Explosives Affix

[Charge me Doctor]

Ignite spreads to these fuckers, so i didn't even noticed them.

[Sylvaeres]

It's shit cos it's an affix that basically makes marksman hunters not viable from M+7 onwards
Well guess i'll rejoin the rest of the MM hunts in dungeons come next week.

What strategies to we have to counter it?

Arcane shot?
I wonder if there's a reason to play survival now.



Every dungeon has a pack with 5+ mobs, not feasible.

If I can do it with Ice Lance, you can do it with Arcane Shot

- - - Updated - - -

So just got a firsthand report from a group that did CoS13. The best description for this is "It WAS a 3 chest"
"It's like trying to fix a sinking ship that is full of holes and water. You're repairing the holes as fast as you can, but 30 seconds later the ship just sinks"
Accurate report that should probably get the same feeling from any brave people attempting CoS this week till its fixed

Note: They had 12 orbs spawn within 5s 30s into the fight, sounds like a gr8 affix.

We did it at either a 10 or 11 this week and I couldn't believe how insanely quick they can pile up

[durrtygoodz]

It's an utterly broken affix. For it to stay as is there needs to be some sort of reduced proc rate on larger pulls, currently anything more than 6 or so mobs is just an inevitable wipe and just painfully slow because every DPS (and the healer and tank) is having to hard swap to a target with 250k HP. The pack before the hallway in HoV with Teeming wiped our group (8/10M raiders) 4 times until we just used Heroism on it.

Considering we already have 2 affixes designed at stopping large pulls (Bolstering and Necrotic) I don't see why we need a third. I personally think it'd be much better off if they had significantly more HP and were damaged by cleave as normal mobs are.

VotW last boss the walls summon orbs everywhere. I don't think it'd be doable without a class such as Moonkin who can just 1shot them: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NBSb...ature=youtu.be

The orbs only spawned because you dpsd the walls like a genius.

[Emerald Archer]

Say that after you've gone lower karazhan and after wasting every proc to a orb because you are forced to engage groups of 10+ there. I was using LnL proccs because that would result in more overalldmg during trash.

The affix is random-group cancer for sure though. Can't imagine most of the crowd going through this without issues, no one wants to do them if they have to sacrifice so much just to handle them. They should make them 1 HP or something, so autoshot/attacks do the trick. Or at least make them able to get hit by multishot/AoE, even if you have to target them first. In fact if I could use an AoE attack to hit the trash along with the orb I have currently selected, that would make it so much better for hunters.

BM on the other hand will just cycle through with petattacks and deal AoE just fine.

edit: and about that

What range orbs are you getting at? I mean, 95% of the orbs are at melee range, where the tank is, how do you AoE in M+ if you don't have them together?
Orbs don't spawn where players are, they spawn close to mobs. Melees are like 500x times better than most ranged classes.
Figures that BM is so much better at dealing with them, because they are basically semi-melees too in terms of instant casts, mobility and ressource cost.

When doing large pulls, or pulling distant mobs over, there are often orbs at range, or on bosses where adds spawn away, or like the wall phase on votw.

If there are situations, where a melee can't kill an orb because it is out of range, by DEFAULT that instantly means any ranged who can 1 shot them, is better in general. Not by a lot, but it does mean they're better.

[Nightstalker]

The Orb spawn should be tied to absolute mob HP lost. Lower Karazhan is a nightmare because the average mob HP is so low.

[Deleted]

My 250k arcane shot 50% it.
Didn't check the absolute numbers, but since GCDs are a ressource, healers can't deal with most of them on their own, because they have to heal too, if you do small pulls, sure but that will automatically make it the worst affix there is. (Unless bursting is even worse)

When doing large pulls, or pulling distant mobs over, there are often orbs at range, or on bosses where adds spawn away, or like the wall phase on votw.

well that's true, but you are looking at a handful of orbs like that at best over the whole duration of a run. Classes with a lot of low-medium hitting abilities will however deal with them much easier than MM hunter who either overkills them, or doesn't kill them in 1 GCD (unless it's a crit). Could imagine that affliction Warlocks have a hard time too, or Demo (not sure how good the Guardian AI is right now)

From what I've heard Shadowpriest are meh too. Basically everyone who has to hardcast is bad.

I don't know what kind of builder Rogues use these days, but 'good old Sinister Strike' would be perfect for them, considering CPs carry over now.

[Emerald Archer]

My 250k arcane shot 50% it.
Didn't check the absolute numbers, but since GCDs are a ressource, healers can't deal with most of them on their own, because they have to heal too, if you do small pulls, sure but that will automatically make it the worst affix there is. (Unless bursting is even worse)




well that's true, but you are looking at a handful of orbs like that at best over the whole duration of a run. Classes with a lot of low-medium hitting abilities will however deal with them much easier than MM hunter who either overkills them, or doesn't kill them in 1 GCD (unless it's a crit). Could imagine that affliction Warlocks have a hard time too, or Demo (not sure how good the Guardian AI is right now)

From what I've heard Shadowpriest are meh too. Basically everyone who has to hardcast is bad.

I don't know what kind of builder Rogues use these days, but 'good old Sinister Strike' would be perfect for them, considering CPs carry over now.

I'm not sure you read through my original post correctly. I was stating that MM is ok at dealing with them, but no where near as good as BM is.

My entire thing was Boomkin is the best spec to deal with them, and BM is the 2nd best. Melee can follow that wherever they want, but those 2 are excellent at it.

[BergErr]

My 250k arcane shot 50% it.
Didn't check the absolute numbers, but since GCDs are a ressource, healers can't deal with most of them on their own, because they have to heal too, if you do small pulls, sure but that will automatically make it the worst affix there is. (Unless bursting is even worse)

+15 fortified they have around 340k HP

[Softbottom]

This affix is annoying but super easy. Tab target to orb, kill it. Rinse and repeat while you aoe mobs. The eyes die in 1-2 hits in a +10. Why is everyone crying about it?

[Deleted]

no if you are maximizing your AP/hour you are pulling much more than what you are talking about. I am talking about the entire room from mores including boss, same for attument, same for Maid. These pulls are simply not possible anymore but are with many other affixes.
The three arcane wardens at moroes are actually on the easier side of that dungeon, they shifted the majority of their dmg to the avoidable things on the ground, the debuff you get does very little damage now.

Those pulls have never been possible on very high M+. Nobody cares about Mythic+2.

[Emerald Archer]

Those pulls have never been possible on very high M+. Nobody cares about Mythic+2.

Wut, on non-fort you can pull the entire moroes room easily up to like 15 (I haven't personally done higher in kara, so can't confirm past that)
And on Fortified, with lust up you can clear the fire brand guys to the right, then pull the boss and have all the horses come through, lust aoe them down, gg. On both Fort and Tyran up until atleast 15. And the Maiden room is a joke to mass pull up till.

Sounds like your groups are just bad man.

[Deleted]

Wut, on non-fort you can pull the entire moroes room easily up to like 15 (I haven't personally done higher in kara, so can't confirm past that)
And on Fortified, with lust up you can clear the fire brand guys to the right, then pull the boss and have all the horses come through, lust aoe them down, gg. On both Fort and Tyran up until atleast 15. And the Maiden room is a joke to mass pull up till.

Sounds like your groups are just bad man.

We are talking about fortified here.

[Emerald Archer]

We are talking about fortified here.

So you can still mass pull on fortified. High keys is subjective to the person, I think 13+ is a high key, 13-15 you can still do the Attunemen pull, and the maidens one. With good players could could do the moroes one too, all you need is for people to know to use a defensive if they get 2 of the aoe hits on them.

[Thelonehalfswede]

If they take AOE dmg, then the health could be increased. Instead of the 300k (?) maybe it could be triple that or more. Or they could be re-made to match the orbs at botanist, thus making them easier to target.

A lot of thoughts, however the way they are. Doing anything with that affix is a total turn-off.

[Deleted]

I'm not sure you read through my original post correctly. I was stating that MM is ok at dealing with them, but no where near as good as BM is.

My entire thing was Boomkin is the best spec to deal with them, and BM is the 2nd best. Melee can follow that wherever they want, but those 2 are excellent at it.

Your first post said that MM hunter is "great" for it. I think they are probably some of the worst classes for it because big parts of their AoE is tied to Multi shot and they require more than 1 GCD without "critluck".

[D3athsting]

Frost mage is super good with instant ice lances critting for 1M+

[Reloe]

Wut, on non-fort you can pull the entire moroes room easily up to like 15 (I haven't personally done higher in kara, so can't confirm past that)
And on Fortified, with lust up you can clear the fire brand guys to the right, then pull the boss and have all the horses come through, lust aoe them down, gg. On both Fort and Tyran up until atleast 15. And the Maiden room is a joke to mass pull up till.

Sounds like your groups are just bad man.

I can gurantee you we would be doing those pulls without explosive still at 15. When doing it last week all the trash was dead within 10seconds, this week it'll be 20seconds max then and basically all their damage is avoidable or only on the tank which is not the problem.
We did like 50 lower kara runs last week all above 10 and most of the time boosting someone who did close to zero damage because he'd die to volcanics or some stupid shit on every big pull. We Finished all those runs within ~16minutes average which is like 7minutes below the 3chest timer.
And exactly this is simply not possible anymore. For the average group that isn't even trying big pulls this affix isn't too bad. As I said its very similar to bolstering, it limits your possibilities, once you go high enough nobody would be doing those mass pulls anymore it doesn't matter anymore (like ~18+ or smth) but this min/maxed speedfarming isn't working this week.

[ribthanwa]

As a holy paladin it was pretty easy for me to just judgment or crusader strike them twice or even just do a holy shock for them to die. Other healers can't kill them as easily, but for our group I basically killed all orbs that spawned so they could focus on AoEing the actual mobs.

As a MW monk, I just rising sun kick them at pretty much any reasonable keystone level and they die.

[Meerkatz]

I'm part of a tank healer combo. We run guardian, brewmaster, dh/rdruid, rsham, hpal. Our mains are the druids. This week we've managed to complete an 11 Cathedral with friends(51 min), pug a CoS 14 (in time) and deplete a pug HoV 10. The CoS had a few trouble spots including wiping on the bridge double inquisitors and some dps attention to detail issues with orbs. The HoV was a terrible comp (2 hunters, 1 mage omgwtfbbq no interrupts) combined with complete inattention to orbs. No one interrupted anything and they ran their stuns on top of me a few times. We gave up and left after wiping too many times to fortified thundercallers and orb explosions.

I have heard orbs are probably designated like enemy totems. I don't pvp so I can't comment much. I didn't realize that sunfire couldn't target orbs even when I'm directly targeting, I thought I was just too slow. Moonfire worked ok and I didn't realize that spells with built in aoe also didn't work.

I don't think this affix is that difficult. I'd say that the only real issues with orbs are what we can/can't direct target them with and difficulty targeting them on large packs that pull together. Very difficult to target when imps or mana wyrms are spawning 3 or 4 simultaneously. Tab targeting is very hard when you've got a teeming pack covering up all the name plates.

The other situation where orbs are difficult to control are teeming mobs requiring srs bsns interrupt control. Teeming fortified thundercallers, inquisitors, constructs are challenging when combined with orbs. I don't really know what the actual solution is, but I think those are the only real problem areas. I can even moonfire them down if dps aren't getting chunked all to hell from CoS cat debuffs, imps, inquisitors, thundercaller bolts/stuns etc.

(Meerkats-Stormrage)

[Laronda]

As a demon hunter - oh look an explosive orb *chaos strike* now there isn't an explosive orb there. I don't see the issue, don't tell me that your class can't deal with it in anyway (or any class in your party)

If you're getting a shit ton more than you can deal with, guess what... you're pulling too much. You wouldn't pull that much with other affixes so why treat this any different, it is a 7+ affix after all.