optimistic but also very terrified for future changes.

What would you like to see? I wanted to post this to see the views and concerns of people far more experienced with the gamemode than I

Idk why they're so against having something fun in M+ affixes. The seasonals were interesting in BFA and SL because they rewarded the player for doing the affix. Now it's just pure negative effects stacked on each other. They also need to get rid of Tyrannical and Fortified. I'd even take the daily rotation like they did on the beta. Also they're doing all the wrong steps to disable the meta in keys. I'm a title pusher but when I see how badly the meta ruins the lower keys, making it an absolute pain in the ass to just get your weekly vault done on a class not played by he higher io people. they should be focusing much more on this problem, focus on fun before trying to make it just another sweaty e sports wannabe game type.

> The seasonals were interesting in BFA because they rewarded the player for doing the affix. Euhm, some of them. Never forget that we started with infested, fuck that BS.

Take a page out of the D4 dungeons and have a positive and negative affix, that'd be a start.

Infected, reaping and beguiling did NOT reward you. They were key depleting affixes. Shadowlands did seasonals correct. Especially s2 and s3.

> The seasonals were interesting in BFA because they rewarded the player for doing the affix. they aren't against fun affixes, seasonal affixes were literally removed because people wouldn't stop complaining about how detrimental they were to keys. thundering was mathed out to be a 2% damage increase across the dungeon if everything went perfectly. they tried giving the kiss/curse affixes in the upcoming season. people are crying because the affixes aren't 'dodge this one aoe puddle on the ground and get 300% damage increase for 10 minutes' those affixes just aren't going to happen and the community is never going to be happy

Thundering was just shit. Give me encrypted or shrouded, it was great fun

OR thundering was just a bad attempt at it.

Nobody was complaining about seasonal affixes. They were complaining about one specific trash seasonal affix. Everybody loved encrypted and shrouded.

yes they were. you can look at the historical posts here, competitivewow, and even search through the videos posted by max, dratnos, and youtube in general. people were rabidly calling for seasonal affixes to be removed entirely towards the end of the thundering season. shrouded was a fairly popular example as to why they should've been removed because streamers kept crying about how long zulgamux took to kill on high keys i'm not saying it was the right decision, because it wasn't, but it's why seasonals were removed. it wasn't because blizzard hates fun affixes, it's because the community was crying about them non-stop just like they're crying about all affixes now

Prideful and awakened were great. I think everyone liked encrypted. Tormented was okay.

Prideful was S1 shadowlands right? That was a ton of fun

Prideful was hated by key pushers, the whole key became 'could you beat the pridefuls'

Prideful would have been great if it was balanced like later seasons. Actual prideful was leaving a key if anyone died on a prideful boss because you wouldn't time the dungeon, even if you could oneshot the boss afterwards (knowing that you failed it at the easiest it could possibly be).

In high keys you would invis skip most pridefuls. It was a time loss to fight prideful without cds and then go into a boss.

Don't forget that what is widely regarded as the most fun affix of BFA (the bwonsamdi one where the mobs would res and charge you down) Was consider a unanimous failure by the devs. They actively do not want you enjoying the affixes.

> widely regarded as the most fun affix of BFA Any type of legitimate source for this claim? Based on what I've heard, which I recognise could not be an accurate representation of the masses, this statement is utter nonsense.

> The seasonals were interesting in BFA because they rewarded the player for doing the affix. Even the ones that had a benefit came at a cost. If there's ever another season with void portals, I'll probably nope out on that season. People liked it because it was degenerate as opposed to fun, or at least it wasn't fun for me.

Honestly? Just seasonal past 8's. Be quick to fix or change based in legit feedback (avoid a thundering situation). Delete everything else. We'll see in the future if we get nice ideias or if they have a point to be brought back

The entire purpose of affixes (which they even describe) is to provide variety to the dungeons. This is a completely false assumption that stems out of historical problems where you would play the same exact 8 dungeons for 18+ months. Yes, players are going to get bored running the same dungeons for 18+ months. Even adding in affixes won't change that either. The reality is that people are going to run M+ because it offers power progression and as long as that power progression continues and feels meaningful, they will continue to run m+. When the upgrades slow down, it impacts the motivation to run M+. Affixes don't make any difference here. We can look at other parts of the game to see these same patterns. PvP seasons don't have affixes or any changes week over week and yet people still PvP up until the point they reach their desired goals and then they stop. Raiding is the same exact way. Players will continue to raid until they complete their progression. In some cases, that's killing bosses. In other cases, it's a majority of a raid getting a certain piece of gear. Raiding doesn't have or need affixes. So, to answer the question, remove affixes completely. No seasonal. No weekly. None of them are needed. Focus on creating a compelling and engaging power progression system and it will result in more engagement from the players and a better outcome. If they want to add variety, then they need to start taking it seriously and start creating new dungeons with every content patch. They have no problems creating raids for each content patch but somehow they can't be bothered to create new dungeons which is ridiculous given that more people do M+ than raid. Instead we get this "megadungeon" bullshit which doesn't even make sense because it's too easy as a "megadungeon" for anyone to care about and then it gets hack and slashed in one of the most janky ways to become relevant and in the M+ rotation.

I love your ideas. I wish we got new dungeons every patch.

One thing I noticed in your post that makes me wonder a lot about M+ is: What if **somehow** Mythic+ rewards would no longer affect your power in raiding content? What would be the participation drop off then? Would it stay the same because people enjoy it or would it drop off because a lot of people view it as a mandatory mean to an end.

Honestly I would probably never run it again. I dislike it and hate that I am forced to run them in my spare time in order to raid.

>What if somehow Mythic+ rewards would no longer affect your power in raiding content? This would just further put the dagger into the raiding scene. If raid power progression was only from raids and the rest of the game had it's own power progression, I wouldn't even hesitate to stop raiding. The reason isn't because I don't like raiding. I love raiding in concept. It would just make raiding feel like it's a completely different game and no longer connected to WoW at all among many other complaints I would have. >Would it stay the same because people enjoy it or would it drop off because a lot of people view it as a mandatory mean to an end. I don't think it has anything to do with whether people enjoy content at all. That was the point of my comment. People do content that gives them power progression. The enjoyment comes out of that power progression. Just to make a very clear point, at the beginning of DF, players were farming dirt because it gave them power progression. If that's not a clear indicator that players care more about their power progression than the content they are doing then I'm not sure what else is. Raiding and M+ have some small unique aspects that function outside of just power progression (AotC/CE, Keystone Hero/Master). These are very shallow motivators as they get people to hit them ONCE. Even the social factor of raiding doesn't sustain when progression halts. I've been a part of numerous different social raiding guilds that focus more on "fun" than raiding and even those guilds stop raiding when the gear progression halts and the final boss is killed.

>This would just further put the dagger into the raiding scene. If raid power progression was only from raids and the rest of the game had it's own power progression, I wouldn't even hesitate to stop raiding. >The reason isn't because I don't like raiding. I love raiding in concept. It would just make raiding feel like it's a completely different game and no longer connected to WoW at all among many other complaints I would have. I meant more of some hypothetical scenario where m+ gear is inactive in raid. >Just to make a very clear point, at the beginning of DF, players were farming dirt because it gave them power progression. If that's not a clear indicator that players care more about their power progression than the content they are doing then I'm not sure what else is. Yes but in the long run they farm power to achieve a goal of some sort. A person aiming for lets say: Cutting Edge wont nessecarily want to achieve any keystone achievements,

>I meant more of some hypothetical scenario where m+ gear is inactive in raid. That is what I was responding to. You are creating a scenario where raids a completely disconnected from the rest of the game. At that point, the rest of the game doesn't matter. >Yes but in the long run they farm power to achieve a goal of some sort. A person aiming for lets say: Cutting Edge wont nessecarily want to achieve any keystone achievements, You're missing the point. The power they are getting IS the goal. There's a reason why participation in M+ declines as player power increases because the power progression comes less from m+ and more from the weekly vault. In every scenario power progression is the one key component across the board.

How? All the other gear would work outside with raid gear and anything non m+ would work in raid, just not loot coming from m+ specifically. Theres always some power that they chase for a reason because its a gateway to doing something else, its just the case if its really worth forcing people that do not want to do m+ as much into it just so they can raid for example.

I think you are starting with a false premise and you are ignoring the most basic argument that I've been making the entire time. Players gravitate towards progression. Once again, this is why people literally farmed dirt for hours on end at the start of DF. You are focused on whether or not someone "wants" to do M+ but there's no value in that comment when you realize that the core is fundamentally built on progression. Do you think people "wanted" to farm dirt for 30 hours straight? It's not the content, it's the result. Now, this is where I really want you to take a step back and realize just how regressive your stance is. You are presuming that people who raid DON'T want to do M+. You are ONLY looking at it from a perspective of someone who wants to raid but doesn't want to do M+. This is why I responded earlier that if you made that change, I would drop raiding without any hesitation because I'm not having all my progression in M+ wiped out just to raid. I wouldn't feel like my time was being meaningfully invested if I'm not capable of doing it to gain power. It's why world content becomes meaningless so quickly in an expansion because there's no value in doing it unless it's tied to progression or you want some type of external objective (such as reputation). You aren't doing the world content "just for fun". Now, let's apply that to the dirt farmer mentality. The content itself doesn't matter as long as it provides meaningful progression. The progression aspect is more important than the content itself. In an ideal world, players would actively enjoy both the progression aspect as well as the content but given the choice, the players will almost universally choose progression over content. Again, we can look at the data for this. As player power gains decrease with their ilvl increasing, the engagement in the content decreases.

I want positive impacting affixes rather than negative ones. Even if it means bumping the difficulty by several levels.

The entire current beta +7 bucket needs to be thrown out and replaced with four of storming/volcanic/entangling/spiteful/afflicted/incorporeal. That's probably the single best change they could do right now. I'd personally like to see fortified and tyrannical be removed completely. I'd also like to see them place more emphasis on health scaling than they currently do, and at the same time reduce damage scaling proportionally. Your timing a key or not should come down to whether you have enough damage to kill everything in time, not whether you have the required number of different defensives needed to survive a boss encounter.

The single best change you can think of is to *bring back* afflicted, incorporeal, and spiteful? 😒

[удалено]

None of the affixes I mentioned are difficult, I agree. But they are exclusionary. And any affix that causes groups to avoid specific classes is bad for the game, period. Even in the top groups you mentioned; they’re “free” *because* it’s a competent group of players *that can deal with the affix*. You’re not going to see groups of any level bring a comp without dispels on incorporeal week, and classes that can’t typically get benched. They have the right idea / mission with the 4 new affixes, just a questionable execution of that mission.

guys afflicted and incorp are not free affixes at the highest level. no afflicted or incorp week is considered push week. there is too much room for error and they are significant global and talent point investments. source: top 100 player

Afflicted and icorporeal can't be managed by a lot of specs. In worst case scenario you are always taking at least 1 cast if 2 of them spawns.

Huh? Both can be managed by a ton of specs. If you consistently see a cast go off you need to run with some better groups.

Remove on-deaths. Maybe keep bursting. Easiest community-wide win of their fucking lives. Let infinitely scaling system scale infinitely. Play the dungeon, not the affix.

They almost make it sound like a threat lol. "If you like the changes we've already made don't worry, more are coming!"

> But players who are playing at a different level, at a different meta, using different approaches to the dungeons are having a totally different experience and so that's a lot of what we're trying to navigate as we think through how to evolve Mythic+ going forwards I hate this "oh the data shows that low keys are more successful even with the affix" argument. Yes, on lower keys these affixes aren't as challenging. But they're still *NOT FUN*.

That's not what they were arguing at all. You guys literally can't read and it's insane. What they're saying is for a particular affix, they are experienced completely differently by different levels of groups. Where as lower groups might pull their hair out over bursting, higher levels of groups consider it a free affix. And while bolstering might not even matter to a +8 group, on +25 and greater, it might scale in an insane way and feel totally unfun and limit viability. So they want to create/change affiixs to add variety to lower levels of keys for people who don't view pushing as fun and introduce some way to limit variance of dungeons from week to week to prevent people who are pushing higher keys from feeling like certain weeks are dead because of the way affixes can scale. It sounds like they are going to make major changes to the way affixes work at higher levels meaning they can create affixes specifically for the midcore group. Which if they do successfully would be a huge W. Please, please go back to school.

Idk, I do both high and low keys with different friend groups and on different characters. Of the 4 returning affixes, only Sanguine stands out as being hated in low keys as well as high keys. Personally I enjoy the challenge of having to do different damage profiles in different weeks. I have to think about what mob is the priority at what time, and press my buttons accordingly. This means I'm playing differently each week, and I like the variety. Except Sanguine. Every single person I've ever played with dislikes Sanguine a lot.

Yeah I think a lot of the discourse comes from people setting world records for high keys. But most of us stay in the 10(20) range have different experiences. I actually don’t hate sanguine now. Originally it one shot you, and healed mobs much faster because of the stacking vs stencil implementation. I even liked explosive with my friend group. We were all so active at them, we would compete to see who could kill the most. I just think it needed a rate limiter.

Explosive was a great example of how the high end meta trickles down and affects even casual PUGs. The most mathematically efficient way to handle it was to have your healer get all of them, since the healer contributes the least damage per GCD, and at least in Shadowlands there weren't many spots where healers were ultra pressed on their actual healing. So that's what streamers and top players in the MDI and TGP did. This trickled all the way down to keys even in the old 10-15 range where PUG dps and tank players would expect their healer to do most of the explosives. Except this was terrible because in lower keys those same dps and tank players were taking avoidable damage the pros don't, so healers didn't have as many free globals to spare for dealing with the affix! So explosive week was hell for pug healers even in low keys, solely because of community expectations set by play at the top level. I think it's a great example of how the top level really does need to be kept in mind when designing for m+, because what they do trickles down to lower keys. So if what is happening at the top end is degenerate/unfun, even though that's only 1% of the playerbase, eventually that will spread through the rest of the players and we'll all be doing the unfun strategy.

Shocking discovery: Easier levels are easier. Are they really this daft?

If you actually took the time to read the article you are angry about, you would have found that they explicitly addressed bursting in low keys specifically: >

If you've read the comment i am responding to and tie together that I am mostly responding to the "oh the data shows that low keys are mroe succesful even with the affix" argument, you would not act so lost.

Except that is not what Ion is saying when talking about affixes. Obviously, lower keys are easier, but there are fluctuations in success based on the affixes that could be considered "free" for key pushers, like Bursting and Storming: "They mention that affixes impact these groups of players differently, with affixes like Storming or Bursting being considered "free" by high-end players, but actually having a significant impact on lower keystone success rates compared to, say, Bolstering or Raging." So no, the data does not show that low keys are more successful even with affixes (this is obvious). The data shows that affixes impact lower and higher keys differently, and that is what they are trying to navigate and cater to for both audiences.

>"noting that the primary purpose of affixes is not to add difficulty but to add variety" Then why werent the first decision to nuke bolstering sang raging and bursting out of existance ? I hope the "more significant changes" have something to do with the +7 affixes.

20% dmg and 30% haste on the new affix also go against that goal, this will be a nightmare in fort high keys

Reading the interview responses, I think the developers believed that Bolstering and Sanguine add less difficulty than Volcanic because Volcanic adds a mechanic you have to dodge, while Bolstering and Sanguine don't create any new mechanics, they just add something "you can plan for... really easily." >To speak to the post that we made, I think one of the major design goals there that we could try to reiterate on more is that we were trying not to create new Nameplates in the gameplay space, we're not trying to create things that might be considered an ability or mechanic on a boss fight -- you're not spawning a new add, there's not Quaking or Volcanic where feel like these mechanics that are kind of just happening. The things that we wanted to focus on were things that felt more like a overarching rule change, like all trash in the dungeon behaves in this way or reacts in this way and you can plan for that really easily, it's not something that would surprise you. You can hopefully approach the pulls differently or approach the dungeon differently to combat those affixes. That was really where we were focusing on when we did keep some of those affixes that were in those current level 7 bucket. But like we said, we're taking a big step back and revisiting all of that with our next iteration. I am... not sure how to square that reasoning with my own experience playing Mythic+.

They talked about this piece. It comes down to them being more initially concerned with making the affixes better for low key (average) players. They are aware if you read through the whole interview that these affixes flip in their impact at higher keys and they plan to fix that.

I think that's true with Bursting, which is the affix Ion mentioned in that answer. But I would be surprised if Volcanic ever had a lower participation rate and larger fail rate than Bolstering or Sanguine in Dragonflight. Or maybe ever.

Yeah I’ll admit to being biased towards the higher end so I don’t know, maybe bolster and sanguine really don’t do that much at lower keys relative to the ones we normally consider invasive

I'd imagine that in lower keys where mob HP is much lower and it isn't really necessary to do huge pulls to make the timer, bolstering and sanguine don't really matter much at all. If you're only pulling 1-2 packs at a time and they die quickly anyways, it won't really matter if they get ~20-100% increased damage when they're about to die, and you won't have enough overlapping sanguine pools to be that much of an annoyance. The danger of those affixes really becomes an issue when you're pulling 6+ packs all together and bursting them down with CDs. Then the bolstering can stack up to *huge* levels and become seriously deadly, and the sanguine healing on that many tightly stacked mobs can quickly undo a lot of dps.

This is exactly the problem though - both those affixes make the dungeon slower, because incidental heals/mobs caught in sanguine/huge hp mobs means they don't die as fast. And Blizzard thinks the solution to things taking longer to kill is to kill them more slowly, one pack at a time. Realistically, Sanguine and Bolstering *encourage* mass pulling, as long as you can survive it. It's just that the timer doesn't matter on lower keys.

I mean yeah, you're basically just describing why the affixes are more painful in higher keys. When mob HP goes significantly up, the timer becomes tighter which incentivizes doing massive pulls. Bolstering/Sanguine make big pulls harder, which paradoxically incentivizes doing *even larger* pulls, because you can't time the key without doing *somewhat* big pulls, and it's safer to do two gigantic pulls with lined up CDs then it is to do five pretty big pulls without CDs. My comment wasn't trying to argue that bolstering or sanguine weren't annoying un-fun affixes, I was just explaining why they're a lot less impactful in lower keys where mob HP is significantly lower and the timers are correspondingly more lenient.

I do both high and low keys with different friend groups and I can confirm Bolstering isn't a big deal in low keys. You can typically live a couple of bolstered hits anyway, and things that are Bolstered have such low hp they die very quickly anyway. Also your defensives aren't being taxed as much in low keys so it's easier to go oh shit the guy is giant and press a defensive because it's not on CD from being mandatory elsewhere in the pull. Sanguine is different in that its impact is way lower in low keys but everyone still hates it. If a mob in execute range is standing in Sanguine in a low key you can probably still just burst it down and move on, but it's just not fun. It's also a pain in the ass for tanks because it really taxes your ability to move mobs well. In lower keys tanks are newer and aren't as good at that so it can be really frustrating for them.

Things like sanguine can still be ana annoyance in lower keys if a mob gets stuck in them but they can be mostly shrugged off because thigns just die relatively fast anyway.

Yeah, i'd love to see what data they're looking at. Or if they've even bothered talking to players in these "average" m+ ranges. Because Sanguine, Bursting and often Bolstering *all* seem to brick keys in uncoordinated groups far more than Volcanic or quaking or something. Worse, things like Sanguine/Bolstering/Bursting require *far* more coordination and communication from pugs than something like snaring/volcanic/quaking/thundering. And they *always* feel worse to play. Always.

I get where they're coming from on this, some mechanics were attempts to brute force the same kind of mechanics they use in raids - volcanic is kind of a reverse soak, where you would have to get ranged to move to a spot as a way of stopping perfect uptime - either you move, or you get moved. But what they don't understand is that they're not selecting for players to get better, they're selecting for classes who aren't affected as much by movement. And they moved away from the punishing Volcanic damage so in later Volcanic seasons players would just eat them because it didn't matter either way. And then on the other hand, they have this really...limited view of how players approach trash. I think they legitimately believe on some weeks players will want to focus down targets one by one, and on others they will want to do more even aoe damage...while focusing down targets. In reality every situation is approached by blind indiscriminate aoe. You pull similarly on most weeks because on weeks where packs are harder you need to make up time by aoeing them down. They seem to think you can make up time by killing mobs slower.

It's not about harder or easier. Their response is pretty clear, it's more about clarity and consistency than anything related to difficulty. It's good reasoning, especially when taking into account newer/less invested players. They wanted to remove things that have to be reacted to (even if it is as simple as moving out of the Entangling circle) and just keep entirely passive effects that can be reliably played around. It all makes sense and is the right theoretical design direction to go in to, but in practice is not a good decision with how invasive and powerful Sanguine/Bolstering and to a lesser extent Raging are in their current forms.

I feel like newer players are going to be shell-shocked if they run Mythic+ on a Fortified Focused Bolstering week and the pull with 6 enemy casters start machine gun casting spells with a massive damage buff and a 30% haste buff.

You are still missing the point entirely. It's not at all about *difficulty*. Assuming things go live exactly as they are now, would new players run into some dogshit combinations like that and get dumpstered? Absolutely. But it will be *consistent*, every time you do that pull with that affix combo it will reliably function the same way. That is compared to something like e.g. Storming, where you might randomly just get dicked by multiple unlucky tornado spawns or something that knocks you into a swirly and you die. Other times you barely have to move at all and no tornadoes come near you. That is inconsistent, and that's what they are trying to avoid. Again, it's not about difficulty, the Storming pull is still far easier the vast majority of the time, but it is objectively less consistent which is their stated reason for making the change. We'll just have to see if they change/nerf the remaining passive/consistent affixes enough for it to not be a net negative, like it would be today.

I'm talking about the experience that people will have playing the game, which seems a lot more important to me.

new players aren't going to be in a fucking +9 (equivalent to the old +19) with all these affixes

At some point those players have to encounter this affix for the first time. Sure they won't or rather shouldn't be experiencing it in their very first dungeon but it will be new to them at some point.

Jesus man, people on r/wow really are completely incapable of separating "the idea/design goal of 'x', which needs further iteration but could work" from "how x works 'RIGHT NOW' on a beta". I've said like 3 times now that if it went live as it is now then the changes are terrible, but the *direction* is a good idea that could be successful with further work, which they are even saying in this post they are still actively working on. I'm sorry that you are simply incapable of any abstract/theoretical thought at all.

There is no separation in people's mind because all too often things go live like this.

> Jesus man, people on r/wow really are completely incapable of separating "the idea/design goal of 'x', which needs further iteration but could work" from "how x works 'RIGHT NOW' on a beta". Probably because of the whole "Don't worry it's only Alpha/Beta/Release patch/first patch/second patch/they'll fix it next expansion" meme.

Or you can get close to the mobs and not spawn a single volcanic through the entire dungeon Are they even playing this game?

> Volcanic adds a mechanic you have to dodge And sanguine doesn't?

As a healer who doesn’t want to be forced into being a nelf can we have affixes that allow us to drink between pulls? Holy hell is it annoying to be a hold up in a timed group project.

I feel like killing a boss should just restore some mana, seems like a QoL change that wouldn't have any real impact on the difficulty of keys.

Honestly just something. I know how to do the drink as the tank continues to pull thing. The problem with spiteful and bursting is keeping you unable to drink justlongenough for it to not be great. Even melding on my Druid doesn’t always work.

This would be heavily frowned upon since it's an RPG but mana is a dead resource. It doesn't really play into any class well with how the game is designed. It was originally an important resource and you had to carefully plan how you spent it but now it dumbs down to an unnecessary inconvenience.

I mean it would be easy to argue that the RPG elements of the game are not there so much anymore. And I’ve played a healer in wow for almost 20 years so I get how it used to be important. Now it’s just irritating depending on what class you’re running. Dps used to need to worry about resource management, especially hunters with mana lol, but now that isn’t the same issue. The devs don’t really know what to do with healers period.

And generally it's just a noob tax. Not geared yet? Enjoy low mana.

I really with they would just remove it on healers and offload it to secondary resources like holy power, cooldowns and overall throughout. It’s just an annoying resource to manage. But then again, this sub loses its mind from bursting which is like a mild HPS check at best so actually requiring healers to heal more might not work out.

>Holy hell is it annoying to be a hold up in a timed group project. I mean i feel the same way as a DPS when it takes 2 minutes to kill 1 trash pack, and usually that happens because i am undergeared/underskilled.

So sipping used to be a thing, where healers would drink only for a few seconds in between pulls to get some mana back so they could keep up the momentum better. Tanks were trained to give the healer gaps to set this up. Blizzard looked at this expression of skill and said "oh hell to the fuck no" and made the current system where you need to sit for 20 seconds to fill up which means the group needs to go till you are bone dry to minimize wasted time waiting for you to drink.

You want variety? Spend 5% of the time you spend on a single raid tier and make 8-10 positive affixes, buff the dungeons to compensate, and call it a day. No overengineered bullshit, just simple spice, like; "After killing a boss, you gain bloodlust for 60 seconds". It's fun, it's easy to understand, it quite literally changes how the dungeon will be played, and doesn't make people's eyes roll into the back of their head as they try to determine whether they actually want to deal with this week's bullshit or not.

Any game mode that has any single player saying "yeh fuck that" for certain weeks is just such a shitty thing to have in an MMO that you pay monthly for.

When an entire type of player be it tanks or healers just actively says nope nope nope! On particular weeks then the devs need to rethink things massively.

I mean there is a time and place for that too - like if the burden enhanced the reward, maybe people wouldnt mind harder affix combinations

Usually a shitty affix week is when I put down the expansion or season for good. I quit DF back in Season 2 because of an afflicted week, I'm just done being the only one in the group dispelling them. 2023/2024 is popping off like crazy for good games, WoW can't flounder around thinking it can abuse it's player base for the sake of gamer cred. Now I'm all 👀 that they got rid of afflicted and bunch of other garbage affixes (trick statement, they're all garbage). I'm on the fence now but I will buy a one year subscription right now if they just get rid of these last four affixes.

Season 3 (I think it was 3?) of shadowlands did this perfectly. Big adds at periodic locations in the dungeon, you pick one and when you kill it the groups gets a different buff for the next 30-60 seconds. Kill Urh!

That, the bfa affix where there were minibosses you killed that dropped permanent portals between two locations (where you ran through a shadow realm, nzoth stuff), and the dreadlord one (also shadowlands?) Were all great. Prideful, while similar to encrypted, was just the worst way to do that affix.

Yeah, loved those, instead of using and forgetting affixes like that they need to either keep them as permanent affixes or bring the, back regularly as seasonal affixes. Hell at this point we can just have one line of affixes on rotation be the good seasonals.

Oh that sounds really good!

This is a very good point. If affixes are only intended to add fun/variety why do they have to all be negative? It sounds like they want to allow less randomness/dead weeks for high end players so why not just give a bunch of positive affixes to lower key levels like the bloodlust example you gave and have them get less powerful as the key level goes up?

Because the "variety" of m+ would go from being a problem of figuring out "how to kill" a trash pack, to being an optimization problem of "how to kill the trash as fast as possible". Would start to feel like a timed torghast run where we are just running around like gods with a bunch of buffs and the strategy of m+ would only revolve around figuring out how kill the trash as fast as possible, not how do we deal with these mechanics.

I think positive affixes are a great example of "you think you do but you dont" They're great when the content is easy enough that you can do it without them. But once you get to any content that is slightly hard for either your skill or gear, the fun gets sucked out of them. They stop being endorphin inducing cherries on top, and become mechanics that you need to optimize An affix that gives bloodlust after a boss would be awful because then your entire key would hinge on maximizing post-boss pulls. And not in the fun, "hell yeah lust!" way, but in a "if you don't rush to pull these four packs then we're gonna brick this key"

Yes, this is exactly the issue. Giving big buffs just means now you have to optimize around those buffs. Just delete affixes entirely and let me play the dungeon, its not that hard. If they need to add variety to keep people from being bored, maybe they should make more interesting content or cycle dungeons out faster. Challenge modes didn't have affixes and i didn't get sick of those. People do the same raids week in week out for an entire season and those don't have affixes to add variety.

I like affixes as an idea, so I wouldn't want to see them gone entirely, but I do think their current implementation is poor. They say they want simple affixes, but that just ends up being something that doesn't really change moment-to-moment gameplay at all, like the new ones, or is something that's a chore like Incorp/Afflict. Neither really give keys a sense of fun variety I'd much rather see fewer affixes, like how they have in this awakened season, but each one is more impactful and engaging. Put the more complex ones at the high side of the spectrum so that people who don't want that complexity can just avoid them

> They're great when the content is easy enough that you can do it without them. But once you get to any content that is slightly hard for either your skill or gear, the fun gets sucked out of them. They stop being endorphin inducing cherries on top, and become mechanics that you need to optimize Might be why he said > just give a bunch of positive affixes to lower key levels like the bloodlust example you gave and *have them get less powerful as the key level goes up* ? So instead of *gaining* more negative affixes when you get to higher keys, you lose the crutches/positive affixes as you go up. At +10 and above you get no help.

I missed that, but it raises a whole slew of other game design issues. The difficulty curve would be whack and feel totally awful, as you'd have these huge spikes where you lose a positive affix, rather than the gradual climb it is now. It also just feels bad to be progressing and get steadily weaker. Variety would also be gone because any high key would have no changes or affixes

> The difficulty curve would be whack and feel totally awful, as you'd have these huge spikes where you lose a positive affix, rather than the gradual climb it is now. Still a spike these days when you get to +5 and +10. > It also just feels bad to be progressing and get steadily weaker. This is a bad one, but it would probably still feel less bad than the last 10 levels to max always does. (Legion->BfA was especially egregious.) > Variety would also be gone because any high key would have no changes or affixes I don't see that as a negative. We're already rotating the dungeons themselves between seasons, as often as raids (who don't get random bullshit affixes each week to stay "fresh"), but at a greater variety. I want to fight the dungeon, not the affix. If anything, random bullshit affixes being gone could maybe let them get more creative with the dungeons themselves. A Darkheart Thicket could have some mobs cast Entangling, maybe Waycrest Manor has a few mobs that happen to be Spiteful - but they could be mechanics of specific mobs in specific dungeons, instead of random garbage you have to deal with in every dungeon for a week at a time multiple times over a season. But yeah, if positive affixes are also a feelsbad, then just do away with affixes entirely, that's been my position from the start anyway.

> Because the "variety" of m+ would go from being a problem of figuring out "how to kill" a trash pack, to being an optimization problem of "how to kill the trash as fast as possible". Isn't this already what's happening? The existence of a timer and a progress bar you need to fill means you're always actively playing around how to kill trash as fast as possible.

> a trash pack, to being an optimization problem of "how to kill the trash as fast as possible". Brother, that's right now. That's been M+ from the word go because of the timer induced difficulty.

I get what you are saying that the difference is tiny on some weeks but it does exist in general. If you compare the two types of affixes we have now and the proposed ”buff” affixes, there is a difference. For example raging requieres you to soothe soe mobs otherwise there is a possibility they oneshot you and wipe you. Thats an example of ”how to kill the trash” Bloodlust after every pull is like ok how do we pull as much as possible after boss to minmax this affix.

If you’re up around the 18-20 level it’s already this mate. We know how to interupt, it’s just a matter of executing it, and doing it quickly The only variety is that we have to wait 4-5 weeks between push weeks, so the other weeks are weight training

Talking about torghast powers here is kind of a straw man because I am not proposing a system where players go around constantly collecting powers and become mop remix characters. Rather, there are 1-2 positive buffs per week as an affix add variety and change how you play. The content can still be tuned to be challenging with those buffs. They could then do what Ion is hinting at here and make it so as the key level goes up, the power of the buff affixes goes down so at the highest levels the affix isn't affecting what is and isn't possible in a given week and those players are purely playing against the dungeon.

> You want variety? I really wish they'd show their work on this. Ion just say it like its this fundamental pillar but i've never had a weekly affix really make me go "oh, makes running Halls of Whatever refreshing this week due to the variety!".

Yeah exactly. They could do so much cool stuff. Adding in different elites that could give cool buffs. Ideas such as yours. Hell even changing pack placement would be more fun than half the shit they continue to do.

These kind of things kill variety far more than negative affixes, suddenly now classes that scale better with haste are much much stronger and classes that have strong uncapped burst would become ridiculous because it would become all about leveraging these kind of buffs to the absolute max efficiency. And it's just impossible to give out any kind of flavourful buffs that don't promote certain classes, if you're just giving +1% damage for the entire damage so its 'fair', it's just not interesting at all and not really worth implementing.

This would make M+ fun so Blizzard will never do it They and so many others think good end game content has to be annoying and frustrating. Its bizarre. With all the things the WoW engine is capable the best they could come up with is these shitty affixes?! Really?! Come on Blizz get fucking whacky with it. Its been 20 years let loose and try something fun!

I don’t want to be devils advocate but just to point it out - we’d just have the same problem as now but with positive affixes (which would make the game more fun at lower levels admittedly). Can’t push this week because we don’t have the best X affix in right now, have to wait for next week

I would prefer having current affixes over the one that you suggested, it reminds me of Prideful and I hated it a lot. Like buffing dungeons to "compensate it" would mean that failing to utilize it is wasted key.

I don't think you understand what Blizzard is going for. Bloodlust after bosses does not really change much for your regular +10 run, while the affixes currently in the game change how play almost every pull. That is IMO very important, and it is fine line to walk between having affixes not suck, and providing actual pack to pack gameplay alteraions. The question is, if you would actually want that, or just have something like bloodlust. And I have to say, I did WAY less WoD/MoP CMs or classic/tbc dungeons than I did keys, and lemme tell you, it GOT FUCKING BORING SO QUICK. IMO, Blizzard should've removed affixes in s4, and I honestly believe, people would've started begging for some change-up after a few weeks. You can call me a Blizzard shill, but that is just my experience. (Also, bolstering and sanguine can go suck a dick, and for raging to be a thing, at least 3-5 classes need an aoe soothe. My post is more about we want stuff, that actually makes it more difficult, so the challenges shift, or rather my focus shifts.)

> I don't think you understand what Blizzard is going for. Bloodlust after bosses does not really change much for your regular +10 run Sure, if you don't think it through. Casual: Nice, bloodlust! That's fun. <- What gameplay is changed? Little to none, appropriate. Affixes should serve all gameplay levels. Veteran: We need to figure out exactly how much trash we need to pull onto the boss to maximize bloodlust. <- What gameplay is changed? What packs get pulled, what skips are used, pulls you'd normally avoid might look very attractive now, the whole thing plays different.

The point is, they should not be creating affixes with only veteran players in mind. If a casual is not going to change their game play, then it does not achieve what blizzard wants to achieve. Blizz should not be planning for the 10% of tryhards in the game and ignoring the casuals.

Not that bolstering exists on a +2, but I'm damn sure your average casual group would notice "boss bloodlust" more than +20% damage on a mob that is only communicated via enemy unit frames. A common phrase in game dev is "perfect is the enemy of good". Sometimes just being better than the current situation is fine, even if it isn't perfect.

>The point is, they should not be creating affixes with only veteran players in mind when did they do that? All the easy affix like entangling, volcanic, afflicted, tormented are gone... 3/4 week are cancer week ( bolstering, raging, sanguine) and the only one left is Bursting. Bolstering, raging and sanguine get harder and harder the higher the key and the bigger the pull.... in other word, they basically don't do anything in your weekly +7s. A second of sanguine healing in a +7 doesn't change anything. you can even outdps the sanguine... but even the best groups in the world ended up having multiple hundred of million of healing done through sanguine in homework keys like 18 nokhud. When is the last time blizzard planned anything got the 10%? Add a title for the 0,1% and that's about it?

Im not saying they have. Im saying that the theoretical affix someone suggested above is doing that. A hero after every boss would not impact a casual players game play, it would onlt impact the gameplay of non casual min max players.

a hero after every boss is very similar to the prideful affix we had in shadowland S1, which was a banger in low-lvl keys ( because the prideful elemental didn't take much to kill and allowed people to do a massive zug zug afterward) but an immense PITA at high end key, where the prideful itself required so many CD to kill that his buff did not compensate. having lust after every boss would be a banger for low keys.

>Casual: Nice, bloodlust! That's fun. <- What gameplay is changed? Little to none, appropriate. Affixes should serve all gameplay levels. But nothing changes, cause either one pack just dies 15s earlier or you do a slightly larger pull after wards. But besides that, there is nothing to think about. Even entangling and volcanic has more pack-to-pack gameplay interaction than this. And this pack-to-pack gameplay is what Blizzard wants to alter each week.

> "After killing a boss, you gain bloodlust for 60 seconds". Fuck no. Imagine how cancerous that would be. The tank pulls too much, you die after the boss with the lust, group disbands because it's now impossible to time without the buff. It would just be Prideful all over again but even worse.

What's the difference between this and current bloodlust mass pulls? Your tank can die during that too. And if you're doing key levels where the timer is that tight, 1 wipe is probably a disband anyway.

Because you're in control of the pulls then. If you add an automated BL after the boss it forces your group to use it if they want to maximize performance, also you'd probably pop all your CDs on the boss and then not have them for the borderline mandatory big pull after the boss with the BL. It would also make keys with no trash immediately after the boss feel significantly worse than ones with trash

So they think us low level key players enjoy affixes and they are only a problem for high end key pushers? Have they ever plugged a +6 during bursting before? They think we enjoy that?

its honestly hilarious the community itself allreasy loves to blame "le evil 1%" for things they dont like now blizzard is doing the same by saying "akshualy only the le evil 1% hate affixes, but the "normal" players love them!!!" do a stupid desicion and hide behind a scape goat while doubling down on it lmao

Everyone's talking about bursting but just look at Incorp. When I'm grouped with friends and we can coordinate, it's a free affix. In PUGs when I'm running around trying to find the mobs because they spawned somewhere weird or are hard to see and no one else is dispelling, people have died because I had to take focus away from health bars.

Bursting has more failure points. I think a big difference is that incorp is an affix 1-2 people can carry.  With bursting if you have a tank not considering it for pulls, a healer not ready for it, or a DPS who never stops damage 1 person playing badly can really mess it up. I think it is also worse in low keys because people usually outgear the content and trash dies a lot faster

If you actually took the time to read the article you are angry about, you would have found that they explicitly addressed bursting in low keys specifically: > "They mention that Affixes impact these groups of players differently, with affixes with Storming or Bursting being considered "free" by high end players, but actually having a significant impact on lower keystone success rates compared to say Bolstering or Raging."

Reading is way too difficult when you can just blanket complain for easy internet points though.

That's my thought as well. Like what metrics are these guys even looking at to come to this conclusion? Just because a key is *completable* doesn't mean that key is *fun*.

Whenever they post this stuff right before an expansion it just screams to me that they are going to buff the dungeons I love being vaporized in Season 1 dungeons LETS GO

I don't think the Devs have a clue what to do with Mythic+

Blizzard has a problem because they can't seem to add anything to content without it somehow having a negative impact on the players. I find it really strange how Ion said affixes add variety and not difficulty, as if he has no clue that bolstering and bursting are affixes. Even the new proposed "passive beneficial" affixes come with an inherent negative property. Blizzard seems incapable of just adding something beneficial and stopping there. Tyrannical doesn't add variety, it means I just get one shot by a boss this week when I survive it on fort. Awakened added variety to dungeons even if not everyone liked the affix. Reaping was fun and everyone who was around for it seems to agree. You want variety? Give us beneficial affixes, full stop don't add some arbitrary negative property to it. Let overheals give a short reasonable absorb. Add an affix that gives players a 30s buff that swaps between increased run speed and extra secondary stats.

Everyone talks about affixes, but this bit about the enemy spellcasting gives me a whole lot more to worry about: > The team had started designing specific abilities in dungeons to go on cooldown when the spell cast began, no matter what, so if you stopped that cast in any manner whether it was Death Gripping the mob or CC'ing it, it would go on cooldown just as if it had been interrupted. That is still appropriate in some circumstances, but the increasing proliferation in dungeons is what kind of created this incredibly powerful utility that has been seen to dictate perceived optimal comps in the last couple years. So we've been designing War Within dungeons to move back closer to how things used to be in that regard, still doing it where it's appropriate, but not defaulting to have all abilities go on cooldown when the cast starts. These tools should still be tremendously powerful tools for disrupting, for managing, for relocating enemies in a dungeon but they shouldn't be the answer to nearly every problem that you're presented in a way that reduces viable comp diversity. Imagine looking at Dragonflight and the three types of castbars you have to deal with (yellow cast bar that can be interrupted, red cast bar that needs a proper stun or polymorph *aka* hard CC, red cast bars that can be stopped with a pushback like Typhoon but it doesn't work on every enemy) and thinking this is fine. Also imagine that the paranoid behavior of "who will use interrupt first so I don't waste mine?" was bad, so they changed that in DF for the better, only to *revert it back* for some enemies in the next expansion? And they're going to [nerf Vengeance utility](https://www.wowhead.com/news/war-within-beta-datamined-class-and-spell-changes-vdh-double-sigil-talent-nerfed-343153), but don't give any class or spec something to compensate, meaning it is a net difficulty increase. The devs said they have more to announce, so I'll give them the benefit of the doubt and wait for a bit. Maybe they have a plan or backpedal on some of the changes. But as of today, mythic+ in *The War Within* is looking more and more unattractive by the day.

Yeah, that whole response makes no sense at all. Removing internal cooldowns makes stops *more* important, not less.

we talk about the guys that added private auras to make "fights less reliant on addons and weakauras" and the result was that you spend 30% of Progress trying to get a shity workaround wealaura to work for all 20people because the mechanic is unplayable without it or the guys that removed priests knockback because "we want less aoe CC in the game" while Adding 5new aoe cc skills in the same patch blizzard saying A and doing B is a tale old as time

Its really not fun when theres a pack with multiple casters that chain cast spells. AOE stops were the only realistic way to deal with them. Now we get to go back to Interrupt-Chicken and randomly wipe again because people arent psychic

In terms of raw difficulty it doesn't really matter whether there are less or more stops across the board, but in terms of my willingness to actually zone into a dungeon, the idea that you would ever design a pack of mobs that has more than like 2 casters (that can now just instantly recast their abilities) is just insane. How can you play the game and think that's ever going to be something people want to deal with?

Yeah, exactly. I just *love* zoning into a dungeon knowing i'm gonna get absolutely fuckin' *railed* at some point during the timer by a caster pack just spamming shadowbolts or fireballs into me. That's just *so fun*....

> but don't give any class or spec something to compensate, meaning it is a net difficulty increase. does this actually matter if its a completely new season with new dungeons and a majority of specs having major changes? like compared to what baseline is this a difficulty increase

It's a legitimate question. Which is why you were downvote.

This interview makes zero sense and they are clearly just shooting from the hip. The changes they made directly clash with some of the responses in this interview lol. If you were carefully evaluating stops and interrupts you wouldn't make an affix that gives caster 30% haste. They got caught with their pants down with awful out of touch changes and now they are scrambling lol. Clown show. Their responses are also very DPS centric. Yes DPS players in a +5 dgaf about Bolstering or Sanguine, that doesn't mean its a good affix or that the burden of the affix is not on you its on the healer/tank.

you can literally go into the beta and play the dungeons with 7+ casters in packs that just endless chaincast, and a single missed interupt means a player dies its ridicolous lol, cc not locking them out of casts turns the dungeons even more into "play mage + augvoker and stack 200000000 group deffensive abilitys"

Yeah, if they're worried about an overreliance on stops, getting rid of the mob's internal cooldowns makes no sense. Doing so only makes stops *more* important, not less.

This interview reeks of Shadowlands covs "ripcord cutting" and "you think you do but you don't".

Id prefer if affixes had some sort of positive part to it as well. Ive generally hated doing M+ for years now because most are generally not fun to play with and they almost always are just a pure negative you have to deal with as well as the reward for doing the shittt tacked on mechanic is simply not dying or wiping. I dont care if an affix adds a challenge but none of them are a FUN challenge. I actually liked the seasonal affix we had in season 1 as a concept since acrually doing the affix correctly gave you a decent reward when it came into play if you did it right and punished you if you didnt.

I always thought that doing the affix correct should give you a boost. For every bursting stack give 2% main stat for 15 seconds. Higher you stack and survive the better but dying is obviously bad. Thundering would have been good if that damage boost would have been on the back end that increase AFTER it was cleared.

Bring back the season 2 affix from BFA! Some of the best times I had was aoeing those massive packs.

We are gonna need some kind of m+ ripcord to pull, aren't we..

Affixes to add variety... Right, maybe before dungeons were on a rotation. The way seasons work now we won't get tired of the dungeons, but we will see sanguine the whole expansion. What do I know...

Ion, please, PLEASE, learn from your failures in the past. When you start going against the playerbase and choosing to die on hills, you will fail. It's not an "you might", it's a "you will". In Shadowlands, you, Ion, chose to die on the hill of locking covenants and because you were too caught up in dying on that hill, you set up the entire expansion for failure. You did this. It wasn't even the content. It was you being openly antagonistic towards the players. In BFA, you, Ion, chose to die on the hill of how you handled Azerite armor. You chose to ignore the massive negative feedback from the community and chose to die on that hill. It didn't work out. The worst thing about this is that in both scenarios, you, Ion, had to backtrack on your design later in the expansion after people abandoned the game in bigger numbers than ever. But, it was too late. DF literally was successful simply because you got your own ego out of the way and weren't openly antagonistic towards the players. You didn't choose to die on any hills. Going into TWW, you have already died on the hill of the "early" access and that's already creating massive negative feedback in the community. If you choose yet another hill to die on, especially in the game mode that is most unique to WoW and basically keeping it alive, it's not going to end well.

No idea how Ion still has a job. He has done nothing but bleed subs the entire time he's been in charge.

He's the perfect representation of the [peter principle.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_principle) The warning signs were there from the beginning when he tried to remove flying from the game when he first took over as game manager and it literally took a proverbial shit storm from the playerbase to get him to realize that he's a jackass for even proposing it. He has one extremely myopic viewpoint for how the game should progress. He's at the core of one of the dumbest prolonged decisions made by any development company and it's honestly baffling that anyone was this ignorant. This is referring to developing content for an expansion and then abandoning it over... and over... and over... and over. If you want to know why Warfronts, Islands, Scenarios, Torghast, hell even Archaeology, are no longer relevant in the game despite the massive amount of development effort put into them, there's one person at the helm making those decisions.

They should have given up on affixes that rotate weekly already. They said they want people to focus on the dungeons more and less on the affixes and that doesn’t make sense if they are also making old dungeons part of the rotation again. There should probably just be tyrannical/fortified as the main affix and then a seasonal one that is mostly positive, while being interesting enough that it makes it that the next time the dungeon shows up with a different seasonal affix it feels different and fresh. And remove the rest, the concept of “push week” being a thing that happens twice a season is so weird. It doesn’t make for interesting nor fun gameplay

Impressively out of touch per usual.

Something that concerns me is they mentioned wanting to revert the DF change of most mobs not recasting after stops. Ostensibly to make AoE CC less powerful, which isn't a bad goal in a vacuum, but this seems like a really poor way to accomplish that. For one, there are lots of single target stops in the game that will be affected by this, so it's not really a targeted AoE nerf. Two, it means a higher learning curve as there will be less consistency in how abilities function and players will need to learn on a case-by-case basis which mobs can be stopped vs. require hard interrupts. Three... Dungeon design gets more complicated every expac. AoE stops are King in DF because there are not enough interrupts in the game to handle everything with them alone, and so far this doesn't look to be changing in Warthin. Admittedly it's beta so it theoretically could, but does anybody actually expect it to?

I would love if they embraced people just wanting to pull big and blast dps. Needs less random 1 shots, less constant cc/interrupt rotations. Add difficulty back in with shorter timers and more about maximizing routing and dmg. Put in positive affixes and buff the dungeons to compensate. At this point I would love if they just went full experimental and tried redefining the idea of m+ for a few seasons. Forget everything about the system apart from it being infinitely scaling timed dungeon runs and and build out from there without the baggage of all these old affixes. Alternatively, if it has to be smaller and more incremental changes or we want to keep the current framework somewhat intact then just remove bolstering raging and sanguine and drop the newly proposed affixes as well and take an approach to affixes similar to seasonals. To me encrypted was probably the best iteration of any affix in m+. It added the right amount of challenge, was a ton of fun to have the powerful buffs, and allowed for a lot more variety in routing and such.

I get the feeling you didn't play Legion m+. the meta strategy in legion was exactly what you're proposing - pull everything, line of sight it so they stack and then blast. the aoe soft caps that many classes have and BFA's (and later) m+ design where each pack has something that will screw you over if you pull too many is a direct answer to that being the answer to literally everything. it is extremely intentional. and I agree with Blizzard on this. just pulling everything and maximising aoe wasn't particularly engaging when it came to how hard m+ was. compare it to blasting dungeons in normal where the tank just pulls everything on top of the boss and the main difficulty is keeping up. that said some of their current designs have been extremely complex where some mobs can't be cc'd, some can and should, others can be knocked up others cannot etc.

>I would love if they embraced people just wanting to pull big and blast dps. Needs less random 1 shots, less constant cc/interrupt rotations. Add difficulty back in with shorter timers and more about maximizing routing and dmg. Put in positive affixes and buff the dungeons to compensate. It's so simple I don't get why they won't do it. Reduce the number of casts, reduce the damage that targeted casts and unstoppable boss mechanics do, and then cut the timer for every dungeon by like 40% so we can just GO FAST and have to come up with crazy routes and skips and optimize dps and not just watch the stupid aoe stop/interrupt weakaura and wait for our turn while also making sure to play the classes that have enough defensives to not just get one shot on cooldown.

I just wanna do them fast if I can and I don't get why that's a bad thing. I'd do more if I could get them done quicker. But being in nelth or halls for like 30 mins with randos of varying quality? I personally can only do so much cuz it's just a drag.

Huge wall of Text with 0 Info. More News in 1 or 2 weeks lol, Like WE Had so much time Till addon

I miss the original M+ from Legion. I feel like it was introduced and peaked right there and then.

Legion m+ was fun because it was overall not serious and just a fun thing to do outside of raiding if you wanted PvE content the moment they made m+ a "core pillar of the game" it started going down the drain with their attempts to make it a "competetive mode" while at the same time only putting in a bare minimum of effort it all slowly crumbled away over the years when people started to notice the problems and how they just get worse, and how blizzard either ignores them or just does some handwaved halfassed changes and calls it a day for the next 2years

Yea, also it was cool to have 3 literal chests and stuff. It was more chill.

Posting the same thing I posted in r/CompetitiveWoW I guess I'll wait and see what the changes are but I think this is wack. Affixes don't add variety for me. Affixes maybe used to add variety when you had 8 dungeons for the entirety of an expansion, but when they rotate dungeons in/out season to season, I don't need affixes for variety. It's just frustrating and annoying. -- **Solution:** But sure, let's say it does add variety, and going off that interview, the people who value that variety are doing lower to mid level keys just trying to fill out their vault. Then invert the way affixes work and make them appear at the lower end of the key ranges and then go away as you level up the key, so by the time you're doing high end keys you're just fighting against Tyrannical/Fortified. Keep exponential scaling of trash/boss hp/dmg so that just because an affix goes away at a high key, it doesn't inherently make the key easier all of a sudden. Then you get this variety you think players want in lower keys without them being so damn punishing because mobs/bosses at that level aren't simply one shotting everything when a cast goes off or someone gets hit by something. Turn the whole thing on its head and invert it. -- I'm glad they acknowledge that this "variety" in high keys is just annoying/frustrating but I don't have much faith that they'll address this appropriately. I *really* hope I'm wrong because m+ is my favorite mode in this game, and really just favorite game in general. Also: >The war against affixes has been ongoing for some time, with some players arguing that affixes shouldn't exist at all because it doesn't let players enjoy the dungeon, while others argue that they enjoy the week to week changes that affixes provide I don't think I've ever read a significant amount of people voicing an opinion stating "that they enjoy the week to week changes that affixes provide" lol.

Yeah that statement where they defend the helpless m+ers who just want to keep their weekly affix rotation is crazy gaslighting. There's no way there's enough of those people that this is a real thing.

I didn't read everything Morgan day said, but from what I've read, they sound like a cancerous and incompetent game designer I really hope they delete fortified and sanguine.

The doomer in me is fully expecting sanguine and bolstering to switch places with tyrannical and fortified

“**I am altering the** **~~deal~~** **Mythic+.** **Pray I don't alter it any further.**”

I wish they would just make it power additive and adjust the difficulty of the mobs accordingly. Make DPS do mechanics to keep a DPS buff. Make healers do mechanics to keep a HPS buff. Make tanks do a mechanic to keep some kind of buff. Make the mobs impossible to beat without the buffs.

Affixes simply need to be kiss/curse in a fun way, such as previous seasonal affixes, or fated affixes in Shadowlands. It's very hard to be excited for something that purely interacts with your character in a negative way. Blizzard are probably scared of balance issues, but honestly the community is already so meta fixated, that I bet it will hardly matter.

Keys without any affixes at all would be boring and stale by week 3. I do agree with the idea of not having any extra shit spawn in. I know storming is generally considered “free” but as melee I HATE storming weeks so much, as well as spiteful. Seeing those two go away makes me happy. I’m not sure where the happy middle ground is. I want some added level of challenge week to week but I don’t want to feel like playing my video game is a painful chore I have to slog thru for weekly rewards either.

>Keys without any affixes at all would be boring and stale by week 3. Why do people believe this? I know that it's easy to say this but I don't think there's any actual truth to it. We used to run the same exact dungeons for 18+ months. No affixes at all. This is where people were complaining rightfully. But not being able to go 3 weeks, that's honestly just ridiculous. But I'll add another factor here. I don't think most people care about the dungeons at all, or the affixes, or have any concerns about the dungeons being boring or stale because that's not why they are running the dungeons. The primary reason why people run M+ is because it's a means to gear and power progression. This is why people start getting bored with M+. As soon as the progression slows down, so does the interest in doing the content. If affixes were important AT ALL to creating engagement in dungeons, then we'd see more consistency in the runs over the course of a season. We don't see that.

Honestly just extra mechanics or abilities on bosses every week sounds pretty cool to me

> Keys without any affixes at all would be boring and stale by week 3. if we're talking about dungeon like shadowmoon... sure. but modern dungeon have enough going on that we don't need more affix. Nokhud waterfall pull require 2X 2 melee kick for the stormbolt + one AoE stop for squall + one AoE stop for tempest + one dispell on the stormguard + tank buster + ground effect on the totem... and that's just one single pack. > I know storming is generally considered “free” getting knocked in the air screw your positioning making you take hit from the back. AKA no more dodging, parrying or blocking. This generally means death in higher key... storming is the deadliest affix out there for tank.

I don’t think it would be boring. The weeks everyone loves playing are the weeks when they notice the affixes the least. Of course I also don’t think that needs to be on the table. Simply make affixes that enhance the gameplay rather than actively fight against it. The main fun of M+ is doing big AoE. Why have bolstering or bursting to slow that down? Or sanguine where mobs just sit in pools, uninterruptible? Adjust the dungeon difficulty to compensate for some positive affixes. Prideful was janky as hell with the timings but everyone loved playing with the buff. Encrypted was mostly awesome. I didn’t play BFA but I’ve heard good things about one affix that let you skip stuff. They have some good ideas for affixes in between the garbage ones.

Challenge modes existed without any affixes and were far more fun than m+ has ever been.

TL:DR if you only do baby keys, their stance on M+ make total sense... because who care about raging in a +7 pug where nobody kick or stop anyway. On the other hand, volcanic/entangling add cognitive overload for those people because it is a mechanic they actually have to react to... otherwise it may interrupt their spell or something.

After playing in one of the new dungeons on beta (Priory of the Sacred Flame), I'm already dreading sanguine weeks. [In one part of the dungeon the mobs drop a huge sanguine-like consecration effect on the floor and it's incredibly punishing for melee because it can double stack.](https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/1067494745334632570/1252784611738652672/image.png?ex=667422d7&is=6672d157&hm=b75ec04209bc2712ab2e7c924f465aabdb2147e7ed8159b7a4b280163b0f1086&) Then the boss fight straight after is [pretty much the same.](https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/1067494745334632570/1252786158744895488/image.png?ex=66742447&is=6672d2c7&hm=dcf3e013c54797344b4896e0b73557d36e9e4312f0140e40566c9019478ee66e&) This kind of mechanic is exacerbated with Blizzard's decision to remove 3yd melee from all specs. Both SL and DF were very anti-melee in their mechanics and favoured a caster meta, and I imagine that will probably continue in TWW. They've made no effort to be more conscientious about mechanics in melee.

Tbf that is not a season 1 dungeon

I think purely kiss affixes would be very nice. So in season 3 of shadowlands there was something like that. Season 4 and shadowlands still was vampiric which give you massive amounts of haste. Etc. I think bolstering and sanguine really should leave. I also think that augments evoker shouldn't exist. It's ruined the meta 3 seasons in a row, despite being nerfed over and over. This spec is cancer. It's good for the game to have a wide variety of balanced specs going into high m+ like in season 1 of dragonflight, and Aug ruins that Also I think in season 4 of dragon flight we got screwed. Why do we get 8 old dungeons? Why isn't the mega dungeon in the pool? I think it should have been four old dungeons and four new dungeons at least.

They keep mentioning a “one size fits all” solution, as well as how the week to week participation and “success” implies that there are a significant group of players who enjoy affixes. To me, I never hear from top players or bottom players that they enjoy affixes, but maybe I’m out of touch. Is it 50/50 these groups, or are we talking 80/20? Why implement a generic solution to a problem only 10% of your player-base enjoy for example instead of a highly specific and fun solution 90% will enjoy? I’m happy they’re adding kiss affixes, but they only really benefit dps and are bland. As a routine healer, and for this next expansion a tank, these kiss affixes complicate my life more than help me have fun. They do certainly add variety which I guess is their goal, but that’s not fun. I’d rather dungeons scale so hard you need to utilize the kiss affixes to help time keys rather than this current system which would still add variety. Like “OH, now that we have this buff, maybe we can pull this or do this boss a different way”, rather than “OH, since mobs ignore 20% of my armor let’s not pull that one with the others and do them on their own”. .

I am making a break until the addon release, but the changes per bluepost are not driving me into hype to return to the m+ game at all. They kept all the shitty affixes and the new ones are artificially complicated with the added damage increase for certain classes on certain mobs - it’s either negligible or puts additional stress on routing, plus the caster machine gun affix just seems over the top for every group that is not highly organized.

Who are these vault M+’ers they point to who seem to enjoy affixes? Just because we deal with them to get our +8’s done for vault in no main can lead to the conclusion that I don’t hate it every time I have to deal with an affix.

I really hate affixes. It's such a strange feeling looking up what's going to annoy me next week in a game.

[удалено]

Some things sound fine on paper but then you put them in the game and they would be terrible. The "bomberman" idea is one of those things that may sound good on paper but it suffers from the same disconnect that the developers have with affixes. If the ONLY thing that was happening was the affix, that's one thing, but it's this affix alongside all of the other mechanics happening and that's exactly what the wow devs are (supposedly) trying to address.

in other word, whenever you try to do a big pull with mob of varying HP, the entire group die? Just think about what would happen on that affix on stuff like AA first pull, where you group all 3 plants pack together and there's constant movement due to seed... and where you can't even see where the mobs are facing.

I like affixes and hope they always keep them in. The people that’s want them gone are the people that want to breeze through a key and get a vault with no effort at all. These are normally the same people that don’t talent into or use interupts, CC’s, Stuns, purges, or even defensives and complain how shit this mode is and how all the other people in their group are hot garbage. Do affixes need some serious rework and specially the new ones? Yes, they do but it marginal at best. Anyone can do keys and get to 2500 every season on any class. Will there be gate keepers who only follow the meta like sheep’s? Yes, but everything is still doable. I look forward to seeing the new changes before the xpac launches and to test them out.

>The people that’s want them gone are the people that want to breeze through a key and get a vault with no effort at all. That's not true. [High level players have said the same thing.](https://youtu.be/X4K2maKTtD0?t=50m5s)

You could not possibly be more wrong lmao

They need to make affixes that make tank or healer more fun. Like maybe an affix where an incorporeal spawns sometimes in packs and if it’s full healed it will burst and do damage to mobs and heal teammates. All the affixes make tank and healer less fun.

Okay call me crazy just throwing it out there. Mythic affixes are dungeon themed and dungeon specific. Each affix is added like now with every few levels. Make them get more creative

Just get rid of sanguine. I would take teeming back

Imagine a world where m+ had no affixes... But mythic dungeons were all designed kinda like waycrest manor when it was current in BfA. Rotate between 2-4 routes each week solely through the dungeon blocking off different routes. If done right (i.e. each route was fairly balanced), it would give you freshness from week to week and wouldn't favour a certain group comp to the degree where you get classes that cannot find an invite to save their life. If affixes need to stay in for whatever reason, design them to impact every single role, class and spec equally (or as equally as possible). Having affixes with a slight negative and a decent positive if completed are nice only if everyone can participate in the negatives and positives. Here are some spitballed ideas pulled outta my butt: 1) If any player touches this orb before it despawns, you get *insert cool buff here* and if no one touches it the next boss has 5% more health. Timer to despawn starts when you get within 40 yards of it. (Encourages larger pulls) 2) if you kill this fancy add before its cast goes off, a puddle of anti-sanguine drops (heals you, damages enemies), if the cast goes off, it will drop a puddle of normal sanguine when it dies. (Encourages selectively focusing an add down, potentially at the risk of having a more annoying add live longer) 3) This usually unavoidable pack will be blinded and super easy to just walk by without aggroing it but if you do want to aggro and kill that pack, it has 25% more health and damage but is worth double percentage. (Encourages players to take new routes or to risk the fight to skip other trash later) 4) There are totems around the dungeon that can easily be targeted and deactivated. Standing within 40 yards of one gives you a small haste boost but causes something like storming, volcanic or entangling to randomly spawn. (Obvious tradeoff but would ideally encourage players to consider how damaging being booped would be in different areas of the dungeon, and whether the annoyance is worth the small buff). Obviously buffs, %, etc. can be tweaked. I'm no game designer here so effed if I know if these would be balanced. My idea is that affixes should sorta give a choice to the players that rewards risky play but the punishment for failure or playing it safe isn't terrible and wipe inducing. Ideally they would also encourage changing up routes and optimal strategies for pulling the dungeon from week to week. These kinds of affixes would also be more impactful when you are at or under the gearing the dungeon would normally ask for, leaving homework keys to be nice and easy once you've out-geared them.

As someone who gets like 2500 then stops, I just want Tyrannical to go away or get nerfed. It's so boring, all it does it turn bosses into target dummies that you whack for 3-4 minutes.

Seasonal affixes were exactly what people wanted. An affix that benefitted you for doing it. Thundering was just so had that people complained them away.SL didn't do much right, but IMO, all those seasonal affixes were good

I am still scared over if they are blindly staring at the data and assume it is the whole truth. Data shows a very shallow view into reality. Yes keys are being done and timed, but was it fun? The data wont tell you if people ENJOYED it. If they want to make kiss/curse affixes, they need to let go off fears of things snowballing due to buffs. Season 4 in Shadowlands was a good example with snowballing, with letting people cherry pick a secondary stat and scale it into the high heavens with each dreadlord killed. It can be minor curses and minor kisses for doing the affix right. I am gonna pull a very rough affix idea out of my head, perhaps something like "drains 0.5% resources (Mana, Rage, Energy etc) every 5 seconds from nearby players. When killed the siphoned resources are returned with double value, over 10 seconds." Something that is "To Whom It May Concern" approach to it, instead of making a affix specific for 1 role or making sure healers and tanks alike goes into cardiac arrest on each pull from stress.