I assume “variety” is the main reason but I’m curious what other people think.
Personally, I think they are just a waste of time overall and are more effort/trouble then any value they add.
Raids don’t have weekly rotating affixes and I’ve never heard anyone complain about that.
So, why dungeons?
Wouldn’t just focusing on really great encounters/balance be enough?
Wouldn’t dropping the headaches/balance issues that affixes bring be an overall boon as dev time could be more focused on the more evergreen parts of dungeons?
Is this just an idea they carried over from Diablo but never worked out and they are just too afraid to admit the L and drop them?
I think variety was the primary goal, but I think that Blizzard approached in incorrectly at the same time.
Originally they approached it as additional challenges on-top of the dungeons. This was, to a degree, pretty fine initially until they started really bloating the amount of mechanics present within the dungeon. Then it just slowly became a mechanical hell. The affixes and mechanics started really contradicting each other (stack for this mechanic, but wait, spread for Quaking at the exact same time).
I think the way they should have approached it, and they’re somewhat doing that with the current affixes, is having affixes that buffed the players. This would have provided variety but in a more fun way, because I have been running thousands of M+ per expansion since Legion and I have never (exception: seasonal affixes in BFA) heard anyone say “Oh man, I love this affix” or “This affix is a lot of fun.” Instead if was usually looked at as: What annoyance do I have to deal with this week?
Frankly, I’d have loved to have seen iterations of the affixes like this:
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Overflowing (originally in legion, removed halfwayish through the expansion): Healing done to a player who is already at max health overflows as damage into enemies, spread equally between enemies.
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Raging: When a player reaches 35% HP, they enrage increasing all damage done by 15% for 10 seconds.
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Sanguine: When an enemy dies, blood spill on the ground around them. Players who stand inside this blood heal for 1% of their maximum health every 1 second. Pools of blood last for 20 seconds.
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Bolstering: If a party member dies, the remaining party members are bolstered dealing 30% increase damage/healing for 20 seconds.
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Explosive: Player spells and abilities have a chance to spawn an explosive orb. If the orb is targeted and destroyed (single target abilities only), the orb explodes for 120% of the damage received split evenly amongst amongst enemies within 30 yards.
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Fortified: Players take 5% less damage from all sources and have 20% additional health.
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Tyrannical: Players deal 10% more damage and healing.
I feel like this would have provided a much more varied form of gameplay while simultaneously not feeling like a burden/hindrance/annoyance to players.
Also, Blizzard, feel free to use this information for future affix iterations since you took the concept I had posted several years ago about how a support class would function and then implemented identically that concept as Augmentation evoker. (really wish my resume would stop being rejected from Blizzard… I just want to be able to work on/contribute to my favorite game!)
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Part of it comes down to the fact that they are under the impression that they have to keep raising the difficulty bar for players to keep them engaged every season.
It’s why every new or reworked dungeon this season has an asinine amount of mechanics. It’s a lot easier to throw spaghetti at the wall to see what sticks, and trim what doesn’t, instead of just making engaging content without the bloat.
A great example is the last boss on Ara Kara. That would have been an infinitely more interesting fight if the poisons were limited to 2 people, and the pull didnt exist and was replaced with something like a knock back with web aoe lineups that forced movement after. But it’s easier to make the fight difficult by blowing mechanics out of proportion instead of making interesting interactions.
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Oh man this would’ve been such a cool affix to play as a healer. Instead of having to weave in DPS you just maximum pump heals 100% of the time all the time lol. I’m just imagining as a rdruid just full hotting the entire squad and then popping a pot and dumping tranq.
This would be super degenerate groups would sac the aug on purpose and then brez them lol.
What it feels like to me
D3 grifts need affixes because they are randomly generated and the content is very very simple for 99% of players.
In comparison wow dungeons have a lot more mechanics and things to worry about normally.
Also most ppl dont group for diablo versus wow which adds more layers of complexity.
The most popular affixes in wow are the ones that are free and basically deleted by pressing one button. Wonder why.
Most of us who did the SL seasons agree that Encrypted and Shrouded were good affixes.
It’s not about the one button. It’s about the fact that they created interesting interactions for the runs.
With those interactions, you could change routes and pull bigger around them because the group was provided a buff that helped them keep going. We used to heavy pull into an encrypted boss to let the healer pop full mana and then swing another large pull.
It’s the fact they added depth and options to the runs more than the ease of dealing with them. Opposed to something like Prideful, which was a kiss-curse, but just meant your run was ruined if the tank was 1% off trash amounts at any point.
The affixes that were entirely negative did nothing but make the dungeons more annoying for the sake of difficulty. I don’t think I personally dislike any of the Xala’tath ones this season, but that’s because they are marginally better than dealing with Necrotic-Spite existing again.
The problem with that idea is that the dungeons will get tuned around the affix which makes it negligible
Even past iterations of the kiss/curse affixes were tuned in the expectation that you’ll always bave the buffs
Well stuff that changes the route or how you play would be cool to me (my first season was season 2 DF so, pretty boring affixes imo)
It just seems like overall people dont enjoy that.
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The explicitly stated reason is for variety.
Eventually the content would get old very quickly. The element of randomness, even if it is fairly small, introduces more replayability.
Right?? I am a healer main and that would be awesome imo. Weeks where I feel like I am super duper contributing outside of just keeping people alive from their own stupidity, lol.
Yeah, I just came up with those examples on teh spot as I was writing it LOL. In hindsight, that would be a stupid way of doing it.
My overall point, though, was the to make them boons! 
Arguably, the tuning is questionable as is now lol… and we don’t even have anything “fun” to play around.
Honestly, agreed. The fact we’ve seen multiple 20%+ nerfs to dungeons this season just proves nothing went through testing above 7’s-9’s internally. The jump to 10 was so ridiculous for half of the dungeons pre-nerfs, and some are debatably still needing more.
The thing is, for title players, the difficulty exists either way. You’re going to get to your wall eventually. Who cares if that wall is an 18 or a 23 this season. The keys between 2 and 10 should be manageable with proper gear and slighty above average play.
I think we’re pretty close to it being fine, but some of the bosses still need work. Tred’ova’s poisons need to stop instantly hitting for 1/2 my hp because I looked at the puddle. Especially since those damn things are invisible part of the time. I’ve heard multiple streamers complaining about wipes on that boss to invisible spots.
I certainly can’t speak for Blizzard’s motivation, but personally, I like there being affixes for the variety. I like that there are slightly different challenges from week to week.
Raids have 3 progressible difficulties (and only 2 that any significant portion of raiders will ever see) and loot lockouts. It’s common for most raiding groups to spend a certain amount of time progressing a boss before they kill it, and then when they come back next week the boss is expected to be farm. There just isn’t much exposure to a boss when it is still a challenge for most raid groups.
M+ on the other hand is intended to be repeated, with an endless difficulty curve. Every week you can bump the difficulty of some of the dungeons up to the next level, but it won’t feel any different relative to the previous week due to your gear also improving. A person spending as much time in M+ as someone will progression raiding will likely see each dungeon an order of magnitude more times than each raider will see a raid boss.
And frankly as far as I’m concerned, farm is the worst part of raiding because of the lack of variety. I really don’t want dungeons to feel a similar way when I’m going to be running them far more often.
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Its pretty lazy, would be cool if they added something like a new boss mechanic or add mechanic every 4+ key levels and add hp and dmg.
Maybe get rid of the timer and add a life counter so everything isnt a face pull rush and you could have time to explain things to people if they dont know how it works.
The current Affix system is more RNG than anything and creates a lot of BS unbalanced scenarios.
Or better yet keep the affixes but affixes adapt to a new mechanic for that boss thats dosn’t overlap with other boss mechanics.
originally probably variety, at this point however, just a silly method of slowing progression and artificially inflating engagement metrics for those that participate
I can just see this from a healer PoV…sorry guys, cannot heal you above 35% or we lose the extra damage. 
Would have been funny though!
Originally it was the same 8~10 dungeons for an entire expansion, dungeons were also pretty simple; especially in legions since the original dungeons were designed before mythic plus was an idea, so affixes made sense as a way to provide challenge and variety.
Now though with dungeons being more complicated and the rotation every season i dont think they need much more then a seasonal.
Tyrannical and fort are just scaling modifers, the timer one has been unpopular and the end one where xalatath just ups the difficulty and remove the gimmick is also just scalling. None of those are particularly interesting or fun, theyre just modifers that could be in the baseline.
As for the current rotating 4, im aworried we’re gonna be stuck with the xalatath ones; they feel like seasonals since theyre all xalatath popping up and they all have kiss curse mechanics, im liking them now but if its just those 4 for the rest of the expansion theyll start to grate on me the same as the old ones.
At the same time designing 4 new affixes every season seems unsustainable for blizzard compared to just one seasonal every 5~6 months so i dont think theyll be any new ones season 2 or 3.
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These are all awesome. Very in line with what a video game is supposed to be: fun, without eroding the challenge.
I fear Blizz will never take this approach. They are too afraid of people progressing higher in an infinitely scalable system, for whatever reason.
Because dungeon mechanics by themselves are too easy. The intention of affixes is to interrupt otherwise easy gameplay and add nuance to an encounter.
A wasted global is the difference between a wipe and living. Does a tank let DRs drop off while trying to frantically reposition? Does a healer mismanage CDs during Rot damage and an an affix happening? Do DPS use defensives and interrupt their rotation to deal with affix?
It’s a tough scenario to balance. If you make a dungeon mechanic too difficult, the barrier to entry becomes exponentially higher.
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Are they though? On a high enough key everything 1 shots and you have to play perfectly. I’m glad affixes are gone past 12s.