I love the 2 voices of Dratnos. The higher pitched "I am now Blizzard" as he readds the text. Then normal Dratnos when supplies his own commentary.

“Idiot nerd losers who do high keys” dorki just took one hell of a stray

If nothing else their willingness to change is a great thing. Happy to try this version

Look at him! He is BEAMING! 😃

Dratnos to the rescue, saving me from literacy.

Xal'atath's Bargain could allow them to bring back our favorite seasonal affixes, with a bit of tuning/iteration. Looking forward to this!

Every boss death should be a check point

Drat's energy in the intro was palpable.

M plus saved, humanity redeemed, Dratnos has cometh

I really felt it when he yelled “die!” After each affix

You know it's going to be good when Drat's smile is busting our of his gums.

I was unbelievably hyped after reading this. MASSIVE DUB

Great changes - looking forward to seeing how the testing plays out.

you could tell how excited Dratnos was about this lol

16:46 real voice btw

This looks absolutely awsome, for someone that plays for portals every season. Awsome, no more boring affixes where you just wait for the next week

and a beneficial affix if done correctly.. AWESOME

Challenger's Peril is going to brick as many keys as Bolstering, Sanguine, Raging, Bursting, if not more so, especially in pugs. I mean, pugs are already filled with rage quitters, to the point where people rage quit long before they are even in jeopardy of failing the key. But this will just exasperate that even more. Everything else sounds amazing though.

16:47 Everytime dorki talks I'm gonna imagine this voice now

This is already so much better than any iteration of m+ so far. This is the right track for sure

when dratnos has a grin this big in the intro you know the blue post is about to hit

Didn't even bother to read when I saw the news . It would spoil my dratty dose of the day

I don't know yet whether I will love the new affixes - but I love to see something different

I think they still need to cook on the depletion piece of the puzzle, especially when they're increasing the death timer penalties. Also think Fort/Tyran just kinda feel out of place with this new affix system. Assuming Guile also effects bosses - I think that's probably good enough, unless they're worried about people being able to push keys too high

Cool, I might finally give m+ a shot. First and only experience was a friend bringing me along to a +18 for my first m+ and it was the blood pools which I'm pretty sure is sanguine, told him right after that I'm never doing m+ again and that I'm going back to OSRS lol.

I can't help but smile at the start of the video!

Looks pretty fair. Gotta test it tho, but all in all, nice changes imo. I also like the idea of affixes changing more often and all of them are basically seasonal now (as it sounds with Xala) I was a bit worried about the deaths timer thingy but let's be honest. In your average 7-10 weekly range it doesn't hurt as much. Most groups can time it by pulling safe by far anyways and for high end groups, the debuff is gone and replaced anyways, so it doesn't hurt them as much. For me as a weekly to 15+ pug player it sounds really good and interesting to do both affix combinations once in a while.

Excited for those changes.

The biggest thing here for people who want to push high keys is you aren't restricted at all by when you start pushing in the season. You'll also see the top teams reach the maximum keys possible FAR quicker as soon as they're geared enough.

The Changes are absolutely great. The distinction between pushing and weekly keys is really good. The only thing to worry about is the +12 Key situation with the current dungeon Design and the oneshotty unavoidable damage. Now you have fort and tyran + the new Xalath Affix, which pushes you faster into oneshot territory. But with the right tuning it could be great

One of the bargains is Raszageth orbs. Give an interview saying you don’t want to spawn nameplates or add mechanics with affixes. Introduce affix that is a raid mechanic that spawns nameplates. Overall change is good, hopefully final version of the bargains is better.

I really do like this new season, but the one thing I see happening (and this is a big maybe) is people getting bored in high keys because of lack of variety. Maybe they could add only the positive part of the bargain as a choice at the start of high keys and you have to choose which 1 or 2 you take. This way you can tailor the buff to your group, and it also adds the variety to maybe spice things up. Can also add some "counter play" potential for certain mobs/dungeons. Anyway, really liking the new direction.

The smile in the thumbnail is huge haha with good reason

Me not reading the changes so I can listen to the dratnos video at work 👍

Really good changes. My only followup suggestion right now is to do something fun along the lines of Bwonsamdi's Bargain or the N'zoth fish, where a group that's failed the timer can make a further pact with Xal'atath.

I'm excited to try this new this new take on m+

That 15 second deaths affix is going to destroy the PUG 7-10 range...

looking good! im stoked

The easy solution for different affixes in high keys is making them separate scores like old fort/tyran. Obviously you don't want more than 2-3 of these, but that sounds like the direction they are going with the new seasonals.

seems kinda good in general. now they just need to balance correctly otherwise the dungeons will be a nightmare

Be interesting if they change any timers/durations/CDs regarding party wide buffs like hero/bl or PI to compensate with Fort/Tyran both being activated on M+

hottest Retail content creator at the moment, commenting on issues without a nihilistic approach

Looking forward to finally give M+ a try for the first time in TWW. The game seems to be in the most accessible and "learning-friendly" state its ever been

The extra health increase needs to be removed from affixes, without those they can reduce the dungeon timer to like 30 min or even lower. Health increase was the reason we even had 40 min dungeons.

The absolute wall between 10, 11 and then 12 is insane, but these changes seem good overall. I think they should make it a bit more gradual, Xal'atath's guile on top of Fort + Tyr is pretty intense

I would argue that the bargains should be just optional things you CAN put on a key, but dont have to past +12. Maybe you make it so you can put as many as you want on any key you've already timed, sort of like an arcade mode for m+. Once you've proven you can time a key, you are free to mess around with 4 damage amps and pulling half the dungeon. Farming +14s with turbo damage sounds so much more fun than just like +8s where everything instantly dies

Yeah, I like this a lot more than what they had before but the lack of variety is a little worrying to me. I hope they design some more fun bargains to spice it up

I really like this as someone who only does M+ for the barre minimum max gear upgrades. I'll get the fun affixes and still gain all portals + gear upgrades.

I am actually hyped by these changes and getting into higher M+ keys with those changes, push week dead week just felt stupid to me and kinda made me not tryhard the mode as hard as I should have, they did indeed cook this time, kinda crazy

the ascendant one could be very interesting if they rain down and you could intercept them by jumping instead of having it hit whoever stands where it lands, would make me as DH quite happy because i could just double jump collect them way early xD but it's definitely sounding a lot more interesting than whatever we had so far however i'm not sure how much i'm looking forward to having both tyran and fort on 10s

At first I thought the key not changing week to week would be bad, but, when I think of how I play the only times I really cared/notice affixes were the bad ones, otherwise I was either playing for the dungeon/my vault or to beat my best

Youre right they should make a lot of bargains, even if some technically make it easier from week to week as long as one doesnt make it super difficult to complete it would help vary the dungeons from week to week for lower keys. And because its not in high keys it will never scale or be problematic in that area. So hopefully they arnt done cooking here. Not sure if they plan on keeping these for the whole xpac or changing seasonally but looks promising so far

These are great changes, my only potential concern is that having both Fort and Tyran active, on top of having a flat 20% health and damage increase, will cause high keys to scale out of control too fast. With all these modifiers stacking on top of exponential scaling, balancing bosses around always having Tyran and Guile active on a +15 or something, could cause the boss on a +2 without Tyran to die in 10 seconds.

I don't like m+ and do keys just for gear into raid, but now I can't wait to play with these affixes :)

id love if they made more rewards over 12 as well. i dont mind if its just cosmetic like a mount or transmog set

I dont mind challengers peril but i think it should be key level 9 or 10 that it sets in. As a lot of people are still pugging 7s and 8s and it feels quite punishing for pugs to have every death count as 3 deaths. I think this affix shines more in premade groups, which is the higher keys

Yeah, to me, this is an INSANE cook. I really like the idea of there being one "active" affix, because it lets that affix really standout. It can be powerful unto itself and you don't have to worry about how it's going to synergize with other affixes. I think it's really intelligent to utilize the other affix slots as tuning knobs to ratchet up the challenge, but ultimately wash it out in the end at the +10 level. Particularly having fort and tyran always active should allow for them to balance the dungeons much more appropriately. Bosses don't need higher base tuning to keep them remotely relevant on fort weeks and vice versa for trash on tyran weeks. I think having no variance for high keys could have some insanely interesting effects on "the meta". I don't think it will impact the actual peak meta. I do think that we'll see top key players largely exhausting the potential for pushing in the first 2-3 months using the best meta comp. After that, they'll spend the last 2-3 months of the season primarily playing with other comps and classes. Hopefully that can improve the community perception of classes and specs that aren't in the absolute peak of the meta.

This sounds fantastic! Tuning dependent for fort and tyran together. But thank f those 4 affixes are gone.

I wonder how it would affect things if the below 12 affixes, in some weeks, required utility like purge, curse removal, soothe and so on to serve the meta changing goal of last week (in a better way that the ones last week did). Of course, you'd have to be careful it doesn't become "you need an evoker cus aoe soothe" but still, something that made you want a class you didn't usually take could be worth it, now that it doesn't affect the pushing keys?

While I don’t think this system will be perfect out of the gate, I think this is a MASSIVE step in the right direction. Separating weekly/homework keys from push keys systemically will leave a hurdle for some players just getting into it but ideally allows them to be balanced separately.

I like the new ai Dratnos-gpt reading and analyzing blueposts

this is good. kinda what ive been wanting M+ to look like for awhile.

I would wish the new affix would be present even in higher keys if they all look as interesting as current ones presented.

Damn, I have been waiting on this video

Amazing changes. Tuning tyran/fort scaling will be the key, but it's still an absolute W

Been seeing some others just melting already to this. So good. I'm a casual 2k-2.5k so this should be a fun season for me.

Wow another W for blizz. Listened to us and made it better

I feel like this is the perfect solution as someone that typically runs up to level 10 or maybe 11 now if I wanna test myself and push further, let’s say 12 or above I just get to focus on the dungeon mechanics. I don’t need to worry about a tornado at my feet or a ghost chasing me And on the flipside lower keys were maybe I’m just farming aspect crests I get these fun little damage Bursts massive blizzard W

I do worry about how this is going to feel over the course of a whole season or multiple seasons. Was never someone that wanted to remove all affixes, which is basically is. Personally I can see myself getting bored of nothing changing week to week after a season or two, but I am willing to see what its like. I am sad that I am going to graduate from doing keys with the fun/interesting affixes a couple weeks into the season unless if I am gearing a new character/alt up. I can only do 8-16 keys a week or so and I try make sure as many of those keys as possible are something thats pushing for score for me at least.

Awesome. Especially bursting, which was any pug healers nightmare

Seems like for a +12, the key never changes so now its just how well can your group coordinate the dungeon.

These are overall awesome changes! 9/10 IMO! This is sick!

Yay no more bursting!! I was worried bursting would feel awful with the healing nerfs

I'm reasonably happy with this I still disagree with their basic philosophy that most of us need variation week to week but this seems good. They really do need to reconsider crest rewards when failing to time a key though crests should always be the same whether or not you time the key possibly also more crests for higher keys. I do worry how many people will stop at 9 though as 10 seems like quite a jump having both Tyranical and Fortified.

This is precisely what we need. Tuning might need to be adjusted, but this is in the level of when they finally figured out how to tune PVE and PvP separately.

With fort and tyr together creating a timer issue instead of survival issue - anyone else thinking this will create a dps healer meta- or 4 dps meta.

Ascendant definitely turned out to be a bit different than what you and I both were expecting. I already had to deal with some nasty overlaps with it that screwed the group. Also, doesn't it go against the philosophy they put out like 2 weeks ago about not adding any more nameplates to the dungeons?

Oh God thank God, it took long now I'm way happier about m+

Yay healers will at last not be the group's slave in M+. Hurray! I like the changes because they have a foundation to make fun rotating low level affixes. And I feel the pushers will be ok since the dungeon rotation is in place every season so boredom shouldn't settle as it would have been before DF.

Also what would you think about boss hp check points? Because even you you are cranking if something happens on a boss fight and you wipe ex. Ruby life pulls one on the bosses bolder blow up immediately and kill everyone in the group. If that happens on 15% health you lose the key immediately because you lost like 6 minutes for the flight, death penalty, and the 3 minutes of combat completely wasted. Even if it’s like a 12 you are looking at possibly 2 chesting a key to now not even timing it. Do you think that if you get a boss to below 50% they reset at 50% next pull or would that make it to easy?

Aah, I'm gonna miss getting oneshot by some huge mob.

amazing changes! I still cannot believe sanguine is gone!

If they'll add necrotic for any groups with a VDH back this will be even better ;)

Amazing changes, now all we need is at +18s damage stops scaling higher, just health.

I hope they do a 2 on 2 off for one of xalataths bargain or fort/tyran so people who do play in the 4-8 range don’t always see them in the same pairs. super minor thing but would be nice

Xal’atath’s Bargain: Frenzied + Ruby Life Pools + Fortified = 💀💀💀 Giving Mobs 40% Haste even at their 1/3rd HP is gonna be insanely crazy. I haven't checked all the caster mobs in new Dungeons, but it's safe to assume most of them have baseline cast time 1.5 to 2 secs at most. With 40% haste, players may not even have a chance to interrupt. 😬😬

This feels like Blizzard might be leaning a little too heavily into the idea that all key pushers are hypercompetitive and will all love it being balanced like a hardcore esport. I'm kinda caught between two worlds here. I think pushing keys is the most fun someone can have in a video game. I like pushing my io up, but I'm not competing with anyone other than myself. I hate Bolstering and the wild swings in difficulty from one week to the next, but what Ion said about the importance of variety from week to week resonated with me. I would argue that variety is dramatically *more* important to me than it is for a player getting their weekly key because they're not the ones repeating the same 8 dungeons hundreds of times every season. I am. I'm glad Bolstering is going away, but I think the rest of these changes will make Mythic+ get old for me much more quickly every season. Fortified and Tyrannical offering different challenges and contributing to io separately means more opportunities to improve in different ways and adds a lot more flavor and variety to every dungeon. The death timer change reduces routing creativity, punishes you more for mistakes you were already trying to avoid, shifts and reinforces the meta even more toward more toward high-survivability classes, makes it harder to cycle different people through your group, reduces the number of pathways to success, and lowers the cap on what any given group can achieve. The content will grow stale sooner with the dungeons always being an identical experience from one week to the next. The increased difficulty and reduction in unique dungeon scores by affix means I'll "max out" much more quickly on what key levels I can achieve in a given season. The system will produce fewer "wins" for players like me who just want a system that recognizes and rewards continuous improvement. All they had to do was remove Bolstering. I hope I'm wrong. I'll still be doing and enjoying M+ either way. I'm just worried that I'll burn out on it more quickly each season.

In general I'm in favor if this change, however, I think 20%+ to both healing and dmg in one fel sweoop is going to be too much since it's 20% + the normal 10% increase, which means that it's going to feel more like going from a +12 to a +15 than from a +12 to a +13. I would much prefer if it was a 10% extra boost to HP and dmg as that would essentially be more like skipping one lvl instead of two. I just think the jump from a +12 to a +13 is going to be too steep. I don't think it will be like going from a "we can do this with a couple of minutes to spare" to a "this will be tight, but we can do it!". Iinstead, I think it will go from a "We can do this, even with a wipe or two" to "this is impossible". The difference between the lvls of m+ will be too big, in my opinion. The general change to the system is a nice shake up, but the scaling between those two lvls of m+ will be much too harsh.

Tyranical and Fortified together equals to neider really. They will just ballance dungeons with that in mind. Anything 10+ should be easier for blizz to balance.

Big fan of this. I can't stand the current live affixes, and I only do m+ for gear and then I'm out. Even then, the live system was seriously making me think about quitting the game after 4 seasons of having to deal with it. I want to do m+, but it's just so anti-fun and painful. Anything to make it more fun and less painful is very good.

Guess that'd mean no longer fort+tyra keys, back to 8 keys for score no? Or something silly where you get them separate until +9 and then get combined. Guess this will be updated based on feedback on beta.

IM SO HYPED

For harlan sweet, if your entire dmg buff will last his dmg taken increase buff, wouldnt it still be worth to hold?

This looks great!!

Great day for m+

the reason push weeks exist is because gear is too easy to get, everyone is bis in 2 weeks so there's no power increases later on.

Should simply just be every time a boss dies you respawn there

the handsome and smart Dratnos!

I hope the dungeon bosses are fun enough to justify having tyran and the new 20% hp and dmg buff at 12.

I kind of hope they add 1 or 2 more bargains.