My thoughts on m+ affixes

Gameplay Dungeons, Raids and Scenarios
1

I understand where the new proposed m+ changes coming from, but I don’t like the idea. By making a melee vs ranged week we will go back to the situation where it will be “pause” week for 50% of players constantly. That will negatively affect the amount of players to queue with and subsequently destroy alot of enjoyment for players. When u already had a difficult time queueing as some classes, now add a 50% time u cant play at all modifier on top of that will just feel miserable.

I like the take that actually the storming/volcanic bucket is the less interesing bucket of affixes. They require no interesting planning or workarounds, while the bolster/burst bucket does. My idea would be to make the punishment smaller and give maybe a bonus. For example: Bolster increases ONLY melee swings (so its a pure tank affix) and also increases damage mobs take by X% (like 1% e.g.) per stack to make it reward in a sense. Sanguine should not affect stun-immune mobs to make it easier to manage and instead of healing it could make mobs dmg immune while inside, which will make the punishment for mismanaging on annoying casters alot less punishing on the timer (especially high max-HP mobs on high keys). Bursting could be changed to also grant haste per stack so that it has a cool trade-off in which u actually WANT some stacks, but not an unmanageable amount. Then u can also change raging so that it is also dispelled by using a CC on the mob, after which CC works normally again (effectively soaking one extra CC) and then after dispelling/soothing giving them exhaustion: -50% haste and movespeed.

My take would be to keep forti and tyran, but maybe bring them even closer together in numbers. Because they actually do change the flow of the dungeons and makes it nice to look forward to a change in pace every week.

Then for the new affixes: I think we should just keep a bucket of the 4 “meaningful” affixes I just described and just let those 4 rotate with tyran and forti. This way you already get 8 different weeks which spices things up enough imo. So I would plea for NO new affixed and just making the 4 cool ones cooler with a positive effect

I realise that with the current options I stated that bolster and burst would be faster on the timer, so it doesn’t work perfectly as I wrote it, but I think it would be a good start where blizzard could start from.

Thoughts?

2

I think we should go back to why affixes exist in the first place.

It was because dungeons lasted an expansion and not just a season. This meant that something was needed to keep them fresh.

Since that reason is no longer valid - we have seasonal dungeons - I don’t see how removing affixes altogether would be a bad thing.

I think Blizz are just too scared to take that step. They shouldn’t be.

4 Likes
3

I see your point and agree that with the seasonal dungeon rotation there is less need for affixes. However I think that having no weekly changes will make prolonged m+ pushing feel very stale. I personally look forward to every new week’s affixes to shake the gameplay up a bit. Though I would like it if some of the more annoying interactions or “unavoidable” deadly overlaps of affix + dungeon mechanic would be less frequent. Which is why I would like to change it the way I stated it. Also I think that with the “easy” affix bucket the visual and mechanical clutter just becomes cumbersome quite often, which is why I would like impactful, but manageable affixes without extra clutter

1 Like
4

I know for people who like pushing keys it is way better everything to be the same, but from my pov I really enjoyed having affixes mean something. Most of the afixxea are boring for me doing one dungeon more then 10 times gets monotone without fun affixes.
I get that while pushing you rather have a flow and know the dungeon and never get different stuff, but for me there is no challenge in that. The only time I am ingaged in a dungeon is when I need to help with dispells.
Not saying they should bring old bolstering back or explosive, but for me having seasonal afixes and more of them was way better.
I think it should be middle ground where they do different and fun affixes or even harder that make you play the dungeons different.
Not sure how people stay engaged in this boring monotone keys in dragonflight, but I guess numbers are talking and it is just me.

2 Likes
5

The actual affix changes contradicts every single goal they have stated themselves.

You might think that entangling provides a cognitive load, but it simply happens and you have to move out of the circle. And even if you fail, it doesn’t have a huge impact. Now lets say it’s Fortified Week, and it’s combined with Focused and Raging.

  • Non-boss enemies with mana have 30% increased Haste, but take 10% increased Frost and Fire damage

So now you have casters who are already buffed from Fortified, having permanent bloodlust and if they happen to enter the 30% HP range and you don’t have an enrage dispel ready, people are gonna start dropping like flies. Just take some of the casters from current season dungeon, that legit starts one-shotting players if even a single cast isn’t stopped.

Or take another example, you combo Bolstering with the Reckless

  • Non-boss enemies without mana ignore 20% armor with their attacks, but their armor is reduced by 30% and they take 10% increased Arcane damage

So now you have an affix that just makes tanks take 1-2 keystone levels worth of extra damage from all melee attacks. Add a few bolstering stacks and tanks are gonna start flopping.

All of the 4 new affixes actually adds even more cognitive load, because now you have to track things that aren’t even emphasized with visual aids. Focused affix will require even more effort on interrupts from the group. There are already non boss enemies in the game that require 3 players to perfectly rotate their interrupts, such as the Primalist Stormspeaker in Nokhud offensive. 1 stormbolt goes off and someone loses 70-80% HP.

Or what about Desecrated Ohuna’s Rotting Wind casts, that easily kills the whole group if even a single cast goes off on fortified weeks, and you’re fighting 3 of them at the same time as other caster’s that also needs to be stopped.

The thought behind kiss/curse on the +4 affixes is good on paper, but the kiss part is such a low impact it’s not enough to warrant changing up the meta. It might look like 10% extra damage, but realistically it’s more like 3-5% at most. Remember it’s only 1 type of mob, and unless you play a spec that does 100% of it’s damage from 1 magic school, it’s not going to boost your damage by a meaningful amount.

It doesn’t really solve the issue of DPS specs getting declined either, even if the damage increase aspect was buffed to a substantial amount. Best case scenario, your non-meta spec gets more invites on 1/4 weeks. What are you supposed to do on the other 3?

I don’t think it’s going to affect the tank meta either, because that is dictated mostly by which tank enables the largest pulls. Unless VDH is grossly undertuned it’s by default a meta pick, simply because it can lock down big packs on it’s own.

I think this is a great point. Dungeons have gotten much more complex every expansion. This season I deliberately stayed away from +10 keys as much as possible, because it felt good to do 8-9 instead with only 1 affix in addition to fort/tyran. It felt more like I was playing the actual dungeons, instead of playing the affixes.

I think it would ok to keep fortified/tyrannical in. I know there are som outlier bosses that scale too much with tyrannical weeks, but for the most part it’s the affix that actually mixes things up the most in terms of how you play the dungeons, at least for my group.

1 Like
6

Dps doesnt need to cry about the new affixes once again tanks and healers are the roles that gets all the negative impact of those new affixes.

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At least it will be for a different 50% rather than the same 50% always struggling to get invites, as it is now.

On a less cynical note, I find myself agreeing with Deja’s point about the existence of affixes:

Especially if they’re going to continue down the road of making trash mechanics ever more complex, it’s time to accept that we don’t need affixes on top.

8

Who’s genius idea was it anyway that so many NPC casters cast at random targets instead of attacking the guy who they are most angry about, namely the tank?!

And why are some casts visualized/named in such minuscule/apparently weak ways (looking at you Vulture Screech in Brackenhide) while being literal atomic bombs that would kill every living being in Orgrimmar?!

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Because without it we would have dungeons as on classic…Boring and braindead. Afixes give dungeons challenge.

10

A reply 8 days later and you missed the point so badly.

11

And Blizz just announced affixes get removed :grin:

1 Like
12

I am so hyped about this. Dont know about you.

I take Fort + Tyr + perma +20% damage/HP any time of the day…

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I am very interested in how it will play out :smiley: At the moment i am positive.

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We should host a funeral for bolstering and raging. With un-respectful grave desecration included. And anti-undead measures built in the coffin.

To make sure they stay dead.

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