Hello Dratnos, this is everybody.

My first thought was "I'm not reading this daddy dratty will do it for me" Thanks for the dog walk content

Sanguine solution suggestion, Sanguine pools have 10 charges, each charge consumed reduces the size slightly until the pool is gone. If a player is in the pool sanguine will consume a charge to damage the player instead of heal a mob.

"Giga-Poison Death Volley" I lol'd so loud my wife came to check on me on this one.

Give kicks the same treatment as dispels to only go on cd if an interrupt happens. Can still trigger a global cd or short cd if you "miss". That would give a realistic kick allocation that you can build your group around and allow blizz to build dungeons around knowing that kicks will be readily available for any given group

i mean, they could say "if you want the gear you play with affixes, but if you just wanna push keys and you don't care abou the gear then just go to X NPC and turn off affixes" but i mean some players want both but i think that'd be an okay comporomise.

Not one single time i thought about an affix as exciting. Quite the opposite. Every week its just a question with what kind of annoyance you have to deal and wether or not its bearable...

They should make affixes optional that you apply to your key but as a reward each one gives you extra score. Something like you choose to take fortified so you gain 10 percent additional rating at the end of the dungeon.

prideful was miserable in the 10-15 pug scene, especially as it was my first season of wow and I was playing Blood DK. one bad pull and prideful timing was fucked. people would just abandon keys if the prideful timing was off and it was very punishing.

See, they seem keen on change and trying new things, then they give us Alliance Siege of Boralus in s1 and that feels vindictive AF.

I'm 100% a fan of simply adding buffs for different specs for each week to break god comps. And to keep things fresh, have pat areas for the existing mobs. Move them around.... Literally have groups moving freely in the dungeons instead of always in the same spot run after run. Obviously don't create scenarios where super killer mobs can pat to join other super killers etc which would create bad "luck". Maybe the killers are stagnant but the others pat all over.

Thank you Dr. Dratnos! Now I know what to think of these changes!

I'm hoping that the ineffectiveness of stops simply means the spells being cast basically don't matter. Might be a tuning thing at the moment but perhaps their idea is 'we want you to safely pull more packs, but they'll require a bit more work to gather'.

If the primary purpose of affixes is to add variety, why must that variety come in the form of such punishing affixes? Why not just tune the dungeons to be a little more difficult baseline, and then make the affixes more positive affixes. Like instead of bursting, what if there's a thing that says anytime you directly heal another player, 20% of that healing is duplicated on another random target? Or what if it says any amount of leech you have is doubled from this affix. Like, why can't we have fun stuff? Why does it have to be EXCLUSIVELY stuff like run out of these vines, or run away from the ghost that spawns from the corpse of the enemy you just killed, or polymorph this thing that otherwise will make your group unable to heal itself and wipe you? I just don't understand... why can't the game just be more fun if the entire point of affixes is only to add variety and not actually to add challenge? Hello, anyone? Am I taking crazy pills?

I think they misconstrued “amount of mechanics” with “annoying/difficult mechanics”. Technically entangling was a new mechanic, but no one minded it. Bolstering isn’t a new mechanic but is the most worst designed affix by far and makes those weeks miserable. Mechanics don’t all have equal mental burden, and an addition mechanic you never think about is infinitely less annoying than making existing mechanics way harder.

One of the possibilities, based on what seemed like a bug on the Beta, is adding either Fortified or Tyrannical (whichever one isn't active) at a high keystone level, most likely 10 or 11. I think that's a reasonable way of making high level keys distinct, reduce variance somewhat, and ensure that both 'weekly' affixes don't have huge outliers. I'd personally prefer the breakpoint for such a system to be at 11, to make it firmly 'bonus difficulty', but I could see it working at different levels depending on the reward structure at lower levels.

One of the best interviews theyve ever done and it gives me a lot of hope for the future

I "spoke" with my wallet, had TWW pre-ordered the day it was available and last week when they announced these affixes, I refunded it and very specifically put the reason (which was optional, not required) why I am refunding and unless affixes change, I won't bother with TWW. I can always buy it again, just gonna wait and see what they finalize. This was first time ever, since TBC, that I actually refunded upcoming expansion after pre-ordered since it became a thing.

"We tend to chafe with that" was an absolute banger of a line 😂 cheers for the vid as always dude.

I would like to see fewer caster mobs, but as an alternate idea, what if the more leathal a spell, the longer the cast time? Say basic damage spells like a fireball had a 2-3 second cast, moderate damage or debuff casts would be 4-6 second casts, and an absolute kick or wipe cast would be somewhere between 4-8 seconds? Maybe those numbers are too severe, but you get the concept. I think it would help some groups identify the more dangerous abilities faster from a learning perspective, and it would allow groups to strategize their kicks and stuns a little more meaningfully.

Can you imagine with the casting interrupt changes on sanguine weeks where you can't get a casting mob out of the pools because the spells cd isn't changing with the interrupt? That would be one thing I'd worry about

Casual dad gamer here. I’ve gone from top 100 prot pally on server to not filling my vault and just the pug environment with different players and classes and personalities every key is enough variation with tyran and fort.

remove all affixes, and just add back all the old, and good seasonal ones that rotate, and cook new bangers every so often. OP and Ez (ish)

Hi blizz, I'll fix the affixes for U: Sanguine: if player stands on it it takes 5% DMG per second, but gains 20% haste. Sanguine now only works on players. Bolstering: when a mob dies, it put the others around in frenzy state, increasing damage done and received by 20% per stack. Raging: under 30% life, the mob does and receive 30% more damage. ...

As someone who farms 8s for vault then 6s for crests, they could not be further off the mark. Idgaf about variation, and I feel like there's not a single affix I look forward to. Every affix is "at least it's not this one I guess" affixes do no change the dungeon in a positive meaningful way and are just obnoxious at best.

I think they can also just cut damage scaling in half after a +10 or all the way, that will cut down on how much affixes threaten to kill you AND we get back to damage mattering in m+.

Really feel like what would be best is to make R3 affixes %based. One week its Reaping, one week its Prideful. Make a couple more along the same line every 10% causes Y to Spawn. Every 50%, 33%. If you complete it you get a damage amp for the corresponding time. Everyone really liked these kind of Seasonals as far as I remember. Changes the flow of the dungeon, allows you to change how you pull and why without just slowing you down every mob pack or requiring a particular party composition to overcome what feels like a 3rd party just screwing you over.

I think positive ONLY affixes would be the solution. Even if we have to fight an enemy to get them. The reason is that it checks both boxes. 1- variety: you can have a ton of positive affixes, and vary between them. They are positive anyway. The top groups will have fun trying to figure out ways to optimise them, and have fun. 2- if I'm the healer, and I'm the only dispeller, I don't have to compromise my dispel on an affix. I can use it for the du geon mechanics. Same applies for cc, support spells, defensives, etc. This way the content will be design and affixes will reduce the impact on balancing. E.g.: doesn't matter how strong warrior is. It is **** for m+ because they don't being dispel and long cc. So if U play war, you have to accept ppl won't like U during those 2 weeks.

I've said it last year, affixes are ok but only if they implement them the way they did with WotLK meaning : each dungeon has it's own specific affixe(s) I'm certain that if they did that in next expansion it would be easier to balance. They can keep the +/- armor +/- elemental damage.

Here we go again

I think they're mostly thinking about Augmentation Evoker when they're talking about "stops", since the introduction of Augmentation it has been meta, even with plenty of nerfs, just the combination of Augvoker and Veng DH has so many "stops", its actually nuts

"You could see your death coming, you just couldn't do anything about it" sums up sooooo many of my beta keys this past weekend lol.

The season 3 and 4 affixes in SL were great! They should really bring those back.

I’m a solid 4-10 key runner and would definitely say the affixes don’t change up the game play in an enjoyable manner. If anything, they make learning the dungeon at a key level harder and more cognitive challenging for the roles that are ‘expected to’ handle them (tanks/heals). If not trashed completely, I’d rather see a higher threshold kick in so people/teams have a solid idea of the dungeon pack mechanics before adding to with affixes.

I’m glad they recognize us in the +10 to +12 range where it’s almost like the inverse of what the poddyc fellas talk about for free affixes. Bolstering? No real issue, we are killing it all basically at the same time anyway. Bursting? Guess our group is just gonna explode through defensives if we get to 8 stacks because the healers can’t keep up. Edit: also, make us be able to suck up the sanguine instead of the mob if we stand it and take minor ticking damage as a counterplay

Remove additional affix entirely from rotation. Add sockets to the key that give rewards based on what affix you socket into when starting your key. More optional affix added = more rewards.

As long as the stops work in one way or another, unlike delves where more than half of it cant be cced in the first place.

Timed keys should drop affix shards that are sellable and set a key's affix to a given affix. Just overwrites whatever's in that slot.

Prideful would have been one of the best affixes if it didn't completely warp routing. The idea of having a challenging miniboss that makes you super strong if you successfully beat it was extremely fun. It was fine to have to manage your routing to be around the buff, but it felt bad that sometimes if you accidentally overpulled (maybe someone body pulled) it completely screwed the routing

I can see them wanting sanguine to heal the mobs cause it makes the downside of mobs standing in sanguine very obvious. Tho I can see their fix to sanguine scaling to be, make it a set hps, for example make it a constant 100k hps for standing in it, instead of 5%/s or whatever it is. Same can be done with bolstering make it give a set amount of attack power /spell power. Tho I have no idea what their cook for raging is gonna be

As someone who tends to run lower keys on average (S4 I’ve run almost exclusively 6-10 range, though some seasons I go higher), they mention people in that range liking the week to week changes, because people keep playing every week, and I disagree so hard. People in that bracket play every week because we still have way more gear upgrades to get than people going higher, because those people play more. That doesn’t mean we enjoy it. I’d rather have the dungeons be the exact same every week, because trust me, at lower levels, there is no ‘solving’ these weekly changes, you just do the same thing you’ve been doing every week, and hope it works out. TLDR: If affixes are for the average player, then they are for nobody, because the average player doesn’t care about them the way Blizzard thinks they do.

So what I hear is what Blizz always does and has been criticized for in the past 'tuning M+ for the top 10% of players' while the general M+ community who have to PUG just have to deal with it....

What if sanguine worked as is, but casting wasn't possible within it's effect? Still have to kite, but kiting becomes reliably possible.

Bursting is what prevented me from playing and learning my resto druid alt on certain weeks. The start of a week shouldn't be: "What is screwing me this time", it should be: "What is helping me this time" I pushed keys up to +24 keys on my main but i can't say affixes add anything for me.

Removing affixes from keys above the portal achievment would be HUUUUUUUGE, we could play and push EVERY WEEK instead of 2-3 weeks out of 8- OMG thats brilliant

Thank goodness they still haven't said anything about Shaman or Bears, I might have thought they were making an attempt......

"What excitement from week to week affixes give" lol...

I'm a semi casual M+ player. I have a group I play with and we pug one or two people, probably average 4 keys a week, get KSM and teleports but it takes us a bit because we just don't get the reps in. Affixes add variance, but I don't CARE about variance. I don't do enough keys to ever feel like the dungeons are routine. And if they ARE, I never get past a point where that "I know what I'm doing" feeling isn't a positive. These affixes add variance, but it's all negative variance. If some weeks I eat a shit sandwich and some I eat a garbage salad, that's variance in my food, but that's not actually a positive. In order for variance to be a good thing, it needs to be new fun things each week, not a rotation of negatives.

Removing affixes entirely would not only benefit the top 0.1%. The "meta" not only trickles down in the form of class comp you bring, its also the weeks that are considered "dead" for medium end players. Last week was sanguine and the amount of 15-16 keys that were available to queue up for was so much lower than on for example this week when there is easy affixes. You can easily do 16s and 17s on sanguine, but why would players that cap out in "skill" in 16s/17s try to attempt those keys when its still harder than a week later? Also the fun in m+ is never the affixes, like never. The difficulty (as stated multiple times by dozens of people) increases naturally with key level. You have to adapt your defensives/play a different route because the key level you are playing requires you to do so. This is all the variation thats needed. And I might get alot of shit for this, but I actually enjoy fort/tyra, its gives the key a different dynamic and shifts the difficulty of certain encounters

Is it impossible for affixes to be fun and interesting

I wonder if having say 10 second single target unbreakable cc could be a good middle ground here.

Y'know whats not fun? Maintaining a kick/cc order for 30 minutes, or for several hours when you do multiple keys. The challenge of the game is "can you pay attention enough to only use your abilities when its your turn". I understand needing friction but like, once your character is geared and you can do your rotation without thinking too much thats all thats left.

I just wish affixes had more upsides... pure negative or 'negative but with a tiny upside that only effects some specific classes' is less fun as a day to day experience.

You can add the exact same amount of diversity with positive affixes. And what kind of metrics are they looking at when they talk about player who do 8's for vault - they only ever have to deal with one affix, of course it'll be less impactful and have higher completion, I bet there's a higher completion for normal raids too... It just seems like they want to make us play the game their way and not in a "let's maximize the amount of fun you can have"-way, like who would hate a 4 week cycle of 5% increased secondaries?

My honest thought is why blizzard thinks variation is a better long term outcome than fun. What I mean by that is I think blizzard equates variation with all keys levels to higher playtimes and better retention? Shouldn't the goal be about fun? Tons of games across all genres use the same format with wild success. With the occasional seasonal changes. Imagine any other game giving barriers to completion and having their community accept that cycle as fun and rewarding.

The cast being recast after being knocked/not solo kicked is a bit worrying lol. Hopefully they keep looking at this

Being on holiday during push weeks has cost me 2 titles in dragon flight. I am all for no variation on high end keys as the current variation simply benefits people with more flexible life’s

One thing I've always thought was a cool solution to Tyrannical and Fortified would be to instead of making health just more - they add mechanics almost like a hard mode. So if its tyrannical - the bosses have 1 additional mechanic that week. On fortified - maybe there are a few mini bosses that are empowered to do. Something along those lines could make it less unbearable

Imagine if the way they reduce variability would be to add an affix every 3 levels from the pool of 8. +4 Thorned +7 Bolstering +10 Reckless etc. Week to week only the order changes. So once you are pushing +25 every week is Reckless Thorned Attuned Focused Raging Bolstering Bursting Sanguine week!

Blizz should combine Sanguine and Raging. Standing in an allies blood rallies mobs and causes them to become unCCable

If the majority of players essentially run 2-10 (used to be 2-20) for gear and really don't run more than that, then why have affixes for that level area? I know i run in that area of keys just for gear and only gain IO as a consequence of running those keys. I think fort and tyran is enough for that level of key maybe even the new ones they created, and that should be it, 2-4 fort/tyran, 5-9 new affixes and then 10 - infinity for the crappy ones for the pushers. There done

What if sanguine gave the mobs a damage buff and a small DR? I also like dratnos idea of sanguine giving them a burst of healing instead of healing them to full

If there was a genuine way to make affixes not suck, someone would have figured it out by now.

Adding the variety and complexity at low levels to let them make it easier at higher levels for the super high M+ players seems like not the best idea. It will push low key players away. Speaking as one of those I don’t enjoy having the affixes anymore than a high M+ player. Sure they can be fun but I think at some point the key just gets too hard and those players running those high keys should understand that hence the whole purpose of the key levels

Sanguine isent about kiting, it becomes about kiting because dps can't do prio target dmg.

The bwonsamdi affix was by far the most fun, just mass AOE adds didnt hurt that bad was cool and scary !

Not a big fan of the last point. I really hate inconsistencies like that. Some casts go on CD with a stop, but some casts don't, and you have to memorize which is which. Oh, and if you kick something else and don't have kick for the kick cast? Well, that's too bad, now that mob is free casting. A stop should should function the same. The issue was with VDH having 100 stops. And that was so strong in the first place because of how many things are going on in some trash packs.

I think a cool solution to the affix issue would be to allow players to choose their affixes on keys above a +10, that way you could introduce variation if desired, or even adapt to your groups strengths and weaknesses. Lots of soothe effects in your group? Pick raging as you might find it easier to deal with, 2 priests? Pick bursting as the mass dispels will make it more manageable. That way it might introduce some interesting group compositions and lets players take control of what they want to deal with.

it would be fun if you could replace the 3rd affix for sth like 10% more base trash hp in fortified and 5% boss hp in tyranic then you could decide if you play the 3rd affix or fight trash/boss longer

As a tank who runs 11-14 keys I can say confidently…..get bolstering, raging and sanguine the fuck out!!

I def don’t think high keys should get to not do affixes.

So they want non mechanical affixes that still make the weeks feel different? How? The current affixes that give extra mechanics don't make the dungeons feel different week to week. If you want week to week variance you need to look at specifically changing, adding and removing mechanics. But you can't do that with blanket affixes that are the same for all dungeons. And if you do find a way to make that work, then all the dungeons will just feel the same within a week. Also the idea of removing affixes in higher key levels but leaving them in the lowest is bad. If they are so effective that those in high keys can't push as far one week as the previous, that just means that people that cap out in low keys won't be able to complete the same. I.e maybe getting a lower level of crests one week cause they can't complete the higher dungeon, or getting lower track gear at the end etc. Not everyone that caps out at +10 could a +20 if they just wanted to/tried. If something makes higher difficulty content more consistent, easier, etc. It will likely have a similar effect on lower levels. Maybe to a less strong degree, but still similar.

They are wrong that us in the lower keys like M+ affixes adding variety. The biggest reason I stop playing M+ a few weeks in is because of the affixes. I will be pissed if they let higher keys turn them off and not lower ones.

how to fix affixes : sanguine : cap the healing bursting : cap the stacks bolstering : cap the stack and/or change the buff to damage reduction necrotic back in the day : cap t he stacks how hard is this xd...

What about affixes that only benefit the players instead of hinder? I’d rather play around hitting special criteria to achieve something more than try to avoid the bad. Example: a buff that rotates through every damage type every 10 seconds which will increase damage done by of that type by 30%. Makes it so you wanna pop ur cds on your damage increase window to get the max benefit.

Just bring back seasonal like affixes into weekly rotations, fun, variety, kiss curse.

us casual players actually play for fun. we dont have a ton of time to create routes and read up on insane mechanics while we micromanage our gear and talent builds. Personally I would love a mythic scaling that does not do anything but higher numbers. affixes are annoying and removing or at least decreasing the fun part of playing. and honestly, i dont play games to work more. I play to have fun with friends.

Honestly I think it would be an improvement if post key lvl 12 or something there were no affixes except fortified/tyrannical . On high key levels all affixes are either minor inconveniences or they are having too much of an impact on the success of the run. 13 might be easier than 12 this way but rewards are the same so who cares.

Here's my take as someone doing 1-2 key a week until I get my achievement/mount and then don't do M+ after that so a few weeks / month(s) of participation. I can safely say these affixes there to add difficulty do NOT make the experience more diverse or enjoyable for me at all. They fail miserably if the goal is not to add difficulty but diversity IMO. I would MUCH RATHER have either nothing other than normal scaling OR BENEFICAL affixes. I want to play the dungeon. Not the affixes. There's enough interrupts and stuns / disruption needed to where my class makes me sit in LFG for 20 minutes for KSM lvl keys. That's my opinion. I would play M+ way more if it was just normal key lvl scaling or fun / buff affixes instead of inhibiting ones. I hated visions ONLY because of the debuffs put on me, this would have been content I would have loved otherwise.

for me as a filthy casual, I barely enjoy M+ and once I reached the level that a second affix I barely play and 3rd affix is a strong no go mainly due to not tracking enough outside of teh game what each affix does and how to change play around them. The in game resources to get what is going on aren't very clear so puggin isn't a great place to learn. At this point of the season I just go get cosmetics and goof around for low impact low stress play that I don't need to cogi about

Affixes are added as keys go up to 10 so too should affixes be taken away as keys go up to 20 to reward players and their progress. Also maybe set a max to the key level 21 (zero affixes) and at that point it is a timed event instead of endless grind.

Me keeping up to date with all the changes, knowing i will only do high enough keys for myth track great vault: 🧐

I can see the future end of of WOW. They have to do something to make new people want to be there. I have talked to many people who started and quit because they just felt “left out”. If you can’t add new people you are doomed for the future just by attrition.

If the main intent is to just have variety every week, I can't see why there needs to be any negative affix at all. Everything should just be a different buff.

goddamn dratnos rules, ggs

That's not true, I am in a casual raiding guild, we only clear heroic and when we do M+ even in a guild group setting we still feel like 'Damn I guess we can't carry anyone this week'. Specifically Sanguine, Bolstering, and bursting make you feel like you take so much more time in a dungeon that even 1 wipe would make you not time the key. Just like nobody wants to kill a boss for 6+ minutes in a dungeon, people also don't want to kite a pack of mobs forever. For ex: A tank running for his life on a bolstered pack, adds constantly getting healed by sanguine, and a healer spamming STOP DAMAGE around 5-7 stacks of bursting. It just adds so much time to a key that it is no longer fun, I just wanna get in my weekly key and do the dungeon mechanics and I don't want to STOP THE DAMAGE. All in all it makes the dungeon a chore, and you can't play with the new guy these weeks or the new recruit because you just can't carry them, and nobody wants to do a lower key where everything dies supper quickly because it's no FUN. That's my reasoning.

22:07 Imo everything that isn't an actual interrupt *should* feel like a second class solution to interrupting mobs. They're not interrupts. If a dedicated interrupt blocks a cast, why should an AoE stop do that just as effectively but to a whole bunch of mobs AND knock them up or away or incapacitate in such a way that it also provides additional defensive value because mobs are briefly disabled AND not require targeting because it's an area instead of a single mob. Personally I find the entire stop meta to be absolute cancer that completely degrades the experience of dungeons. The solution to a pack of lethal chain casting mobs shouldn't be hitting a basic series of stops that renders the pack harmless while they get AoE'd down like everything else, it should be to hard CC a couple of them and interrupting/burning the others, then interrupting and burning the ones that were CC'd. It is fine, healthy even, for some packs in a dungeon to require a slightly more prolonged kill process than stack and mash damage.

I don't care about the affixes i just want them to implement a penalty to those who leave the M+ before the dungeon is either completed or depleted that's it. Peace and Love.

I like the idea of just one seasonal affix being enabled. Or Tyrannical/Fortified + A seasonal affix. None of the generic fucking poop cock stuff that makes the game unfun. I don't mind alternating between hard trash and hard bosses week by week. I'd prefer it didn't exist but I don't mind that it does. The generic "we added this random thing to the dungeon and it'll probably make you wipe at least once in a pug because fuck your healer and the tank" is just lame. I'm not a great M+ player, obviously. I peak at around 3k rating each season and run about 200ish keys combined across the 2 or 3 characters I typically play within a season (this fluctuates based on how much I like the current dungeon rotation). When I fail a dungeon, I want to it to feel like I failed the dungeon because I'm not good enough at that specific dungeon and I need to get better at that specific dungeon. Do this boss mechanic better, rotate my defensives better, kite this trash better, do more efficient pulls that don't stress out my pugged healer, etc.. I want to feel like the only thing stopping me from going to a higher keystone level is my skill at that specific dungeon. While you can still get that feeling somewhat with the current affix system, the fact that the difficulty of the dungeons can change so drastically from week to week depending on what affixes are active makes it so difficult to actually gauge whether I'm failing this week because I suck at brackenhide hallow, for example, or if it's because these affixes make brackenhide so much harder than it was last week.

tldr we hear you dont like the changes and we dont care. If they just moved the shit affixes bolstering, bursting, sang back to +10 and higher i think people overall would be much happier.

TLDR: "We keep designing the game for the 1%, thats why civilians have to have dogsht affixes under 10s". I just dont know man, why cant they introduce dogsht affixes after 11? People who call mom and dad that they gain +1 IO from xy dungeon pushing 20-21s so they can be proud of their boy could deal with them, why +10 portal people need to encounter 7bracket affixes?!?!?

really encouraging post. depending on how far their iteration goes for the "beyond weekly keys" system, I'd like to see a cook on the amount of time spent in push keys vs homework keys, and the disparity of character power in characters that do and dont mythic raid while we're revisiting the "competitive" side of the system as a whole. also make the new +4 affixes 5-20% of a secondary stat each week - it affects every class, yet some will benefit more than others, and it will feel a lot better than just an X% damage increase to a school of magic.

Affixes do add difficulty.

The talk on stops is an exaggeration. The problem was how much DH tanks could shut down the mobs. They are finally removing the second charge sigils. We don't need a pendulum swing to mobs starting to chain cast spells. Remember these dungeons are played by pugs without coordination as well.

If they go back to the BFA style of M+ where stops don't interrupt the caster then we will go back to always needed at least 2 melee to keep up with stopping the important casts. I think their comment about having stops dictate the meta is wrong. DH was the problem, not "stops" being the problem. If they go back to the old style then rip healing priests as the only specs in the game without an interrupt.

The affixea are not there for difficulty butbto change it up from week to week... This is fine bit currently its just choosing what kind of poo you want to eat. Things that add FUN to the game in different ways each week, why cant we have that?.

For affixes and some raid designs, Blizzard is clearly being a prisoner to themselves. On the one hand, they need to make their game look "fun and somewhat challenging," or as Ion referred to it, "to add variety," while content creators stream or make videos. This is especially true for raids during the RWF (Race to World First) period, where they want to make the game really "hard and challenging" to the extent that RWF guilds won't faceroll the raid within two days. If Blizzard designed these bosses so that even non-HOF (Hall of Fame) guilds could manage, the RWF guilds would just blast through the tier in seconds. The same applies to Mythic+, where if they took away the social media aspect when designing the affixes, we all know that from top to bottom, NO ONE LIKES Bolstering, Raging, or Sanguine. There is a difference between "liking" something and "enduring" something. They are really being slaves to social media, and the worst part is, even content creators themselves would rather run Mythic+ without those affixes. If variety is truly their goal here, they need to know that no one likes this kind of variety. So, delete Bolstering and Raging. Again, just because players can endure something doesn't mean they like it or that it should exist.

I don't know if my perspective is helpful, but I normally run keys high enough to get portals once a season normally toward the end and spend the majority of a m+ season running +8s (previously 18s) 4 a week for vault. Affixes have never been fun. the easy ones feel better, but they have never made a dungeon more engaging. If anything they have felt more annoying, because the affix times like quaking, or incorporeal have terrible overlap with boss mechanics. I would rather have bosses and trash with more mechanics, especially bosses, than any affixes at all.

The problem with affix for me, is that NONE of then make the dungeons more fun. I dont want "variation" i want more fun, less fun is a problem. I dont want to stop doing DPS because i will die if i kill 200 mobs.

As a player who peaks around 2.5-2.8k io, no, I don't want affixes. Dungeons are engaging enough, and affixes don't make them any more or less interesting. A boring dungeon is a boring dungeon; an interesting dungeon is an interesting dungeon, and no amount of affix-based "variety" is going to save a bad one. Good dungeons won't get stale b/c affixes don't exist.