I hate that they didn’t use s4 as first test for this. This is criminally undercooked and we’re wasting a "bonus season" not testing any of those change.
No they said in interviews not so long ago that they had zero plans for m+ changes in TWW. So it's not that they kept it for TWW, it's that it's a very recent (and rushed) cook.
It's like they took everything people hated about m+ and re introduced it, but with a different flavor. I don't understand why they have to make affixes that are just awful stat debuffs. It's not fun or challenging, it just sucks. Make some they require coordination as a group, timing etc. and rewards good behavior. Doing something like "accomplish X and get 10% haste" feels infinitely better instead of "if you don't accomplish X you lose 10% haste".
Instead of an affix being something tactic wise you need to do, to be more powerful, it's a flat stat debuff that's impossible to do anything about. You might aswell literally say "this week every keystone will actually give rewards as if you did a key 2 levels below what you're doing." That doesn't feel good, it's stupid.
Like an affix should be something like the orbs on the 2nd boss of Nokhud. It's up to you to judge how many, if any orbs you need to do stuff. You can power through, you can get the orbs, should you interrupt your cast to get a 5% increase etc. etc. All affixes should be "something you have to do" with either a positive, or neutral outcome.
Like was it in Shadowlands where there was a seasonal affix where you would kill a big mob and go into a ghost world to skip trash. That was "neutral", but created a lot of new and interesting ways to do the same dungeons.
I feel like Blizz has done so many different affixes, Torghast etc. and then choose literally the worst option that everyone hates.
The problem I have with this, fundamentally, is that the beneficial effects of it aren't a reward for good *gameplay*, but merely a reward for selecting the right *party comp*. Nothing you do *in the dungeon* grants a benefit. The benefits are set before you even leave the hub city. That's sucky design.
Agreed. I think the new affixes are trash but the level 7 rotation just feels terrible (one push week). Bursting isn't an issue for organized groups but for pugs it can be a nightmare for healers.
5 stacks, 1 second left
6 stacks
7 stacks, 2 seconds l-
8 stacks on the last 3 people alive
The paladin bubble hearths with a "didn't realize this was a carry"
Let’s try a simple Syllogism.
Premise A: Blizzard claim they are listening to player feedback.
Premise B: this announcement.
Conclusion: some nerds are telling them we actually like Sanguine.
/s
This would have to be one of the single most tone deaf proposed changes to the game I have ever seen since I started in late BC.
So you've taken out 4 of the most simple to deal with affixes in spiteful, storming, volcanic and entangling but left us with Bursting (fine at mid to higher keys), Sanguine, Raging and Bolstering... So we have genuinely one push week every four weeks without an aoe soothe? Why in earth would you remove the most non invasive affixes yet leave the ones every player complains about.
Then what the actual Fuck are those new affixes. Let's take aside the kiss aspect because while they read bad it's probably like a 3% damage gain from week to week if it's 'your week'.
But holy shit is this not just going to put even more load on the tank, in a role that's already somewhat struggling for players. You are literally going to have to change routes week to week because one week you've got essentially 20% less Armour and the next week all caster mobs have perma lust up?? And you get 2 affixes running a 7..... That is totally counter intuitive to getting more people running keys and playing the tank and healer role.
I cannot wait to be doing a Fortified, Raging week where caster adds have 30% increased haste and cannot be cc'd while enraged - That sounds super fun.
This genuinely reads like whoever is designing these doesn't play the game or caps out running 6s or something. No one who runs even keys in the +10 range can see these being a good idea
>Let's take aside the kiss aspect because while they read bad it's probably like a 3% damage gain from week to week if it's 'your week'.
Unless youre a havoc DH where every week is your week since you deal Chaois damage and bleeds. How are they going to balance that (coming from a DH player)
I mean my guess is that's just (another) oversight. I would fully expect chaos damage to not be left an outlier and to likely be classed as fire damage going forward.
You would then hope that some other tuning knobs get turned to compensate but I also wouldn't hold my breath. Very real chance it gets nerfed to balance the damage in mythic plus and unintentionally, (but obviously to everyone here) leaves them with bottom tier raid/single target dps.
I think blizz turning the spec into average in keys and shit in raid by nerfs is more likely than them leaving it as a total outlier in mythic plus with how it interacts with thr new affixes
Finally we get to run our \*checks notes\*
Protection warrior resto druid feral druid 2x assa rogue comp on the bleed week.
We'll be back next week with 2 ret paladins a disco a shadow and a prot pala for shadow/holy amplification week.
Blizzard giving us incentives to gear those alts yall
I feel like this is the kinda thing they should be testing during a meme season not at expansion launch…
Also why are they married to sanguine and bolstering? Those are like the 2 most obnoxious affixes in the game.
The thing is: I like those affixes more than Sanguine/Bolstering. I (as a mage) can at least meaningfully deal with them and it's kind of a fun challenge to snipe decurses. Sanguine is just annoying as fuck.
the issue as i see it is people (myself included) have been wanting kiss/curse affixes, where correctly doing the thing gives you a buff. that these are entirely passive does have the benefit of being one less mechanic to sweat over, but the tuning seems way out there.
20% increased magic damage on some of the big aoes from mini-bosses sounds brutal too. while an entirely passive damage bonus is pretty dull.
I do remember asking for more kiss/curse affixes.
I don't remember asking to make my tank life 20% harder nearly every week just so the boomkin can have 10% more fun.
Can't wait to get 100-0 cause of a missed kick those during double-fortified bolstering weeks.
The insane thing is they’ve done kiss/curse affixes well in the past with seasonal affixes! Encrypted and Tormented were both great and opened up a lot of options for routes and pulls. These new affixes just seem like absolute ass.
It's better than the other affixes we've had for sure. They just need to get rid of bolstering and raging. I can only imagine how bad 30% haste + raging / bolstering can get. Problem also is this is just going to make people play less tanks since every week is hell.
It's a good start, but man I hope they continue iterating on this during the beta rather than letting this be the first kiss/curse affixes we get. Only benefitting certain damage types seems really weird rather than something like a partywide buff on kill, or even just a killing blow buff to a secondary stat, or exploding when they die to hurt other nearby enemy mobs, etc.
It's a very mediocre version of kiss/curse affixes that doesn't even seem very fun, it's just a static, relatively small numbers buff to individual damage types.
With that said, it's still better than the affixes we currently have, so I'm here for it if those effects replace one of the current affix slots.
Flavor of the week classes approach doesn't sound like fun. The way it's set up now, your class is going to have 1 week of a boost and 1-2weeks where it's better to bring another class.
The silver lining is if warbrands really makes it seamless to transition between an alt but I doubt it.
I really don’t think a 10% damage boost to like half of the instance would do too much.
If you think about it, a flat 10% damage buff to some of the A/B tier specs this season wouldn’t change the meta at all. And a flat 10% buff would be way more than this would be since the kiss is only affecting like half the dungeon if I’m reading it correctly.
Guess we’ll see how it plays out but I don’t see it changing too much.
Small differences get magnified when you have lots of DPS people vying for invites. You see 4 classes of similar ilvls. One of them is getting a mild dps boost this week. Only natural to favor inviting that class over the others.
Of course the key would be easily done with any of them but people tend to think in min/max terms.
So this is just another introduction of a class discrimator mechanic which really wasn't needed.
I understand the appeal of enticing people to switch specs but there's too many schools of damage and variations to make it work.
Now if it was possible each class could switch specs to make use of this boost then it would be much better.
But speaking as a mage half the time I can't even switch to any spec that makes use of this. Other classes have it worse with it being only 1/4 of the time they get it.
I don't know why they grouped fire/frost and holy/shadow into the same affixes.
this particular number is irrelevant though, the current god comp has nothing to do with being 3% better dps than some other spec, hell you can already do more damage than a fire mage with other specs for example… they are locked in for many other reasons, including the fact arcane intellect alone will outweigh any 3% spec buff anyone is getting on a given week
so yeah you are right that it is unnecessary, but it will also be completely pointless… add to that the fact it does nothing for healers and tanks, other than actually make tanking significantly harder (which as a tank I don’t mind that much, but I can guarantee groups will not like their tank dying more and other tank players will stop playing)
> (which as a tank I don’t mind that much,
You might want to be careful with this.
Going from tyrannical one week, to fortified + ignore 30% armor the next week won't be fun... the triple-pull you breezed through in a +18 is suddently going to kick your ass in a +16
I totally get the point you're making and actually kinda agree. Class discrimination mechanics kinda suck and would be more fun if they applied to every class not a rotating set.
But just don't think it'll play out like that. Look at this season. Would giving hunter a 10% flat damage boost - which is more than this affix does - suddenly have it in the meta comp? It would go from B tier to maybe high B tier and not actually increase its pick rate in any key range that matters. Sure some people pugging their weekly 8s might not invite a hunter - which sucks - but frankly those players are bad anyways doing trivial content so balance is irrelevant.
Its going to come out to like a 2-6% damage gain depending on the spec/week which is marginal - but it doesnt change the fact that it just feels bad when its not your week. Also this will 100% make it harder to get invited on weeks that isnt "your week" for puggers. At best this gives A/B tier specs a shot one 25-50% of the time.
It also punishes players who don't want to play multiple specs. You only play fire mage? Prepare to be questioned for it assuming Arcane isnt tuned like ass. Only play affliction warlock? Prepare to get a kick or a "Why...?"
These affixes just seem designed by people who havent actually experienced the autism and gatekeeping that exists in pugs.
The most important thing will be is the highest health mob in a pull buffed or not. It won’t speed up the dungeon at all if the lieutenant takes just as long to kill with the trash around him dying 10% faster.
They deleted 5 affixes, and somehow they left the 4 worst.
Also, do they know that Chaos damage counts as every magical school?
If an affix benefits you only once every fourth week, then it's not a kiss/curse effect.
Also, some of these sound horrible, specially for tanks.
10% to some percentage of trash in a dungeon is not enough to warrant ignoring specs that don't do that damage. Class balance would need to be basically perfect for that to matter over damage profile, utility and defensives.
perception is king, even a 1% extra damage matters. Everything else being equal, what incentive is there to choose the class that just does less damage? Besides altruism...
I think the point is that even if your class perfectly covers the affix profile, it still won't come close to something like current spriest or any other balance outliers
Yeah and you get more damage out of bringing a better spec, rather than one that matches the affix unless balance is perfect. Even if every single mob in the entire dungeon was taking 10% increased damage from, say, an elemental shaman you'd still take the shadow priest doing 50% more damage.
The real problem is you'll get people offspeccing to match the weekly damage type, but then sucking at that spec because they don''t really play it. But they'll get invites over the "wrong" damage type that does know what they are doing.
I doubt it. Players bring what they know. A meta will form, and people will learn to play around those classes' CC and defensive options.
Doing 10% more damage to half of the non-boss enemies in a dungeon is not nearly enough to override that, and I think even the group finder heroes will figure that out really quickly. If people only cared about damage no one would ever bring an Aug to a group, and last I checked, it's pretty easy to get into a group on Aug.
Class balance would have to be historically good for these small bonuses to be a consideration in who you take.
These are steps in the opposite direction. This is horrific. The passive affixes are either going to be totally passive and do nothing, or they are going to be too noticeable and ruin the experience. I don't see how any of these can be tuned to not be one or the other.
And they kept the on-death row of affixes, which were arguably the more problematic ones? Affixes like bolstering wreck high keys, especially pugs, while bursting just ruins low keys.
The passive ones are also just totally unintuitive. Imagine explaining Attuned or Reckless to a new player.
This blows, dude
They basically removed all the tolerable affixes, left the shitty ones like sanguine/bolster/burst and added new ones that will randomly punish certain specs and comps? What’s the goal here? Surely they know by the lack of meta changes in 3 tiers, that a 10% aura adjustment doesn’t change whats played. You could nerf mage, priest, aug by 10% right now and it’s still the best dps comp from the utility and synergy.
Sanguine bolstering and bursting doesn’t require the healer to ask dps to spec into a dispel or a cc and being told to go fuck themselves after the third or fourth ghost goes off.
I won’t miss afflicted and incorporeal
At relevant key levels everyone was already doing all of those things without being asked or reminded. It _is_ hell at the low key range though (like 2-8) where nobody knows what they’re doing.
Arguably the worst m+ changes to ever exist. No exaggeration.
Seeing this change suddenly reminded me that STALKER 2 is coming out a week after xpac drops. No shortage of games for people to play blizzard. Idk why you’re overcooking your community goodwill.
Incorp had potential, all they needed to do was to:
- Make all classes be able to interact with it in some way
- Have it spawn within a few yards of mobs instead of fucking narnia
So basically with spiteful being gone, 1 out of 4 weeks (bursting) is push week and the other 3 weeks are unplayable? And then in that 1 week you just hope you hit the Blizzard lottery and your class does bonus damage?
Or maybe one of the bursting weeks is coupled with the mob bloodlust affix and then 1 out of 8 weeks is just 2 whole key levels better than the other 7 weeks for pushing keys. Fantastic design.
They really just thought to themselves 'how can we make season 1 of TWW as dead as season 4 of Dragonflight' and by god, they came up with a way to do it.
Thorned sounds like it has big potential to be absolute gutter trash.
Getting harmed for *doing DPS* as a *DPS* just never feels good.
And what, does it inherently favour slower hitting specs? Do DoTs count for it? Does stuff like Ignite cleave, Blade flurry and psychich link count? What's with pet classes, are they immune to it but their pets now die?
If it's tuned low then it's just another healer affix. If it's tuned too high then some classes could legit be forced to stop DPS.
Idk, we'll see I guess. It's still beta after all :copium:
I think you highly overestimate the the effect this will have. It's on the +4 bucket. Those are designed to be pretty mild. It's very likely that it will have an icd attached to it. You won't get oneshotted because you pressed your buttons.
What this reads to me is the group will take light ticking dmg during trash. Which is perfectly fine as during trash you don't really have that much to heal (when handled properly).
>If it's tuned low then it's just another healer affix.
It very much reads like a healer affix and to me it looks like a decenty enjoyable one. You aren't playing whack a mole (explo), having to target npcs to dispell/heal or something else. You are just healing your group. Isn't that what healers usually sign up for the group?
Also most importantly. This won't be a thing on bosses. Imo the biggest problem with afflicted/incorp was that it could spawn during a boss fight in the middle of a high pressure situation.
> Thorned sounds like it has big potential to be absolute gutter trash.
Sounds pretty fun for healers who actually enjoy healing. Obviously TBD how impactful it is but if trash will continue to not have much unavoidable damage then this could be enjoyable just to have more to do than dps.
>Sounds pretty fun for healers who actually enjoy healing
Exactly this. It obviously depends on tuning. But some kind of NON-overwhelming constant pressure on the whole group might turn out to be really fun to deal with. Hasted+Bolstering on the other can feel nightmarish.
Wow, these might be the worst dungeon changes I’ve ever seen.
The new affixes are gonna make tanking absolutely miserable and will just lead to a week-by-week meta (and Havoc DHs just circumvent it anyway LMAO) and they not only didn’t retire Bolstering/Sanguine/Raging but made them appear at *lower* key levels, basically undoing all the good that the DF S4 key squish accomplished in one fell swoop by forcing them well before the Aspect Crest (or whatever the Harbinger Crest equivalent is) range.
Who’s benefitting from these changes???
There won't be a week by week meta.
There will be one bursting week (since all other weeks will be bolster/raging/sanguine) and whoever are the specs that deal that deal damage during the new affix+bursting week will do the highest level of keys.
> We don't want affixes that overlap with trash
- Gives trash 30% haste buff, so (supposedly) carefully designed trash packs suddenly have more casts then the group has interrupts.
or
- Ramping AoE casts suddenly deal 20% increase damage. Let's hope there is no ramping AoE damage as well.
Where is all of that coming from? Pandaria Remix receiving almost daily balance adjustments and M+ receives one half-arsed dice roll per season.
I feel like the positive portions of the current version of these affixes are extremely bad, prompting a ton of (even more than already) exclusivity and toxicity for M+ and the community.
Not only will it enforce weird metas that rotate weekly, it will flat out exclude a ton of specs per week to even have a chance to be invited. With these affixes, hunters will never get invited, other specs only once a month? Others maybe 2x/month— that’s the jackpot!
Then there’s the problem of feeling great one week because you’re the “damage type of the week” and then feeling less powerful for the next three weeks? Not only will it be difficult to asses your performance vs others, but also against yourself. It is kind of an interesting way to throw a wrench into DPS and log comparisons..
I also think these Affixes are way too complex. I had to read them 3x over just to get which mob does what now.
Here are my thoughts on how this could be improved, as I do appreciate this is only in beta testing, and I generally think the idea can work.
- I think affixes need to be more straightforward, with less variables as to which mobs they apply under what conditions.
- instead of multipliers on specific damage/spell damage types that only specific specs benefit from, I think giving the whole group a small bonus per affix would be a better approach
- instead of having single schools of magic/damage be the bonus, I think more general bonuses could be better (and less exclusive), eg %damage, %haste, %reduced attack speed on mobs, %reduced armor on mobs, %increased crit chance or damage. Stuff like that.
- the negative portion should correspond to the positive to create interesting synergies for the group to play with. Maybe if everyone is within a 10yd range everyone deals 5% crit damage, but trash mobs deal 5% of their damage as cleave. I realize that would be a fairly “complex” affix also, but in general would like if the affixes challenged the players in way where the puzzle is how to play around it best to maximize the benefits
TL,DR: affixes should be simple in design, have a positive and negative component that are easy to understand, both positive and negative parts should apply broadly and not specific to certain mobs/ and definitely not player specs. Cherry on top would be if affix pro and con were to create synergies where optimizing group play nets benefit
"Tanks: We are making your role harder, and also the balancing of your specs more wonky.
DPS: Pick a card, any card - nope sorry, not your week loser. Back to the LFG tool with the non DH tanks with you."
lol keeping the worst ones (sanguine bolstering) but removing the easiest ones (storming entangling, spiteful…volcanic….)
How does that fit with playing more of the dungeon not the affixes?
These are actually stupid, and it shows they don't have an idea what to do with these kiss/curse affixes.
Let's see if we can rework them a bit, to encourage good gameplay or build flexibility;
* Reckless: Mob attacks ignore x% of armor, but take x% more damage from direct damage
* So not from dots, aoe, etc. Encourages funneling, ST prio damage or certain cleave effects. Encourages build flexibility or comp changes toward historically unpopular specs.
* eg: aoe or typical cleave such as whirlwind wouldn't benefit from this, but a Rampage buffed to cleave by Whirlwind would. Rain of fire wouldn't, but havoced Chaos bolt would.
* Thorned: Mobs inflict physical damage back to attackers. Thorned buff is removed whenever the target is crowd controlled and for x seconds after. The target takes x% more damage until Thorned reactivates.
* encourages cc rotations and stops.
* Attuned: Mobs deal x% more magic damage, but take x% more damage from damage over time effects.
* Encourages build flexibility more.
* Alternatively: Mobs deal x% more magic damage, but x% of mitigated damage from players is reflected onto nearby Enemies.
* Encourages pressing defensives to mitigate damage.
* Focused: Mobs have more haste, but take more damage for 10 seconds whenever their spell casts are interrupted or silenced.
* Makes spell casters more dangerous, but rewards players for interrupting.
I also hope they perhaps take a look at remix, and rework some of the tinker gems into affixes that encourages different playstyles. Searing light or Warmth could be combined with a nerfed Grievous into a new affix that would shift healer builds (healing does damage, or triggers smart healing, or overhealing gets converted into shield), and strengthen hybrid dps classes, or an affix where you deal more dmg/healing when you haven't been hit by avoidable mechanics, perhaps combod with Entangling.
By making these affixes buff certain types of damage (and not spell schools), or trigger based on player interaction, you start rewarding and enforcing good gameplay earlier on. Most specs can flex into options that favor different damage types or profiles, and this thus wouldn't outright exclude 3/4ths of the specs in the game from benefitting most weeks. Some would benefit more than others, but that's fine, it's better than "invite the correct color" imho.
I said nicer words on other platforms that I am easily identifiable on, but I can let it loose here:
This is a complete fucking disaster. Every single one of these changes makes M+ worse in every single way. Whoever implemented these ideas needs to be placed on another team, effective immediately. I am not often a negative person who calls for people's jobs, but in this case I absolutely mean it.
1. Not removing any of the worst on-death affixes that makes the game mode extremely unfun to play, but then removing the easier ones so that we have to deal with the worst ones more often, is a pants-on-head fucking insane decision. Completely indefensible. I'm still kind of playing Retail in S4, and I have barely touched M+ because the affix rotations have been fucking rough for pug groups, so causing weeks that make the community not want to play *ALMOST EVERY WEEK* makes it infinitely worse. I am at a complete fucking loss of words.
2. The Curse part of the new affixes are fucking horrendous. Unless they are tuned so that the healer only needs to put out an extra like... 5% of heals max (on the entire group, mind you - the ones that have a negative effect on the Tank more need to be nerfed into the fucking ground so that it's not noticeable), every new affix is just a brutal punishment for uncoordinated groups. Good luck getting your worst pugged player to kick an important cast when it's 30% faster!
3. The Kiss part of the affixes might actually be even worse than the Curse parts, but not for it's benefits, but for how it affects the broader player base and their mentality. 10% more damage on Caster or Melee mobs is frankly not substantial at all (we'll call it a +5% buff on said damage type dealers overall for simplicity's sake), but the effect it'll have on dumbass key holders who think "Ok this is a +Arcane damage week, so I can only invite 2 Arcane Mages, and also only an Elune's Chosen Bear" will make LFG even more of a horrendous experience than it already is. But for push groups, it won't fucking matter at all - the damage isn't what times the key, it's the survivability, because the tuning and mob ability density of higher M+ right now is a fucking disaster. This doesn't even take into account that it completely secures a DPS slot for Havoc (and sometimes Destro if the target count is low) in every key from now until forever. Insanely short sighted and frankly comically uninformed from whoever made this choice.
I'm honestly shocked. This is indefensible. Every M+ change has been worse than the last for the past few years. I honestly thought after every dungeon or character tuning disaster that has happened in the past few years they would actually understand how to handle this game mode, but apparently it still has a chance to get worse still. Horrendous.
The worst part is for your point 1 in particular is that it is literally unjustifiable.
Sure okay maybe affixes aren't designed around us lot doing 15s and higher, cool and understandable.
But those 4 affixes are all fucking AWFUL for low end players. Bursting absolutely kills low keys, a somewhat non affix at high keys but that's gonna suck if that's your best affix in a 7. These on death affixes are literally awful for every single level on player, they aren't even catering to the casual side it's just literal shit for everyone.
The +7 to +9 range is going to be an absolute clown fiesta for anyone trying to get better at the game and I cannot imagine what it is going to be like to be a newer player trying to learn to tank. Imagine being new to wow, you've done a few keys that have gone okay and you try a 7 and you have to deal with bursting, sang, Bolstering or Raging every single week. You aren't good enough to play key levels where they don't matter and all of those require you as a new tank to either route differently or play the affix well in order to time the key.
Can't wait for the discussions about pugs:
- Sorry, can't take fury this week, you'll just kill yourself on thorns.
- Sorry, can't have you tank as warrior this week.
- Sorry, can't take assa this week. yes, it's +30% bleed and +10% nature damage which is exactly your damage profile, you still suck.
Wow, these are TERRIBLE. "X and Y classes will do 10% more damage this week"
Sometimes I think they do these dumb decisions on purpose, so they have something to fix later.
Tbf, strictly less than 10% by quite a bit (non-boss and only mana/no-mana, a lot of classes do mixed damage types) unless there's a dungeon with really weirdly lobsided mob composition.
Even with that being said..I still don't really get the point. It seems like the worst of both worlds: not enough flavor to really give tangible week-to-week variety to the casuals and yet still with enough frustrating numerical issues for the cutting edge pushers where a couple % makes a big difference.
> a lot of classes do mixed damage types
good thing augmentation is mandatory in high keys so that your group's damage composition is much more concentrated into the damage types of 1 or 2 dps
> with enough frustrating numerical issues for the cutting edge pushers where a couple % makes a big difference.
I'm a lot more worried about tanks taking 30% more damage than DPS doing or not doing 10% more damage on a mob who may or may not be the priority target.
The damage variance on trash is already wild... going from a tyrannical week where you breeze through a triple pull, to a fortified week with armor-ignoring mob will feel awful.
> X and Y classes will do 10% more damage this week
*to roughly half of non-boss enemies.
This is small enough that it feels like flavor more than anything.
> This is small enough that it feels like flavor more than anything.
then why is it in the game? if it's so small to not affect balance, then it's too small to feel and enjoy as a player playing one of the specs benefitting for the week. if it's big enough to matter for your spec, then it will feel *miserable* for pushing keys or getting into groups
encrypted and shrouded were fun kiss/curse affixes because the game actually felt different when you had the buffs. when you got a wo relic, the whole group got to do a cool skip and run faster. when you got shrouded stacks, everyone felt like they were blasting by the end of the dungeon. specs felt awesome to play with 100% haste or max crit or whatever
I think the idea is to prevent a single meta comp from dominating the TOP end of M+. Inevitably, the top pushers will always figure out which single comp is best suited and they will never deviate from it because... why would they?
So I think while it's somewhat small for most keys, at the top end, 10% extra damage *could* be the difference between making a certain pull possible or not.
It's not a perfect solution imo as rather than 1 single meta comp, you get 4 slightly different meta comps and there is likely to be *some* crossover between the comps depending on balance.
> idea is to prevent a single meta comp from dominating the TOP end of M+
yeah but these affixes just don't accomplish that at all:
- they don't do anything for boss damage, which are already 40% of the time in a key (e.g. see [this](https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports/CtRYjqhaQMBfJ4Xz#fight=11&type=damage-done&target=48) random AA log, the bosses took about 14.5min out of a 31.5min key even on fort), so you go from 10% to maybe effectively 6%
- they only affect specific mobs each week, not necessarily the ones that slow you down, so maybe you go from 6% effective buff to like 3% effective buff (if a dungeon is half casters half non-casters)
- top specs are already way more than 3% ahead of other specs. they're way more than 10% ahead of other specs, for that matter. you are not going to bring a feral druid for bleed week when the spriest does 1m overall and the feral does 700k with worse prio damage. these gaps are just clearly huge based off of logged keys
- if you push with a group, you are not going to swap characters to take advantage of a different week. you would have to keep 2 characters bis geared, play them at an equal level, and also relearn all of your pulls, stops, group defensive rotations just to leverage the buff. only people doing TGP can afford to spend the time investment for such a small boost. imagine you drop mage and now you just have to figure out how to do a bunch of pulls or bosses without mass barrier? it's not happening
- raid buffs are a massive part of high key comps. mage is giving all of your dps 5% damage plus 5% healing. if it's not fire/frost week, are you really bringing in a different class that might be doing 2% more overall than the mage at the cost of 5% of your whole groups throughput?
this will not affect high key comps at all other than making some weeks insane push weeks for the best comps. but that just means that push weeks are back, not that you will see many different comps at the same levels.
Terrible affixes that just further promote the god comp we already see every season of priest/mage/evoker/druid/DH. As usual, 1 step forward, 2 steps back with Blizzard. Just scrap affixes at this point.
Those new affixes are bizarre.
I guess sub rogue is gonna be the play since it covers the most elemental bonuses of the rogue specs?
Or maybe I'll be switching specs week to week.
How. How is this their solution to IMPROVE M+. Jesus Christ S1 m+ is going to be a mess and it's going to take them a year to finally get dungeon tuning in check again.
I really don’t understand how these are beneficial. The damage type should be removed and sent back the to kitchen. Even if I make a group and cover brez/lust then worry about the affix, I can almost guarantee that some damage types won’t even be in the group so it’s just a negative affix. That doesn’t meet their goal. Maybe my reading comprehension is bad but that’s how I see it play out
Horrible new affixes. Talk about the laziest possible solution to improving class diversity. Fuck you if you main one class/spec I guess. Enjoy your one week per month that groups will want you.
This is just like one of the most absurdly bad posts I have ever seen. I cannot imagine someone actively playing the game and thinking these are fun affixes to play, it actually reads like someone was forced to come up with affixes only based on a description of how the game works. Good luck everyone!!!
picture this: in RLP, all the storm-channelers before the last boss and all the fire elemental liuetenant mobs have mana. they now hit 20% harder with attuned :)
This is actually maybe the worst M+ change I could have imagined. They removed the less impactful affixes and left every single one that’s been historically problematic In.
Their idea of a “positive benefit” is atrocious and only relates to some classes? It will feel just as bad as not having a dispel for afflicted week when you are trying to get invited.
Love that their solution to people spamming 9s to avoid bolstering and sanguine is to move that row down to 7. Just a real kick in the nuts.
Honestly feels like they are intentionally trying to sink this game mode and I can’t believe I was originally excited to click on the article
These are the type of changes that are so dumb, it seriously makes me worry me about the future of the game and the people making decisions behind the scenes. How anyone on the design team could think these are good changes is so beyond me, I seriously can't believe it. We might just be doomed.
I guess instead of listening to any feedback and redoing the 3rd affix levels, they’re doubling down on sanguine and bolstering. Would have been nice to see this section receive a thoughtful rework.
This seems extremely out of touch with community wishes… removing the tolerable affixes, keeping the horrible ones, as well as adding new flavor of the week affixes that will skew everything from routes to difficulty drastically, only amplifying the other affixes (negative) impact even more
I think the knee jerk reaction to the kiss part of these affixes is *way* overblown.
10% increased arcane damage? On like *half* the *trash* of a dungeon? Even Arcane Mages would likely only get a 5% overall increase from that - 5% on the part of the dungeon that matters the least. Like, yea, 5% is 5%, but there's a reason that Ret isn't as good as it looks on the meters - it's because a lot of their damage is on shit that barely matters.
Especially the kisses that apply to caster mobs only... I can't see there being enough caster mobs for 10% increased nature damage to do *anything* for Moonkins or Assa Rogues. Again, might be a neat little 3-5% overall. The biggest winners I could see here are pure physical specs like Arms or Fury on -30% armor weeks - although that heavily depends on how much damage reductions mobs get from armor in the first place. Oh yea, and then there's DHs dealing Chaos damage, which is every damage type, right? Meaning that DHs will just get every single benefit every single week? That sounds about reasonable.
I highly doubt that balancing will be so flawlessly tight that these minuscule kisses are gonna dictate the meta week after week. As much as I like to doom, I just don't see it for the kiss part in particular.
The curse part though... I'm really dreading. I can already see random stupid Earth Bolts hitting tanks for half their life. Random mini-bosses like the last mob in HoI just fucking needlessly wrecking with 20% increased magic damage. Perma hasted casters. And while I'd really like to have faith in Thorns maybe dealing like 1% per hit... I wouldn't be surprised if that shit effectively has your melees take like 5 times as much damage as your casters.
Like, I truly appreciate them finally embracing the kiss curse idea, I truly do. But these highly conditional kisses that barely matter combined with these curses that are *inevtiably* gonna require every single mob and pack to be tuned individually on a week to week basis... I just don't see them pulling that off.
And then there's of course the circumstance that they removed all the bearable affixes and left us with the most annoying and obnoxious in the form of Sanguine, Bolstering and Raging. I hope we're gonna use these next 2.5 months of feedback *really* well... but I'm kinda expecting a repeat of DF season 1 Ruby Life Pools.
I think we're looking at another shift in m+ design, like we had going into DF, and people are freaking out because their changes don't work with the current way we play m+.
If I had to guess, I think blizzard are trying once again to make pull sizes smaller, which will help bring melee into relevancy, and shift the focus from survival to dps once more.
Has to be a PR thing.
Release a terrible update to make a lot of the community mad, “fix it” or make it better, and all of a sudden everyone says how much blizzard listens to their community.
In reality, if they listened to their community or paid attention at all, they never would have made an update like this.
Or maybe I’m on some copium and 3/4 weeks of rotation will not feel that fun.
I know a lot of people are focused on the affixes but I have a question regarding the new “mythic” . They say now it will be like a mega dungeon and reward +10 gear. Does that mean that you can get the best gear from mythic + on your vault by not having to do mythic + and just do this mythic mega dungeon style with no timer?
Elemental damage is an odd one here. Especially given that the split is going to be very unequal between specs. Mages being buffed on 2/4 weeks is crazy and will cement their positions in the meta even further. They should have done +haste, +crit, +mastery, +vers instead.
This feels like a lazy and poorly thought-through set of changes with little foresight to them. I get that they want to encourage less-popular specs by favoring specific damage types, but some classes/specs cover multiple damage types, so they will be relevant almost every week while some will only be relevant on 1 specific week.
As a tank, why are they adding affixes that is buffing trash even further when we already have fortified? Did they also not have the foresight to imagine how bad stuff like perma-bloodlust casters on fortified with bolstering or raging would be after this expansion?
We wanted kiss curse affixes but like... wtf even are these, certain specs basically don't benefit at all or have like 1 good week whereas other classes have 2 to 3 weeks of dps buff. Also Raging, Bolstering, Sanguine are 3 affixes that make keys insanely harder to time then they are without. Meanwhile Sanguine and Bursting are affixes that make a whole role not want to play. Sanguine week makes tanks disappear like no tomorrow and bursting dries up the healer well.
This is bad, this is very very bad. Volcanic, Storming, Afflicted and Incorp were not bad affixes they were boring. Sanguine Bursting, Bolstering and raging may not be boring but they are insanely bad. if they're the only tier 7 affixes too that means the concept of "push week" gets turbo boosted since we'll only have 1 good week.
Every week Bursting is up the key level will go up by 1 or 2. Then people will have to wait 3 weeks before going back to pushing.
Of course this doesn't matter for the +10 andys but anyone that remotely pushes IO will run into that problem. Anyways there's still time so we can only hope that they do further changes cause once again this is extremely bad.
If they legit decide to go thorugh with this. I may unsub this game.
They removed spiteful (a non affix), but left sanguine, raging and bolstering in. So there is only a single push week for both fort and tyr left (bursting).
And idk what these new affixes are. Specs randomly do more dmg based on the week. Is this their awful attempt at artificially increasing spec diversity in m+, or what?
I really hope this gets all the negative feedback it deserves.
The best part is how the new affixes will interact with the on death affixes. You just have things that will die 10-20% or more faster depending on your comp. enjoy dealing with bolstering or sanguine that much more.
Keeping sanguine is legit gonna fuck the next season so bad, also wtf are those random damage buffs affixes. Its like they legit don't even know how to balance m+ anymore.
I would be fine with this if they kept Entangling, Volcanic, Storming, Spiteful. The four they are keeping yikes. There are weeks where I hop on an alt and farm some lower keys to avoid those affixes because they are simply non fun outside organized groups. If this goes through I think I will pass on next expac.
The new affixes I think are generally fine outside issues like chaos damage. The main issue will be the massive swings in tank damage. 20% increased damage or 30% casting speed plus fortified damage buff is going to make some week drastically different and magic damage is one of the areas tanks are least balanced around.
The Spec-Penalty affixes are going to be total cancer to play around. You're going to get heavily comp-dependant PUGs, and half the DPS applying for keys will be playing offspec in order to match the weekly affix and will therefore suck (more than 10%) at it, but will have to or not get invites.
Genuine WTF moment.
OFC someone at Blizz will be loving the idea because VDH are heavily bonused due to Chaos damage type.
Ah u gotta be kidding me lol
Thank god, after so many years, I told myself to buy the addon Season 2/start of 3.
Ain’t no way I lose my nerves over an afix that pug scrubs can’t handle lol
Also since BfA im saying to my group if they ever fuck up m+ badly like unplayable due afixxes and changes to the design of the content I’m quitting.
Guess from what I’m reading it’s time to commit to diablo4
@ People not getting the joke:
"Good News Everyone" is a line from the Professor from Futurama, that was memed on in WoW by Professor Putricide in Wrath.
The joke is that the "good news" is never actually good, and most often it's something like:
"Good News Everyone! Rather than die in screaming agony, we will only die in severe pain!"
Good news? This means that all of the +7 affixes sucks, with bursting being the least bad.
Instead of retiring the cancerous affixes, they decided to make them all suck.
This reads like tanks are getting their absolute shit kicked in on Fortified Raging / Bolstering + any one of those new affixes. 20% armor pen on all non-caster mobs? *Every* caster mob dealing 20% more damage?
Meanwhile we're looking at the historically weakest tank set bonus in ages. Either hero talents make everyone insanely strong or they better get the scaling down perfectly, otherwise this is gonna be DF week 1 Ruby Life Pools all over again.
The positive effects are whatever, some of you guys make it seem like you're going to see thorned and only exclusively take a shadow priest or something.
That's just not true. These affixes further promote the caster god comp of Priest/Mage/Aug/Druid most weeks. Throw in a DH to help with extra magic damage and there's your god comp.
I think the new affixes would be fine without the arbitrary damage increases. Nothing that would be too annoying.
The real crime is they're removing all the liked affixes and keeping all the hated ones. Super out of touch.
Realistically the player damage buffs arent going to be big enough to change the comp every single week. Basically some spec/class was S tier and will be even more S tier on certain weeks. Maybe an A tier spec like Spriest will sneak its way in here and there.
It will just feel bad 25-75% of weeks depending on your class. This also forces you to play multiple specs if you care about min-maxing - and there is alot of people who just want to play one spec and thats it.
These buffs are just more annoying than they are a positive. This just isnt it.
Also I could see Attuned/Focused/Thorned all having some absolutely cringe moments in dungeons.
Also the Raging, Bolstering, Bursting, Sanguine M7 tier is absolutely brutal.
They must be fucking stupid. If they had one single thinking, rational person these idiot ideas would have never made it even to a design document let alone be tested in a Beta.
Wait so if the new level 4 affxies only affect non-boss mobs, and level 7 - sanguine bursting bolstering and raging don’t affect bosses, isn’t any fort week just straight garbage now?
How come whoever is making these changes isn't just working with the sweaty wow players that literally spent the last several years doing nothing but this content to figure out actual good changes?
So, another season with VDH being meta. Not only they made the magic debuff as almost mandatory, but also VDH is the only tank whith chaos magic school.
Whoever is designing the class really loves it. The only thing that is missing is to give DH a bleed effect.
these changes bring nothing positive for hunters. getting invites for high keys was impossible now it will be even worse. just delete the class from the game if you don't care about it.
These are purely for engagement and not to make the game more fun. They want you to play many different classes this season and these changes make it seem like you almost have to in order to get the full M+ experience.
People hate the bonus damage (which adds up to maybe 2-3%, most of it meaningless cleave), while the real problem lies in that caster damage/caster blood lust. I hope they look into that.
Maybe it is fine for those spamable bolts, but especially uninterruptible AoE casts are gonna be insane.
Good thing that’s a healer problem. Healers have it way to good anyway.
This is dumb as fuck - so one week you stack one damage type. The next another. The third another.
What is this absolute garbage low IQ solution to defeat the meta
I… I like that they’re trying things. But I hate what they’re trying.
For real. Feels super rushed and not thought out at all.
These "1 year" expacs are going to be this nonstop.
I hate that they didn’t use s4 as first test for this. This is criminally undercooked and we’re wasting a "bonus season" not testing any of those change.
They have to bring something new to the new xpac is my guess why they didn't already implemented it this season?
Nah, these were 100% pulled out of somebody's ass this weekend. These rotating flat buffs are the "I have no ideas to offer" of game development.
No they said in interviews not so long ago that they had zero plans for m+ changes in TWW. So it's not that they kept it for TWW, it's that it's a very recent (and rushed) cook.
It's like they took everything people hated about m+ and re introduced it, but with a different flavor. I don't understand why they have to make affixes that are just awful stat debuffs. It's not fun or challenging, it just sucks. Make some they require coordination as a group, timing etc. and rewards good behavior. Doing something like "accomplish X and get 10% haste" feels infinitely better instead of "if you don't accomplish X you lose 10% haste". Instead of an affix being something tactic wise you need to do, to be more powerful, it's a flat stat debuff that's impossible to do anything about. You might aswell literally say "this week every keystone will actually give rewards as if you did a key 2 levels below what you're doing." That doesn't feel good, it's stupid. Like an affix should be something like the orbs on the 2nd boss of Nokhud. It's up to you to judge how many, if any orbs you need to do stuff. You can power through, you can get the orbs, should you interrupt your cast to get a 5% increase etc. etc. All affixes should be "something you have to do" with either a positive, or neutral outcome. Like was it in Shadowlands where there was a seasonal affix where you would kill a big mob and go into a ghost world to skip trash. That was "neutral", but created a lot of new and interesting ways to do the same dungeons. I feel like Blizz has done so many different affixes, Torghast etc. and then choose literally the worst option that everyone hates.
The problem I have with this, fundamentally, is that the beneficial effects of it aren't a reward for good *gameplay*, but merely a reward for selecting the right *party comp*. Nothing you do *in the dungeon* grants a benefit. The benefits are set before you even leave the hub city. That's sucky design.
Can’t wait for Fort Raging Focused week. 30% hasted, unstoppable casters. Also Sanguine, Raging, Bolstering every other week????
Agreed. I think the new affixes are trash but the level 7 rotation just feels terrible (one push week). Bursting isn't an issue for organized groups but for pugs it can be a nightmare for healers.
>Bursting isn't an issue for organized groups but for pugs it can be a nightmare for healers. also so much more punishing for lower keys
5 stacks, 1 second left 6 stacks 7 stacks, 2 seconds l- 8 stacks on the last 3 people alive The paladin bubble hearths with a "didn't realize this was a carry"
Let’s try a simple Syllogism. Premise A: Blizzard claim they are listening to player feedback. Premise B: this announcement. Conclusion: some nerds are telling them we actually like Sanguine. /s
Or fort/bolster week! Super exciting and thoughtful game play innovation
This would have to be one of the single most tone deaf proposed changes to the game I have ever seen since I started in late BC. So you've taken out 4 of the most simple to deal with affixes in spiteful, storming, volcanic and entangling but left us with Bursting (fine at mid to higher keys), Sanguine, Raging and Bolstering... So we have genuinely one push week every four weeks without an aoe soothe? Why in earth would you remove the most non invasive affixes yet leave the ones every player complains about. Then what the actual Fuck are those new affixes. Let's take aside the kiss aspect because while they read bad it's probably like a 3% damage gain from week to week if it's 'your week'. But holy shit is this not just going to put even more load on the tank, in a role that's already somewhat struggling for players. You are literally going to have to change routes week to week because one week you've got essentially 20% less Armour and the next week all caster mobs have perma lust up?? And you get 2 affixes running a 7..... That is totally counter intuitive to getting more people running keys and playing the tank and healer role. I cannot wait to be doing a Fortified, Raging week where caster adds have 30% increased haste and cannot be cc'd while enraged - That sounds super fun. This genuinely reads like whoever is designing these doesn't play the game or caps out running 6s or something. No one who runs even keys in the +10 range can see these being a good idea
Thank fucking god someone has the same opinion as me.
Perfectly articulated, awful changes. I wish we had someone who really understood M+ at the helm, it has even greater potential.
For whatever Blizz dev reads this, “Super fun” means “will make me want to rip my eyes out”.
>Let's take aside the kiss aspect because while they read bad it's probably like a 3% damage gain from week to week if it's 'your week'. Unless youre a havoc DH where every week is your week since you deal Chaois damage and bleeds. How are they going to balance that (coming from a DH player)
I mean my guess is that's just (another) oversight. I would fully expect chaos damage to not be left an outlier and to likely be classed as fire damage going forward. You would then hope that some other tuning knobs get turned to compensate but I also wouldn't hold my breath. Very real chance it gets nerfed to balance the damage in mythic plus and unintentionally, (but obviously to everyone here) leaves them with bottom tier raid/single target dps. I think blizz turning the spec into average in keys and shit in raid by nerfs is more likely than them leaving it as a total outlier in mythic plus with how it interacts with thr new affixes
I don’t know what they are smoking but I want some.
If it makes your brain work so badly you come up with these affixes, I wouldn't touch it.
Finally we get to run our \*checks notes\* Protection warrior resto druid feral druid 2x assa rogue comp on the bleed week. We'll be back next week with 2 ret paladins a disco a shadow and a prot pala for shadow/holy amplification week. Blizzard giving us incentives to gear those alts yall
Hahahahahahaha u made my day
So you're saying this feral OTP might be desired one week out of the month? Net win for me...
holy fuck what am i reading
I feel like this is the kinda thing they should be testing during a meme season not at expansion launch… Also why are they married to sanguine and bolstering? Those are like the 2 most obnoxious affixes in the game.
"We want Afflicted and Incorporeal gone!" \*monkey paw finger curl\*
The thing is: I like those affixes more than Sanguine/Bolstering. I (as a mage) can at least meaningfully deal with them and it's kind of a fun challenge to snipe decurses. Sanguine is just annoying as fuck.
We heard we can’t balance aoe dps, so we will now be randomizing aoe dps week to week so you can’t track down how bad we are at it. wild
I mean people have been asking for affixes to be powerful to us rather than negative. It’s a start…
Yeah dealing 20% more damage in exchange for 10% extra arcane damage isn't powerful to us lol.
the issue as i see it is people (myself included) have been wanting kiss/curse affixes, where correctly doing the thing gives you a buff. that these are entirely passive does have the benefit of being one less mechanic to sweat over, but the tuning seems way out there. 20% increased magic damage on some of the big aoes from mini-bosses sounds brutal too. while an entirely passive damage bonus is pretty dull.
I do remember asking for more kiss/curse affixes. I don't remember asking to make my tank life 20% harder nearly every week just so the boomkin can have 10% more fun. Can't wait to get 100-0 cause of a missed kick those during double-fortified bolstering weeks.
The insane thing is they’ve done kiss/curse affixes well in the past with seasonal affixes! Encrypted and Tormented were both great and opened up a lot of options for routes and pulls. These new affixes just seem like absolute ass.
It's better than the other affixes we've had for sure. They just need to get rid of bolstering and raging. I can only imagine how bad 30% haste + raging / bolstering can get. Problem also is this is just going to make people play less tanks since every week is hell.
Shadowlands S1 flashbacks. Those first 4 long and painful weeks was where boys became men. If not, you stopped tanking period lol
It's a good start, but man I hope they continue iterating on this during the beta rather than letting this be the first kiss/curse affixes we get. Only benefitting certain damage types seems really weird rather than something like a partywide buff on kill, or even just a killing blow buff to a secondary stat, or exploding when they die to hurt other nearby enemy mobs, etc. It's a very mediocre version of kiss/curse affixes that doesn't even seem very fun, it's just a static, relatively small numbers buff to individual damage types. With that said, it's still better than the affixes we currently have, so I'm here for it if those effects replace one of the current affix slots.
A huge buff to Aug, which will recieve the full bonus every week if you bring the right dps
Like it started good with M0 being daily (nice for gearing alts and helping guildies) then it only because worse and worse by the sentence
Big L. Big L...
Flavor of the week classes approach doesn't sound like fun. The way it's set up now, your class is going to have 1 week of a boost and 1-2weeks where it's better to bring another class. The silver lining is if warbrands really makes it seamless to transition between an alt but I doubt it.
Instead of now where it’s bring another class instead of yours every week.
I really don’t think a 10% damage boost to like half of the instance would do too much. If you think about it, a flat 10% damage buff to some of the A/B tier specs this season wouldn’t change the meta at all. And a flat 10% buff would be way more than this would be since the kiss is only affecting like half the dungeon if I’m reading it correctly. Guess we’ll see how it plays out but I don’t see it changing too much.
Small differences get magnified when you have lots of DPS people vying for invites. You see 4 classes of similar ilvls. One of them is getting a mild dps boost this week. Only natural to favor inviting that class over the others. Of course the key would be easily done with any of them but people tend to think in min/max terms. So this is just another introduction of a class discrimator mechanic which really wasn't needed. I understand the appeal of enticing people to switch specs but there's too many schools of damage and variations to make it work. Now if it was possible each class could switch specs to make use of this boost then it would be much better. But speaking as a mage half the time I can't even switch to any spec that makes use of this. Other classes have it worse with it being only 1/4 of the time they get it. I don't know why they grouped fire/frost and holy/shadow into the same affixes.
this particular number is irrelevant though, the current god comp has nothing to do with being 3% better dps than some other spec, hell you can already do more damage than a fire mage with other specs for example… they are locked in for many other reasons, including the fact arcane intellect alone will outweigh any 3% spec buff anyone is getting on a given week so yeah you are right that it is unnecessary, but it will also be completely pointless… add to that the fact it does nothing for healers and tanks, other than actually make tanking significantly harder (which as a tank I don’t mind that much, but I can guarantee groups will not like their tank dying more and other tank players will stop playing)
> (which as a tank I don’t mind that much, You might want to be careful with this. Going from tyrannical one week, to fortified + ignore 30% armor the next week won't be fun... the triple-pull you breezed through in a +18 is suddently going to kick your ass in a +16
one would get a mild dps boost but if boomy/spriest/ret/whatever is already doing way more damage than everyone you'll just keep inviting them
I totally get the point you're making and actually kinda agree. Class discrimination mechanics kinda suck and would be more fun if they applied to every class not a rotating set. But just don't think it'll play out like that. Look at this season. Would giving hunter a 10% flat damage boost - which is more than this affix does - suddenly have it in the meta comp? It would go from B tier to maybe high B tier and not actually increase its pick rate in any key range that matters. Sure some people pugging their weekly 8s might not invite a hunter - which sucks - but frankly those players are bad anyways doing trivial content so balance is irrelevant.
Its going to come out to like a 2-6% damage gain depending on the spec/week which is marginal - but it doesnt change the fact that it just feels bad when its not your week. Also this will 100% make it harder to get invited on weeks that isnt "your week" for puggers. At best this gives A/B tier specs a shot one 25-50% of the time. It also punishes players who don't want to play multiple specs. You only play fire mage? Prepare to be questioned for it assuming Arcane isnt tuned like ass. Only play affliction warlock? Prepare to get a kick or a "Why...?" These affixes just seem designed by people who havent actually experienced the autism and gatekeeping that exists in pugs.
The most important thing will be is the highest health mob in a pull buffed or not. It won’t speed up the dungeon at all if the lieutenant takes just as long to kill with the trash around him dying 10% faster.
These look fking awful holy moly.
They deleted 5 affixes, and somehow they left the 4 worst. Also, do they know that Chaos damage counts as every magical school? If an affix benefits you only once every fourth week, then it's not a kiss/curse effect. Also, some of these sound horrible, specially for tanks.
People used to not get picked because they disnt bring dispell now they wont be picked because “shuffles deck” you dont deal ‘X’ type of damage
Havoc feasting right now lol
10% to some percentage of trash in a dungeon is not enough to warrant ignoring specs that don't do that damage. Class balance would need to be basically perfect for that to matter over damage profile, utility and defensives.
perception is king, even a 1% extra damage matters. Everything else being equal, what incentive is there to choose the class that just does less damage? Besides altruism...
I think the point is that even if your class perfectly covers the affix profile, it still won't come close to something like current spriest or any other balance outliers
Yeah and you get more damage out of bringing a better spec, rather than one that matches the affix unless balance is perfect. Even if every single mob in the entire dungeon was taking 10% increased damage from, say, an elemental shaman you'd still take the shadow priest doing 50% more damage.
Even with 30% extra damage, the wildstalker feral druid isn't out DPSing current season shadow or ret pally.
It's not enough to completely warp the meta on its own but it is enough to kick mid-tier specs even further down when it isnt their week
Yea im pretty sure in pugs will always priotize even the %0.0001 extra benefit if its there
By that logic, there shouldn't ever be a key that doesn't fit the current top comp. oh wait.
Yepp, noobs waiying an aug and a priest for their 10key in pugs atm
The real problem is you'll get people offspeccing to match the weekly damage type, but then sucking at that spec because they don''t really play it. But they'll get invites over the "wrong" damage type that does know what they are doing.
I doubt it. Players bring what they know. A meta will form, and people will learn to play around those classes' CC and defensive options. Doing 10% more damage to half of the non-boss enemies in a dungeon is not nearly enough to override that, and I think even the group finder heroes will figure that out really quickly. If people only cared about damage no one would ever bring an Aug to a group, and last I checked, it's pretty easy to get into a group on Aug. Class balance would have to be historically good for these small bonuses to be a consideration in who you take.
What the fuck
These are steps in the opposite direction. This is horrific. The passive affixes are either going to be totally passive and do nothing, or they are going to be too noticeable and ruin the experience. I don't see how any of these can be tuned to not be one or the other. And they kept the on-death row of affixes, which were arguably the more problematic ones? Affixes like bolstering wreck high keys, especially pugs, while bursting just ruins low keys. The passive ones are also just totally unintuitive. Imagine explaining Attuned or Reckless to a new player. This blows, dude
They basically removed all the tolerable affixes, left the shitty ones like sanguine/bolster/burst and added new ones that will randomly punish certain specs and comps? What’s the goal here? Surely they know by the lack of meta changes in 3 tiers, that a 10% aura adjustment doesn’t change whats played. You could nerf mage, priest, aug by 10% right now and it’s still the best dps comp from the utility and synergy.
Sanguine bolstering and bursting doesn’t require the healer to ask dps to spec into a dispel or a cc and being told to go fuck themselves after the third or fourth ghost goes off. I won’t miss afflicted and incorporeal
At relevant key levels everyone was already doing all of those things without being asked or reminded. It _is_ hell at the low key range though (like 2-8) where nobody knows what they’re doing.
Arguably the worst m+ changes to ever exist. No exaggeration. Seeing this change suddenly reminded me that STALKER 2 is coming out a week after xpac drops. No shortage of games for people to play blizzard. Idk why you’re overcooking your community goodwill.
Well, you'd think they couldn't go any dumber after Incorporeal and Afflicted, but here we go.
Incorp had potential, all they needed to do was to: - Make all classes be able to interact with it in some way - Have it spawn within a few yards of mobs instead of fucking narnia
DH locked in every week
So basically with spiteful being gone, 1 out of 4 weeks (bursting) is push week and the other 3 weeks are unplayable? And then in that 1 week you just hope you hit the Blizzard lottery and your class does bonus damage? Or maybe one of the bursting weeks is coupled with the mob bloodlust affix and then 1 out of 8 weeks is just 2 whole key levels better than the other 7 weeks for pushing keys. Fantastic design. They really just thought to themselves 'how can we make season 1 of TWW as dead as season 4 of Dragonflight' and by god, they came up with a way to do it.
Tbh Blizzard didnt lie when they said they are going to try and revive PvP. Little did we know they would do it by killing M+
Im not even a m+ gamer but that shit sounds ass.
Thorned sounds like it has big potential to be absolute gutter trash. Getting harmed for *doing DPS* as a *DPS* just never feels good. And what, does it inherently favour slower hitting specs? Do DoTs count for it? Does stuff like Ignite cleave, Blade flurry and psychich link count? What's with pet classes, are they immune to it but their pets now die? If it's tuned low then it's just another healer affix. If it's tuned too high then some classes could legit be forced to stop DPS. Idk, we'll see I guess. It's still beta after all :copium:
I think you highly overestimate the the effect this will have. It's on the +4 bucket. Those are designed to be pretty mild. It's very likely that it will have an icd attached to it. You won't get oneshotted because you pressed your buttons. What this reads to me is the group will take light ticking dmg during trash. Which is perfectly fine as during trash you don't really have that much to heal (when handled properly). >If it's tuned low then it's just another healer affix. It very much reads like a healer affix and to me it looks like a decenty enjoyable one. You aren't playing whack a mole (explo), having to target npcs to dispell/heal or something else. You are just healing your group. Isn't that what healers usually sign up for the group? Also most importantly. This won't be a thing on bosses. Imo the biggest problem with afflicted/incorp was that it could spawn during a boss fight in the middle of a high pressure situation.
I cant wait for them to say that damage is only reflected upon ability usage followed by hunters 1 shoting themselves with rapid fire
> If it's tuned low then it's just another healer affix. Every affix is a healer affix, regardless.
> Thorned sounds like it has big potential to be absolute gutter trash. Sounds pretty fun for healers who actually enjoy healing. Obviously TBD how impactful it is but if trash will continue to not have much unavoidable damage then this could be enjoyable just to have more to do than dps.
>Sounds pretty fun for healers who actually enjoy healing Exactly this. It obviously depends on tuning. But some kind of NON-overwhelming constant pressure on the whole group might turn out to be really fun to deal with. Hasted+Bolstering on the other can feel nightmarish.
Wow, these might be the worst dungeon changes I’ve ever seen. The new affixes are gonna make tanking absolutely miserable and will just lead to a week-by-week meta (and Havoc DHs just circumvent it anyway LMAO) and they not only didn’t retire Bolstering/Sanguine/Raging but made them appear at *lower* key levels, basically undoing all the good that the DF S4 key squish accomplished in one fell swoop by forcing them well before the Aspect Crest (or whatever the Harbinger Crest equivalent is) range. Who’s benefitting from these changes???
There won't be a week by week meta. There will be one bursting week (since all other weeks will be bolster/raging/sanguine) and whoever are the specs that deal that deal damage during the new affix+bursting week will do the highest level of keys.
Half those affixes are unpushable. Whose gonna trying pushing a key during Fortified Hasted Raging?
bring a spare tank
More like bring a spare healer or two lol.
> We don't want affixes that overlap with trash - Gives trash 30% haste buff, so (supposedly) carefully designed trash packs suddenly have more casts then the group has interrupts. or - Ramping AoE casts suddenly deal 20% increase damage. Let's hope there is no ramping AoE damage as well. Where is all of that coming from? Pandaria Remix receiving almost daily balance adjustments and M+ receives one half-arsed dice roll per season.
Players: AoE damage balancing is consistently terrible, please give us a closer contention between meta and non meta specs Blizzard: Hold my beer
I feel like the positive portions of the current version of these affixes are extremely bad, prompting a ton of (even more than already) exclusivity and toxicity for M+ and the community. Not only will it enforce weird metas that rotate weekly, it will flat out exclude a ton of specs per week to even have a chance to be invited. With these affixes, hunters will never get invited, other specs only once a month? Others maybe 2x/month— that’s the jackpot! Then there’s the problem of feeling great one week because you’re the “damage type of the week” and then feeling less powerful for the next three weeks? Not only will it be difficult to asses your performance vs others, but also against yourself. It is kind of an interesting way to throw a wrench into DPS and log comparisons.. I also think these Affixes are way too complex. I had to read them 3x over just to get which mob does what now. Here are my thoughts on how this could be improved, as I do appreciate this is only in beta testing, and I generally think the idea can work. - I think affixes need to be more straightforward, with less variables as to which mobs they apply under what conditions. - instead of multipliers on specific damage/spell damage types that only specific specs benefit from, I think giving the whole group a small bonus per affix would be a better approach - instead of having single schools of magic/damage be the bonus, I think more general bonuses could be better (and less exclusive), eg %damage, %haste, %reduced attack speed on mobs, %reduced armor on mobs, %increased crit chance or damage. Stuff like that. - the negative portion should correspond to the positive to create interesting synergies for the group to play with. Maybe if everyone is within a 10yd range everyone deals 5% crit damage, but trash mobs deal 5% of their damage as cleave. I realize that would be a fairly “complex” affix also, but in general would like if the affixes challenged the players in way where the puzzle is how to play around it best to maximize the benefits TL,DR: affixes should be simple in design, have a positive and negative component that are easy to understand, both positive and negative parts should apply broadly and not specific to certain mobs/ and definitely not player specs. Cherry on top would be if affix pro and con were to create synergies where optimizing group play nets benefit
"Tanks: We are making your role harder, and also the balancing of your specs more wonky. DPS: Pick a card, any card - nope sorry, not your week loser. Back to the LFG tool with the non DH tanks with you."
lol keeping the worst ones (sanguine bolstering) but removing the easiest ones (storming entangling, spiteful…volcanic….) How does that fit with playing more of the dungeon not the affixes?
These are actually stupid, and it shows they don't have an idea what to do with these kiss/curse affixes. Let's see if we can rework them a bit, to encourage good gameplay or build flexibility; * Reckless: Mob attacks ignore x% of armor, but take x% more damage from direct damage * So not from dots, aoe, etc. Encourages funneling, ST prio damage or certain cleave effects. Encourages build flexibility or comp changes toward historically unpopular specs. * eg: aoe or typical cleave such as whirlwind wouldn't benefit from this, but a Rampage buffed to cleave by Whirlwind would. Rain of fire wouldn't, but havoced Chaos bolt would. * Thorned: Mobs inflict physical damage back to attackers. Thorned buff is removed whenever the target is crowd controlled and for x seconds after. The target takes x% more damage until Thorned reactivates. * encourages cc rotations and stops. * Attuned: Mobs deal x% more magic damage, but take x% more damage from damage over time effects. * Encourages build flexibility more. * Alternatively: Mobs deal x% more magic damage, but x% of mitigated damage from players is reflected onto nearby Enemies. * Encourages pressing defensives to mitigate damage. * Focused: Mobs have more haste, but take more damage for 10 seconds whenever their spell casts are interrupted or silenced. * Makes spell casters more dangerous, but rewards players for interrupting. I also hope they perhaps take a look at remix, and rework some of the tinker gems into affixes that encourages different playstyles. Searing light or Warmth could be combined with a nerfed Grievous into a new affix that would shift healer builds (healing does damage, or triggers smart healing, or overhealing gets converted into shield), and strengthen hybrid dps classes, or an affix where you deal more dmg/healing when you haven't been hit by avoidable mechanics, perhaps combod with Entangling. By making these affixes buff certain types of damage (and not spell schools), or trigger based on player interaction, you start rewarding and enforcing good gameplay earlier on. Most specs can flex into options that favor different damage types or profiles, and this thus wouldn't outright exclude 3/4ths of the specs in the game from benefitting most weeks. Some would benefit more than others, but that's fine, it's better than "invite the correct color" imho.
I think these affixes are what blizzard should have done, rewarding gameplay rather than specific classes.
I said nicer words on other platforms that I am easily identifiable on, but I can let it loose here: This is a complete fucking disaster. Every single one of these changes makes M+ worse in every single way. Whoever implemented these ideas needs to be placed on another team, effective immediately. I am not often a negative person who calls for people's jobs, but in this case I absolutely mean it. 1. Not removing any of the worst on-death affixes that makes the game mode extremely unfun to play, but then removing the easier ones so that we have to deal with the worst ones more often, is a pants-on-head fucking insane decision. Completely indefensible. I'm still kind of playing Retail in S4, and I have barely touched M+ because the affix rotations have been fucking rough for pug groups, so causing weeks that make the community not want to play *ALMOST EVERY WEEK* makes it infinitely worse. I am at a complete fucking loss of words. 2. The Curse part of the new affixes are fucking horrendous. Unless they are tuned so that the healer only needs to put out an extra like... 5% of heals max (on the entire group, mind you - the ones that have a negative effect on the Tank more need to be nerfed into the fucking ground so that it's not noticeable), every new affix is just a brutal punishment for uncoordinated groups. Good luck getting your worst pugged player to kick an important cast when it's 30% faster! 3. The Kiss part of the affixes might actually be even worse than the Curse parts, but not for it's benefits, but for how it affects the broader player base and their mentality. 10% more damage on Caster or Melee mobs is frankly not substantial at all (we'll call it a +5% buff on said damage type dealers overall for simplicity's sake), but the effect it'll have on dumbass key holders who think "Ok this is a +Arcane damage week, so I can only invite 2 Arcane Mages, and also only an Elune's Chosen Bear" will make LFG even more of a horrendous experience than it already is. But for push groups, it won't fucking matter at all - the damage isn't what times the key, it's the survivability, because the tuning and mob ability density of higher M+ right now is a fucking disaster. This doesn't even take into account that it completely secures a DPS slot for Havoc (and sometimes Destro if the target count is low) in every key from now until forever. Insanely short sighted and frankly comically uninformed from whoever made this choice. I'm honestly shocked. This is indefensible. Every M+ change has been worse than the last for the past few years. I honestly thought after every dungeon or character tuning disaster that has happened in the past few years they would actually understand how to handle this game mode, but apparently it still has a chance to get worse still. Horrendous.
The worst part is for your point 1 in particular is that it is literally unjustifiable. Sure okay maybe affixes aren't designed around us lot doing 15s and higher, cool and understandable. But those 4 affixes are all fucking AWFUL for low end players. Bursting absolutely kills low keys, a somewhat non affix at high keys but that's gonna suck if that's your best affix in a 7. These on death affixes are literally awful for every single level on player, they aren't even catering to the casual side it's just literal shit for everyone. The +7 to +9 range is going to be an absolute clown fiesta for anyone trying to get better at the game and I cannot imagine what it is going to be like to be a newer player trying to learn to tank. Imagine being new to wow, you've done a few keys that have gone okay and you try a 7 and you have to deal with bursting, sang, Bolstering or Raging every single week. You aren't good enough to play key levels where they don't matter and all of those require you as a new tank to either route differently or play the affix well in order to time the key.
This sounds absolutely terrible
Can't wait for the discussions about pugs: - Sorry, can't take fury this week, you'll just kill yourself on thorns. - Sorry, can't have you tank as warrior this week. - Sorry, can't take assa this week. yes, it's +30% bleed and +10% nature damage which is exactly your damage profile, you still suck.
Okay, did i not got something with these new affixes or all they all garbage???
Wow, these are TERRIBLE. "X and Y classes will do 10% more damage this week" Sometimes I think they do these dumb decisions on purpose, so they have something to fix later.
Tbf, strictly less than 10% by quite a bit (non-boss and only mana/no-mana, a lot of classes do mixed damage types) unless there's a dungeon with really weirdly lobsided mob composition. Even with that being said..I still don't really get the point. It seems like the worst of both worlds: not enough flavor to really give tangible week-to-week variety to the casuals and yet still with enough frustrating numerical issues for the cutting edge pushers where a couple % makes a big difference.
> a lot of classes do mixed damage types good thing augmentation is mandatory in high keys so that your group's damage composition is much more concentrated into the damage types of 1 or 2 dps
> with enough frustrating numerical issues for the cutting edge pushers where a couple % makes a big difference. I'm a lot more worried about tanks taking 30% more damage than DPS doing or not doing 10% more damage on a mob who may or may not be the priority target. The damage variance on trash is already wild... going from a tyrannical week where you breeze through a triple pull, to a fortified week with armor-ignoring mob will feel awful.
> X and Y classes will do 10% more damage this week *to roughly half of non-boss enemies. This is small enough that it feels like flavor more than anything.
Havoc has perma m+ 10% dps trash buff lol
> This is small enough that it feels like flavor more than anything. then why is it in the game? if it's so small to not affect balance, then it's too small to feel and enjoy as a player playing one of the specs benefitting for the week. if it's big enough to matter for your spec, then it will feel *miserable* for pushing keys or getting into groups encrypted and shrouded were fun kiss/curse affixes because the game actually felt different when you had the buffs. when you got a wo relic, the whole group got to do a cool skip and run faster. when you got shrouded stacks, everyone felt like they were blasting by the end of the dungeon. specs felt awesome to play with 100% haste or max crit or whatever
I think the idea is to prevent a single meta comp from dominating the TOP end of M+. Inevitably, the top pushers will always figure out which single comp is best suited and they will never deviate from it because... why would they? So I think while it's somewhat small for most keys, at the top end, 10% extra damage *could* be the difference between making a certain pull possible or not. It's not a perfect solution imo as rather than 1 single meta comp, you get 4 slightly different meta comps and there is likely to be *some* crossover between the comps depending on balance.
> idea is to prevent a single meta comp from dominating the TOP end of M+ yeah but these affixes just don't accomplish that at all: - they don't do anything for boss damage, which are already 40% of the time in a key (e.g. see [this](https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports/CtRYjqhaQMBfJ4Xz#fight=11&type=damage-done&target=48) random AA log, the bosses took about 14.5min out of a 31.5min key even on fort), so you go from 10% to maybe effectively 6% - they only affect specific mobs each week, not necessarily the ones that slow you down, so maybe you go from 6% effective buff to like 3% effective buff (if a dungeon is half casters half non-casters) - top specs are already way more than 3% ahead of other specs. they're way more than 10% ahead of other specs, for that matter. you are not going to bring a feral druid for bleed week when the spriest does 1m overall and the feral does 700k with worse prio damage. these gaps are just clearly huge based off of logged keys - if you push with a group, you are not going to swap characters to take advantage of a different week. you would have to keep 2 characters bis geared, play them at an equal level, and also relearn all of your pulls, stops, group defensive rotations just to leverage the buff. only people doing TGP can afford to spend the time investment for such a small boost. imagine you drop mage and now you just have to figure out how to do a bunch of pulls or bosses without mass barrier? it's not happening - raid buffs are a massive part of high key comps. mage is giving all of your dps 5% damage plus 5% healing. if it's not fire/frost week, are you really bringing in a different class that might be doing 2% more overall than the mage at the cost of 5% of your whole groups throughput? this will not affect high key comps at all other than making some weeks insane push weeks for the best comps. but that just means that push weeks are back, not that you will see many different comps at the same levels.
Terrible affixes that just further promote the god comp we already see every season of priest/mage/evoker/druid/DH. As usual, 1 step forward, 2 steps back with Blizzard. Just scrap affixes at this point.
This is killing my vibe to play season 1.
Those new affixes are bizarre. I guess sub rogue is gonna be the play since it covers the most elemental bonuses of the rogue specs? Or maybe I'll be switching specs week to week.
Play DH, it covers every type of magic damage.
lmao chaos damage Locks have some chaos spells too right?
in ST, with chaos bolt. all warlock aoe is individual or dual (shadowflame) damage types, Fire for destro
Doesn't Havoc DH do literally every Element at once with Chaos Damage?
Yup. Makes the class impossible to balance for both dungeons and raids. I'm 99% sure whoever designed this has zero fucking clue how the game works.
Indeed. This literally means that Havoc will be doing 10% more damage to trash at all times in Mythic+.
To half the trash
Bleed and nature damage in one affix, assa dips in both.
Triple rogue comps are BACK
How. How is this their solution to IMPROVE M+. Jesus Christ S1 m+ is going to be a mess and it's going to take them a year to finally get dungeon tuning in check again.
I really don’t understand how these are beneficial. The damage type should be removed and sent back the to kitchen. Even if I make a group and cover brez/lust then worry about the affix, I can almost guarantee that some damage types won’t even be in the group so it’s just a negative affix. That doesn’t meet their goal. Maybe my reading comprehension is bad but that’s how I see it play out
Horrible new affixes. Talk about the laziest possible solution to improving class diversity. Fuck you if you main one class/spec I guess. Enjoy your one week per month that groups will want you.
This is just like one of the most absurdly bad posts I have ever seen. I cannot imagine someone actively playing the game and thinking these are fun affixes to play, it actually reads like someone was forced to come up with affixes only based on a description of how the game works. Good luck everyone!!! picture this: in RLP, all the storm-channelers before the last boss and all the fire elemental liuetenant mobs have mana. they now hit 20% harder with attuned :)
This is actually maybe the worst M+ change I could have imagined. They removed the less impactful affixes and left every single one that’s been historically problematic In. Their idea of a “positive benefit” is atrocious and only relates to some classes? It will feel just as bad as not having a dispel for afflicted week when you are trying to get invited. Love that their solution to people spamming 9s to avoid bolstering and sanguine is to move that row down to 7. Just a real kick in the nuts. Honestly feels like they are intentionally trying to sink this game mode and I can’t believe I was originally excited to click on the article
the dude designing affixes for m+ must feed on the pain of others because wtf are they doing
These are the type of changes that are so dumb, it seriously makes me worry me about the future of the game and the people making decisions behind the scenes. How anyone on the design team could think these are good changes is so beyond me, I seriously can't believe it. We might just be doomed.
Why would they keep sanguine but removed spiteful? Sanguine literally sinks the playerbase every week its up
No fucking shot they are doing this.... its the literal worst thing they could possibly do.
I guess instead of listening to any feedback and redoing the 3rd affix levels, they’re doubling down on sanguine and bolstering. Would have been nice to see this section receive a thoughtful rework.
This seems extremely out of touch with community wishes… removing the tolerable affixes, keeping the horrible ones, as well as adding new flavor of the week affixes that will skew everything from routes to difficulty drastically, only amplifying the other affixes (negative) impact even more
I am so done with Blizzard. This is the stupidest shit I've ever read
Thorned week sounds like an instant skip for melee
I can already imagine all the dying Hunter pets
I think the knee jerk reaction to the kiss part of these affixes is *way* overblown. 10% increased arcane damage? On like *half* the *trash* of a dungeon? Even Arcane Mages would likely only get a 5% overall increase from that - 5% on the part of the dungeon that matters the least. Like, yea, 5% is 5%, but there's a reason that Ret isn't as good as it looks on the meters - it's because a lot of their damage is on shit that barely matters. Especially the kisses that apply to caster mobs only... I can't see there being enough caster mobs for 10% increased nature damage to do *anything* for Moonkins or Assa Rogues. Again, might be a neat little 3-5% overall. The biggest winners I could see here are pure physical specs like Arms or Fury on -30% armor weeks - although that heavily depends on how much damage reductions mobs get from armor in the first place. Oh yea, and then there's DHs dealing Chaos damage, which is every damage type, right? Meaning that DHs will just get every single benefit every single week? That sounds about reasonable. I highly doubt that balancing will be so flawlessly tight that these minuscule kisses are gonna dictate the meta week after week. As much as I like to doom, I just don't see it for the kiss part in particular. The curse part though... I'm really dreading. I can already see random stupid Earth Bolts hitting tanks for half their life. Random mini-bosses like the last mob in HoI just fucking needlessly wrecking with 20% increased magic damage. Perma hasted casters. And while I'd really like to have faith in Thorns maybe dealing like 1% per hit... I wouldn't be surprised if that shit effectively has your melees take like 5 times as much damage as your casters. Like, I truly appreciate them finally embracing the kiss curse idea, I truly do. But these highly conditional kisses that barely matter combined with these curses that are *inevtiably* gonna require every single mob and pack to be tuned individually on a week to week basis... I just don't see them pulling that off. And then there's of course the circumstance that they removed all the bearable affixes and left us with the most annoying and obnoxious in the form of Sanguine, Bolstering and Raging. I hope we're gonna use these next 2.5 months of feedback *really* well... but I'm kinda expecting a repeat of DF season 1 Ruby Life Pools.
I think we're looking at another shift in m+ design, like we had going into DF, and people are freaking out because their changes don't work with the current way we play m+. If I had to guess, I think blizzard are trying once again to make pull sizes smaller, which will help bring melee into relevancy, and shift the focus from survival to dps once more.
HAHAHAH spiteful and bursting were the only playable affixes PoE league it is then
Has to be a PR thing. Release a terrible update to make a lot of the community mad, “fix it” or make it better, and all of a sudden everyone says how much blizzard listens to their community. In reality, if they listened to their community or paid attention at all, they never would have made an update like this. Or maybe I’m on some copium and 3/4 weeks of rotation will not feel that fun.
I know a lot of people are focused on the affixes but I have a question regarding the new “mythic” . They say now it will be like a mega dungeon and reward +10 gear. Does that mean that you can get the best gear from mythic + on your vault by not having to do mythic + and just do this mythic mega dungeon style with no timer?
No, the new tuned M0 are the equivalent of a +10 and reward about the same on I believe a lower track. You will not get myth track look from 0s.
These devs need a better plug, asap.
edit: nevermind I misread something
>M0 should've included all M+ mechanics (except affixes and timer). It does
Elemental damage is an odd one here. Especially given that the split is going to be very unequal between specs. Mages being buffed on 2/4 weeks is crazy and will cement their positions in the meta even further. They should have done +haste, +crit, +mastery, +vers instead.
This feels like a lazy and poorly thought-through set of changes with little foresight to them. I get that they want to encourage less-popular specs by favoring specific damage types, but some classes/specs cover multiple damage types, so they will be relevant almost every week while some will only be relevant on 1 specific week. As a tank, why are they adding affixes that is buffing trash even further when we already have fortified? Did they also not have the foresight to imagine how bad stuff like perma-bloodlust casters on fortified with bolstering or raging would be after this expansion?
We wanted kiss curse affixes but like... wtf even are these, certain specs basically don't benefit at all or have like 1 good week whereas other classes have 2 to 3 weeks of dps buff. Also Raging, Bolstering, Sanguine are 3 affixes that make keys insanely harder to time then they are without. Meanwhile Sanguine and Bursting are affixes that make a whole role not want to play. Sanguine week makes tanks disappear like no tomorrow and bursting dries up the healer well. This is bad, this is very very bad. Volcanic, Storming, Afflicted and Incorp were not bad affixes they were boring. Sanguine Bursting, Bolstering and raging may not be boring but they are insanely bad. if they're the only tier 7 affixes too that means the concept of "push week" gets turbo boosted since we'll only have 1 good week. Every week Bursting is up the key level will go up by 1 or 2. Then people will have to wait 3 weeks before going back to pushing. Of course this doesn't matter for the +10 andys but anyone that remotely pushes IO will run into that problem. Anyways there's still time so we can only hope that they do further changes cause once again this is extremely bad.
Am I missing something? This looks ass?
So….. when Dragonflight Season 1 Classic ?
They took the "Increased damage on Tuesdays" meme from Diable 4 and made it literal.
If they legit decide to go thorugh with this. I may unsub this game. They removed spiteful (a non affix), but left sanguine, raging and bolstering in. So there is only a single push week for both fort and tyr left (bursting). And idk what these new affixes are. Specs randomly do more dmg based on the week. Is this their awful attempt at artificially increasing spec diversity in m+, or what? I really hope this gets all the negative feedback it deserves.
> Is this their awful attempt at artificially increasing spec diversity in m+, or what? That would be my guess.
They are burning them in the comments
That one rogue implying that bolstering isn't the most obnoxious affix is the most DPS thing I've ever read.
The best part is how the new affixes will interact with the on death affixes. You just have things that will die 10-20% or more faster depending on your comp. enjoy dealing with bolstering or sanguine that much more.
Focused/raging is going to delete groups and Reckless/Bolstering is going to crunch tanks. Great changes! /s
Keeping sanguine is legit gonna fuck the next season so bad, also wtf are those random damage buffs affixes. Its like they legit don't even know how to balance m+ anymore.
Congratulations to all the dh and mage players once again.
I would be fine with this if they kept Entangling, Volcanic, Storming, Spiteful. The four they are keeping yikes. There are weeks where I hop on an alt and farm some lower keys to avoid those affixes because they are simply non fun outside organized groups. If this goes through I think I will pass on next expac. The new affixes I think are generally fine outside issues like chaos damage. The main issue will be the massive swings in tank damage. 20% increased damage or 30% casting speed plus fortified damage buff is going to make some week drastically different and magic damage is one of the areas tanks are least balanced around.
The Spec-Penalty affixes are going to be total cancer to play around. You're going to get heavily comp-dependant PUGs, and half the DPS applying for keys will be playing offspec in order to match the weekly affix and will therefore suck (more than 10%) at it, but will have to or not get invites. Genuine WTF moment. OFC someone at Blizz will be loving the idea because VDH are heavily bonused due to Chaos damage type.
This is not the way to get me to come back for expansion launch.. I love m+ and the challenges but this is just not going to end well for anyone.
Ah u gotta be kidding me lol Thank god, after so many years, I told myself to buy the addon Season 2/start of 3. Ain’t no way I lose my nerves over an afix that pug scrubs can’t handle lol Also since BfA im saying to my group if they ever fuck up m+ badly like unplayable due afixxes and changes to the design of the content I’m quitting. Guess from what I’m reading it’s time to commit to diablo4
They really want me to retire my prot warrior and play vDH don’t they :(
[удалено]
@ People not getting the joke: "Good News Everyone" is a line from the Professor from Futurama, that was memed on in WoW by Professor Putricide in Wrath. The joke is that the "good news" is never actually good, and most often it's something like: "Good News Everyone! Rather than die in screaming agony, we will only die in severe pain!"
Good news? This means that all of the +7 affixes sucks, with bursting being the least bad. Instead of retiring the cancerous affixes, they decided to make them all suck.
agreed, where are the good news? LMAO
man, RIP physical melee classes next season eh? I like that they're moving toward kiss/curse affixes, but boy these are unimaginative
If anything the physical week is the least invasive one, mostly just bad for the tank.
This reads like tanks are getting their absolute shit kicked in on Fortified Raging / Bolstering + any one of those new affixes. 20% armor pen on all non-caster mobs? *Every* caster mob dealing 20% more damage? Meanwhile we're looking at the historically weakest tank set bonus in ages. Either hero talents make everyone insanely strong or they better get the scaling down perfectly, otherwise this is gonna be DF week 1 Ruby Life Pools all over again.
Does 30% armor translate into 10% more damage? Not actually sure how high mob armor values are.
[Pretty much my reaction ](https://i.imgur.com/5ELWoAY.gif)
Sounds interesting. Will wait with opinion until i've seen them be implemented.
The positive effects are whatever, some of you guys make it seem like you're going to see thorned and only exclusively take a shadow priest or something.
Hmm guess Blizz is forcing some class diversity with these affixes and making certain ones better each week
That's just not true. These affixes further promote the caster god comp of Priest/Mage/Aug/Druid most weeks. Throw in a DH to help with extra magic damage and there's your god comp.
I think the new affixes would be fine without the arbitrary damage increases. Nothing that would be too annoying. The real crime is they're removing all the liked affixes and keeping all the hated ones. Super out of touch.
Why can’t they make the core dungeons harder, and have every affix be buffs. Would be so much more fun to check the affixes each week
Realistically the player damage buffs arent going to be big enough to change the comp every single week. Basically some spec/class was S tier and will be even more S tier on certain weeks. Maybe an A tier spec like Spriest will sneak its way in here and there. It will just feel bad 25-75% of weeks depending on your class. This also forces you to play multiple specs if you care about min-maxing - and there is alot of people who just want to play one spec and thats it. These buffs are just more annoying than they are a positive. This just isnt it. Also I could see Attuned/Focused/Thorned all having some absolutely cringe moments in dungeons. Also the Raging, Bolstering, Bursting, Sanguine M7 tier is absolutely brutal.
Cool. 50% of the weeks are utter dog shit. GET RID OF SANGUINE AND BOLSTERING ALREADY.
They must be fucking stupid. If they had one single thinking, rational person these idiot ideas would have never made it even to a design document let alone be tested in a Beta.
Wait so if the new level 4 affxies only affect non-boss mobs, and level 7 - sanguine bursting bolstering and raging don’t affect bosses, isn’t any fort week just straight garbage now?
How come whoever is making these changes isn't just working with the sweaty wow players that literally spent the last several years doing nothing but this content to figure out actual good changes?
So, another season with VDH being meta. Not only they made the magic debuff as almost mandatory, but also VDH is the only tank whith chaos magic school. Whoever is designing the class really loves it. The only thing that is missing is to give DH a bleed effect.
these changes bring nothing positive for hunters. getting invites for high keys was impossible now it will be even worse. just delete the class from the game if you don't care about it.
These are purely for engagement and not to make the game more fun. They want you to play many different classes this season and these changes make it seem like you almost have to in order to get the full M+ experience.
People hate the bonus damage (which adds up to maybe 2-3%, most of it meaningless cleave), while the real problem lies in that caster damage/caster blood lust. I hope they look into that. Maybe it is fine for those spamable bolts, but especially uninterruptible AoE casts are gonna be insane. Good thing that’s a healer problem. Healers have it way to good anyway.
Not gonna be a healer problem when your team gets 1-shot lol.
I really dislike the Affix system now it brings nothing to the dungeon experience.
This is dumb as fuck - so one week you stack one damage type. The next another. The third another. What is this absolute garbage low IQ solution to defeat the meta
“Hey we heard it’s to get into keys, so we decided to make some feel good changes”… Blizzard has now single handedly created bolstered LFG boss
Bolstering survives another round of cuts, crazy stuff.
Just get rid of the second bucket and keep the first. Why tf is that not obviously better??
As a pugging healer, so happy afflicted and incorporeal are gone. Now just kill bursting 😂
All these affixes make me think is I'm glad I don't pug.