So, affix changes…
Pros: Getting rid of afflicted and incorporeal gets rid of two class restricting affixes. Always a win.
Cons: Bolstering and Sanguine not being retired despite being the two most hated and complained about affixes for the last two years.
Ultra Cons: These new affixes are presented as “every class gets a chance to shine” but in reality are way more class restricting than afflicted or incorporeal. If your class doesn’t do the damage that is getting the buff that week, you simply won’t get invited to keys. We’re taking one step forward with removing afflicted and incorp, but taking two steps backward by adding these new affixes.
It really depends how many trash creatures meet the criteria. If it’s a small percentage of the overall count, this might be as bad as it looks. However if they aren’t careful with how they spatter the dungeons with the creatures that fit criteria, this could be the group building nightmare we’re already envisioning.
No, Just don’t. Give it to everyone or no one. Havoc will be BiS because it will have every damage type, while other specs will suffer from not having any buffs. I don’t want to play different specs, I want to play the spec I enjoy.
Well I applaud the intention of a kiss/curse affix, this isn’t the way to go about it. Rotating the damage type each week, is just going to encourage some pretty substantial gatekeeping in m+. If you want to keep the same idea, it should be a buff to damage that affects everyone. Either a flat buff, or increased crit chance or something like that. Something everyone will benefit from.
If the idea is to create more class diversity with these new affixes it wont fix the problem of that. You still wont be able to bring certain specs to high m+ if they lack utility, damage profile, stops or interrupts or buffs that help the group. The mobs doing essentially more dmg to your tank or group with the negative side of these affixes also will push people away from the content.
Yeah all I’m seeing here is reasons for groups to exclude you from their key. Don’t want to play Arcane on your mage? Kicked from pugs, not doing your full damage potential in your organized groups, just feels bad that week.
It’s ok, your week will come up in 14 days. Better hope it’s not Sanguine that week though, we know how much you love that!
I can’t even get an invite to a key as a sin rogue already, now I’m DEFINITELY not getting invited 3/4 weeks a month. Awesome game design. Definitely made by people who play M+.
While I understand that wanting to iterate constantly on affixes is a good thing, it feels like y’all are missing out on really significant parts of the M+ system and just have left them frozen for the past 8 years.
There have been changes that impact how keystones are made and used (legion depletion, bfa deletion, etc etc)
There have been near-continuous changes to affixes (seasonal affixes, larger or smaller pool, different overarching affix goals, these new passives ones).
But it feels like there has been an incredibly small amount of effort and thought into iterating on dungeon design and the exact method of M+ scaling, along with Fortified and Tyrannical.
These aspects of M+ feel like they were selected during Legion development at some point and then considered to be “solved problems”, which as a player, does NOT feel like is the case.
There are so many options to make Fortified and Tyrannical affixes more interesting.
There are so many options to make dungeon scaling less “running face-first into a wall where suddenly too many things oneshot”.
There are so many options to make dungeons more interesting than a 30~ minute long CC rotation with some DPS burns spread out throughout it.
None of these are acted on, and so we get the same content over and over with varying success due to different levels of “dungeon quality” (from the player perspective), and minor changes due to “affix flavoring”.
Raging is counter counterplay while being incredibly restrictive on group comp due to sooth being uncommon. Mass sooth from evoker’s Oppressive Roar is mandatory on raging weeks.
Bolstering has always been awful. It’s been nerfed 2-3 times now and still feels unplayable. Bolstering places to high of an emphasis on priority damage in keys. it forces you to kill mobs evenly and kill the scariest mob first. The requirement of this damage profile in keys is one of many factors leading to mage shadow priest meta dominance.
Bursting is somehow the least obstructive affix in this bucket. Healers hate it, pugs play badly around it, organized groups are annoyed by it. Worst case everyone dies. Best case you slow dps and have a mass dispel in the group if you have to kill a group of mobs at the same time.
Sanguine Like bolstering has been nerfed 2-3 times in the past few years and is still just the absolute most annoying affix. How has this not been deleted?
Reckless- Don’t do physical or arcane? Well good luck getting a group.
Thorned- Fast attacking melee will be excluded. I main enhancement shaman and we hit a lot, even more if we go storm build for windfury. So basically I can’t play that week or I’ll kill myself or make the healer hate me. Real fun. I also play assassination rogue so I guess Slice and Dice is going to kill me. Realistically only casters will be brought so less hits for thorns and only shadow priests or warlocks.
Attuned- Magic damage increase could really hurt some tanks that aren’t great at it. Nature damage and bleeds so shaman, rogues, and hunters?
Focused- so interrupts are going to be insanely hard? unless you exclude the casts that NEED to be interrupted or rebalance those abilities so it’s not a wipe this is going to be stupid hard. Also I guess this is just mage week? maybe some shaman depending on build?
Overall this is extraordinarily bad design. So bad that I question if the people who made this have played more than one class/spec. You already saw classes getting excluded with afflicted and incorporeal and you doubled down on making it worse. I am not going to run 4 alts to play M+. I do 1 character and if 3 of 4 weeks I can’t get a group because my class/spec is either heavily punished for existing or I don’t have the right damage to boost, I’ll simply either not play M+ and/or given the lack of endgame content just quit the game.
ALL players should be punished equally and all players should be buffed equally. Since I know you’ll be stubborn or just time crunched due to prematurely announcing the release, here is a partial solution. Doing the boosted damage type puts a debuff on the mob that increases everyones damage. That way you won’t be filling a group entirely with those damage types and just need one which most groups will have anyway.
