With each new season of Mythic+ dungeons, we take time during the development and testing of the content update to consider how M+ affixes have been working, design and implement new affixes, adjust dungeons where necessary, and add new dungeons.
M+ is played by a diverse range of players, so we try to make sure our feedback sources are just as diverse, to maximize our chances that we’ll spot pain points, knowing that different types of players have different experiences in M+. We look at data and statistics, forum posts, streams, and of course, we play a great number of keys ourselves at various levels and discuss our own experiences internally.
A major focus in these efforts is always how different weeks “feel” for players. An example of this was the adjustment to Ingra Maloch in Season 2. Player feedback was aligned with our own experiences that the penalty for missing a burst damage check felt overly punishing and made the dungeon less fun, and we didn’t want to wait too long to dial in the fun.
That said, a sense of mastery is a very important part of Mythic+, and changes that invalidate player strategies or otherwise involve relearning aspects of the game can have a negative effect on that. With that in mind, we prefer to make those types of changes at the start of a new season. For example, we felt that there was too much stress on tanks in Shadowlands Season 1, so going into Season 2 we sought to address that with our approach to the Tormented affix as well as changes to existing affixes.
For Season 3, our experiences again aligned with player feedback, and:
We’ve made adjustments to the affix rotation to break up Necrotic and Sanguine, as this combination could overburden tanks.
We’ve also made a change to the duration of the Necrotic affix to afford tanks more control over their ability to reset stacks.
As always, thanks to everyone who tested M+ dungeons on the Eternity’s End PTR with us, especially those who reported bugs and submitted thoughtful feedback. You made a positive impact on Season 3 and our future efforts in M+.
My main issue with Season 2 of Shadowlands is that nearly all of the hardest affix combinations were placed on Fortified weeks. Necrotic, Bolstering, and Raging are significantly worse on Fortified weeks than they are on Tyrannical simply due to how much harder the trash hits. You literally can’t sit there and face pulls where all of a sudden you get a -50% healing debuff or the trash hits +50% harder.
Many of the bad affixes were nerfed, but several of this affixes just need to be completely removed or redesigned. Bolstering and Necrotic are two of the most egregious affixes in terms of clearing out the tank queue.
It feels like you guys are slow at addressing the affix problems because it took Ybarra and twitter making an uproar when we got the Sanguine+Necrotic week several months into the season. That was the affix combination that finally got people saying enough is enough.
We were complaining about these affixes in BFA and in Season 1 of Shadowlands. In Season 1 we could only play 2 out of 4 weeks of the month because nobody pushed on Tyrannical weeks. I remember seeing I had all timed +20/21s on Fortified and my highest timed Tyrannical keys were +15s in Season 1.
We also don’t need to have Tyrannical and Fortified. The vast majority of affixes only have an impact on the trash and don’t make bosses any harder so Tyrannical ends up being the easier week to do stuff because trash dies faster so you can do bigger pulls. The bosses have been nerfed so many times that they aren’t the big slogs they were in Season 1.
Also, on alliance there’s a significant problem with trying to find players on higher key levels. You either can’t find players or 50% or more of the keys are OCE so you have to play with 400+ ping. I don’t know how many hours I’ve literally spent this season just sitting in queue waiting 20+ minutes for a tank or a couple of dps to apply in order to fill a +22/23/24 key. It could be close to 12-15 hours sitting around twiddling my thumbs.
I am hoping that 9.2.5 fixes this problem with cross faction play, but it’s a serious problem nonetheless. There’s 4-5 more keys listed on horde side than alliance.
Either way I’m hoping that Season 3 has a more fair affix combination where it’s not you get 1 push week every 5-6 weeks on fortified and every Tyrannical week is an absolute joke in comparison.
now lets get rid of tyrannical and fortified, as you know from listening to player feedback that nobody likes these two affixes. I’m sure there is a way to adjust the difficulty to make up for it. we should also get rid of fortified raging week as that is some dumb combination as well.
A rework to make necrotic a more boss mechanic then a trash mechanic would be significantly better. Aka make the stacks give more necrotic but ensure only a certain amount of stacks can be gained over a certain period of time. So now tanks would be able to pull big and stay in the fight longer but it will still be something to pay attention too.
here’s where I’m going to pop in and say “we told you so”
we TOLD you that re-pairing necrotic/sanguine in s2 was a bad idea.
what? no. you can’t kite a boss to drop stacks. the only thing I think needs to change about it is mobs you can’t kite shouldn’t apply it. if a mob is immune to slows/knockbacks/stunsk… or one of those little jerks that leaps to you, preventing you from dropping stacks, it shouldn’t apply necrotic.
