New M+ Affixes

Gameplay Dungeons, Raids and Scenarios
1

well those new affixes sound worse than the ones they removed lol

    • New Affix: Incorporeal – While in combat, incorporeal beings appear and attempt to destabilize players with spells that reduce their damage and healing done. Incorporeal beings are susceptible to all forms of crowd control.
  • New Affix: Afflicted – While in combat, Afflicted Souls appear that seek the aid of players. Afflicted Souls spawn with poison, curse, and disease afflictions. Removing any of these afflictions or restoring the spirit to full health causes it to despawn. Fail to remove their afflictions in time will inflict players with a negative status effect.
  • New Affix: Entangling – While in combat, entangling vines snare players.
  • Updated Affix: Explosive – Fewer Explosive Orbs spawn, but they now have substantially higher health.
  • The following affixes have been retired for Dragonflight Season 2:
  • Quaking
  • Vulcanic
  • Grievous

I mean… incorporeal sounds stupid because you now need to waste CC on random mobs. cool

afflicted looks like to be a pain as you need to build a group that has all 3 types of dispel?
Could you please at least make it so that only the one you can dispel the debuff will be afflicted when not debuffing? Because if you have a dd potato that doesn’t even skill the dispel the group will get punished again lol

Looking forward to entangling in Halls of Infusion bridge or Frogs haha
Points points if you also have spiteful or sanguine

Grievous did not need to retire, could just lower the healing threshold to 80%
Vulcanic was a non affix is they tuned it to 1 vulcanic per person instead of more mobs = more vulcanic. I had time there were 6 vulcans under my feet.
Generally not a difficult or very annoying affix, no idea why they remove that one

quaking was annoying. If they would have removed the interrupt could have been fine but i guess they didnt want to bother always adjusting quaking for every dungeon because of mechanics.

The real kicker is that we still have stupid affixes like explosive, bursting and spiteful

2 Likes
2

From the use of “and” in the description, it would spawn with all 3 and you only need to dispel one of the 3 to clear the mob.

Also you can full heal it to get rid of it if needs be

3

Yeah, gg being ensnared in the hallway of hell before last boss in Halls of Infusion or at Tree boss suck mechanic in Brackenhide or during ANY other of the thousand movement mechanics in pretty much every fight in every Dungeon. The RNG of this will feel so bad. Have fun waiting till the end of the season for the necessary adjustments to come.

And gg for making most of the possible Affix combinations absolutely frustrating for healers …yet again. Imagine needing to heal random mobs to full in every fight (as you have to save your dispel for more important mob mechanics in a lot of instances) in addition to the extreme healing requirements in DF and then not even being able to drink afterwards without severely holding the group back because of bursting or spiteful. These affixes haven’t already been incredibly annoying on their own, no no, let’s make them even more annoying for healers to deal with.
Another spit in the face of healers, great job, Blizzard.

Thanks, I hate it.

4

I really don’t get why the real problem isn’t getting tackled here. Players would like rewarding mechanics, affixes with two sides - you do what the affix wants = you get rewarded; you don’t do what the affix wants = you get punished.

It looks like they initially made a step in the right direction and then suddenly stopped and went back to the same things we are used to. I mean, afflicted sounds cool before you learn that doing it right rewards you with… nothing. Just imagine entangling + spiteful. Basically if you get unlucky enough you’ll just stand there, waiting to be killed. This is not something active, but passive instead. This way we play to… play. Basically the reward for doing the mechanic correctly is my life. This is not exciting, never has been and never will. The closest thing to something rewarding is thundering right now, at least i am buffed if i do it correctly.

I have a lot friends who got tired of m+ just because doing higher keys felt more punishing than rewarding. Doing a high level key should be something that engages me more than just by putting stress on the party - it should be an experience players look forward to try because “yes, it will be hard, but it will be satisfying”.

Imagine this:

  1. let’s remove everything. Every affix, all of them, just leave in tyrannical and fortified. Then let’s add affixes starting from scratch.

  2. Level 4 affixes: simple environmental mechanics, reworked to not have silly overlaps with boss mechanics, like pools you have to dodge, a couple moving tornadoes are ok and so on. Nothing fancy, just spice up the key for casual players who want to try doing a higher key than usual.

  3. level 7 affixes: interactive and rewarding mechanics. You could have 3 of them cycling during the weeks, taking inspiration from the ideas behind afflicted and other stuff, for example:

A) wounded ally/horde soldier spawns, he’ll die in X seconds; if you fail to save him, he dies, debuffing the party that failed to help a friend in need, but if you save him he blows a horn and calls for friends and they help you for X seconds (by damaging, debuffing, i don’t care);

B) elemental pillars spawn and they have to be destroyed before they collapse. If you do, the pillars getting shattered deal aoe dmg to the enemies, if you don’t they deal it to the party;

C) four different objects (like floating roman numbers) spawn and they have to be clicked in the right order - I, II, III, IV. If you do, the party gets a buff. If you don’t, you get a debuff.

And you could vary these instead of putting a ton of others. For example:

Alliance soldier and horde soldiers do different things and they can spawn as humans/dwarves/dranei or orcs/goblins/taurens and just have different effects.

Floating numbers can be fire/earth/ice/storm and have different effects, same thing with the pillars. Even lv.4 affix could vary this way: volcanic and storming could easily become the same thing, you just have to call it “elemental interference” and if it’s fire, it’s volcanic, if it’s storm it’s a tornado and so on.

Now picture this: while you are fighting inside the dungeon you hear a cry for help and you see a wounded alliance soldier that asks for aid; you pop a personal cd to stay alive while your healer switches focus and heals him, he thanks the group and as he sounds the charge 4 more appear and help you mow down the pack you engaged. Or maybe while you are in the open while attacking freehold some icy pillars erupt, you shatter it and they explode, freezing the enemies for just the couple seconds you need to catch a breath and reposition. But if you fail to do so, it will be you to freeze while surrounded by angry pirates.

Maybe what i’m writing is silly or exaggerated, but personally is what i feel could make me actively do more and more m+ just for the experience.

1 Like
5

Ion Hazziskostas doesn’t like anything that makes the game fun and doesn’t annoy you to death.
The guy is like some kind of sadomasochist and it spills over into his design philosophy.

3 Likes
6

Don’t usually like to moan about things that I haven’t tried but these don’t look one bit fun to deal with.

Snare in M+ will feel awfull, more so on some specs than others.

Dispellable affix feels the most none affix, just something the healer needs to deal with again LOL. (I play healer specs aswell)

CCble debuff, sounds bit meh and I guess how many can spawn will decide how it feels.

Tankier explosive with less spawns could be better but will still feel bad. Just delete this and take grievous on its place.

Was really hopeful when affix changes were announced but this was a huge let down.

7

To me they just sound as bad.

I don’t really get it, people complain that m+ isn’t fun so what they do is they remove the seasonal affixes which historically have really been the only affixes that had an element of fun to them while expanding on the unfun affix system.

I see this and if anything it just solidifies my viewpoint of affixes are bad just remove them entirely and up the per key level scaling or add actual abilities to bosses depending on difficulty to compensate.

It’s not filling me with excitement.

8

Well, this is what we get for all the bad players complaining. Vulcanic and quaking are not hard affixes at all, griveous is not bad affix either. The only affix i personaly dont like is bolstering, since it slows everything down realy.

However, reading up on the new affixes i feel like i’m gonna either just quit the game tbh, or just deal with the bad hand we’ve been dealt. Cant realy make up my mind. They dont sound fun at all!!!

9

No, this is what we get for Blizzards notorious inability to listen to player feedback and properly work with it.

2 Likes
10

one of the most fun things for me is PULLING really BIG PULLS and interacting with the pull and dungeons not slow down and deal with bad affixes … it looks to me im quitting WoW next season if this goes alive as is

1 Like
11

Why are all affixes punishing? reward risk, don’t take away. How hard can it be?

if you need ideas here is a few -

  1. When the mob enters combat a duplicate spawns next to it, does no dmg and walks aimlessly next to where it spawn, it takes 50% reduced dmg. If you kill it you gain x% dmg buff for x sec after killing it. stacks 5 times.
  • move the pack away, no effect, aoe it down, get dmg buff, but need additional time so risk is loosing time for a dmg buff, potentially put pack on boss? risk reward.

  1. Curse of the afflicted - several cursed objects appear randomly around the dungeon (10+ locations), when a player picks it up it grants a kiss curse reward. Fex 20% reduced healing output, all single target healing is splashed to nearby party members for the same amt, or, all your dmg taken is now reduced by 20% but you take 10% of all dmg you do.

  2. all enemies are now elementals in addition to their normal type. Fire enemies when killed makes you immune to fire for 30 sec, but take double dmg from ice types. Same for earth and lightning. In addition you do 30% additional dmg of the chosen type which is increased against the opposite element and reduced vs the same (changes the route through the dungeon that with some smart planning could be either very rewarding or punishing.) flip locations randomly.

  3. During the dungeon several new enemies appears, similar to lootgoblins. If you kill them the endboss drops additional random loot from any dungeon, BUT if you dont kill it he spawns friends. (he runs like mad, so need to cordinate CCs and be prepared for him running into packs and causing you to get insane pulls).

  4. The dungeon visibility is removed, you now can only see 25 yds infront of yourself. Several enemies will spawn in the darkness and if you step out of line you can pull extra.

12

Grevious & bursting has been my favorite combo

Healers actually has to heal Sigh i guess we’ll get more

  • New Affix: Entangling – While in combat, entangling vines snare players

Disconnecting my controller = Mechanic/difficulty stuff, i feel like next season is gonna be the worst m+ season for me :confused: oh well

13

Let’s protest and unsub?

14

Probably don’t want to overreact but in spirit I agree with the op. They’ve removed mildly annoying static affixes (a small strafe and you’re done, or just keep on healing the party) to something that will be a lot more active interference

Honestly affixes just feel stupid to me now. Even tyrannical is dumb at higher keys because it just makes mechanically simpler dungeon bosses have more monotonous long fights

It was a good feature that had its run. The community has grown out of it

EDIT: still really happy with how blizzard have been changing their approach overall so not just complaining

15

because if it becomes rewarding you get one of two things;

  • the game will be balanced about you perfectly exploiting the risk factor for the reward every single time
  • you get weird situations where in perfect play suddenly a +4 is easier then a +3 and a +7 is easier then a +6

for the first reason I hope it never happens, for the latter reason this is Ion’s own reason as to why they have 0 intention of doing something like this.

Personally I’d rather just see the affixes removed and difficulty added back by adding skills and abilities to mobs and bosses rather then give mario’s hammer bro more BS to throw at you off-camera

16
  • you get weird situations where in perfect play suddenly a +4 is easier then a +3 and a +7 is easier then a +6

Why is this an issue. Ever done lfr rasz vs heroic (with a half decent group?)

But yes I 100% agree that affixes have lived their life. I honestly kind of view dungeons as fun trash pulls. If I want enjoyable bosses I’d rather raid. Having a tedious dungeon boss is just not fun for me.

1 Like
17

I’ve heard Ion make this argument and I really don’t see the big deal. How is anything below a 10 even a big deal in the first place…? He considered that outcome worse than yet another season of garbage affixes that long out stayed their welcome?
And with a balanced kiss/curse mechanic, no it wouldn’t be any easier.
You still have to deal with the affix, it’s not just some free buff. Something in line with a minor temporary buff to compensate for the DPS/GCD tax of dealing with something like explosives is all it would take to make these more engaging.

1 Like
18

There is a very clear pro argument about kiss curse. Carrots are better than sticks to modify behavior. If you want the dungeon to be played and feel different then you have to incentivise all 5 players too change how they approach it

Dps are biased to not ‘wasting’ time on negative affixes and mostly play the same way . So often it’s tank and healer bearing the brunt. But everyone will play differently if there is a buff reward. After the success of good kiss curse seasonal affixes I’m struggling to understand why they’ve forgone them and are focusing on negative ones

1 Like
19

we dont need kiss curse.
we dont need overly punishing affixes

make dungeons interesting and dangerous pulls too limit the pulls and remove all but 1 seasonal affix

1 Like
20

Here’s an idea, try to think of some FUN affixes.

1 Like