Mythic Plus Dungeons and Affixes in Dragonflight

Mythic+ Dungeons in Dragonflight

Mythic+ dungeons are not exactly a new system in the game at this point, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t new players coming in, or people who have never dipped their toes into the endgame PvE content and might need a little guide to help them get started, we’ve all started somewhere. So, keeping that in mind, we’re gonna go through the basics first before getting into the changes that Dragonflight implemented. This article was written during the first mythic season of the expansion, so some of this information may change.

Mythic dungeons are a set of dungeons (8 as of this point in the expansion) that you can run repeatedly, each time you run them your objective is to beat a timer, and each time you beat this timer your keystone will level up. Your keystone is the item you use to start the mythic+ runs and the higher its level, the more difficult the dungeon is going to be. Keystones also only work for a specific dungeon and once you complete that dungeon, it’ll randomly change to one of the 8 dungeons -this may include the one you just did-.

Now that you know all of this, we’re gonna talk about affixes. The affixes are a system in the mythic+ dungeons that will gradually add more and more difficulty to the runs depending on your keystone level, giving you one affix at level 2+, 2 affixes at level 4+, 3 affixes at level 7+ and finally 4 affixes at level 10+. In Dragonflight the fourth affix will always be the seasonal affix, but the other 3 will be different depending on the week.

The affixes that you will encounter are:

At level 2 and up you’ll encounter either of these as a first affix:

• Fortified: Non-boss enemies have 20% more health and inflict up to 30% more damage. For these weeks it’s best to take it slow, kite enemies and use as much CC and AOE damage as possible.
• Tyrannical: Bosses have 30% more health. Bosses and their minions will inflict up to 15% more damage. For these weeks you might want to make sure you have a cooldown or two saved up to make it through the fight.

At level 4 and up dungeons will have either of these as a second affix:

• Raging: Non-boss enemies enrage at 30% health remaining, dealing 50% increased damage until defeated. For raging weeks it’s best to focus priority targets in fights and avoid AOE damage, bringing a class that can dispel enrage is also a good practice.
• Bursting: When slain, non-boss enemies explode, causing all players to suffer damage over 4 sec. This effect stacks. For these weeks it is recommended not to do big pulls, time the kills of mobs and bring dispellers too. Immunity abilities can clean off the debuff too.
• Sanguine: When slain, non-boss enemies leave behind a lingering pool of ichor that heals their allies and damages players. On Sanguine weeks it’s a good practice to kill mobs quickly and move them outside of the paths you need, or away from bosses.
• Spiteful: Fiends rise from the corpses of non-boss enemies and pursue random players. These shades can be CC’d so it’s best to slow them down and move away from them when they spawn, as they lose health over time but can prove to be deadly.
• Bolstering: When any non-boss enemy dies, its death cry empowers nearby allies, temporarily increasing their maximum health by 15% and damage by 20%. This buff lasts 20 seconds and only applies to enemies in combat, but it does stack. Not pulling too many adds at a time and making sure not to bring them into boss fights is a good way to deal with it.

Mythic+ Affixes in Dragonflight

At level 7 and up you’ll encounter a third affix in the form of:

• Quaking: Periodically, all players emit a shockwave, inflicting damage and interrupting nearby allies. This one can be easily controlled by keeping away from other party members.
• Grievous: Injured players suffer increasing damage over time until healed. This one’s particularly nasty, especially against mobs that do AOE damage, so avoiding being hit is a priority on these weeks.
• Volcanic: While in combat, enemies periodically cause gouts of flame to erupt beneath the feet of distant players. This one can be easily controlled by positioning every party member close to the fights and keeping pulls under control.
• Storming: While in combat, enemies periodically summon damaging whirlwinds. This one is particularly hard for melee classes, so keeping pulls small is a good way to keep it in check.
• Explosive: While in combat, enemies periodically summon Explosive Orbs that will detonate if not destroyed. This one’s another that can be easily controlled by keeping pulls small, also you can be out of line-of-sight to protect yourself from it. But do be careful since the explosions do 50% of your max HP.

At level 10 comes the seasonal affix (This is a new Dragonflight mechanic):

• Thundering: Enemies have 5% more health. While in combat, players are periodically overcharged with primal power from Raszageth's unending storm. This power comes with great risk, and failure to discharge it quickly can have stunning consequences.

The Thundering affix is Dragonlight’s first seasonal affix, which will be in every week as the fourth affix from any +10 dungeon and above. This one affix is a little different from previous ones in the sense that if handled properly (And with a little practice), it can be much more beneficial than detrimental to your dungeon runs. It also comes with quite a few moving parts, so we’ll get into a more detailed explanation of how it works.

Every 75 seconds the affix will kick in, spawning multiple circles on the ground that will stun you for a second and deal damage. Once the circles are gone, each party member will receive the primal overlord buff, giving them a 30% increase in outgoing healing and damage. However, the players will also be marked with either the Mark of Lightning or the Mark of Wind, always having 2 of one and three of the other. These marks can be cleansed by walking close to a party member with the opposite mark within those 15 seconds, giving the remaining party member the 15 seconds of increased damage or healing. The tricky bit is if you miss the 15 second window, every party member that still has a mark will be stunned for 5 seconds and take a large amount of damage.

This new affix introduces a debuff management aspect to the runs, that can be exploited by skilled players to maximize their damage output and clear the dungeons quicker, but it also adds an extra element to keep track of that can be devastating to inexperienced players. As you may have imagined, certain combinations of these affixes can be particularly difficult to deal with, and even the veterans will have a hard time getting through the dungeons during these weeks.

Mythic+ Dungeons in Dragonflight

A good way to get around the skill gap presented by these new changes is to run with a professional team, like the ones that work with us at Mythic Boost. This way you can learn the routes, how to deal with affix combinations and the way the most experienced players tackle their classes. Or you can also book a session with one of our PvE coaches that can help you get acquainted with the best practices for your class, team compositions, best-in-slot gear, addons, particularly difficult mechanics and anything else you might want to know.

Of course, all of this hard work is not just for the fun of the challenge, Mythic+ dungeons are a very efficient way to gear up your toons, and Dragonflight has brought a change that will make the process even better. Previously, the way loot worked in mythic+ is that you’d get the drops at the end of the dungeon -or from the weekly vault- and those pieces of gears could be improved or ranked up with a currency called Valor. This hasn’t changed at, what has changed though is that starting February 14th, 2023 the weekly cap on valor will be removed, doing away with the need to be playing every single week as to not fall behind, and giving you the chance to farm as much as you need when you have the free time to do so. The higher ranks of these gear upgrades are blacked behind a minimum rating required, but another change that the expansion brought was that dungeons from level 10 and up have an increased rating gain.

Dragonflight also shook things up a bit with balance changes on previous classes, some nerfs and buffs on affixes, and adding a whole new class to the game, the Evoker. The Evoker has two specializations that work in a hybrid manner, the Preservation Evoker being a direct heal/damage mitigation healer with a big utility kit at its disposal, and the Devastation Evoker being a burst damage DPS with a similar access to the same utility kit.

Overall, these changes have been a fresh breath of air from the previous model of keeping the players locked in time-gated mechanics, making them have to come back every week to grind out what was needed regardless of their work-life balance. Which I’m sure a lot of us are very thankful for, I know I am.

This might be a lot of information to digest in one go, but you really don’t have to do that. If you’re more of a learn-by-doing kind of person, you have come to the right place, just check out our store and I’m sure you’ll be running dungeons like a pro in the blink of an eye.

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