The optimist in me thinks: Great, now every week a different spec gets to feel a bit special. The realist in me knows: There will be +4 group leaders with no business min maxing to this extent who will only invite specs with the buffed types of damage.

dratnos, so fast, so smart, so handsome

Being able to fill my vault with myth track gear without having to deal with the +10 affixes will be missed

Let’s be real, this could be a 3% buff and most groups would only invite meta specs for that week. Anyone saying otherwise hasn’t been pugging keys in DF with a non-meta spec.

Looking forward to the first Thorned week where everyone is instantly killed by it because that possibility is in no way foreseeable.

The 4 bucket could absolutely influence hero talent choice (arcane vs trees for boomy for example) but that’s presuming they will be reasonably equally balanced. Keeping bursting around is big sad.

"Here, all trash in the dungeon has unconditional bloodlust. You are not getting around it, but frost and fire mages are also the only class you can bring. Good luck!"

okay, lets do 2 targets aoe cap and more mechanics to each mob and more meta orientation. This definetely would be FUN

Affix changes?! Nice! Bolstering is gone now right? Right?

I totally agree with what you're saying. They are so close! Taking our feedback, just implementing it wrong. - They are keeping the affixes that make us want to skip weeks. - IMO a fun part of M+ is competing against other specs, so these are kind of anti-competitive. I don't think anyone really wants class specific affixes. - Could have made dispelling or cc'ing an incorp/afflicted give 10% damage/movespeed to group or something to benefit eveyone instead of debuffs. Or breaking entangle gives 20% movespeed for 30sec. and only slows if not broken. Cool stuff like that.

Sin rogues eating well on attuned weeks. Nature damage for the poisons, bleed damage for the bleeds, AND they have a poison that slows casting, which nerfs the bad part of the affix.

Does this mean DH/Destro are basically getting perma 10% buff every week since their damage is chaos which counts as every spell school?

Fortified + Focused + Bolstering is gonna be fun. Kicks don't matter, casters slightly outside range are getting buffed, oneshotting random non-tank players

>>>Recap OF War Within M+ Experience>>> Reckless: 20% less Armor For Tank? : Guardian Druid : IronFur IronFur IronFur IronFur IronFur IronFur Thorned: Ret Pala: Im Not taking any Dmg?: Prist: Im Dead Attuned: Arms assassination Feral : 5Bilion DMg : others : Details is Buged i cant see myself on Dps List Focused: You Not Mage? : You Shall Not Pass Blizzard: Best idea we had in Last 10 Years -_-

How the fuck does Sanguine keep dodging bullets

Watching you wrestle with the fact Bolstering is still gonna be in the game was the best part of this video, lol :) Well done.

With hero talents often being mixed damage types, I suspect more classes have access to dipping into the right damage pool? Like, Blood Death Knight by default does Shadow, but can now also do Shadowfrost, Evokers are Fire-Arcane-Nature etc, so most specs are not necessarily un-buffed for 3/4 weeks, usually just 2/4, if they are willing to pick the other hero talent.

The only thing that makes sense for 'more meaningful progression between each level' is that theyre referring to Normal>Heroic>Mythic, which i would agree with if that is what they mean

Think the m+ changes are bang on. More focus on the actual payer base and not the 1%. If people want to do MDI and be sweaty, let them they will find a way round it, and they play all day. For everyone else, having a better opportunity to get groups and play is the right direction. Also, people wanted a positive to affixes, and they have listened. Is the implementation perfect, maybe not yet, but the direction is a huge step in the right direction from blizzard big W in my eyes

Imagine havin a Fortified + Focus + Raging week in a Dungeon like AV or BH and watch your team getting sniped or perma put to sleep

Imagine thorns week: you pull big and then you get, say, a frost DK and they pop pillar > frostwyrm's fury... Sounds incredible.

All I see is more healer affixes, I wish the design team could find a more interesting thing to do for healers and less affixes which just is heal more.

Let’s go dratty D, big dawg drat perhaps, ty for the content

Hey Dratnos! Math nerd here to explain why the "more meaningful progression" statement. As you know, the growth of M+ scaling is geometric, which means each level grows as a % of the previous scaling. As you also know, this means that the difference between mob dmg and health increase as the key levels increase. So in the new system, when they are getting rid of +2-10 they are getting rid of the key levels where the scaling is the smallest and barely noticeable even for more casual players. Hence, the remaining keys are the keys that have more meaningful progression between each level. So this is achieved not by increasing the scaling in the remaining levels, but by removing the levels where the scaling isn't noticeable

They mention about consumables in the section talking about damage profiles for the new affixes. If they add food / flasks / pots which do different types of damage, then I can see groups still just going meta comps, and nothing will change. Yes a class that specifically does that damage type would still likely outperform them slightly, but playing with a spec you are comfortable with over, the weekly flavor spec would still benefit most people more. When it says that arcane does 10% more damage for instance, that is only against a % of the mobs (non casters), and not on bosses at all, so would likely only mean a 2-4% overall increase. Bit meh, and another reason I don`t think it would impact the meta. Throned would likely be Prot Paladin week though.

I can see this new affix set increasing the level of class stacking.......seems logical

I'm usually pretty sympathetic to how hard making and balancing a game is, but it's impressive that they so accurately identified the things that m+ players like and did the exact opposite of that. They make big pulls harder by adding a bucket of affixes that only effect trash. They keep the garbage unfun affixes like bolstering and raging while removing the tolerable ones like entangling and spiteful. They implemented more random stuff that benefits some specs more than others for arbitrary reasons. Also, did they consider how horrible adding any damage type effects would actually end up? Damage types haven't mattered in forever in pve, so they stopped caring about them. Making them matter again when the design team has treated them like flavor text for years is insane. Havoc dh for example does almost entirely chaos damage, which is every damage type, so they randomly just get to do 10% more damage to trash. How do you balance that? Classes that have different buttons that do different damage types (elemental shaman, balance druid, dev evoker, etc.) are going to want to change their rotation because the funny affix said so. What about trinkets? This season for example is dominated by fire damage trinkets and cantrip effects, which doesn't really matter because who cares what damage type it is, except now all your BIS gear is randomly 10% stronger on fire damage week. Damage types effect literally all damage dealt, it's insane to try and slap a new system on top of something so fundamental and expect it to not be horrifically broken. The numbers on the affixes seem relatively low but it is truly baffling how they thought it was a good idea at all. Im honestly pretty hopeful that these will be reworked or canned altogether, they've been good about changing stuff people hate with the talent tree reworks and with the reception I've seen I would be shocked if they didn't reconsider their frankly horrible choices

For thorned they can very easily balance it with a GCD and a % based damage. That way it's never out of control and healers are still engaged with it.

These new affixes are kindof..... interesting. It could promote a weekly meta shift perhaps? I'm interested to see how this implantation works out. Is my frostfire mage gonna double dip on the frost and fire damage week? :P

30% armor sounds like a lot more than it's probably gonna be, depending on how much damage reduction armor currently does for mobs. I'd assume that mobs take like 30% reduced phys damage from armor - reducing that number by 30% means they'd go down to like ~-20%, which would roughly mean 10% more damage, which would be in line with all the others. Like, I seriously doubt that this is gonna be any more relevant or significant than any of the other bonuses.

There is a lot of classes that do shadow damage. Unholy Dks and frost now with the talent making abilities shadowfrost damage, sub rogues, shadow priests, warlocks, Dhs, and even dark ranger hunters now and holy is ret. So 7 classes and 10 specs benefitting from thorned affix.

I'm pretty sure the affix with the shortest lifespan is Overflowing. It seems to me that it only lasted two patches in Legion!

These new affixes sound sooooo bad. There is no chance any push week would involve the reflect or taking increased damage from casts. Unless all the casts are kickable there is just no way

Does that mean during the frost and fire damage thing mages can double dip with buffs and gain 20% more damage on those mobs with frostfire?

Trying to get spec diversity by giving them a buff every 4 weeks is not going to work, but kiss and curse is good They should encourage correct gameplay with these kiss affixes: • Healing/offhealing: Keep the Incorporeal mobs and make it that they need to be healed (not CCed) and either once fully healed or when they finish their cast (and fully healed), they give the group a damage buff. • Kick/purge/Dispel: Afflicted was made to encourage dispels as utility. So, make an affix that gives mobs a 10sec dmg taken debuff whenever they are kicked or purged and give a +10% healing buff whenever something is dispelled • Priority damage/even damage: maybe 15% splash damage on mobs with very high hp or a stacking buff that keeps stacking as long as something dies within 5sec after the last one. • Gathering pulls: non-boss enemies take 2% increased damage for every non-boss enemy within 5yards

Idk man, we gotta give blizzard a shitstorm, i can't believe this is their take on the affix problem... I refuse to believe this goes live like that on launch

LETS GO I LOVE DRATNOS

reads reckless: If you are a tank, you are screwed, if you are an arcance mage you are happy. Guess I will not tank that week?

I think the new affixes could also replace tyra and forti. Just make a few that affect bosses as well. Keep the +4 bucket and add a few that are more like vulcanic. Maybe change bolstering so that if the mob dies it shatteres shards that buff mobs. A dk could avoid that by just gripping them out of the swirly or that if a player soaks it the mob doesn't get the buff. Same for sanguine. Make the players soak the puddle like magmorax puddles

Kiss curse lets go! I wish it wasn't spec/class specific but I am glad they are trying it finally. I think they should aim at fun effects that encourage healers and tanks to play, it would significantly impact sitting in LFG waiting for the group to fill.

Yea...... why is bolstering and sanguine still on there.... EDIT: Dratnos also now reminded me that we will have both of them more often now with 1 less +7 affix.. ty dude. my hype is ruined.

remember when bolstering didn't go away and some trash packs was raid boss's back in the day? we still spent 10mins trying kill the bolstered to hell monster lol

Am I the only one confused by some of the damage mods benefits certain classes in two ways? Nature damage and bleed for Assas Rogue, and Frost/Fire for Mage with the new hero talents?

Whilst I agree I would have preferred either Sanguine or bolstering to go rather than spiteful it is the only affix that took your attention away from the mobs, which was their design goal and I agree its a good change

Looking forward those fort reckless raging weeks. Gonna be no tanks in sight!

No the Affix that lasted the least amount was i think it was called Overflowing. It was only for one Patch in Legion.

Hmm noticing demo lock might struggle from these new affixes. They do a combination of shadow, fire and physical damage, so they will benefit somewhat from all of them, but not to the extent of other classes, likely meaning they struggle more for groups each week. Will have to wait and see

Mannn, they could make this 4 new affixes as a random choice when you start your key instead of fixed choices every week. This could make keys more hard/easy and more interesting, also avoid the "specific classes every week" problem.

So now we are going back to how affixes were applied back in SL, one affix at +2 then next at +4 and last one at +7...

I think people are overlooking the fact that most of the difficulty from m+ is now coming from the dungeons themselves and not the affixes. I wouldn't be surprised if they also nerf the 4 +7 affixes to make them less problematic. The new mobs have a lot of unusually disrupting effects that really need to be taken care of quickly. Even on heroic on beta having your healer being stunned or pushbacked regularly in combat for example can be tricky.

Hunters with Arcane Shot, Serpent Sting and Black Arrow gonna kill it 3/4 weeks, lets go baby! 🙃🙃

I keep hearing everyone go on about chaos damage gaining from every affix, but I feel like the intent is clear, and it won't be hard to make chaos damage never change or only change on a specific week.

Thought on these new +4 affixes in conjunction with Fort/Tyran? It seems like Tyran weeks you'll be able to basically ignore the second affix, and Fort they could be a real problem. Do you forsee top groups not being able to time the same key level on Fort as they do with Tyran?

About the "small" increase the new affixes give to your group: Compare a caster comp with warlocks, mages, balance druid, vdh and a healer versus MW monk, guardian druid, dps warr, rogue and a hunter (bleed comp) on Attuned weeks (+% bleed damage affix). The difference is ridiculous. Even if they reduce the bonus from 30 to 10 to keep it equal to the others, the bonus is still huge for one comp vs the other and there will be absolutely a meta for each week.

Imagine if the first affix gives your spec's damage type a bonus, but the second affix is bolstering so no one wants to play. You're not missing much, but it would still feel like a kick in the nuts.

I actually think the “meaningful progression” bit is a little more real than it appears on the surface. For most of us who watch a dratnos video the second it drops 2-8 are no meaningful roadblock, but for my casual friends it’s a nice change just that getting 2-3 key levels high is a bigger chunk of the way to the max vault key/portals. Before when they’re slogging through 12345678901011 it felt like a wash. The gameplay is the same but the number plays fun little tricks on our brain

I think these are going to have even less of an impact then at first glance, after listing the passive affixes the post mentions that the affix will only apply to certain mobs, I interpret that to mean that a during an Attuned week only mobs with mana will take increased nature/bleed damage, so depending on how even the split in a dungeon is on casters/melee trash the impact on meters could be really small.

How would you feel about certain dungeons having certain mobs that take more fire, nature, or bleed dmg? like you may not be the best in Azure Vault as a fire mage, but you blast in Everbloom? Maybe it could rotate, even. I just don't want to be told "this isn't your week" when I want to paly.

Can we keep entangling and volcanic instead of bolstering and sanguine?

I guess we just grind 6s now instead of 9s? Ill grind my myth vault from raid. Blizz really shit the bed with forcing bursting/bolstering on to 7s

I dont mind if they implement 1 shotish affix but it should always give at least 5 seconds to respond with a dispell to remove.

Comparing m+ rewards the raid rewards, the changes make sense difficulty-wise. If only they had replaced sanguine. I am very happy i no longer have to hard ignore classes that cant do afflicted though.

I completely agree with your take on affixes. Blizz is TOTALLY missing the mark and clearly does not understand the m+ playerbase.

The thing about "more meaningful progression" at least for my interpretation just means that % wise your progression is more noticeable - let's say the portal is your goal, each level is essencially "10%" of the progress towards the portal - while before it was only 5% for each level. Silly concept, but still, for some people that small "disguise" makes a difference in how rewarded they feel.

Should just keep it simple one week you have players have ×% more haste but take ×%more damage , another week players have ×% more crit but have %20 less move speed something like that, I like the idea of it giving a buff and a nerf to us. When ever they try make things spec specific it doesn't really work. But once again I'm all for new things to keep it fresh

Me: wow this is cool Me: Wow I'm a warrior and none of these affixes affect me Me: now it'll be even more impossible to get into groups

I think all they had to do to make incorporeal a fine affix was to make the beings disappear after getting their cast stopped by anything other than a kick. Still wouldn't be fun, but it every class would be able to handle it. Afflicted was inherently too class-biased to fix.

Imagine thorns & bursting in the same week.... You are dying thru the entire encounter only to have spiked burst damage at the end. Sounds brutal.

So we will have mobs, that take more damage and we keep bolstering? Sounds like a great plan :D Also everything that will be buffed in a particular week will have a spec that will benefit most. So if there are no other reasons to bring different classes it'll be 3 mages...tho I will hate to have to PI my burst-dps on the reflect week everytime they pop their cds...

Ret will get 3 weeks so that's nice. Divine arbiter makes us holy strike, holy/phys. Burning Crusade makes us radiant, holy/fire. So at least I'll be playable

They should just add entangling and volcanic into the 7 bucket to allow for some super push weeks

Entire cycle is buffs to non-boss enemies, surely this won’t scale horribly with fortified/bolstering/both… Also vdh being absolutely ultra-mandatory for another expac

I don't really get what they are thinking here

I really like the passive approach to the new affixes. Ramping damage while trying to find and dispel an afflicted mob just feels horrible. I think we should pay more attention to the sentence "These affixes will not affect every creature" My take would be that it's going to be one mob per pack that is going to be buffed. The kiss part of the affixes are properly going to be so minor that they doesn't really matter that much.

Thorned *NEEDS* an ICD. Doesn't matter how op dh is if every eye beam, immo aura, or blade dance kills you

Ret and Holy Paladin with 3 good weeks: Reckless, Thorned, and Focused. Ret and Holy Paladin have Radiant dmg. Radiant dmg does holy and fire.

So stacking raidbuffs is even more important since you have another multiplier on your damage. I guess we can delete everything that isn’t Mage, DH, Druid, Augmentation.

As these new +4 affixes only affects non boss enemies, won't they really only matter on fort weeks? Meaning that if they rotate on a set schedule only two of them will really matter.

You already know what will be meta again!

tbf, as someone who did readily spec into talents to deal with incorporeal and afflicted mobs, I didn't hate them as affixes - the issue was generally that without addons and weak auras (and even sometimes with them) finding the mobs that needed dealing with in a big pull could be tricky sometimes - and I always felt that the easy fix for Blizzard would've been to just have them pop up in the boss frames instead. Will be curious to see if the new affixes have different kinds of impacts - if a group doesn't have the buffed damage type, would they try and come up with a route that avoids as many of the buffed trash mobs as possible? Or are the numbers going to end up meaninglessly low and not impact route choice etc. But I see them being a fine line between these new affixes being a complete non-factor and being problematic. These numbers look closer to non-factor though...

Really wish they added a "token" system into regular retail. Imo you should be able to farm out raid gear in m+ rng is bad imo when you can only do a raid boss once a week.

If the affixes people enjoy the most are the ones that have the least impact it sounds like people just dont want affixes at all. To me the best designed affixes are ones which actually impact how you play and also feel rewarding to play them well. If they really decide to go the route of appeasement and make the playerbase happy, I would be a little bit worried about how dungeons end up feeling without any affixes.

Yo, give em hell in the post to get Bolstering tf out!

its more meaningful progression in terms of the number. the difficulty as you point out is the same as before. basicly you only have to progress half the numbers to reach max rewards compared to before. also for me the one affix i really dislike is raging. bolstering, eh its annoying but it pops up often enough that you have it in mind. raging is an affix that doesnt matter at all. until it does, and then you could easily wipe if you cant save it.

Mythic dungeons being on daily lockout is such a good change for people who do dungeons casualy like me . Tbh i dont like the fact that we are forced to do dungeons that are not relevant in the story . It destroys the immersion . My best memory of doing dungeons was in start of legion when we could do only mythic 0 . The experience was more similar to classic dungeons and it made it pretty enjoyable

I wonder hows Thorned gonna work with armour. It feels like it will be fun as shadow with 30%~ ish less phys reduction than ret for example.

So they said they want to decrease visual stuff so thats why they chose to get rid of the +4 affixes. Honestly wish they did it the other way around cuz I dont mind the visual ones as much.

Good luck finding a group, if it´s not your damage type week.

I'm sure they mean levels are more meaningful as each keystone increase is a larger % of the total pool of keys. Assuming a highest keystone level of 33/23, 5 to 6 is approx a 4% increase and 15-16 is approx a 3% increase. It's still a pointless tat selling point, but i imagine thats the idea

So the kiss-curse is: kiss dps, curse tanks? As if there wasn't enough of that already. I had no major issue with any of the removed affixes (outside few classes having no way to deal with afflicted so it had to go). The new ones don't appear good. They have to stop making affixes that do nothing for dps/heal and only affect tank.

20% armor ignore as bear tank vs prot warrior who just blocks it ....... *WHY* is bolstering/bursting still a thing? The most hated affixes are still here just out of stubbornness

Mostly worried about "focused" since it just lowers kick or CC time on stuff that's most likely going to be a huge tank buster.

Will warriors be the only tanks to survive on fortified-reckless-bolstering week so they will be squishy with attuned?

One thing you didn't mention that I think is fun about these is that it makes more items/flasks/potions/enchants potentially viable on a weekly basis. The itemization in wow is SO boring, but this could lead to me considering the AOE frost damage flask on certain weeks or different trinkets even if one is slightly better in a vacuum. I think that's more realistic than inviting people based on their damage type which is great.

Also m+ affixes shouldnt add difficulty on lets say a 19 now. Its already increasingly more difficult. A timer based affix should be the only affix. Sanguine for example adds so much more time to a key. Same with bolstering. Just add a multiplier. If youre pushing a 19 take 2 min from timer. Or add an addition mini boss, like what they had s4 of sl.

imo they should add M0 mechanics to heroic dungeons, otherwise keys will be a mess in the first weeks

my unholy dk going to blast on shadow dmg weeks i guess? good video tho dratty, was waiting for your take on these

The amount of double-speak in this blue post is impressive, to say the least.

These changes are just... please fire whoever is coming up with these ideas. Half the weeks being bolstering/Sang is enough to make me not play.

Are they telling us to play our alts on specific weeks to get the buffs? Gotta make those alt friendly systems worth it.