THANK YOU GROWL! Yes most of my guild is in the GetWeeklyKeysDoneForVault bucket and we "participate" in the bad weeks but we do NOT enjoy them. They suck the fun out of our mplus nights. Growl == man of the people. (step aside Dratnos)
This Soooo much!! Hearing people the last few days just state ‘People doing lower keys enjoy the impact of affixes’ was so annoying like no they are not fun.. even in lower keys
@@michaelmoran2125 A lot of us enjoy raid, large scale group PvE content, and WoW does this better than anything. However if you are not a CE raider the easiest, and best way to get gear to help you do those raids is M+. So, we do that to support the part of play we really want to do. And for us the affixes just make a boring part of the game frustrating more so than anything else. Maybe if there were no affixes we might start enjoying that part more. Hard to tell cause there's no way to test that. I must admit that I've had more fun doing more difficult dungeons these season with less affixes.
Growl being for the people! Also great points from everyone @42 min - there is way to much going on in individual packs. DRAT nailing it with the bfa UR example.
Growl is totally correct about the affix thing. Its about fun. Positive affixes would be just fun for the lower key playerbase, while changing almost nothing for the high key players because they are going to optimize everything around it anyways.
I love listening to Growl's takes because even though he is a very high end player, I feel like he understands the points of view from the different "tiers" of players who do keys.
Growl was spot on regarding the lower end M+ changes. Just because we participate week on week, doesn't mean we like affixes... If that's blizzards conclusion I'm a bit worried for the future. My personal best solution is, remove affixes except fort/tyran, then add all the good seasonals - have 1 seasonal per week. The point of affixes is for each week to be different. Prideful, awakened, encrypted etc makes us approach each dungeon differently in a much more fun way than bolstering, sanguine, bursting etc.
Yep, everybody just talks about how prideful scaled to be too difficult on high keys with ramping dmg etc., but from my experience in pug keys, the biggest issue with that affix was always the 20% trash count break point, when you would accidentally spawn prideful in the middle of the pull, which was difficult enough on its own.
As a low key pusher and purist noob the affixes also don’t impact me positively either. Ion is worried that we would be bored without them but I don’t know anyone who thinks that way
14:00 When you're in a PUG, and you're not OUTGEARING the content, and it's the early weeks when most people have 0 dungeon KNOWLEDGE. All of these things compound to be a much more difficult experience and then you throw in some garbage affix like bolstering or raging that absolutely makes a difference and is a huge negative to the experience.
As a person that does keys to fill my vault and usually stop around a +10. I'm not too fond of affixes and neither is most of my guild. The fact that Blizzard thinks people enjoy them shows how out of touch they are with that player base.
I agree but im also not too happy with this key squish cause playing alts is practically out of the question for me because my motivation has kind of gone out the window doing keys on my main and spending 2+ hrs finding groups that will take me only to spend 10 minutes in a key and because we had one wipe the key is over and everyone leaves. so id like to see the key squish reverted but yeah affixes are not fun at all especially when you have the affixes+ all the mechanics in a key rather it be from bosses or to the trash packs you pull. It also felt like a jab at the casual M+ players who would just do low keys for fun or just kind of have something to do on alts to gear but now doing M0 is more brutal that playing an alt is pretty much pointless atleast imo which could just be coming from my motivation drop off since the season started.
I mean I also do around 10s and just fill vault but I enjoy affixes. No affixes would be so boring. Doing an uldaman for the 70th time the exact same way would be brain rot inducing almost.
Bolstering and Bursting are actually huge issue in mid keys. Not every group is made of Meta or plan every single pull and CDs before starting the run. Even if you have a priest in your PuG for mass dispel, the CD may not be up for 2nd or 3rd pull. And PuGs hardly focus on biggest HP mob in the group and that ends up getting Bolstered. High key runs have all this sorted out and their "inconvenience" is they either have to alter their route and pulls or in some cases do one or two smaller pulls.
I got an idea. They should add a checkbox that you can tick when you are starting M+ key. It's called E-Sports Mode. So, if you tick it, you get what they are designing right now an E-Sport Dungeon, but if you don't tick it, you get the same thing, only trash does half of mechanics, literally half of the stuff trash does is disabled and if you want to go past +10, well they my friend you are an E-Sports gamer, so that checkbox is no longer optional, enjoy. I think that would rise participation so much and make dungeons so much more fun, for PuGs and people looking to have a good time and not a sweaty time.
I know Growl is a homie so he'll usually be on from time to time. But I feel like he should be on at least like once a month. The peeps in the comments seem to feel similarly. He brings good vibes and has good takes. Another great episode tho!
Max and Dratnos suggesting that people who run lower keys "enjoy affixes" is one of the nuttiest takes lol.. Remember when we talk low keys, I'm willing to bet most of those groups are PUGS with no coordination whatsoever lol. There's a reason on the pug scene for a long time people considered keys to infact get easier the higher you go (like once you broke through an old 15 the ksm range) because the players you pug with actually wanna game lol.
I've played 3 expansions worth of M+ with a group that struggled to hit Keystone Master seasonly (old +15). Growl has been the first I heard describe exactly how, as a "average" m+, I feel about Affixes. You don't need to have vamperic cause a key to deplete to be annoying when it resets a mob.
The game would be a lot better if Blizzard actually tuned classes on not just their raid performance but their M+ one as well. Like it's crazy that some classes/specs are still target capped to FIVE. If you ever pull 2 packs in m+, there's a high probability that it's going to be more than 5 mobs. I also wish M+ was more about damage than surviving, obviously you would reach that point eventually in an infinitely scaling system but I would rather it be "we need to more damage" than "we need the class with 6 defensives to time this key" because damage isn't really much of a factor.
how does max not see that mythic plus is not made for the "99%" (as he repeatedly claimed) of all players. There are a shit ton of players which do +10s (higher keys) and above and get absolutely nothing for it, neither tuning nor rewards. Affixes feel shit for those players too, not just the 1% which do +20 keys. It feels shit when a mob doesn't move for 20 sec and is just bathing in sanguine (oaks in BH). Just because a handful of players do mythic raiding (0.1% kill the last boss on mythic) doesn't mean there is also a small amount of players which do higher mythic plus keys. Dorki even told max that there are definitely more high m+ players than mythic raider but he just completely ignored it...
I’m using m+ stats. Top .1% of keys in s3 were around a 27 and the 1% was around a 22 or 23 so a 12 or 13 now. Things scaling out of control are literally a 1% problem not to say that it should or shouldn’t be addressed my opinion on that doesn’t matter.
@@Xynth25 Honestly I’m impressed with the work they did to survival. I just feel that with prepatch 4-5 weeks away, they will need time to do tuning before launch without focusing on major talent changes. I don’t see shaman getting anything unless the big notes hit next week
What if we turn tyrannical and fortified on their heads. Make it x% damage increase to boss/non-boss enemies. The boon decreases incrementally by key level down to either a minimum or just zero, leaving you with the dungeon as it is. Could be applied to another affix tier, too, imo.
While I mostly agree with the defensive overload of the game, I wonder if defensives help decrease the toxicity of the game. If someone dies with a defensive unused, perhaps the thought I could have lived decreases the need to blame the healer or tank.
Remove : - depletion - timer - +2 +3 key upgrade As long as you complete they % and kill all the bosses you get the loot and +1 key lvl ***(this only apply to keys lvl lower then 11, where rewards stops) *** Keep : - affixes - difficulty - experiment with seasonal affixes and keep the best ones for the future.
What if every affix you complete a key on gives you some rating. So you have rating from Tyran and fort but you also get a little m+ rating for best your key done on bursting or bolstering etc.. you would still have push weeks for the big rating jumps but also making sure you have keys done on raging would play a roll.
I think Dratnos hit the nail on the head with the one simple statement, "The affixes are not fun when whatever your doing is a progression key." Blizzard misses the mark with participation, and things not affecting low keys etc. At some point in every players journey for their personal skill level, they get to a key that is a progression key for them. And that is when Affixes are just unfun. The only reason we hear about this more from people that "Push keys" is because they are ALWAYS doing a progression key. And the only reason people not pushing keys don't complain is they have opted out of it entirely because they don't want to deal with it. So they just don't do progression keys at all. By design this makes 0 sense for Blizzard. You want people to log in to play the game and try new content. Well progression by default is new content. That's why there's the differentiation between Progression and Farm. And mythic plus is infinite new content because you can always get to new progression content. Why design a system which intentionally makes you not want to participate in it and attempt new things? No matter how you look at it that's just bad game design because it encourages not playing and participating in the game and trying new content. If I were to fix it personally I have my own opinions but I wouldn't elaborate those here cause no one cares.
I think Growls choose your affix idea is incredible when it comes to choosing the damage type affix, that helps meta gate keeping so much. But the on death affix would just be whatever is easiest
Proposed: Sanguine is a heavy DR but also applies to players. Raging also enrages its target (tank, usually, but...). Bursting also puts the dot on the enemies. Bolstering increases damage by 5% for players. Storming silences enemies when they are in the tornado. Even if the mechanics of an affix are annoying, if they are useful too, they become a strategy. I think 100% of players would like that change, and it's definitely more fun, so why the fuck are we so stubborn about making m+ mechanics annoying af?
I think the more important issue is the way dungeons are scaling. The limiting factor shouldn’t be living oneshots but doing enough damage to make it in time. Then it wouldn’t be as punishing to try a higher key or it wouldn’t be endless wiping when you fail, you would still feel like you can play the game. When it’s crazy oneshots in every single pack that needs 100% coordination to live the game just doesn’t let you play it.
The FOTM reroll question I'll say this: IF you are good at the game, there is no reason you need to reroll, however if you are not good at the game (and you need to be honest to yourself) then you are going to have a much easier time by playing good specs. The reason is percentages, it's very simple. If FOTM spec is capable of doing 100k dps and your spec is only capable of doing 80k DPS, but you personally are only able to play them at around a 60-70% effectiveness, then well, if you swapped to the FOTM spec you are going to be almost performing at maximum of the spec you are currently playing while performing at just above a mere 50% of what the FOTM spec is capable of by playing your current spec. Even if you are good and capable of performing at 90%+ you will of course still do more by also swapping to FOTM, you can just more easily get away with staying on the poorer class because you can get the same performance out of it that weaker players on FOTM can bring. Ok?
I think something that would help in pushing people towards trying higher content and also breaking up the meta. A honestly super simple change on Blizzards end -- Is making the Title cutoffs based on your Class. It literally would just require them slightly tweaking their database algorithm that determines the winners to include the Class. That would immediately improve player engagement because you wouldn't feel like if your spec or class isn't meta that there is no point in even trying.
I feel like the biggest problem with M+ is that keys deplete after just 1 try. They could maybe try one season where keys deplete after 3 tries (3 charges on your key) and see what happens. It would take them like 5 minutes to implement technically and, while possibly not the optimal solution, is ultimately overwhelmingly better than what we have now. It would diminish M+ toxicity (especially in pugs) and would feel much more fair. To me, a lot of the problems that M+ has (including overall bad affix design) would be a lot of more bearable if you could just try again after you fail.
about what growl said for low key ppl and affix, im pretty sur the big affix that reduced significantly participation even in lower key was necrotic, that why they romoved it amongst the first one.
I'm gonna be honest, I think Max misread the comments on raid buffs from the interview. All they said was basically "we aren't adding something right now but we want every class represented in raid" and not "we don't want to add a raid buff for shamans or DK specifically because it would be too restrictive"
Replace fort/tyran with 2 different affixes each season and get rid of all others. Solves the whole push week conundrum and keeps variety. Allows you to go crazy with affixes if you want because you need both for score anyway. You could throw things like reaping or even huge positive affixes into the mix. Stop scaling damage as hard as health and that solves the augmentation problem. Either hard cap damage at a really high level or change it to 10/15 scaling.
Personally, I really like the Incopral affix. It takes a really low amount of effort and focus, and high communication teams can have just 2 dedicated players to deal with it, while random pugs can just have 4-5 player yolo it. also, u can always silence or stun to buy time if something goes wrong.
Not to compare the cats against one another but it’s crazy how much more insightful growl is. Dorky is a chill MFer and great member of the poddy, but man I love having growl around for large M+ changes
Portals being the final reward from m+ feels so weird cause after the season ends they pretty much lose all usefulness. You push to get portals for keys and once you finally get all your 10's, your only reward is to do more keys
The one size fits all solutions are the only solutions that won’t feel bad though. I don’t care how high a key you can do without having to play around the same affixes I do. I do not think m+ needs to be balanced off of content creators. These ideas feel like how can they make the mdi even less relevant than it already is. If I was a streamer I’d be worried about playing without the same conditions the lower players play with.
Here's a cook for giving a "ramp" to incentivize going high in keys as well as decrease the dilemma of the higher key you go the less crests you get in average. Get 5 crests upon successful key completion and 0 if you deplete, then get a bonus crest for every key level regardless if you time. If you timed a +7 you would get 12 crests, and if you failed but completed a +10 you would get 10 crests. This still gives an incentive for timing while also giving an incentive to stretch your skill and push higher up to your skill level, and if you go too far and fail it's not a waste of time.
As someone who's mainly been playing low keys on alts this season, Tyrannical feels bad at low keys for different reasons than high keys. The problem is that trash mobs just die so quickly at low keys that a lot of classes just don't really get to play the game properly. If you're playing a destro warlock or balance druid or fire mage or any spec that has ramp time, you might as well not even be there for the trash pulls in those dungeons. What I would like to see happen with fort and tyrannical is that every week just has the fortified HP modifier, and the only difference is the amount of damage done by trash/bosses.
If they know most casts will get through cause you cant stun them, they can tune it so the casts aren't lethal. They wont get it right at first, but stuff worked this way for a long time before they changed it. That's part of the reason trash does so much now, is they let you stop so many casts with stops. Without that they can start to see what they need to tone down. Max mentioned on a prior stream a dungeon where you couldn't stop anything and then see how they design, their current philosophy is the partial approach to that where they can take a look and tone down. It'll take time but it can work
I would like you to answer. “What you’ll limit a key from being pushed higher?” A lot of the problems you guys bring up come when you push higher and higher keys. Like, “they should make some spells that don’t kill you so you don’t have to interrupt” At some key level everything will kill you.
I do wonder why they haven't considered splitting the kiss / curse aspects of the new affixes. It removes the need for the additional annoying aspects of bolstering etc. and incentivises more class / spec representation at lower key levels. It also avoids making routing at these levels more complicated to avoid especially difficult packs of mobs. Something that puts off a lot of new tanks.
bring back challenge mode transmogs as a reward for encouraging higher level m+. complete all dungeons on a +10 for portals, complete them all on a +15 for a sick transmog (not just a recolor of the current season tier set)
They need to make interrupts like dispels. If you do not actually interrupt a cast with it, it should not go on CD. Think of how awesome that would be for pugging or any non-commed M+.
I have been saying this since this E-Sport M+ design started, where every stupid trash mob does 3 things. Interrupts go on full CD only if the interrupted something otherwise they incur a GCD. Would improve PuGing so much for everyone.
I hard agree with the interrupt changes and here's why - Actual spells and actual interrupts are what players should be managing. The game was designed around melee having a kick and that being the control mechanism. Having a kick should be the valuable utility, not the FOTM aoe CC of choice. The gross propagation of AOE CC stops forced Blizzard to design challenges for that metagame. Nerfing stops means they balance around the nerfed stops, which means a softer coggy load for everyone. Obviously, they couldn't leave it balanced the same as it is now, where they're needed, that would be big dumb. Removing parry is like saying casters should always cast while moving. Roles have pros and cons, we need to stop trying to make everything "fair", it's not supposed to be.
I truly don't understand why everyone seems to want healing to be boring. Heals feeling powerful is awesome, and healing through huge damage spikes makes you feel like a god. Why would you not want that? Healing right now is really good.
Cap M+ level somewhere and let better times give you more score. Non pushers will have a goal and pushers will have a reason to keep playing/pushing without frustration of insta dying because blizzard can actually balance the dungeons with a specific end point
I need to get the misconception that low key pushers like affixes out of the way. There are some people who like them sure, but I don’t think a single person in my guild or friend group likes affixes and we run 6-10 (15-20) range. The affixes that cause problems for low keys they mention is correct, but stop saying the casual audience likes affixes, it’s not a wide spread take in my experience.
I feel like it they just gave melee like a 1% damage buff for hitting a target from behind, and removed parry, it would still incentivise the play behavior they want and make it less disastrous when you cant hit a target from the back
Casual players don't usually want difficult content. The idea that we're getting a bunch of defensive tools is just silly, because that implies that we're getting difficult content that we need them for. In other words, the casual players can't possibly be the target of these defensives. I do think some amount of self healing is useful for solo content, but not defensives.
Im not a casual player but I would argue more people want no affixes then those who do want them. If you remove affixes for high key players low key players will also want the option to do that. Just from talking with the more casual people in my guild after they announced the affix changes literally everyone I talked to wants affixes just removed entirely, affixes are not enjoyable and don't make dungeons interesting they instead make them irritating. My group currently is in the 14-16 range depending on the dungeon and affixes right now make me not want to push keys because the higher we go the more important each dungeon mechanic is but the affixes force you to play around them to the point where the dungeon is not even about the dungeon anymore its about how well your group is built to deal with the affixes that week and that applies to all keys from like 10+. I don't think its just a uber high end problem I think affixes have just become more important then the dungeons themselves outside of niche situations. If blizzard wants to make people less picky and to feel like they can play whatever they want a better idea would be to move the rewards like title cutoffs to a spec leaderboard instead of a global leaderboard. Its just not reasonable for blizzard to be able to make everyone viable in a given season even with the given affixes and they don't actually make people feel good they isntead make people feel bad that doing M+ this week is going to just be objectively harder for them.
As someone who mostly pugs his way to 2.5k rating, I can honestly say that affixes feel the best the least you have to think about them. Like tyrannical and fortified are mostly fine, but bursting? I hate that thing with all my life, sometimes it makes keys feel really miserable. I know I'm not a super great player, but if it were for me, I'd either remove all affixes, or just leave tyr and fort, I'm not doing kyes because I find them awesomely fun, I'm doing them because I want to fill my vault and get better gear. With interviews given I feel like the optics are backwards, let "casual" m+ players play the dungeon to get the gear, no affixes or just the base ones, and tune the dungeons to be appropriately challenging, on the other hand, leave the affixes to the hardcore m+ players so they can have an additional layer of difficulty. If that makes for people gearing too fast, or being "done" with the system, then great, that'll either give you more time to play something else, or give you more time to work on alts
30:11 On the rewards that could incentivize long term play; Challenge mode armor sets/ unique art assets. These are incredibly potent when done well and hard to obtain. Mop's class armors stood out with special animations during spell casts. It was like the Mage Tower. It is something challenging that is a step beyond the curve. It was something that top players could fight for leaderboards, sell services, show off etc. The key to this working is the exclusive art. It can't just be the red version of your already green armor.
I think the thing with affixes is that while having them change things up in dungeons from week to week is a nice philosophy the current reality is removing the affixes would be an overall improvement over leaving them as is. So while yea having good affixes to make things interesting can be the goal it's basically at a point of perfection being the enemy of progress.
It's true that participation metrics aren't enough data to indicate whether affixes are working well or not, but neither is Twitch chat. One thing people need to be conscious of is that streamers' audiences are going to be giving them biased takes. The fact that they are participating in chat already means they are a non-average player, and then they are also more likely to parrot streamer takes back at them because streamers are charismatic and people listen to them.
In regards to incentivizing pushing higher keys than the rewards, i dont think the issue is they dont exist, the issue is that blizzard walks back all of their attempts. For example when m+ started, rewards stopped at 10, but you could earn an achievment (and realm first!) for a +15, meaning there was some reason to go beyond. Then the next season, they upped the cap to 15 for rewards, but had to make it "easy" to get. They see sawed this for a long time until they landed in portals, which was a prestige reward and was amazing as a push goal. Then as dragonflight progressed portals lost prestige meaning. Like in season one, portals where at 20 but the world top keys where like 25. Now at season 3/4 portals are 10/20 , but highest caliber keys are 21/31, essentially s1 delta twice over. I personally think that portals should be mythic raid difficulty, and if you *can* do portals, the "title" keys should only be like 3-4 levels higher, and this would spread out the goals of m+, while having some sort of aspirational goals for each level (normal raid = 2k io mount, heroic = 2500 or w/e for hero, portals = mythic prog/CE, title = HoF)
good episode guys! i think this is my second or third time hearing about the interview. I watched the ones Dratnos did and read about half of it as well. i don't even do m+ but it's fun to hear people talking about it haha.
If bosses have a five percent chance to parry just remove it and give all melee attacks 5% extra damage when you're behind the boss. Same positive with no negative.
My hot take for affixes is to basically bring back shrouded, except every enemy gives you a little bit of stat, have lieutenant mobs give disproportionately more to incentivize people fighting the bigger trash in dungeons, and get variety by having the stat getting boosted rotate from week to week. So on haste week, the best class will be different from mastery week
It's weird to say that no depletes would get boring. People play the exact same 7-8 maps in CS every single day for literally years with next to zero gameplay changes and it still fun. Yea, its pvp, but its a similar situation.
In M+, people are aiming for rank 1 and that creates a Meta, but it would also be awesome if there were some Class Rank 1s or Spec Rank 1s. Being Season 2 Rank 1 Survival would be awesome. People wouldn't feel so much like playing their main was meaningless.
I'm glad Max highlighted the fact that there are some classes that have more than one raid buff while shamans only have a single spec with something that is wanted in a raid. The goal from Blizzard of having class representation is good, but they need to normalize their design and fix this issue. Let every class have one buff or otherwise 'required' utility, and have it be class wide. Anything that is 'required' should not be stuck on a specific spec, and classes having more than one thing ala Devo and Ret aura, should be pruned.
Growl's comments on M+ and fun are so based. He needs to be on every PoddyC. He brings in such a good sentiment for the broader player base.
Common growl W
Common groWl
would happily have him over dorki who doesn’t seem to understand anything or even know what’s going on most of the time lol
Dorki is literally a joke on the podcast they should have had growl as the third from the start
I wanna be clear I love Dorki's insights too. I really like Growl too! I like lots of things. There can be many good things!
Growl needs to be on more often. This show needs a healer perspective.
What’s a healer
im impressed 2 episodes in row with people that heal.
Growl who
I thought Growl was a Fire Mage now.
Somebody that has to do everything @Michael-bu7ni
Growl has good takes, you can tell he's highly skilled at fire mage.
THANK YOU GROWL! Yes most of my guild is in the GetWeeklyKeysDoneForVault bucket and we "participate" in the bad weeks but we do NOT enjoy them. They suck the fun out of our mplus nights.
Growl == man of the people. (step aside Dratnos)
100% this
This is war!
This Soooo much!! Hearing people the last few days just state ‘People doing lower keys enjoy the impact of affixes’ was so annoying like no they are not fun.. even in lower keys
Man call are wild why you playing a game that's not fun. Even the worst affixes as a healer I had fun.
@@michaelmoran2125 A lot of us enjoy raid, large scale group PvE content, and WoW does this better than anything. However if you are not a CE raider the easiest, and best way to get gear to help you do those raids is M+. So, we do that to support the part of play we really want to do. And for us the affixes just make a boring part of the game frustrating more so than anything else. Maybe if there were no affixes we might start enjoying that part more. Hard to tell cause there's no way to test that. I must admit that I've had more fun doing more difficult dungeons these season with less affixes.
Dratnos embracing the bit is the most dratnos bit dratnos could do
How much bit can dratnos bit if dratnos could bit dratnos?
Growl being for the people! Also great points from everyone @42 min - there is way to much going on in individual packs. DRAT nailing it with the bfa UR example.
Growl is totally correct about the affix thing. Its about fun. Positive affixes would be just fun for the lower key playerbase, while changing almost nothing for the high key players because they are going to optimize everything around it anyways.
I love listening to Growl's takes because even though he is a very high end player, I feel like he understands the points of view from the different "tiers" of players who do keys.
Growl was spot on regarding the lower end M+ changes. Just because we participate week on week, doesn't mean we like affixes... If that's blizzards conclusion I'm a bit worried for the future. My personal best solution is, remove affixes except fort/tyran, then add all the good seasonals - have 1 seasonal per week. The point of affixes is for each week to be different. Prideful, awakened, encrypted etc makes us approach each dungeon differently in a much more fun way than bolstering, sanguine, bursting etc.
Thank you Growl. Prideful in pugs was fucking stupid and I feel like max and dratnos just never had the pug experience
Whats so stupid is they easily could have made it a banger fun affix if they just reduced its health by like 70%
Growl is a man of the people
Yep, everybody just talks about how prideful scaled to be too difficult on high keys with ramping dmg etc., but from my experience in pug keys, the biggest issue with that affix was always the 20% trash count break point, when you would accidentally spawn prideful in the middle of the pull, which was difficult enough on its own.
Growl is so spot on... I love his takes and he represents the common player in a critical way.
As a low key pusher and purist noob the affixes also don’t impact me positively either. Ion is worried that we would be bored without them but I don’t know anyone who thinks that way
They already make spell effects almost impossible to see. That should be enough.
Brilliant episode! Basing this on Dratnos being the first thing on screen.
14:00 When you're in a PUG, and you're not OUTGEARING the content, and it's the early weeks when most people have 0 dungeon KNOWLEDGE. All of these things compound to be a much more difficult experience and then you throw in some garbage affix like bolstering or raging that absolutely makes a difference and is a huge negative to the experience.
You TELL em
This is easily my favorite WoW podcast out of all of them currently still going.
Dratnos is a big reason.
Growl continues to be my favorite content creator around WoW. He’s just so based
(1) make affixes optional
(2) make affixes increase crests and flightstones
Really loved Growl's takes and the way he talks. Give us more Growl!!
I appreciate Growl so much. He is a High M+'er but really understands the casual player and the low key player.
As a person that does keys to fill my vault and usually stop around a +10. I'm not too fond of affixes and neither is most of my guild. The fact that Blizzard thinks people enjoy them shows how out of touch they are with that player base.
I agree but im also not too happy with this key squish cause playing alts is practically out of the question for me because my motivation has kind of gone out the window doing keys on my main and spending 2+ hrs finding groups that will take me only to spend 10 minutes in a key and because we had one wipe the key is over and everyone leaves. so id like to see the key squish reverted but yeah affixes are not fun at all especially when you have the affixes+ all the mechanics in a key rather it be from bosses or to the trash packs you pull. It also felt like a jab at the casual M+ players who would just do low keys for fun or just kind of have something to do on alts to gear but now doing M0 is more brutal that playing an alt is pretty much pointless atleast imo which could just be coming from my motivation drop off since the season started.
I mean I also do around 10s and just fill vault but I enjoy affixes. No affixes would be so boring. Doing an uldaman for the 70th time the exact same way would be brain rot inducing almost.
Bolstering and Bursting are actually huge issue in mid keys. Not every group is made of Meta or plan every single pull and CDs before starting the run. Even if you have a priest in your PuG for mass dispel, the CD may not be up for 2nd or 3rd pull. And PuGs hardly focus on biggest HP mob in the group and that ends up getting Bolstered.
High key runs have all this sorted out and their "inconvenience" is they either have to alter their route and pulls or in some cases do one or two smaller pulls.
I got an idea. They should add a checkbox that you can tick when you are starting M+ key. It's called E-Sports Mode. So, if you tick it, you get what they are designing right now an E-Sport Dungeon, but if you don't tick it, you get the same thing, only trash does half of mechanics, literally half of the stuff trash does is disabled and if you want to go past +10, well they my friend you are an E-Sports gamer, so that checkbox is no longer optional, enjoy. I think that would rise participation so much and make dungeons so much more fun, for PuGs and people looking to have a good time and not a sweaty time.
I know Growl is a homie so he'll usually be on from time to time. But I feel like he should be on at least like once a month. The peeps in the comments seem to feel similarly. He brings good vibes and has good takes. Another great episode tho!
See you trying to steal my PoDios joke Max O-O
But really Love ya guys easily the best WoW podcast out there!
Magnolia Pfp!? Based.
For us in the trenches bursting is far worse than the others, except for a few situations such as bolstering in everbloom.
Max and Dratnos suggesting that people who run lower keys "enjoy affixes" is one of the nuttiest takes lol.. Remember when we talk low keys, I'm willing to bet most of those groups are PUGS with no coordination whatsoever lol. There's a reason on the pug scene for a long time people considered keys to infact get easier the higher you go (like once you broke through an old 15 the ksm range) because the players you pug with actually wanna game lol.
I've played 3 expansions worth of M+ with a group that struggled to hit Keystone Master seasonly (old +15). Growl has been the first I heard describe exactly how, as a "average" m+, I feel about Affixes. You don't need to have vamperic cause a key to deplete to be annoying when it resets a mob.
The game would be a lot better if Blizzard actually tuned classes on not just their raid performance but their M+ one as well. Like it's crazy that some classes/specs are still target capped to FIVE. If you ever pull 2 packs in m+, there's a high probability that it's going to be more than 5 mobs.
I also wish M+ was more about damage than surviving, obviously you would reach that point eventually in an infinitely scaling system but I would rather it be "we need to more damage" than "we need the class with 6 defensives to time this key" because damage isn't really much of a factor.
Growl yapping is something I did not know I needed.
Dratnos forgetting episode numbers strikes again.
how does max not see that mythic plus is not made for the "99%" (as he repeatedly claimed) of all players. There are a shit ton of players which do +10s (higher keys) and above and get absolutely nothing for it, neither tuning nor rewards. Affixes feel shit for those players too, not just the 1% which do +20 keys. It feels shit when a mob doesn't move for 20 sec and is just bathing in sanguine (oaks in BH). Just because a handful of players do mythic raiding (0.1% kill the last boss on mythic) doesn't mean there is also a small amount of players which do higher mythic plus keys. Dorki even told max that there are definitely more high m+ players than mythic raider but he just completely ignored it...
I’m using m+ stats. Top .1% of keys in s3 were around a 27 and the 1% was around a 22 or 23 so a 12 or 13 now. Things scaling out of control are literally a 1% problem not to say that it should or shouldn’t be addressed my opinion on that doesn’t matter.
RIP Shaman.
Max & Dratnos: “There’s still time! Shaman will totally get a rework”
Fingers crossed they get the Hunter treatment of a 90% complete and thought-out rework shipping instead of spending 2 months like Warlock.
@@Xynth25 Honestly I’m impressed with the work they did to survival. I just feel that with prepatch 4-5 weeks away, they will need time to do tuning before launch without focusing on major talent changes. I don’t see shaman getting anything unless the big notes hit next week
@@attinger117 I think Tuesday is the day for you guys, fingers crossed.
What if we turn tyrannical and fortified on their heads. Make it x% damage increase to boss/non-boss enemies. The boon decreases incrementally by key level down to either a minimum or just zero, leaving you with the dungeon as it is.
Could be applied to another affix tier, too, imo.
While I mostly agree with the defensive overload of the game, I wonder if defensives help decrease the toxicity of the game. If someone dies with a defensive unused, perhaps the thought I could have lived decreases the need to blame the healer or tank.
Remove :
- depletion
- timer
- +2 +3 key upgrade
As long as you complete they % and kill all the bosses you get the loot and +1 key lvl
***(this only apply to keys lvl lower then 11, where rewards stops) ***
Keep :
- affixes
- difficulty
- experiment with seasonal affixes and keep the best ones for the future.
What if every affix you complete a key on gives you some rating. So you have rating from Tyran and fort but you also get a little m+ rating for best your key done on bursting or bolstering etc.. you would still have push weeks for the big rating jumps but also making sure you have keys done on raging would play a roll.
I think Dratnos hit the nail on the head with the one simple statement, "The affixes are not fun when whatever your doing is a progression key."
Blizzard misses the mark with participation, and things not affecting low keys etc. At some point in every players journey for their personal skill level, they get to a key that is a progression key for them. And that is when Affixes are just unfun.
The only reason we hear about this more from people that "Push keys" is because they are ALWAYS doing a progression key. And the only reason people not pushing keys don't complain is they have opted out of it entirely because they don't want to deal with it. So they just don't do progression keys at all.
By design this makes 0 sense for Blizzard. You want people to log in to play the game and try new content. Well progression by default is new content. That's why there's the differentiation between Progression and Farm. And mythic plus is infinite new content because you can always get to new progression content. Why design a system which intentionally makes you not want to participate in it and attempt new things?
No matter how you look at it that's just bad game design because it encourages not playing and participating in the game and trying new content. If I were to fix it personally I have my own opinions but I wouldn't elaborate those here cause no one cares.
I think Growls choose your affix idea is incredible when it comes to choosing the damage type affix, that helps meta gate keeping so much. But the on death affix would just be whatever is easiest
Growl's take on FOTM rerolling was honestly one of the most mature and refreshing takes I have heard from someone, kudos.
Proposed: Sanguine is a heavy DR but also applies to players. Raging also enrages its target (tank, usually, but...). Bursting also puts the dot on the enemies. Bolstering increases damage by 5% for players. Storming silences enemies when they are in the tornado. Even if the mechanics of an affix are annoying, if they are useful too, they become a strategy. I think 100% of players would like that change, and it's definitely more fun, so why the fuck are we so stubborn about making m+ mechanics annoying af?
Kragmaws room is good because it has a lot of trash close. The more trash you could pull the more possibilities
I think the more important issue is the way dungeons are scaling. The limiting factor shouldn’t be living oneshots but doing enough damage to make it in time. Then it wouldn’t be as punishing to try a higher key or it wouldn’t be endless wiping when you fail, you would still feel like you can play the game. When it’s crazy oneshots in every single pack that needs 100% coordination to live the game just doesn’t let you play it.
The FOTM reroll question I'll say this: IF you are good at the game, there is no reason you need to reroll, however if you are not good at the game (and you need to be honest to yourself) then you are going to have a much easier time by playing good specs. The reason is percentages, it's very simple. If FOTM spec is capable of doing 100k dps and your spec is only capable of doing 80k DPS, but you personally are only able to play them at around a 60-70% effectiveness, then well, if you swapped to the FOTM spec you are going to be almost performing at maximum of the spec you are currently playing while performing at just above a mere 50% of what the FOTM spec is capable of by playing your current spec.
Even if you are good and capable of performing at 90%+ you will of course still do more by also swapping to FOTM, you can just more easily get away with staying on the poorer class because you can get the same performance out of it that weaker players on FOTM can bring. Ok?
I think something that would help in pushing people towards trying higher content and also breaking up the meta. A honestly super simple change on Blizzards end -- Is making the Title cutoffs based on your Class. It literally would just require them slightly tweaking their database algorithm that determines the winners to include the Class. That would immediately improve player engagement because you wouldn't feel like if your spec or class isn't meta that there is no point in even trying.
I feel like the biggest problem with M+ is that keys deplete after just 1 try. They could maybe try one season where keys deplete after 3 tries (3 charges on your key) and see what happens. It would take them like 5 minutes to implement technically and, while possibly not the optimal solution, is ultimately overwhelmingly better than what we have now. It would diminish M+ toxicity (especially in pugs) and would feel much more fair. To me, a lot of the problems that M+ has (including overall bad affix design) would be a lot of more bearable if you could just try again after you fail.
about what growl said for low key ppl and affix, im pretty sur the big affix that reduced significantly participation even in lower key was necrotic, that why they romoved it amongst the first one.
DK actually does have a raid buff in Insidious Chill, too, which is also one of those ones that scales since it only hits one target at a time.
I'm gonna be honest, I think Max misread the comments on raid buffs from the interview. All they said was basically "we aren't adding something right now but we want every class represented in raid" and not "we don't want to add a raid buff for shamans or DK specifically because it would be too restrictive"
Replace fort/tyran with 2 different affixes each season and get rid of all others. Solves the whole push week conundrum and keeps variety. Allows you to go crazy with affixes if you want because you need both for score anyway. You could throw things like reaping or even huge positive affixes into the mix. Stop scaling damage as hard as health and that solves the augmentation problem. Either hard cap damage at a really high level or change it to 10/15 scaling.
Personally, I really like the Incopral affix. It takes a really low amount of effort and focus, and high communication teams can have just 2 dedicated players to deal with it, while random pugs can just have 4-5 player yolo it. also, u can always silence or stun to buy time if something goes wrong.
Not to compare the cats against one another but it’s crazy how much more insightful growl is. Dorky is a chill MFer and great member of the poddy, but man I love having growl around for large M+ changes
Portals being the final reward from m+ feels so weird cause after the season ends they pretty much lose all usefulness. You push to get portals for keys and once you finally get all your 10's, your only reward is to do more keys
Hey, my Vale of Eternal Blossoms teleport was marginally useful in BFA, okay? haha
The one size fits all solutions are the only solutions that won’t feel bad though. I don’t care how high a key you can do without having to play around the same affixes I do. I do not think m+ needs to be balanced off of content creators. These ideas feel like how can they make the mdi even less relevant than it already is. If I was a streamer I’d be worried about playing without the same conditions the lower players play with.
Here's a cook for giving a "ramp" to incentivize going high in keys as well as decrease the dilemma of the higher key you go the less crests you get in average.
Get 5 crests upon successful key completion and 0 if you deplete, then get a bonus crest for every key level regardless if you time. If you timed a +7 you would get 12 crests, and if you failed but completed a +10 you would get 10 crests. This still gives an incentive for timing while also giving an incentive to stretch your skill and push higher up to your skill level, and if you go too far and fail it's not a waste of time.
As someone who's mainly been playing low keys on alts this season, Tyrannical feels bad at low keys for different reasons than high keys. The problem is that trash mobs just die so quickly at low keys that a lot of classes just don't really get to play the game properly. If you're playing a destro warlock or balance druid or fire mage or any spec that has ramp time, you might as well not even be there for the trash pulls in those dungeons.
What I would like to see happen with fort and tyrannical is that every week just has the fortified HP modifier, and the only difference is the amount of damage done by trash/bosses.
If they know most casts will get through cause you cant stun them, they can tune it so the casts aren't lethal. They wont get it right at first, but stuff worked this way for a long time before they changed it. That's part of the reason trash does so much now, is they let you stop so many casts with stops. Without that they can start to see what they need to tone down. Max mentioned on a prior stream a dungeon where you couldn't stop anything and then see how they design, their current philosophy is the partial approach to that where they can take a look and tone down. It'll take time but it can work
I would like you to answer. “What you’ll limit a key from being pushed higher?”
A lot of the problems you guys bring up come when you push higher and higher keys. Like, “they should make some spells that don’t kill you so you don’t have to interrupt” At some key level everything will kill you.
I do wonder why they haven't considered splitting the kiss / curse aspects of the new affixes. It removes the need for the additional annoying aspects of bolstering etc. and incentivises more class / spec representation at lower key levels. It also avoids making routing at these levels more complicated to avoid especially difficult packs of mobs. Something that puts off a lot of new tanks.
bring back challenge mode transmogs as a reward for encouraging higher level m+. complete all dungeons on a +10 for portals, complete them all on a +15 for a sick transmog (not just a recolor of the current season tier set)
They need to make interrupts like dispels. If you do not actually interrupt a cast with it, it should not go on CD. Think of how awesome that would be for pugging or any non-commed M+.
I have been saying this since this E-Sport M+ design started, where every stupid trash mob does 3 things.
Interrupts go on full CD only if the interrupted something otherwise they incur a GCD. Would improve PuGing so much for everyone.
I hard agree with the interrupt changes and here's why - Actual spells and actual interrupts are what players should be managing. The game was designed around melee having a kick and that being the control mechanism. Having a kick should be the valuable utility, not the FOTM aoe CC of choice.
The gross propagation of AOE CC stops forced Blizzard to design challenges for that metagame. Nerfing stops means they balance around the nerfed stops, which means a softer coggy load for everyone. Obviously, they couldn't leave it balanced the same as it is now, where they're needed, that would be big dumb.
Removing parry is like saying casters should always cast while moving. Roles have pros and cons, we need to stop trying to make everything "fair", it's not supposed to be.
I truly don't understand why everyone seems to want healing to be boring. Heals feeling powerful is awesome, and healing through huge damage spikes makes you feel like a god. Why would you not want that? Healing right now is really good.
as someone who only started watching the poddyc a few weeks ago, i feel like i've *ONLY* seen them with Dratnos full screen at the start.
Growl is goated. Also best tip for M+ is to max out your char. Get that 528 ilvl and then pug.
I literally love growls takes. Please him on more often!
9:10 in, growl is 1000% correct, that metric is so wrong too go by because of gear and vault
Podious spelt this way looks like Odious. Stinky podcast goodbyes! xD
Cap M+ level somewhere and let better times give you more score. Non pushers will have a goal and pushers will have a reason to keep playing/pushing without frustration of insta dying because blizzard can actually balance the dungeons with a specific end point
PoddyTea == DramaTime, if it turns into anything like DramaTime with Preach has been over the years this is gonna be good
Their mythic affix response was akin to: im sorry youre upset
Which for all intents and purposes just comes off as condescending and unapologetic
I need to get the misconception that low key pushers like affixes out of the way. There are some people who like them sure, but I don’t think a single person in my guild or friend group likes affixes and we run 6-10 (15-20) range. The affixes that cause problems for low keys they mention is correct, but stop saying the casual audience likes affixes, it’s not a wide spread take in my experience.
I feel like it they just gave melee like a 1% damage buff for hitting a target from behind, and removed parry, it would still incentivise the play behavior they want and make it less disastrous when you cant hit a target from the back
Growl needs to be here every week
Casual players don't usually want difficult content. The idea that we're getting a bunch of defensive tools is just silly, because that implies that we're getting difficult content that we need them for. In other words, the casual players can't possibly be the target of these defensives. I do think some amount of self healing is useful for solo content, but not defensives.
Growl is honestly such a good fucking guest / host / whatever. Dude is a baller.
Im not a casual player but I would argue more people want no affixes then those who do want them. If you remove affixes for high key players low key players will also want the option to do that. Just from talking with the more casual people in my guild after they announced the affix changes literally everyone I talked to wants affixes just removed entirely, affixes are not enjoyable and don't make dungeons interesting they instead make them irritating. My group currently is in the 14-16 range depending on the dungeon and affixes right now make me not want to push keys because the higher we go the more important each dungeon mechanic is but the affixes force you to play around them to the point where the dungeon is not even about the dungeon anymore its about how well your group is built to deal with the affixes that week and that applies to all keys from like 10+. I don't think its just a uber high end problem I think affixes have just become more important then the dungeons themselves outside of niche situations.
If blizzard wants to make people less picky and to feel like they can play whatever they want a better idea would be to move the rewards like title cutoffs to a spec leaderboard instead of a global leaderboard. Its just not reasonable for blizzard to be able to make everyone viable in a given season even with the given affixes and they don't actually make people feel good they isntead make people feel bad that doing M+ this week is going to just be objectively harder for them.
Bosses parrying is as ancient of a mechanic as tanks needing to be Def capped
As someone who mostly pugs his way to 2.5k rating, I can honestly say that affixes feel the best the least you have to think about them. Like tyrannical and fortified are mostly fine, but bursting? I hate that thing with all my life, sometimes it makes keys feel really miserable. I know I'm not a super great player, but if it were for me, I'd either remove all affixes, or just leave tyr and fort, I'm not doing kyes because I find them awesomely fun, I'm doing them because I want to fill my vault and get better gear.
With interviews given I feel like the optics are backwards, let "casual" m+ players play the dungeon to get the gear, no affixes or just the base ones, and tune the dungeons to be appropriately challenging, on the other hand, leave the affixes to the hardcore m+ players so they can have an additional layer of difficulty.
If that makes for people gearing too fast, or being "done" with the system, then great, that'll either give you more time to play something else, or give you more time to work on alts
30:11 On the rewards that could incentivize long term play; Challenge mode armor sets/ unique art assets. These are incredibly potent when done well and hard to obtain. Mop's class armors stood out with special animations during spell casts. It was like the Mage Tower. It is something challenging that is a step beyond the curve. It was something that top players could fight for leaderboards, sell services, show off etc. The key to this working is the exclusive art. It can't just be the red version of your already green armor.
I think the thing with affixes is that while having them change things up in dungeons from week to week is a nice philosophy the current reality is removing the affixes would be an overall improvement over leaving them as is. So while yea having good affixes to make things interesting can be the goal it's basically at a point of perfection being the enemy of progress.
It's true that participation metrics aren't enough data to indicate whether affixes are working well or not, but neither is Twitch chat. One thing people need to be conscious of is that streamers' audiences are going to be giving them biased takes. The fact that they are participating in chat already means they are a non-average player, and then they are also more likely to parrot streamer takes back at them because streamers are charismatic and people listen to them.
Invite Growl back to talk about the hybridization of roles for self sufficiency
Wth Growl is a great guest to have, bring him more often!
Growl is such a champ!
Growl, healer of the people.
Love the Growl takes, he is spot on. A cat of the people. Replace Dorki with Growl!
I always enjoy the different cat backgrounds, adds some nice flair and makes it so you know it's a different week.
In regards to incentivizing pushing higher keys than the rewards, i dont think the issue is they dont exist, the issue is that blizzard walks back all of their attempts. For example when m+ started, rewards stopped at 10, but you could earn an achievment (and realm first!) for a +15, meaning there was some reason to go beyond. Then the next season, they upped the cap to 15 for rewards, but had to make it "easy" to get. They see sawed this for a long time until they landed in portals, which was a prestige reward and was amazing as a push goal. Then as dragonflight progressed portals lost prestige meaning. Like in season one, portals where at 20 but the world top keys where like 25. Now at season 3/4 portals are 10/20 , but highest caliber keys are 21/31, essentially s1 delta twice over. I personally think that portals should be mythic raid difficulty, and if you *can* do portals, the "title" keys should only be like 3-4 levels higher, and this would spread out the goals of m+, while having some sort of aspirational goals for each level (normal raid = 2k io mount, heroic = 2500 or w/e for hero, portals = mythic prog/CE, title = HoF)
good episode guys! i think this is my second or third time hearing about the interview. I watched the ones Dratnos did and read about half of it as well. i don't even do m+ but it's fun to hear people talking about it haha.
The constant referral to episode 29 and the thumbnail saying 30 is like an itch that can’t get scratched
lol, I really like Growl. want him on the poddyc again soon!
If bosses have a five percent chance to parry just remove it and give all melee attacks 5% extra damage when you're behind the boss. Same positive with no negative.
My hot take for affixes is to basically bring back shrouded, except every enemy gives you a little bit of stat, have lieutenant mobs give disproportionately more to incentivize people fighting the bigger trash in dungeons, and get variety by having the stat getting boosted rotate from week to week. So on haste week, the best class will be different from mastery week
The amount of ADHD self southing max does in this episode makes me feel scene. Just rock it out brother, we all in this together.
It's weird to say that no depletes would get boring. People play the exact same 7-8 maps in CS every single day for literally years with next to zero gameplay changes and it still fun. Yea, its pvp, but its a similar situation.
Liked the video solely for the ketchup call-back. Banger PoddyC as usual!
In M+, people are aiming for rank 1 and that creates a Meta, but it would also be awesome if there were some Class Rank 1s or Spec Rank 1s.
Being Season 2 Rank 1 Survival would be awesome. People wouldn't feel so much like playing their main was meaningless.
It’s worth noting that true mike’s way comes with mayo as well.
I'm glad Max highlighted the fact that there are some classes that have more than one raid buff while shamans only have a single spec with something that is wanted in a raid. The goal from Blizzard of having class representation is good, but they need to normalize their design and fix this issue. Let every class have one buff or otherwise 'required' utility, and have it be class wide. Anything that is 'required' should not be stuck on a specific spec, and classes having more than one thing ala Devo and Ret aura, should be pruned.
Growl is the perfect 3rd man love that guy and his takes