It’s time to remove all affixes, even tyrannical/fortified, just to let dungeons difficulty scale linear without any affixes. All the affixes are just annoying. It doesn’t make dungeon experience more fun, nor encourage more players to join M+.
There is no need for extra mechanics/difficulties/visuals for current dungeons as they are now.
Along with the removal of affixes, the M+ levels should also be squished. Since there will be no more affixes, the difficulty of e.g. +2/3/4 is minimal. Each level should have higher difficulty gap. Currently +20 should be be squished to +10, current +10 should be squished to +5, etc. And the highest vault reward requires +10, instead of +20.
Since M+ and affixes were introduced, the number of dungeons we get in each expansions is pitiful. Open the dungeon journal page of Wrath and Dragonflight, the number of dungeons comparison is just sad.
Blizzard spent too much time on balancing troubles made by themselves, instead of creating real contents.
I believe the purpose of tyrannical/fortified is to add more variation of group combos: e.g. more ST dps on tyrannical week, and better aoe dps on fortified week.
But this design goal clearly failed. Just look at every MDI, every team will pretty much always bring the same combos regardless tyrannical/fortified.
Reality check. MDI isn’t the way the average player plays keys.
Some players do, that’s for sure. But those guys are something else, the best of the best. Playing for the fastest possible time, and not just the goal of completing the key and moving onto the next challenge.
I know when I play keys, I do adjust some of my talents depending on the affixes each week.
One or two as you said max, but I’d be happy without any.
And OP is right, Blizz is trying to fix a broken system rather than pulling resources toward creating something new and engaging.
It’s not fun anymore and it looks absolutely ridiculous. I feel a tinge of anxiety if I happen to cast two full spells in the standing in the same spot. I just move even when there’s nothing there. It’s freaking stressful and noooot fun!
For example sanguine, an ele shaman who relies on earthquake for dps loses op to 25% of dps on these weeks. How do you fix that? Don’t play on sanguine weeks or what brah
Time is the best and objective standard for M+ difficulty.
Without timer, the hard M+ will just be a time dragging fest. People will wait for hero/bl reset on every pack, just to finish the dungeons, which is clearly not a pleasant experience either.
Removing affixes is better, because we really don’t need extra mechanics/difficulties in current dungeons. And it will encouraging more people to join M+, without the need to learn new mechanics every season.
If people want hard content with a lot of mechanics but without time limit, mythic raids are there. And that has always been their purpose.
I mean agree - and disagree, at the same time.
I feel like there should maybe be an option: Timer OR affixes.
I’ve been M+ a lot since it came out, and I just feel like the stress is the biggest issue for majority of casuals since it usually makes for terrible attitudes to spark too (Stress always brings out the worst in people).
A lot of dungeons were designed without M+ affixes in mind, e.g. quaking with last boss in NO, 3rd boss in Shadowmoon, quaking with thundering, sanguine with ranged uninterrupted mobs that just don’t move, etc.
Now they bring old (pre-Legion) dungeons into seasonal pool, this problem will only be more obvious. Those old dungeons were created totally without M+ affixes in mind.
When you have 10 different affixes rotation, of course you will encounter all kinds of unpredictable problems. Blizzard creates problem for itself.
Affixes are lazy design. I hated the idea of when they were introduced.
I personally prefer dungeon encounters like old days - bring back cc, agrro, resource management etc. Even with affixes people just zerg in high keys with coordinated interrupts.
Back in days tanks and healers had some respect - now a days people just forget about teammates. They dont even bother to res teammates.
Because there are fun challenges and :poop challenges. “Hey lets randomly snare people at random times” is like slapping someones nuts occasionally while they are running a marathon. Sure it makes it harder, certainly not more fun.
And participation is down. Theres probably a lot of factors but the affixes being stale is one of them. The new ones look garbage though.
I think it’s way beyond removing affixes… M+ is trying to be some sort of action rpg dungeon crawler, but stuck within the confounds of wow the mmorpg…
Let’s rebuild the whole system from the ground up. Use thorgast tech. It was clearly a prototype for something (and no not the azure span silly elite area).
The ideas and tech are all there… Stop overlaying nonsense over dungeons. Make a new game mode build to scale up with increasing challenges…
I always refer to the game HADES… Such simple yet perfectly executed concept. Imagine that but in wow, it will become huge.