I honestly dont unterstand why both timer and affixes are such a big deal for many people here.
Without a timer you can basically just wait for Lust after each pull negating most of the difficulty of the dungeon.
There was even a season at which a DH Tank player soloed M+ up to +20.
Took a couple of hours but it worked out in the end.
I dont see timers to be such a big deal, still timed a 21 recently after having almost 20 deaths within the first 5 minutes.
As for the affixes - most of em got nerfed to hell already anyway compared to what they used to be, not to mentioned that there were 4 affixes at higher keys active at the same time for most of the expansions.
Sanguine - Nerfed from 1 min to 20 sec to 6 seconds.
Bolstering used to buff HP and DMG indefinately, nerfed to buff only damaged and then every stack being on a different timer.
Bursting - Nerfed to be dispellable
Really dont know what people expect, take as much time as you need for every dungeon and only a little increase in damage and hp every level ?
People gonna get bored pretty quickly like this i assume.
I like this. Brings more people to do HC dungeons because I never did HC dungeons on this expansion. I just went straight into M+ with my guild. Now there is a reason to now which is good. I would suggest to just remove the lockout for M0 as you can just run them all the time on Keystone and HC so having the middleground be locked out kinda sounds dumb to me. Other then that this would be a good thing for the game.
Kinda get that. But that was sorta the whole point of M+. Challenging people in order to get rewards.
Removing the difficulty step by step just destroys the whole intention behind that.
At least the way i see it.
for one, yes in the first week people will push their key to m8 or what the myth track reward is. everyone will probably start at m2 or m4 and people will only inv 485 ilvl with 3k rio.
i certainly will do that to save me a lot of headache. i am normally not a gatekeeper but at the start of the season you want to play with competent people as gear is carrying nobody yet.
i mean in s3 we started with like 447 and pushed to 18s.
s2 was a bit more problematic because of overtuned bosses that were brickwalling some dungeons e.g. naraxus
i mean 3k rio this season is really easy if you are somewhat decent or just bad and persistent that groups carry you through.
i predict people will be gatekept even more than before but we shall see
Since item levels for gear overall are going up next season, I wonder if it means that world content such as Fyrakk Assaults, Dreamsurges and Time Rifts will also scale? Also speaking of Dreamsurges and Time Rifts, I’m also wondering whether if those two weeklies will also have a change in currencies like the previous season, where Dilated Time Capsules were replaced with Dilated Time Pods, and where Dreamsurge Chrysalis were replaced with Dreamsurge Cocoons.
I dont think it is smart to remove afix and time from m+ simply because people will not get use to it and after 10+ key will be disaster. We all know on what LFR looks like! i would simply give more time , less boosted afixes and afer 10+ time is reducing down , afixes get harder.
I honestly dont get why blizzard does not get affixes either…
Affixes = difficulty + fun
Thats the formula. Initially, affixes looked like this:
Old Affixes = difficult + annoying
And people complained for 10 years. Blizz thought… OK lets nerf them. For 10 years non stop. So now we have.
New Affixes = easy + annoying
And people are still complaining. WHY? Because nobody addressed the issue. The elephant in the room. They are annoying. Really annoying.
They strip the fun out of the dungeon. The solution?
MAKE THEM FUN and rewarding.
Its time for kiss/curse mechanics here. Simple as that. And the fact that Blizz and the general playerbase took 10 years to see it (some haven’t got there yet) baffles my mind.
I swear to god that if you ever do something like: If mobs stand on sanguine they heal a LOT. But if YOU stand on sanguine you do 5 to 10% more damage…
People will BEG to get affixes back. In heroic dungeons. And in raids. And in PvP arenas to be sure…
An interesting idea crossed my mind yesterday when i read a post about encrypted affix - which was seasonal.
If you think about it, most seasonal affixes - except infected, which was the worst affix they ever created, but it also was the 1st seasonal, so thats okay - were pretty fun and ! encouraged people to adapt their playstyle around those affixes including some kind of potential reward
I dont remember all the names but some examples i have in mind :
Encrypted - Cool buffs after defeating the extra Mobs
Denathrius affix - 20% Trash triggers mini boss granting a huge 1 Min Buff
Awakened - Fighting a mini boss grants the opportunity to place portals around the dungeons
Headhunter affix - Try to kill as many dreadlords in order to stack a buff you can choose at the start.
All those affixes included something people have to do during the dungeon, but also something they get in return.
Since nobody likes tyrannical, at least i have never heard anyone say “yea tyrannical is great”, how about this :
Replace the level 2 affixes Fortified & Tyrannical with a weekly changing rotation of most of the seasonal affixes.
This way we have rewarding, engaging, and gameplay affecting affixes instead of just puhsing enemy stats and therefor difficulty artificially.
Bosses do X more damage, have Y more health but trash has X LESS damage and Y LESS health.
EZ. Sure, boss fights will be 6 minutes long. But the epic 40 mob trash pulls adds to the fun…
Fortified would be the inverse. So you would be incentivized to pull bosses with trash. Which adds to the fun as well.
So many things you can do with affixes except make them annoying. In fact, I argue that the more benefits it gives you, the harder it should be to pull off.
That would only exacerbate the problems of the tyr/fort cycle. Tyrannical is already a slog where trash dies too fast and bosses take forever. Hell even at 20 and up on tyrannical, packs die barely halfway through my CDs. It’s boring and heavily favours burst specs over specs with ramp time.
The way dungeons are on fortified should be the default. Bosses can still be challenging without having to do the same fight with 2 mechanics for 6 minutes. Plus without cycling between tyra and fort, the dungeons can be better balanced as a whole, and avoid terrible combinations like fortified + bolstering.
I like the changes except for a couple of things. Why have lockout on M0 still? (Or raid for that matter) even if you just remove it after world first is done - let people no-life the game if they like, it will make more playable options available to people. Also increase the rewards for completing a key. The 50g doesn’t even cover the repair bill let alone consumables. Also, the vault is obviously better than it used to be prior to the previous system but please add in a scan for what gear you have equipped or in bags, 6 options and most weeks they’re items I already have or have a higher ilvl piece in that slot. Easy way to combat this is give a currency that you can spend on specific items you’ve been hunting for.
I really dont care what they do. As long as its kiss/curse.
Because the idea of Serenity to add seasonal affixes is interesting. But only because seasonal affixes are the only ones that gave something “cool” (aka: A benefit of some sort).
So just expand on that and call it kiss/curse instead of seasonal.
Difficulty do not has to be time pressuring. You could for example also have that the dungeon can have this number of deaths you are allowed and the enemies being so strong, that you think of CCs again. So the opposite thing of M+ timer. You all the time but you are forced to think of every trash group as a puzzle and the reward for doing it fast and efficient is being fast AND efficient and not like now where fast AND efficient is set as standard.
But I think that with how much all the classes are tuned arround AoE this will not come back so far.