Ranking M+ Affixes w/ Dorki & Dratnos

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Hey guys! Recently on stream figured I'd make a bit of a Tier List Ranking M+ Affixes w/ Dorki & Dratnos, was a pretty fun idea and had a fun time overall discussing the state of affixes and m+ aswell - hope you enjoy!
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Introduction: 0:00
Spiteful: 1:34
Volcanic: 11:59
Afflicted: 13:48
Bursting: 21:06
Raging: 26:33
Entangling: 28:45
Sanguine: 30:59
Bolstering: 36:22
Incorporeal: 38:26
Storming: 42:24
Overall thoughts on Affixes: 44:07

[@nathanwood3110]

Dratnos saying wtf is an E at 30:30 is peak comedy.

[@themanhands5599]

25:05 growl's laugh at top rank being F is the highlight

[@kkpratt]

Afflicted's biggest problem is how hard the mobs are to see. They need more than just a white smokey appearance.

[@sebastian6843]

and that you cant custumize their healthbars... is so bad

[@jbutler8585]

Afflicted/incorp suck tremendously for a bunch of reasons. They violate the 'play the dungeon not the affix' mantra because you MUST drop everything and deal with them when they spawn. Both are more of a UI problem than a gameplay one. They are extremely punishing too, even if a single tick goes off that's incredibly dangerous, while no other affix is potentially a wipe for fumbling it once or twice.

[@Christopher-iv6sn]

The most annoying thing to me is when you need to drop combat for mana or a rez and you have to wait for it to spawn and kill it first.

[@MckenzieMischief]

The fact that afflicted -don't despawn out of combat -maintain spawn timer count between packs (tank enters combat, afflic spawn immediately) -can't be answered by some classes -stack debuffs All make it, comfortably, the worst affix this season.

[@kkpratt]

I totally agree that Afflicted is the worst affix. I'd also add that the punishment for one Afflicted going off is extremely lethal, and more lethal than others. (One Incorp cast going off is much more tame. It gets really bad if there are 2)@@MckenzieMischief

[@CloudVaris]

I actually agree about the timer. I wish M+ wasn't so timer-focused as someone who just wants hard dungeons, who liked the cataclysm style of CCing pulls well rather than the modern style of gigapull and cleave, but i kind of accept that it's not going anywhere now.

[@RetryTA]

i miss those days too man, more challenge less ZUG ZUG

[@leothar]

Spiteful can be very annoying for healers too since it just prevents you from drinking.

[@kingtut8367]

Nobody cares about that. They expect healers to have an infinite amount of mana and will pull while healer is literally at 1% mana and wonder why we wipe.

[@3lit3gn0m3]

It also prevents you from liking your melee DPS.

[@RobTunes]

@@3lit3gn0m3 as a melee dps whose partner is a healer, I know this pain deeply

[@Sintare_]

And imagine being a rogue or a feral who wants to enter the stealth.

[@gratefulred1539]

If anyone from Blizzard is watch this, Please give Dratnos a job in design. He's given you at least 3 freebees in here so far

[@derryberry7991]

Blizzard will never swallow their pride and admit that they suck at design

[@sablovestwice]

lol dratnos sucks everyone makes fun of him at higher keys

[@peterpolakovic870]

​@@sablovestwicehe is the nicest dude this game has and he deserves better

[@candulimataoo2852]

He had great ideas to fix some of the affix.

[@Frawt]

​@@sablovestwiceMost intelligent, least ape-like M+ pusher. What the fuck does that have to do with design and how good his ideas were?

[@skipmcilvaine]

Blizzard should bring Dratnos into their offices at the end of each season and pay him to meet with their designers.

[@coreyhaller679]

I love healing my ass off, but I absolutely hate sweating my ass off to keep everyone alive in pugs... there needs to be a decent balance

[@ispear6337]

I gotta say its super weird seeing people who run the same raid every week for 6 months on like 6 toons saying m+ would be stale if it didn't change week to week. From my perspective the point of m+ is to run the same shit over and over to optimize your gameplay against an unchanging background until you master it. Affixes are antithesis the fundamental reason people enjoy pushing keys. I straight up run like 20+ keys a week, every week, and would love if they just never changed throughout a season. Hell, if class changes and set bonuses are transformative enough throughout an xpac I wouldn't even mind if we didnt rotate dungeons either, since those changes and the reset on gear effectively shakes things up on its own.

[@sere971]

Yeah, it's even weirder considering people didn't really get bored with dungeons even before DF where you'd have 3-4 seasons of the same dungeons and the same affixes (other than seasonals) over and over again. I wish they just did away with affixes after DF launched with this new system, personally. The dungeons themselves are already providing the change in experience now.

[@ispear6337]

Another thing about affixes is that they dont make dungeons less stale, they make them more stale. How many years has volcanic, bolster, bursting, and sanguine been in the game now? In a bid to not play the same thing for 6 months we've instead played the same thing for 6 years. Like oh boy cant wait to play bolster again for the 124th week, but this time the background is blue instead of red. I genuinely think that a 6 month sprint of the same exact thing is better than a 6 year rot of a large pool of the same thing.

[@jacobmitchell9227]

I still think they need to have some change week to week even it’s just fortified vs tyrannical.

[@nathanpurss4582]

Reaping will always be #1 for me. That was actually fun, especially as ret pally :D

[@tjxrick4139]

The combination of Bursting and Spiteful, that we got a couple weeks ago in this most recent season, was brutal for healing. We were running me healing (disc priest), and a shadow priest so we had dispels but we couldn't be still enough to get the dispel off because of spiteful was chasing us. And it made it much more challenging to regain mana because we were in combat so much of the time. Either on their own isn't too bad.

[@Fr33mx]

I think affixes used to compensate for how lackluster some dungeons or parts of a dungeon are. In legion when m+ was just introduced it was fine to a certain point due to how few mechanics most trash and bosses had. So artificially "leveling them up" made some sense. But now that every pack has an interrupt, dispell, frontal, aoe, voidzone, healing check dps check etc we dont really need them. Just scaling a dungeon is good enough and it doesnt compromise some classes that cant deal or are only fractionally capable of dealing with an affix. Tyra and Fort have to go because fort trash "feels right" while the bosses dont last long enough to challenge the group up until certain level. Whereas Tyra just lowered the absolute cap to a dungeon level due to bosses taking too long or just oneshotting you much earlier. Affixes are ok if they themselves do not lsngthen the dungeons too much or at all of dealt with propely. Also having to play the affix more than the dungeon is just stupid design, lets be honest.

[@kyrn3901]

tbh fort and tyr are mostly the problem. I think the others atleast add some spice every week, otherwise you'll probably grow bored very quick. Perhaps more interesting/new affixes rather than the same ones could be nice. Also I do think Prideful was one of the most fun "big" affixes we've had, whereas Beguiling was BY FAR the worst. Beguiling was so god damn awful.

[@Fr33mx]

​@@kyrn3901thing is, i dont know a single person who likes to do m+ and would be against it being just m+ with no affixes. Your argument of growing tired of a dungeon only goes so far as we are now in a territory of blizzard adding more dungeons than ever and each season having their own set. Now on top of dungeons you have to learn their affixes combinations. There is no need for them if the only argument is "spicing it up". We already have enough spice and its a new favour every season(pun intended).

[@ispear6337]

@@Fr33mx Another thing is that when m+ testing rolls around every single person is running keys no affixes; it is actually such a problem that blizzard has blamed some interactions not being fixed by launch on the fact that no one tested them to even find the interaction in the first place. Despite what people might say if they are part of the crowd that doesn't run affixes during testing then they prefer them that way.

[@Senen33]

The answer to why the amount of things delivered in 10.1.x patches compared to 10.0.x patches massively dropped has already been pretty clearly communicated by devs: the return to office order made a decent amount of devs quit. I remember early in DF some lead dev tweeting about how they were in crisis mode because they lost so many people after the rto change and they were afraid they wouldn’t be able to keep delivering updates at the pace they had done so far at the time. And sure enough, they ended up not able to do it.

[@3lit3gn0m3]

Blizzard management doing Blizzard management things and making the game worse as a result. I am so surprised. 🙃

[@gampie13]

you also probably have lots of devs that are good at their job being in the majourity of the ones quiting, rather than the mediocer devs

[@Tenezill]

bizzard managment doing middle management things ;)@@3lit3gn0m3

[@craynak]

It’s because some high paying troglodytes need to feel important. What are they doing being paid 100k+ to micro manage no one when everyone was working remotely. It was such a great game in S1 and S2 it’s been painal to deal with.

[@rensb3294]

I like the option for dungeons to have a timer, done plenty of +20 keys myself. But god do I love going into a mega dungeon with friends on low geared alts and treat it like a raid. Especially the mechagon hardmode was amazing. Feel like this is more needed because mythic raiding is also locked behind having 20 people. So I feel like harder but not timed content is seriously lacking for smaller parties. Heroic 10 man was also a real treat back in the day.

[@skipmcilvaine]

Afflicted mobs need a clearer visual, a health bar and to stop spawning inside the boss or inside all of the boss' and players' graphical chaos.

[@sprodage]

Honestly Afflicted needs one change and I would be happy. Make it so that it only requires recieving a heal instead of fully healing its entire health pool. I will burn my dispel, then if no one else picks up the second one, i have to burn 2-3 casts 90% of the time to get the second one down. Yeah, you can get lucky with a crit, but your shouldn't need to rely on a crit to get grid of an affix.

[@brandon9689]

Being able to efficiently knock out character progression in 30-40 minute sessions with no strings attached is the entire appeal of M+ for me. The timer aligns with my reasons for playing in the first place.

[@danielbeshers1689]

That's how you tier list, baby!

[@Malavander]

I am one of those players who despises speedrunning as an endgame MMO format or indeed in any game. I love pushing increased difficulty, but I like being able to take breaks and treat each encounter as a puzzle to solve instead of white knuckling a whole dungeon like it's a 35 minute boss fight only to be punished for failing or someone bailing after I've committed the time and resources. It reminds me of the draconian days of XP loss on death in early MMO's. All of my friends and family who quit or prefer classic cite M+ being super intimidating and toxic as a prime reason they avoid retail.

[@laxx2542]

I almost feel like that's for the best. What you are describing as the downsides of mythic plus are genuinely my absolute favorite thing about retail right now, the game feels like its in one of the best places its ever been as far as systems and content goes.

[@Tenezill]

i feel like this are two completely different demographics of gamers. m+ is a leader based kompetitive game mode and as others said more like a game of league than anything else what you are looking for or your friends that quit is the exploration / raiding side. it sucks that there is not much aside from raids you can take your time doing it but tbh i rather have the m+ experience as it is right now than a m+ where i got no timer and pull every group slow and calculated for 2hours (because you probably could go up way higher if there is no timer)

[@norwegiantacoeater9115]

So you want dungeons to take longer to complete yet you despise people leaving your key after time invested? Make it make sense…. If you want to immerse yourself, go play classic or do normal/heroic/m0. M+ is obviously not for you

[@Gewsfrahba]

this season is so fun as a ret paladin, doing keys around +20 (give or take) casually. pally toolkit is so robust if talented properly I can have 2 forms of CC for incorp (turn evil and repent) and could feasibly solo take care of some afflicted waves if needed with instant heals and dispel, all while not losing any throughput in the class tree. I really just think its a class design issue for these two affixes

[@poshment5435]

I run tauren pally so aoe stun for mob control too

[@erike9074]

Cries in warrior

[@Gewsfrahba]

@@erike9074 warrior was my main for about half the time ive played wow, paladin the other half. that class needs god right now

[@cap258]

Incoporial is actually better than afflicted. more people can potentially deal with it and they disappear when combat drops. would love afflicted to be the same.

[@elwoodbluesmmkay]

To dearest Max, If you ever need a representative of the team Dads, I will gladly step in. Dad gamer with 2 kids who does 22-24 keys and heals. "Woah, wouldn't his tired opinions some interesting takes" Much love.

[@FoliumSakura]

I think the play would be to keep fort and tyrannical, because like people keep saying that each affix from week to week gives you a difference experience but i'd say the opposite is true. The fact that the affixes are the same for the whole week that makes every single dungeon that week feel much more the same rather then giving each own dungeon its experience. In some cases, doubles down on a dungeon's particular annoyance factor like afflicted/sanguine/ incorp during the gauntlet in HOI

[@davidgreenberg8456]

The thing I liked most about doing the DF megadungeon, was that it was challenging and didn't have a timer. It was like doing a mini-raid and my guildies kept failing the mechanics and wiping a lot, but it wasn't like depleting an M+ key and we had a blast. For me the timer is like the WoW token and TSM. It just takes the fun and immersion away and turns all of your actions into little chunks of optimization. It's all about picking the most optimal route with the most efficient forces to kill, people doing ridiculous skips to try and save 10 seconds, often requiring a BL class to complete the dungeon in time, many specs getting left out because they can't pump as much dps or don't have a specific party-wide utility, and it heavily encourages toxicity in terms of the punishments for failing the timer and the lower rating. I'd rather they bump up the difficulty of the keys and got rid of the timer, or maybe just have an option in the dungeon to enable a timer and it slightly improves your weekly vault reward or gives you some extra gold at the end.

[@Tephr1te]

add a cast bar to spiteful auto attacks so you can walk out of range if it starts to try and hit you

[@opyshuichiro8809]

Unpopular opinion : Thundering in season 1 was a good affix. It needed tunning but you had a positive impact on the affix giving you damage until cleared, and a big negativ impact on ignoring the mechanic. Obviously it might have been a bit too harsh to fail it, but in the end, it made you interact with your teammates, have to be aware of timings (clear it or wait a bit) and so on.

[@NotsofatTheGamer]

I love more Maximum content

[@gageracer]

For bursting I don't wanna blast my healing cd's knowing that the tank will rush pull the boss and I will not have cd for it. Healing for packs or boss totally fun. Healing for a stupid stacking affix where we can avoid by stop killing something for 4 seconds, is the opposite of fun.

[@skipmcilvaine]

I love Dratnos' idea on Incorporeal being a personal affix (and I love his ideas about how to fix other affixes as well), but as it is now, Incorporeal is better than Afflicted in that every single spec can handle it, and Afflicted feels just awful in PUGs if you aren't a spec that can deal with it, or are a healer that is left to deal with it alone.

[@Defenestrationed]

Yea as a DK that often plays with a warrior I've got no problem saying that Incorp is way better than Afflicted lol

[@Trentbail23]

Max I was the guy on twitch that said he’d rather tank tyrannical any week then fortified. As a bit of context this was my first season ever and I mostly pug since I don’t have that many friends that play pc.

[@nastypig5459]

spiteful now feels pretty good to me, at least in 21-22 keys; it's a moderate amount of 'friction' with lots of chances for most classes to counterplay

[@Frawt]

No. Just running away from mobs is fuckin' dull and obnoxious.

[@Literofcola77]

@dratnos, hunters can literally drop a trap before they even spawn. Easiest class to deal with it actually.

[@XenoMecha]

He doesn't actually play just makes the videos and cringe thumbnails.

[@tattoomikevsgaming3937]

You should do a video either on how to fix the current content (raids, mythic+, and world content )with you, the cast here and a poll with your chat or, adding in a new pillar of wow for endgame content.

[@Slania227]

I think the dawn of the infinite megadungeon is a pretty good showcase of what a m+ level of difficulty would look like without affixes. I have to say i prefer that. I find very little value in a game being variable amounts off unfun/annoying week on week. in my view, if the affix is not fun, it should be removed.

[@Lonelylitten]

I think the one thing they didn't touch on with incorporeal vs afflicted is that many of the solutions to incorporeal have cast times and cooldowns. On a hard boss fight where i'm moving it's so much easier to throw a dispel at a mob than it is to find time to hibernate/poly/hex/sleepwalk/dom mind etc. That combined with you having much less time, and it being more punishing makes incorp significantly worse than afflicted for me.

[@tarawright4339]

I'm on the "I hate the timer" side. I've always been an AOTC to mid-mythic level raider, and I absolutely love raiding. Failing over and over until you get enough practice, develop your teamwork enough, and implement enough solutions to problems that you finally overcome a really hard challenge is really fun for me. I've always tried to do a few keys at max loot level every week, but that's just a chore I have to do in order to help the raid. The real fun for me is in pushing myself and my team to overcome a challenge. The timer feels like an arbitrary added layer that the game truly doesn't need to be fun. Dawn Of The Infinite is the most fun I've had in five-player content in a long time, and that's because we were given the freedom to learn the fights at our own pace. ...basically I guess I'm saying I wish dungeons were more like five-player raids, with fixed difficulty levels, rather than infinitely scaling speedrun farms. I realize I'm probably in the minority here, but that's my opinion. Make dungeons hard, make them really hard, make them kick my ass seven ways to sunday, just do it without using arbitrary, articifial difficulty increases like timers and the infinite scaling 🤷‍♀️

[@skylermccracken1534]

The only time I notice enrage is in BH when the feared gnolls run into other packs and I can't do anything to stop them

[@kfactor99]

WTF IS AN E?! lmao good shit fronk

[@Zwow007]

I completely get the timer argument people become straight animals when someone dies in a key because it affects the timer sometimes and they get so butt hurt about the -5 seconds that they lash out or just leave the key entirely. I feel like the timer just makes people realize the time they are wasting instead of them enjoying themselves rather than the timer being a part of the challenge so I get the argument for it. We've all had that one pug experience where some random guy goes off for absolutely no reason because someone died once or twice and that lost time on the key.

[@emimonsterlicious]

Afflicted weeks my healers often thank my baby Evoker. They're so not used to anyone in lower keys doing anything with afflicted. Sometimes the healer isn't doing anything either and I'm like using my big CD dispel to get the second one, too. But ya, I normally really like afflicted bc it's super easy in the least inconvenient way.

[@brkus2665]

Oh that Dratnos suggestion would made M+ much more enjoyable if most of affixes were a personal responsibility thing. So explosives spawns per person and if they don't kill it they get damaged, if Incorporeal isn't stopped they get hit and stuff like that. Because right now biggest issue in PuGs are the people who don't help out on affixes and you then become the workhorse of the group which is tedious and exhausting. That is one of the reasons why I like Entangling is because I'm not affected by someone else roots. This would also force those people to start dealing with stuff. We need to push these changes.

[@davidgreenberg8456]

I PUG a lot and I don't usually play during bursting weeks unless I am playing with a priest friend. It just feels like you have no agency over how much you are going to die because people just stagger the bursting indefinitely until everyone dies.

[@Saintlel]

Casuals: I want the timer to be removed, I feel to rushed Also casuals: You have to grind 24/7 to get anywhere in the game Removing the timer would just mean you'd bash your head into a key level repeatedly for hours until it became apparent you didn't have what it takes

[@garethlewis1984]

So it'd be a 5 man raid then. That doesn't sound bad to me.

[@Justchrissy93]

Dratnos is 100% correct on the warriors, hunters, dk's not getting invites for not having the utility for dispels and such. From a warrior main where I can get invited on non incorp/afflicted weeks much easier than the other.

[@MFTomp09]

As a blood Dk main, you can control undead the incorp. Hunters can trap it. But warriors get a short stun and I think a fear (I don’t play warrior) so they have some utility for incorp. But none of those 3 classes can help at all with afflicted. During afflicted week I play more paladin tank than Dk so I have cleanse to help..

[@Justchrissy93]

@@MFTomp09 sadly warrior cc for like incorp is too short sonits really a waste of time to even cast it lol

[@MFTomp09]

@@Justchrissy93 yea my friend is a warrior and she literally just uses it as a last resort when someone else is fucking up and it’s about to go off.

[@Justchrissy93]

@@MFTomp09 yup, exactly. Usually by that point though we are having more problems than just that affix lol.

[@Koella94]

my take as a high-key-pusher is 3 affixes: - fort/tyra as it is. (starting at +2) - seasonal affix to add lore flavor, kiss-curse as they were and please, please design them well! (starting at +2) - 1 purely positive affix that comes in at +10. this adds some additional skill expression for higher skilled players, as they can interact with the affix to gain benefits and speed up their runs. since the affixes are purely positive however, by definition there can't be any terrible overlaps. if a stressful mechanic happens at the same time as the affix, just ignore the affix. letting the affix go through will have no negative consequences other than losing a little bit of dmg. on higher keys, you obviously wouldn't be able to always ignore an affix because you need the throughput to time the key, but you wouldn't be severely punished with a likely failed key whenever you didn't do >1< instance of the affix correctly. on lower levels, this would lower the required skill floor to get into M+, as you could just completely ignore the affix when you're trying to just learn the dungeons and/or your class. in my eyes, this would be the best of both worlds: high level players can express their skill, low level players can chill and not worry much. and if they did at least a somewhat decent job of creating these positive affixes, i doubt they would be as much of an annoyance as any of the affixes that we currently have. i think it could be quite fun to have some positive interactions during your dungeon run, and not just be beaten down by everything. (and seasonal affixes being well-liked confirms this imo) P.S.: please remove key depletion

[@punk6119]

Something to think about that Dorki brought up, "I never bring dispels on afflicted week." Think of how many lower players, including myself, go to subscription and pull the top spec for the week. Only to find out they don't have a dispel. Then they either ignore it, or they struggle to find work around in the build to get it. I'm just a filthy casual that does 16-20s.

[@ericmats4662]

Easy way to "fix" afflicted is that it resets the cooldown of the dispell used if you dispell it. For incorporeal, id make them clickable. So anyone can just run up to them and remove them with a 1sec channel click or something

[@nyth5167]

Bit of a shame there isn't a solid healer voice on these tier lists. It's really devaluing a lot of the input in my opinion. Especially since there are some niche annoyances that only count for healers. - Afflicted is not hard as healer, but there are several debuffs that need to be dispelled. We can't do afflicted if we need to dispell those debuffs (Think underrot debuffs or freehold Oily Blades). - Bursting and Spiteful just keeping you in combat forever is annoying as F when certain healers need to drink in between packs. (Goes for stealth classes too) I like their opinion, but lack of healing insight is hurting a lot of these videos.

[@adamadamadam83]

To give them some credit, they did use their "phone a friend" when they wanted the healer angle.

[@Tensooni]

tbh incorporeal is one of the few weeks I feel useful on my hunter, since i can cc both in about the same time most people can cc one. and it doesn't overlap most of the cc i'd be using on trash anyways.

[@Essjaybee2934]

ty for the vid dratnos take on sanguine sounds a lot like healer take on keys in general. 'Effort intensive' describes very well most healing experiences in pugs. It's emotionally exhausting to heal a pug 16-20 (depending) early to mid in a season. say you're an rdru out there on your own and you get an invite. your first 20 uld tyran afflicted bursting. and no priest, no other hybrids. big first pull the bursting stacks have 0.6 second left on a 6 stack just as your CD is ending and zugzug rolls it into a 7 stack. Or two afflicteds pop during the totem on the second boss. lol. it'd be more fun to rub your knuckles on a cheese grater i actually would like, no love, love to see affixes become something you choose when you put the key in. in this way all keys (up to +20 max without affixes) could be run with no affixes and credit is given. but you also have a checklist of all the affixes and you can select say up to four for any one key. you get bonus points per affix. affix bonus score could be weighted by community vote. more points for the hardest voted affixes. the list could include affixes from any era. even seasonals. any keys over 20 would require at least two affixes. blizzard is so so so good at wasting the previous expansions hard work. but i digress. Make Affixes Optional purty pleez Just think anyone could play every week. and the tryhards and 1% could make a meta for every affix combo and get all the bonus points and still be in the 1% with all their sweet sweet recolors of tier gear plus maybe special tmogs or mounts or w/e. it's a wowapalooza of m+ i think the suggested raging solution is just incorporeal. i think afflicted and spiteful and bursting and incorporeal should all go in I (EYE) and storming should go in the worst

[@ericanderson2685]

My hot take(s). Keys infinitely scale, they dont need additional things to make them HARDER. The 7 and 14 affixes provide NOTHING for the key other than making them arbitrarily harder, restrict comps (further than the community already does), create varying weekly difficulty (creating push weeks and dead weeks). They provide nothing beneficial, to the point I would argue they restrict dungeon design, or vise versa where certain dungeons require changes to the affixes to make them work (ex quaking in NOK) Fortified and tyrannical are actual affixes as they actually change the key, and how its approached and provide actual variety, on a weekly basis without having to wait several weeks to have another push week Season affixes CAN be good as they provide flavour and a feel to a season. They can also act similary to a 7-14 affix and have all the same issues (thundering) and not provide the value they had the seasons prior.

[@jasons9919]

As a DK main, I feel that incorporeal is an affront to my class. If I get a group that misses one, I have up to a 75% healing reduction! (DS damage dropped by 50% and I get 50% of that damage as healing! 25% healing!!). When in higher keys, I may be faced with MCing an incorporeal or using a DS to survive. This affixes is a big ole middle finger to DK mains IMO.

[@crazyphoenickss]

"If you guys were blizzard and fixing these affixes: where do you start?" Well, if I were blizzard I would start by removing just about all of those affixes and adding in some of the seasonals we had back in shadowlands and BFA, instead, as regular affixes. Removed Affixed would be: Sanguine, Volcanic, Spiteful, Afflicted, Incorporeal, Storming. Tyrannical and Fortified. For the last 2 I would just increase the HP and damage of every mob in the dungeon by 10% for damage and 20% for health, then scale it up with levels, too. Entangling is fine as is, keeping it as is. Raging would be edited into what Dratnos said about any CC removing the Enrage effect. Bolstering would be capped to 6 stacks max. Same with Bursting, too, stack it to 5 stacks at most. Affixes I would add in: Reaping as it was added in BFA so every 20% reinforcements spawn all mobs for the last 20%, though at a reduced HP of like 30% of their normal health or something. Just more to AoE and enjoy. I enjoyed Beguiling, though I would rework it into: 3 emissaries randomly spawned throughout the dungeon. Same colors as before with: Void emissary casts an ability that's a 15 second long cast. If it got off then it puts a 30% HP absorb on all players it touches, can be LoSd and played around with things like AMS. Tides emissary had a 10 second cast that gave every mob a 1% heal/second that stacked to, at most, 6 stacks. Again, each cast is 10 seconds so if you didn't kill it or interrupt / CC it during the cast then it would go off. Enchanted would give mobs a 2% damage taken reduction buff, undispellable, that would stack up to 5 times so 10% damage reduction. Again, 10 second long cast for each cast. No more than 1 emissary per group, all 3 could be CCed and/or interrupted n stuff. Awakened would be added into the pool mostly as is. Bring Shrouded back too, as is. I would add Teeming back in but make it only the non super threatening mobs ever got duplicated, so like if we took a look at Vortex Pinnacle you would not see 2 dragons side by side from Teeming. Explosive would come back, except with a caveat: AOE actually works on them now. If you were an Affliction Lock, Soul Flame would work or SoC splash would work to kill all explosives close by. I would also add in that there's never to be any more than 4 explosives spawned at once per combat, meaning that if you chain pulled and never got out of combat, theoretically you would never spawn any more of them after you killed those 4. This gives room for many people to press their AoE buttons and be fine. Everyone hated this because people couldn't AoE them down. If we fix them being able to AoE and use literally anything that dealt damage to kill, then they become fine. Also if we make sure there's never more than 4 out at once, then again, it's fine. Encrypted would 100% make a combat as it was back in Shadowlands. Summed up/TLDR: Removed: Fortified, Tyrannical, Sanguine, Spiteful, Afflicted, Incorporeal, Storming. Kept in as is: Entangling. Kept but redesigned: Raging, Bolstering, Bursting. Added back in as it was: Teeming, Awakened, Encrypted, Shrouded. Added back in redesigned a bit: Beguiling, Explosive. You're welcome, people, as you would enjoy doing keys with the reworked/added and removed affixes. I made keys feel much better.

[@Blind_Smithy]

As prot pala i genuinely dont understand peoples issue with storming, i just eat them so my deeps dont have to dodge and save their cogi loadge

[@brambledraws]

So, with this 'civilian' term, if you do content harder than casual, but not quite mythic raider/3000io type content, does this make you part of the Coast Guard or the Reserves?

[@johnMa7869]

I think they just forgot about mistweaver. Spiteful adds just bring you to half life with one hit on 20+ and you can expect to find the mistweaver always standing right in the middle of the pack. It's way worse for mistweaver than for other heal specs (even hpal can just FaceTank the adds, because do so little dmg to you in comparison)

[@CypherDarkwind]

I don't mind affixes, my problem with keys is the damn timer. I hate feeling time constricted and then people leave when you don't know if you'll time or not

[@Septemberl4d]

I think the best way to have done this would be not in general. Because a Melee, healer, caster, tank and range DPS will look at each of these incredibly differently from each other. For instance as my priest i hated Storming, quaking and Afflicted, but on my Mistweaver i hated Spiteful, Bolster, Sanguine and entangle. Same goes for my Frost mage, i love spiteful since i can lock them down for everyone. The second i play fire and Arcane i hate it with a passion. EDIT: I think for M+ removing affixes could work, but could make it worse. I think it would need to reward you going as high as possible though to make up for the lack of variations affix add. Dorkis idea is the best though. A reward to people who actually do the affix properly is the best way to go!

[@relaxnerd5713]

There was a psychology experiment where they had people sit in a room alone with a button that would ZAP them if they pressed it. They'd leave the people in there for an extended amount of time and most people would touch the button even though they knew it would ZAP them. Humans would rather experience pain than be bored.

[@1guys4eyes]

Some combinations of affixes too definitely changes if its a push week or a shite af week

[@Arti09HS]

Afflicted absolutely causes pugs to look in majority for dispellers. As DH I would spend 30-45 minutes looking for an invite for Affliction weeks compared to 2 minutes outside of that week.

[@pyroclastixx6969]

The absolute worst thing about spiteful is being a stealth class. You cannot get restealths that week at all especially with a tank that chain pulls. It's a lot of damage from an opener you're missing on say... Assassin rogue, no shrouded suffocation, Outlaw you dont get those 2 ambush/dispatch windows, and with feral you dont get your +50% damage opener. It's really a feels bad that they dont despawn the SECOND the last of the pack is dead. Yea keep me focused and run after me but at least make us out of combat unless we're actively getting hit.

[@James-kv3ll]

I’d rather have different dungeons be available each week with the pool changing each season than have affixes. Fixes every problem with affixes and solves the problem affixes are meant to fix.

[@Zulej112]

Hunter does have a massive toolkit for these affixes its just squishy class with no buffs

[@ninjanikstudios2280]

Here’s my take as a casual m+ person who started playing in DF s1. My issue with affixes is they affect the key too much in terms of limiting comps or just being difficult and not fun. There is a way to either make them do positive things or having them be less impactful. The best example I can think of is nightfall strikes in Destiny 1. The modifiers that affected them would change the game a little bit but wouldn’t limit comps or completely change how you played the game (some examples include grounded and the elemental burns. the burns would improve some damage types and grounded increases damage taken while airborne). These modifiers changed how you played the game slightly but not like flipping on its head, like M+ affixes are currently doing. I think they should be less impactful or giving positive effects if dealt with. Here’s how I think each specific one can be dealt with: Spiteful: Less health less damage, as well as not being an enemy to keep you in combat. Possibly killing one restores a small amount of health as well. Volcanic: No change (I play both ranged and melee and I’ve never minded this one) Afflicted: Gives you a small stacking short haste buff if dealt with. Incorporeal: gives you a small stacking short damage buff if dealt with without any cast getting off (minus mind control). Stuns and interrupts should also be able to deal with it better (like 2 interrupts or 1 stun) Bursting: one tick of damage rather than a stacking dot. Possibly a stacking debuff to give it still lethality (like damage taken by bursting increased by 10%) Raging: the enemy who gets soothes deals less damage OR stuns them for a few seconds. Entangling: no change Bolstering: not have it stack between mobs past like 3 Sanguine: changing amount healed to 3% every 2 seconds as opposed to 5% every 1 (and not stack at all) Storming: less time, disappear after 1 hit (although I don’t think this one is that bad)

[@Koella94]

i dont even think there needs to be any negative side to the affixes.. just make them purely positive. that completely eliminates terrible overlaps and unreasonable punishments, because if you ever cant properly deal with an affix, just ignore it and don't get the bonus this time. difficulty is not a problem, key level scales infinitely anyways. getting powerups for interacting with stuff is way more fun than having to do chores to survive. i'll try to give a list of purely positive affixes trying to incorporate your ideas, and give my thoughts in [brackets]: - Spiteful: when the spirit reaches you, it enters your body and unleashes its spite in 3 waves (1 per second). each wave deals AoE damage to your enemies (dmg reduced beyond 5 targets blabla) [this makes the whole group play closer towards melee range and emphasizes active movement towards ghosts] - Volcanic: little puddle on the floor spawning for ranges, you can step on it to "plug" the volcano, making each of your attacks do a small amount of additional fire damage. if you jump while plugging the volcano you get catapulted up [you can use this to dodge mechanics like a DH doublejump / Warrior heroic leap could], the volcano gets deleted and your next ability makes a volcano erupt beneath your target, dealing moderate fire damage and knocking it up. - Affliced: your haste buff idea is good i think. if the afflicted is not dealt with, it just despawns, which means you only lose your opportunity at the haste buff. i do think that every class should be able to deal with afflicted though, so they should be made clickable. and if you click them theres like a 1s channel called "Mend Soul" and then the afflicted is happy and buffs you. - Incorp: same, damage buff is good. no punishment if not dealt with. and it should go away and buff you on 1st kick/cc. - Bursting: you emit a stacking aura of shadowflame damage instead of taking the damage yourself. if you leave combat with bursting still active, the timer on the buff pauses and only resumes 3s after start of the next combat. [let's actually reward players for good play of killing all mobs at the same time instead of disincentivizing it, crazy idea i know] - Raging: at 30% a mob loses its composure, causing it to take 5% additional dmg and be CC'd for 50% longer. - Entangling: the plant doesn't slow you, and dragging it through enemies makes them trip [like shamy's Earthquake] and take 5% additional damage for a few seconds. - Bolstering: you get bolstered, not the enemies. maybe too similar to Bursting, so maybe just remove this affix. - Sanguine: puddles should not stack. standing in them doesnt heal enemies, but increases your damage done by 5% and heals you. but whenever actual healing is done, the puddle gets smaller [so you still want to avoid avoidable damage to not make your dmg zone shrink]. - Storming: storm clouds/zones appear. dragging mobs into them causes lightning to strike them, dealing damage. if a player stands in them, they become a lightning rod, making them deal a moderate amount of lightning damage with each direct attack. i think ive neglected healers quite badly in this list but these were just quick thoughts, im sure they can be iterated upon to create something that's actually fun to play with for everyone in the group.

[@2invidious]

Affixes are actively strangling my want and desire to play this game. There are some weeks i literally just dont play because they arent fun to me. I want to play the game, but dont think its worth the annoyance that the affixes impose.

[@jo1983uk2002]

I play Healer and I will not log in to play when its an afflicted week

[@emimonsterlicious]

That moment when Max has to be reminded that some people are actually out there healing M+ on mistweaver. And thank god ppl have forgotten about them, bc their buffedness for next season seem to be skirting under the radar such that blizzard keeps sweetening the deal.

[@daviddios]

what about not having the same affixes for all the dungeons? e.g. this week BH is storming + raging, but NL is entangling + bolstering etc.

[@13lowup]

I would love if they reworked the affix system and would add the raid affixes from Shadowlands s4. Which actually gave u buffs.

[@08DuRBie80]

The factors that should be considered are 1. too punishing/ impactful 2. Annoying 3. Too easy/ zero impact 4. Does not scale well at high key levels. S tier is for affixes that have none of these issues A tier has one issue B has 2 issues and so on. That's how I would've structured an affix tier list.

[@aaronowens8941]

As a healer, not being able to tab target the Afflicted is awful. If they changed that, then I can manage it myself. Incorporeal is tab targetable.

[@BombsSV]

Sanguine could be OK if adds couldn’t cast in it. That way there would be some playability in keeping a dangerous caster in the sanguine while killing mobs and then moving caster out at the end or something. Just needs some sort of interaction with the mobs that isn’t healing the bejeezus out of them.

[@FoxiestDuck]

I think having a mythic+1 with no timer would maybe help. I know as a casual anxiety player, learning the route/dungeon on the timer, you're just constantly on edge to perform, because even in mythic+2s, people still expect you to be pulling and doing correctly like a KSM player. This would also help on old dungeons that don't have a mythic0 to practice on.

[@mattarium9408]

youve literally just described mythic 0

[@FoxiestDuck]

There's no mythic-0s of the revamps that's on content and when it's on current dungeons, give no rewards past 1 clear(which should be updated at this rate). No ones going to do something that doesn't give rewards. Also M+0s are just treated completely differently by the community.

[@mattarium9408]

@@FoxiestDuck if you're scared of a timer in mythic 2 set a timer yourself in 0 and see if you'd "time" a 0. The game has a stopwatch feature. Revamping 0s because you're anxious over a timer is crazy. Not every key is a winner. Don't worry about other players. When push comes to shove, block / report them or the key gets depleted and you learn why it got depleted and you go at it again

[@simes007us]

Reward dealing with affix's with a buff.

[@BlastaCabbage]

As a tank on sanguine week I avoid frost mages. If affixes were removed it may be less annoying but possibly boring idk

[@superstandardman]

Spiteful is more interactive with ranged than volcanic is with melee. Sometimes a tank will pull the mobs with them down a hallway and spiteful will be in between ranged and mobs.

[@DuckdaringZ]

I'm one of those Mythic+ Dads. Don't care about which week it is at all. Just making sure I have a meta class and can play it decently.

[@garycolber1111]

i use to skip affixes....now i suck it up i have a m+ problem

[@1guys4eyes]

Speaking on scaling especially with adds I hope they pre change Atal to make the adds on all fights in there stop scaling at 20.

[@kasper1241]

Prideful was not just all fun in lower keys. Because it removed your ability to just press W and basically made mdt with weekly dratnos’ routes mandatory

[@GodOfWar05100]

high keys prideful were criminal to heal too

[@Frstypwngaming]

Volcanic is definitely S if you're melee, but F If you're ranged. Bursting just needs to go because making Priests' required for pugs early is insane,

[@davidgreenberg8456]

Incorporeal is so much worse than Afflicted because people use their hard cc on the same target and then the other cast just goes off and you wipe. Especially because they have short cast timers and most of the spells that take care of it have both a cast time and a longer cd.

[@Expression2.0]

Afflicted week is literally such a bar for non-dispel classes when you pug - most groups look for a minimum of 2 dispellers, some want 3 😂 for a 20 key 😂😂😂 it’s just extremely annoying to pug as any class that’s not able to spec into a dispel Also to the point of “oh but a good healer can dispel both solo” - but some keys you need to dispel actual stuff from the boss/pack mechanics and healer can’t afford to dispel afflicted

[@grahamvandyke]

I just got lectured today by a 3700 aug that my take on sanguine being the worst affix was wrong. Pretty confident though if the 4k IO dorki thinks the same way I don't need to change my opinion.

[@rocker1296]

Ey yo, here earlyish

[@Reelyreed]

TBH Criterion would be so perfect in FFXIV if it just gave some gear man. Like there is a timer on Criterion Savage but that is merely for like some flex title and shit. The civilians would be so for it.

[@kristof7707]

spiteful could be something like: spawns mobs wich can be tanked, they do a small aoe dmg on the group(%hp on pulse so it doesnt become retarded on high keys), when they get killed they give 5s cdr for major dps cooldowns for the whole group. anything like that would be fun, but we usually cant have that

[@kokoro9301]

Reaping was thee funnest affix!

[@dewcodered88]

To make Sanguine not a steaming hot pile of trash. Either remove immune to CC/interrupt/movement mobs or make them immune to healing from Sanguine.

[@MUTV2]

5:14 lol so funny and true

[@Frstypwngaming]

I feel like the only way that no-affix keystones would work is if the dungeons were that interesting and had more mechanics to them naturally that spiced it up.

[@Amphroxia]

my list before watching the video: keep in mind that i don't take into account how easy they are to deal with. S: Corporeal (the only affix that has some sort of positive to it by mind controlling it) A: Afflicted (not bad or annoying to deal with and makes runs slightly more interesting) B: Spiteful, Bursting, Entangling (are ok and have certain interactions with certain classes that are interesting) C: Volcanic, Storming (meh, deal with it) F: Bolstering, sanguine, Raging (litteral dogpoop and has no place in the game, serves no purpose)

[@candulimataoo2852]

Sanguine Incorp and Afflicted are the affixes that slow the key the most substantially. I know that Afficled and Incorp are easy to deal with but 1 missed and it’s become a shit show real fast.

[@Amphroxia]

@@candulimataoo2852 true and i totally agree with sanguine. I have not really seen afflicted or corp missed much tbh, but i imagine it happens a lot in lower keys, still think they are better than all other affixes tho, 1 global every minute versus annoying cc immune on mobs that run on low hp or not being able to pull a lot cuz bolstering will fuck you at the end of the pull etc etc. Not saying afflicted and corp are good, but at least better than others.

[@balhatchet]

Summing up things that make affixes worse than others: No agency in dealing with them (classes without dispels, mobs randomly choosing to start casting in sanguine) Forcing you to stop playing the game excessively (volcanic etc) Makes things take longer (mob healing affixes, and high end tyrannical inflating health bars beyond reason imo)

[@thunder9236]

Max, you were talking about me when you said "that dad that plays m+ no matter the affix". I got 2 kids under 3 years old and I don't care about the affix, I'm playing the game. Entangling is annoying but incorporeal is my least favorite, pug groups struggle like 50% of the time.

[@dillanpickett9023]

I'm just going to leave this here. Anytime a player has to change targets to deal with an affix, it sucks. If we can just play the game and deal with annoyances that just happen, like sanguine or bolstering its fine. Edit - or waste a GCD on an affix...we should never have to waste GCD's to deal with an affix. Edit2 - Sanguine fix each pool can only heal x amount of hp like 200k hp and shrinks as it gets used up.

[@Londonne3]

51:45 im one of those players. I want more fun variety in dungeons through rares and stuff like waycrest manor and people to not just hate it because its slower. unironically i liked the idea of teeming but everyone hated it because it was harder to plan around and slow.

[@flix5668]

people hate waycrest because you can't see shit for 90% of the dungeon, not because it's slow

[@3allz]

They should just remove all affix's imo. We all know they were brought in to add some variety to a static dungeon pool, which is no longer the case. Increase the HP/Damage of mobs at the same key level if they want it to be just as challenging - or just leave it as it is and expect more people are gonna push higher keys. Remove all of them and just add a seasonal affix back for level 14/16 or higher - seasonal affix's that people actually liked and were fun/beneficial.

[@Palefox11]

Most just need tuning and blizz ignores it.

[@Etensei]

Sanguine is giga dog ass because a cringe mob can just most of the times I run a sanguine key there is a mob that casts an unkickable ability thats like 20 seconds long and just perma stands in it and heals to full.