Mythic+ Affix revamp: Suggestions and ideas.

[Algorath]

Hiya folks, there is a growing consensus in the WoW community that the affixes have overstayed their welcome and have more of a negative impact on desire to play, than a positive one. We all know the feeling of "Oh well this week is terrible for me" or, at best "Oh, this week isn't as terrible as it could be".

Multiple content creators have been seen talking about this, and I have thought about how they could be revamped to instead of being punishing, be engaging and rewarding. There would have to be some looking into the numbers on Blizzard's side, that demand either a more steep increase in difficulty, or harder to achieve "Elite" achievements, as the dungeons would get significantly easier, but this is more about the fun and challenge of the affixes themselves. Feel free to leave feedback on the ideas and add how you'd like to see changes in this thread.

Thundering
The same Lightning / Whirlwind mechanic is it is now, only after clearing, a 5yd circle appears under the players, staying inside this circle stacks both buffs until the debuff expires.
Instead of trying to squeeze out every second, you can clear early and stay stacked in the circle as long as the area is safe.

Sanguine
When slain, non-boss enemies leave behind a lingering pool of ichor that makes all players and enemies take 20% less damage.
Not as punishing to the dungeons with mobs that are hard to move or cast constantly. Also gives a way for tanks and melee to avoid damage, if positioned correctly.

Demoralizing (Bolstering)
When any non-boss enemy dies, its death cry demoralizes nearby allies, dealing 5% of the killed targets health to all enemies around it.
This would favour focus-fire on higher health targets in order to maximize cleave on lesser targets, all in all a DPS increase.

Storming
While in combat, enemies periodically summon damaging whirlwinds. Soaking increases haste and allows overhealing recieved to be converted to an absorb shield for 15 seconds (doesn't stack or renew duration)
Storming would be desirable to soak, but only once per 15 seconds. Granting a small haste buff and allowing overhealing shields to help out.

Explosive
While in combat, enemies periodically summon Explosive Orbs that will detonate if not destroyed. Destroying them increases damage and healing by 5% for 6 seconds, stacks.
Explosive Orbs having some sort of benefit for all would just make it more enjoyable.

Grievous
Injured players suffer increasing damage over time until healed, also deal increasing damage and healing (10%) per stack
High risk high reward gameplay for healers to judge when they can and cannot allow ticking damage for increased throughput.

Necrotic
All enemies' melee attacks apply a stacking blight that inflicts damage over time and reduces healing received. Dispellable. Healer gains mana and healing when dispelled. Tank gains immunity to necrotic and CDR for 8 seconds.
Making necrotic less hectic with an immunity, as well as rewarding both the tank and healer makes sense

Inspiring
Some non-boss enemies have an inspiring presence that increases damage of allies by 20% (No immunity to interrupts/CC). All enemies take 100% more damage and deal 20% less damage if the inspiring enemy dies first.
Still allowing packs to be buffed is fine, but having packs be near impossible due to not being able to CC isn't. This also rewards focus-fire. Also the targets shouldn't be pre-determined in every run, if possible for balancing.

Raging
Non-boss enemies enrage at 30% health remaining, dealing 30% increased damage and taking 30% more damage until defeated. DOES NOT COUNT DEATHRATTLES
Small change to make the enraged targets take more damage too. Also removing deathrattle effects like the non-elite Sha that explode on death.

Quaking
Periodically, all players emit a shockwave, dealing damage to the enemy, and if you aren't casting when it goes off, your next ability/spell is instant and deals 50% more damage.
Instead of damaging players, it will damage the enemy, scaling based on how many are able to land. This would promote stacking when possible to increase damage, as well as give ranged a little added motive for stopping casting.

Bursting
When slain, non-boss enemies explode, causing all players to gain ## primary stat, this effect stacks.
Almost the opposite of the new bolstering or inspiring, this would reward heavy AOE and focus-fire on smaller targets to increase the throughput on larger targets.

Volcanic
While in combat, enemies periodically cause a large gout of flame to erupt beneath the feet of players, standing in it increases damage and healing, but swirlies to dodge
A single, larger volcano that spews out swirlies to dodge, but increase throughput for risking being inside. High risk high reward again

Spiteful
Fiends rise from the corpses of non-boss enemies and pursue random players. While being pursued you gain ## mastery and ## speed
Instead of fiends chasing and meleeing you, they chase you until they reach you, then despawn. While they are alive, you gain increased mastery and movement speed.

[Alroxas]

I have thought about how they could be revamped to instead of being punishing, be engaging and rewarding.

While the idea from a good place, the problem lies in the execution. For instance, the majority of these ideas "buff" the player to the point where dungeons in M+ would be easier. So naturally the "other" knob that Blizzard would tune would be the damage and HP numbers of the enemies.

Imagine Fortified and Tyrannical boosted by another X% because of these "changes".

Moreover, the strategies that make best use of these "new" affixes would become required to be used to clear said trash/boss whose numbers would be buffed to keep on par with the current level of difficulty in M+.

For instance, Demoralizing (Bolstering) would basically mean pulling even more trash to the boss and AoE down because it further improves the time efficiency.

Another example: Explosive - Destroying them increases damage and healing by 5% for 6 seconds, stacks. Which means you'll want to pull trash to the boss so that there are more enemies to spawn more orbs but you never really kill the trash. Instead priority becomes Orbs -> Boss -> Trash so that you can build high stacks of throughput. And since healing is also affected, the bosses would need to be more dangerous (easily approaching 1-shot zone) so that you have to build up stacks going into the boss encounter and keep stacks going to survive.


Lastly, Spiteful - While being pursued you gain ## mastery and ## speed. On paper this looks ok but execution is very lackluster due to the way this would be cheesed. For instance, druids can spec into enough CC to trivialize the mechanic and gain full benefit for the group (Entanglement, Mass Entanglement, Typhoon, etc). And unless you want to put in diminishing returns on CC for adds or provide some sort of immunity to roots/stuns/CC to the adds or allow adds to teleport to you after X amount of time, this mechanic has a high chance of being broken almost immediately.

[Puri]

Demoralizing (Bolstering)
When any non-boss enemy dies, its death cry demoralizes nearby allies, dealing 5% of the killed targets health to all enemies around it.
This would favour focus-fire on higher health targets in order to maximize cleave on lesser targets, all in all a DPS increase.

Not a bad list, but just picking out your conclusion here: It would mean the opposite, you would aoe even more low health targets to maximize damage to high health targest.

[Algorath]

While the idea from a good place, the problem lies in the execution. For instance, the majority of these ideas "buff" the player to the point where dungeons in M+ would be easier. So naturally the "other" knob that Blizzard would tune would be the damage and HP numbers of the enemies.

Imagine Fortified and Tyrannical boosted by another X% because of these "changes".

Moreover, the strategies that make best use of these "new" affixes would become required to be used to clear said trash/boss whose numbers would be buffed to keep on par with the current level of difficulty in M+.

For instance, Demoralizing (Bolstering) would basically mean pulling even more trash to the boss and AoE down because it further improves the time efficiency.

Another example: Explosive - Destroying them increases damage and healing by 5% for 6 seconds, stacks. Which means you'll want to pull trash to the boss so that there are more enemies to spawn more orbs but you never really kill the trash. Instead priority becomes Orbs -> Boss -> Trash so that you can build high stacks of throughput. And since healing is also affected, the bosses would need to be more dangerous (easily approaching 1-shot zone) so that you have to build up stacks going into the boss encounter and keep stacks going to survive.


Lastly, Spiteful - While being pursued you gain ## mastery and ## speed. On paper this looks ok but execution is very lackluster due to the way this would be cheesed. For instance, druids can spec into enough CC to trivialize the mechanic and gain full benefit for the group (Entanglement, Mass Entanglement, Typhoon, etc). And unless you want to put in diminishing returns on CC for adds or provide some sort of immunity to roots/stuns/CC to the adds or allow adds to teleport to you after X amount of time, this mechanic has a high chance of being broken almost immediately.

Yeah there are absolutely some things that could be cheesed with the ideas here, you're right! Here are my thoughts on your feedback


On fort/tyra scaling:
I feel like its an "easy way out" answer, but there should be a cap to how far you can push, right. Sure this would make 20's so much easier, but then maybe slightly inflating the achievements to a higher key would help that. So that a present-day 20 feels like a 25 in my hypothetical. As a serious answer though, you are right, at some point the scaling will be insane.

The spiteful thing is fixed by the mobs killing themselves slowly over time, perhaps make them only live for 4-5 seconds instead.

I can easily imagine scenarios where pulling a bunch of easy trash to keep up a steady supply of explosives spawning would be bad too, but in general, if you f.x want to risk taking Wise Mari with the water elemental and 2x casters, for a slight damage increase, I think that risk is worth the added damage.

And remember it's 5% of the NPC's max HP that is cleaved, so the smaller adds that are killed will only tickle the larger adds, while the opposite where larger adds dying would be able to chunk down the smaller adds. Again, definitely opens some cheese/abusing of the system, say getting a big add low, pulling 3 packs into it and killing it off for some big AE damage on the adds.

All in all I feel there's a very fine line between abusing something and playing well to your advantage, and there are probably ways of cheesing the changes in ways I haven't thought through, but with some testing and fixing of the cheese, I feel it's for sure a move in the right direction, over the current design.

- - - Updated - - -

Not a bad list, but just picking out your conclusion here: It would mean the opposite, you would aoe even more low health targets to maximize damage to high health targest.

The idea is that it's 5% based on the targets max hp. So for simplicity, with 10x 100hp adds and 1x1000hp add, 1000 damage to the big add would be 50 damage to all the small, dealing 1500 damage) - while taking the smaller adds would lessen that damage, as targets are falling off one after one. Not sure if that explanation makes sense.

[Alroxas]

On fort/tyra scaling:
[I]I feel like its an "easy way out" answer, but there should be a cap to how far you can push, right.

But you're missing the other side of the equation. M+ is difficulty is part of the reward structure. You're getting Mythic raid level loot from the weekly vault for doing 20s. So if affixes were changed to be "easier", then the other part would be to tune the dungeon harder via HP and damage done.

This is done to keep "balance" of difficulty and rewards.

The alternative is to lower the rewards, after all if it's "easier" content then why should it be just as rewarding?


Inflating the achievements/score to higher numbers (i.e. Now 30s reward mythic raid level loot instead of 20s) is just the same thing, turning the knobs on mob damage and HP.

And remember it's 5% of the NPC's max HP that is cleaved,

Yes so you take the largest HP NPC you can find that isn't super dangerous to the tank, bring down to 10% (or even 5% HP) then bring to boss to burst down both. Maybe even find multiple NPCs like this and then use roots/stuns/CC (non hp regenerating CC) to chain multiple adds to turn them into extra DPS against the boss.


However, the larger issue is that because of the HP adjustment (as required to balance dungeon difficulty), this strategy would become baseline because without you will not have the DPS to overcome the boss.



Similar to how nearly everyone uses the AV skip to avoid killing the frogs because they are time inefficient to kill. Another example: If the timing window wasn't so small on Hyrja for HoV, we would see more of the Hyrja desync strategy.

[Algorath]

But you're missing the other side of the equation. M+ is difficulty is part of the reward structure. You're getting Mythic raid level loot from the weekly vault for doing 20s. So if affixes were changed to be "easier", then the other part would be to tune the dungeon harder via HP and damage done.

This is done to keep "balance" of difficulty and rewards.

The alternative is to lower the rewards, after all if it's "easier" content then why should it be just as rewarding?

Inflating the achievements/score to higher numbers (i.e. Now 30s reward mythic raid level loot instead of 20s) is just the same thing, turning the knobs on mob damage and HP.

Yes so you take the largest HP NPC you can find that isn't super dangerous to the tank, bring down to 10% (or even 5% HP) then bring to boss to burst down both. Maybe even find multiple NPCs like this and then use roots/stuns/CC (non hp regenerating CC) to chain multiple adds to turn them into extra DPS against the boss.

.

I don't think people are unhappy with mythic+ being hard. I think the issue people have, is the affixes being unfun. The fact that m+ would get a lot easier with these changes, or perhaps (as others have suggested) only having Seasonal+Fort/Tyra, is true. And it would need some readjusting from Blizzard's side when regards to when the Mythic tier ilvl should drop.

Personally I would prefer M+ running 25-26's while attempting to make the most out of the weekly affix buffs rather than pushing 19-20s where the weekly affix debuff is particularly punishing. Sure, the instance will scale higher and higher and become super hard, but is that not preferable? Dying to the intended dungeon design rather than some silly overlap, or some unfortunate oversight of an explosive, or random spiteful 1-shotting someone for relaxing a bit too much between pulls?

The good thing about mythic is, the bar will keep going higher and higher, and at some point it won't be possible to go higher. I agree there are a few things on my list that are abusable / cheesable, and wouldn't work.

A simple fix to the Demoralizing affix, for example, would be to not allow it to damage bosses - For the explosives, have a max amount of stacks.

[Okacz]

While the idea from a good place, the problem lies in the execution. For instance, the majority of these ideas "buff" the player to the point where dungeons in M+ would be easier. So naturally the "other" knob that Blizzard would tune would be the damage and HP numbers of the enemies.

Would that be so bad? Even if, why not a M+ squish, 20+ levels is getting crazy. Up the difficulty between them but leave the max rewards at +10 or sth.

Fourth affixes work that way for some time now anyway, they usually buff you substantially, making 10s way easier than 9s, so even without that it might have worked out.

[Alroxas]

Personally I would prefer M+ running 25-26's while attempting to make the most out of the weekly affix buffs rather than pushing 19-20s where the weekly affix debuff is particularly punishing.

But how is that any different? Ok in the current state a +20 with negative affixes thundering + quaking + mob ability X can 1-shot you. In your system of positive affixes, +26 and mob ability alone is enough to 1-shot you.

None of your suggested modifiers do anything for survivability just more throughput and if a cast or ability goes off, you're still killed by the increased damage instead of a combo of abilities.

than some silly overlap, or some unfortunate oversight of an explosive, or random spiteful 1-shotting someone for relaxing a bit too much between pulls?

Doesn't that just mean that you need to account for those things just like you would account for normally non-lethal abilities at every higher keys?

Quaking + Thundering for this week means that sometimes we clear the thundering sooner because it's less punishing to take quaking damage than to take thundering negatives (damage + stun).

A simple fix to the Demoralizing affix, for example, would be to not allow it to damage bosses - For the explosives, have a max amount of stacks.

Hindsight is 20/20 isn't it? Ok so you can't use Demoralizing against bosses, but how about the various mini-bosses throughout the dungeon? The two dragons in RLP for instance?

Even limiting explosive stacks to X number (say 5 or 10) still means that to meet the throughput check of Y boss you still need to execute the strategy. That will become the norm for that dungeon during that affix.

Two immediate problems come to mind. First, if that amount of throughput is necessary then what happens when that affix (Explosive that buffs) isn't active? Second, wouldn't the accepted strategy just become always pull Z pack with boss? It's not necessarily a good thing as it puts more pressure on the group to know these strategies ahead of time.

[Puri]

The idea is that it's 5% based on the targets max hp. So for simplicity, with 10x 100hp adds and 1x1000hp add, 1000 damage to the big add would be 50 damage to all the small, dealing 1500 damage) - while taking the smaller adds would lessen that damage, as targets are falling off one after one. Not sure if that explanation makes sense.

Yes, I understood that part. But you would have to kill the adds anyhow, so it's much easier to deal 100 damage to 11 targets each than dealing 1500 damage to one. And then you get 5*10 damage (500 damage in sum) for free to the big add.

[Artemol]

We could also have infinite itemlvl scaling, but above +20 the dungeon difficulty increases by 50% of current %.

Ie. +20 being 200% dmg + hp.
a +21 being 300% dmg + hp.
a +22 being 450% dmg hp.
etc.

Or add additional affixes every 2 levels above +20.

- - - Updated - - -

or ditch the scaling completly, but introduce new affixes for every lvl.

which means a +20 would have 20 different affixes.

[Relapses]

which means a +20 would have 20 different affixes.

That's not actually challenging, just really fucking annoying.

[Elbob]

Ok so here's why i think this is bad, loading a ton of stacking kiss/curse mechanics(or just kisses for a good few of them) all you are doing is inflating what the player's power is. A long time ago Blizzard talked about how they don't like making characters perform drastically different in various content forms. The original discussion was about pvp and why they don't like having huge swings in how spells work based on your target being a npc or a pc. which is a bit disconnected from this but shows a view in wanting to avoid inconsistent performance based on content type.

In dungeons with 3+ of these affixes your performance would not even be kinda similar to how your char performs in the open world, non affixed dungeon, pvp, or raid which just feels weird and like you aren't playing the same character. Also balancing this huge number of variable power gains would be a constant balancing nightmare. Certain combos of stat gains would launch certain classes to the moon with stats that wouldnt normally be seen until end of expac numbers. Numbers that go through tons of ptr testing and gradual balance checks. You would probably need to make some of these stack differently on different class or specs.

Being that most of these are heavily buffing the player and barely taxing, and you would have to buff the mobs a ton dmg/hp wise to compensate. Why not just remove the affixes and not buff the mobs? You are just kinda adding numbers for numbers sake.

- - - Updated - - -

That's not actually challenging, just really fucking annoying.

could you imagine what the end of the run would look like? lol
-like 100 ghosts being perma rooted to stack mastery and speed
-tank holding like 10+ pulls while in sanguine being chain dispelled from necro to take near 0 damage
-mobs chain exploding aoe'ing all of each other down while stacking stats on everyone in the player group to the point their dps is through the roof
-lets not forget the 1 inspire mobs dies and makes all the rest take another instance of double damage.
-the huge pull resulting in shit tons of volcanics to stand further increasing your damage the swirlies irrelevant to the huge hps the healer can do
-players getting a bunch of free cleave and amp'ed spells from quaking.

Its like the end of a roguelite run where you have all your powers and just waiting out your timer or w/e because you are incredibly overpowered.

Then you die somehow and everyone in the group instantly is only capable of doing 10% of the damage they were just doing and successfully ramping up to that power will take too long to meet the timer so some one just leaves and rips your run. 10/10 lets do it.

[Lathspell]

I wish they would just remove affixes. Infinite scaling should be enough. Playing is so much more fun when there are low impact affixes active.

[Tiwack]

I like your ideas and think they'd improve M+ overall. So many of the affixes are more annoying than fun atm which makes for a poor challenge to take on. And the changing tyranical and fortified every week, to me it's more bothersome than fun and imo those should just be baked into M+ from the get-go, you're doing endgame infinite scaling difficulty afterall on top, like cmon, while it gives flexibility and changing strats it's also so unnecessary as it's at the point of complexity overload already atleast to me.

I don't see the problem in rewarding players for doing well, this is meant to be content with a high skill ceiling and repetitive as fuck. Best way to make that fun is group coordination and rewarding team play that let's you snowball. The most popular seasonal affixes have reflected this so far. Players leave regardless if 1 random death or someone cause the group to lose their buff stack anyway. Just insert a button to restart key already so you can easily replace randos and go again quick ffs.

As an idea I do think it'd be fun to just get something akin to the cobalt assembly powers going in M+, it could be fun for a new seasonal affix. Start out challenged and just seize their magic to snowball into a lawnmower by the end of the instance and tearing up npc's like if you suddenly dropped the keylevel without realizing.

[crusadernero]

m+ was a big overhaul of the dungeon system when announced. It was praised and mostly liked. Its been years now and tbh, its getting annoying when most of these affixes is about avoiding negative outcomes. It got very little to do with "fun" and only about avoid more stuff.

I do suppose Blizzard should do another revamp of the system to draw in more people. Not at the scale like m+ was when first introduced, but fixes and tuning on it. Its getting stale now and as many others have pointed out - Its not really fun, any of them.

Its very telling when people just dont bother with m+ for a week if its a certain affix. When that happens, Blizzard has done something wrong.

This game is two decades old and people have always farmed dungeons. Probably one of the most repeated content ever in this game. When it had easy mobs & bosses and now with m+ keys. That just shows that Blizzard could easily make dungeons more fun and engaging without not really introduce punishable affixes all over.

[Nohara]

Perhaps an affix where you would lose a percentage of stamina if you stand still, and keeps stacking. When you move for a certain amount of time you’d remove a stack or could actually gain a few positive stacks. You could also implement one with damage/healing output. All a bit similar to Umbrelskul’s mechanic.

Another affix could be a collection of orbs that get sucked in by the mobs and bosses, just like the mechanics against Vexamus and the Raging Tempest. If the orbs reach a mob, they get buffed or some sort of explosion is triggered. Players would need to collect the orbs, but it comes with a damage penalty and a stacking debuff, so all players would have to participate.

[enigma77]

Remove every affix except Fort/Tyran

[Tech614]

Remove every affix except Fort/Tyran

No thanks if we're removing affixes those 2 should be the first to go and then balance around it. Tyr and Fort are literally the most boring unimaginative affixes and it's crazy they have made it through every iteration of M+.

If we're being honest they could just remove every non seasonal affix though and balance around them no longer existing. People that don't run M+ on the beta might think it's somehow magically easy without affixes but lol, not really most keys where ran with only thundering on the beta and the shit was still hard. You can balance it to be difficult without annoying ass affixes. Just design a new interesting seasonal affix each season and call it a day, buff damage/health of mobs as needed and get rid of annoying shit.

Every week doesn't need to be different, it's not different every week in raiding or pvp so I'm not sure why blizzard insists on this being a thing and it would be a hell of a lot easier for them to balance dungeons and make cool seasonal affixes if they didn't have to consider all the other bullshit on top of it.

[Artemol]

They should honestly bring back Necrotic with a twist:

Necrotic is only applied when a creature does 2 unmitigated consectuive hits on the target.

Meaning, blocking Parrying, dodging or using an active mitigation the 2nd attack of said creature will not trigger necrotic.


Same goes for Inspiring, which could be brought back as:

Certain creatures in a the dungeon will be immune CC.
All inspired mobs can be crowd controlled, regardless of wether it previously could not.
If the inspired mob is broken free and wanders into a pack, every mob within 6 yards will remain cc'able for 5 seconds.


Redesign Sanguine to:
If a mob stands in sanguine for more than 3 seconds, it is healed to 100% hp and gains 10% haste every second.
- Sanguine pool size is reduced by 50%.
- Ranged creatures will now automatically wander out of sanguine pools.

[Malkiah]

during a run today it occurred to me that Raging as a mechanic directly punishes the gameplay of two people: the healer and the tank.
it only punishes the keystone run as a whole if the healer and the tank fail to take their punishment correctly.
this seems quite shit.

so, i thought, why doesn't raging reduce damage taken by 50% until defeated?
much less shitty - it doesn't punish two members of the group that already have the highest stress role in a dungeon run, you still have a big incentive to....

huh ok as i type this, i just thought of this.
all affixes punish game play, making the act of playing the game itself less pleasant.
why not have affixes that punish M+ success instead?

sanguine redesign:
remove all the damage and healing and instead it's: timer reduced by 0.5 seconds every 0.5 seconds that an NPC is standing in a sanguine pool.

quaking:
remove all the damage and healing and instead it's: timer reduced by 2 seconds whenever someone is hit by the ring.

storming, volcanic, etc etc... you can do this in some form with most existing affixes.
it'll have the same effect as the current affixes, ie you need to learn to deal with them and work around them in order to beat the timer, but your game play isn't punished for it.

i imagine this would be hellish if you were trying to push a key via pugging just for the lack of accountability angle, but TBH i think the current key depletion system is a total crock of shit anyways so i'd say while we're at it, change it so failing to time a key doesn't drop your key level down.
(have a separate NPC for that, same as how you can swap keys)