I am playing since Shadowlands and my main focus is only M+. Doing dungeons not in the highest level, but at least between 20 and 25 I can say Affixes in general are still not fun. Even after the nerfs it feels like you are fighting the affix and not the dungeon in a lot of weeks.
In general moving the affixes into a positive buff instead of a punishment would change the feeling about them and still provide the main reason affixes exist: Having divination between M+ weeks. The argument that in this case higher dungeons will be easier as soon a affix is added can be solved by several solutions, such as additionally increasing the keystone dmg/health modificator at those levels.
But as Blizzard (to my disappointment) stated multiple times that they disagree with this often requested change to the affixes, I see no other solution but to nerf the Affixes even more to make M+ at least a bit more fun.
My suggestions for changes would be:
Bursting
Should not interrupt eating
Bolstering
Should not stack
Raging
Should only be applied to stuns, and CC, but not to displacement and kicks
Spiteful
Disable triggering combat
Storming
Number of parallel spawns should be capped
Storms should dispawn when out if combat
Afflicted
Every class should be able to deal with the affix
Affix should not be a friendly totem to be better targetable
Spawn cd should be increased
Only one should spawn at at time
Incorporeal
Every class should be able to deal with the affix
Sanguine
Should not heal bosses
Mobs should be displaceable when standing in sanguine
Sanguine healing should not stack
Volcanic
Number of parallel spawns should be capped
Entangling
Should not spawn when infight with only a boss. (Current M+ season doesn’t require changes, but there will be boss fights where entangling conflicts with boss mechanics)
I like it. In addition to what you have presented I think there should be a rethink on the philosophy of the two affix brackets, 7 and 14.
Bracket 7+
7 should be a focus on personal responsibility. Individual fails the mechanic, individual pays the price. Considering this theme Afflicted and Incorporeal are out of place as they are a group fail/group consequence mechanic. Also their punishment is highly disproportionate to Storming/Entangling/Volcanic which in most situations represent a small inconvenience.
Suggestions as to the types of affixes that could replace them (using basic themes to expedite, not suggesting these exact themes).
Laughing Skull: skull with low HP descends on the player, can be dps’d while its falling. After 8 seconds the area under the skull will fear the player. Players deal with it by either killing, ccing (AOE or ST), purging or moving out of its vicinity.
Explosive Totem: Spawns near the target with 1 hp. After 8 seconds if the totem is alive the player will be flung 10 yards relative to the positioning of the totem. Players deal with it by either killing, ccing (AOE or ST), purging or moving out of its vicinity (15 yards). There should be a telegraph on the player a second or two before hand so the player knows its coming.
Fate Anomaly: A Fate Anomaly makes its way in a straight line through the current location of the player. Players that come in to contact are disoriented for 4 seconds. Players deal with it by ccing (AOE or ST), purging or stepping out of its way.
Bracket 14+
The theme should be collective responsibility, collective punishment. Considering this theme Bursting and Bolstering are out of place as they disproportionately punish heals and should be replaced with Afflicted and Incorporeal.
Final Thoughts
Keys 2-13 should be a sanctuary where players can learn the dungeons with some added personal responsibility.
14+ represents a more collective challenge and gates the higher rewards.
20+ With bursting and bolstering gone affixes which gate the speed of runs are gone, affix challenges are more linear regardless of how big and fast the pulls are.
You know it’s bad when Blizzard was aware that sanguine and bolstering are a really bad affixes and didn’t put them in TGP final. They are out of line with other affixes. They need to look at Spiteful (when it’s combine with Incorporeal), Afflicted and Bursting. They could delete some affixes so we could have Tyrannical / Fortified + one weekly + seasonal affix.
Personally, I wish they would’ve just introduced more mechanics to each instance at certain keystone intervals instead of giving you a weekly random grab-bag of generic crap that permeates every instance for that entire week. Like M+ 0-7 functions one way, 8+ gets a few minor changes, 16+ gets a few more minor changes, and 21+ gets a few more… kind of like the way bosses change as you progress through raid difficulties.
Not every boss needs a change at every interval, though adding a boss mechanic or two here and there would be obvious. Maybe a specific mob in an instance gains a cleave, a mob’s AoE gains a DoT when it didn’t have a DoT component before, a mob’s randomly-targeted attack gains a small stun, a mob’s got a new spell that needs to be interrupted, a pack here or there gains an extra mob and it could be a new mob altogether with abilities of its own that wasn’t there before, etc.
Sections of instances could change. Parts of Vortex Pinnacle could gain random gusts of wind that you need to react to and run against or risk being blown off the sides. Parts of Neltharion’s Lair could gain randomly falling stalactites that you need to get out of the way of and stay there when they hit the ground whereby they introduce an LoS issue (or gain depending on how you look at it) if you stand behind one. The first boss’ parrot in Freehold could rise from the dead partway through the instance and you now have an undead/spirit/skeletal parrot dropping something different at your feet for the rest of it.
I’d have rather seen something like that that would force you to deal with them because they aren’t going anywhere on a weekly basis, instead of affixes where people are like “lol I’m not playing this week”, X class/spec is required that week for an affix and because of that, Y class/spec has a much harder time getting an invite this week because of it, etc.
This is the problem with random procedural mechanics just slapped on top of dungeon mechanics like a band-aid. There will always be bad interactions.
Yeah, no. What we want is dungeon difficulty that isn’t implemented via the lowest effort and most cost effective approach from a developer pov possible.
If you think affixes are actually well designed and interesting fun to deal with mechanics, rather than the band aid low effort solution that they are then you’ve drank the Blizzard cool-aid. Big time.
Imagine being solely an M+ player and having multiple weeks per month where you don’t even want to play. And Blizzard have openly said they fine with this. It’s insane.
In both seasons we have seen a big drop off after a 2-3 weeks combo of consecutive bad affixes.
I remember last season there was a thread on here titled something like “Blizzard should be terrified of this” referring to upcoming weeks of horrid affix combos. Many of us were in agreement. I honestly expected something, it seamed crazy to me that they would not adjust, they didn’t and the pug scene diminished over night.
For what its worth I don’t think the affixes are exclusively the issue. They issue is they have been doing the heavy lifting in an otherwise largely stagnant content format. Fail to address this and wow turns in to Diablo 3. People will come for a season every year or two, play for a month or two then leave when they have gotten their fix.
Introducing Boss Mechanics would be somewhat surprising. I don’t like it. The purpose if affixes is to change something in the dungeons from week to week and the concept in general is not bad, just the way it is solved currently is bad.
You can’t move mobs out of sanguine because the mobs are unmoveable, immune to CCs and throw some uninterruptible casts. Blizzard went overboard on trash with uninterruptible cast and unmoveable, unavoidable damage and debuffs