Mythic+ Affix Guide — Updated for Dragonflight Season 4
Affixes exist to make Mythic+ dungeons more interesting, rather than simply increasing damage and health requirements, by introducing dungeon-wide abilities that slow your group's progress through the instance.
Mythic+ Affixes
Mythic+ Affixes are special effects that are active in all Mythic+ dungeons each week. These serve to make dungeons more difficult, and they will change your approach to them from week to week.
For more information on how Seasons and other Mythic+ systems function, check out our main Mythic+ Overview page below.
New Affixes in Dragonflight
Incorporeal
Incorporeal will have a chance to spawn during combat, up to a maximum of 2 copies. The copies or copy, will be present for 20 sec casting Destabilize, if the cast goes through, it will reduce your damage and healing by 50%. How to counter them?
- You can use interrupt or stun effects to stop the cast from finishing.
- The "copies" fall under no category, meaning that you can Banish them, Blind them or any sort of hard crowd-control ability will stop them from casting.
- Even if they are in the middle of the pack, once they are crowd-controlled, they will stop casting until the duration of the CC persist or 20 sec are gone, in which case they will disappear.
- Once you defeat all enemies you were in combat with, all "copies" will disappear.
Afflicted
Will have a chance to spawn up to 2 Afflicted Souls every couple of seconds spend in combat. The Afflicted Souls will have only one ability called Afflicted Cry; if it goes through, it will reduce the haste to all players by 100% for 10 sec. How to counter them?
- All Afflicted Souls have Cursed Spirit, Diseased Spirit and Poisoned Spirit debuffs, once you dispel one of them, they will disappear. This means that classes that provide such dispel or have multiple of them will be extremely valuable in Mythic+.
- You can use direct healing to get rid of the Afflicted Souls. Passive healing does NOT help you with healing the souls (such as Vampiric Embrace).
- You can line-of-sight the Afflicted Cry cast.
- If you are further than 55 yards, you can out-range the Afflicted Cry.
Entangling
Entangling is the easiest among the newly introduced affixes; all it does is every couple of seconds, there will be an Entangling plant spawn under all party members, which will slow you by 30%. You have 8 seconds to move further than 10 yards to remove the affix; failing to do so will stun you for 3 sec. Here are a few other ways to deal with Entangling.
- Movement-imparing immunity like Blessing of Freedom will completely neutralize the harmful effect of Entangling.
- Magical immunity will also neutralize the effect.
Fortified and Tyrannical
Every week, all Mythic+ Keys of level 2 or higher — in other words, every key — will be either "Fortified" or "Tyrannical." These two affixes alternate every week. These affixes are by far the most impactful on any given week and will fundamentally affect how you approach the dungeon and how you set up your character in many cases.
Fortified
Having Fortified present will increase the difficulty of non-boss enemies by 30% and their Health by 20%. Pay attention to the size of each pull to prevent your group from being overwhelmed by the extra risk.
Tyrannical
Tyrannical is an extremely dangerous affix, increasing the Health of each boss by 30%. In addition, bosses will also deal 15% more damage in the weeks with this affix. All in all, make sure to save your offensive and defensive cooldowns for the dungeon's boss fights when this affix is present.
Other Affixes
Afflicted, Incorporeal, and Entangling are going to be part of the Level 5 Affixes.
Level 5 Affixes
Volcanic
Volcanic acts as a ranged counterpart to the Storming. When in combat with an enemy, Volcanic Plumes will occasionally appear under players. Failing to move out of these plumes in time will deal a small amount of damage and knock you up. This is one of the easiest affixes to play with, but it can turn deadly if combined with any other dungeon mechanic. One important note to keep in mind is that the more enemies you fight, the more spawns of Volcanic Plume you will see! In addition, these plumes can only appear under a player that is not in melee range of an enemy.
Storming
An affix originally introduced Shadowlands, Storming is quite tough for any melee players looking to play it. While present, tornadoes are created and spiral outward from enemies when in combat. Coming into contact with these will cause damage and knock you into the air. Similar to the Explosive affix, pulling large amounts of enemies at once will result in more of these tornadoes spawning at once. If you are a ranged player, stay out of melee, and you will have an easy time dealing with it. In addition, when the mobs are under the influence of a stun, they will not spawn any tornadoes!
Level 10 Affixes
Bolstering
Bolstering activates whenever an elite non-boss enemy dies, increasing the damage of all nearby enemies by 20% stacking with each death infinitely for 20 sec. The biggest change here is that the affix no longer bolsters the Health of the mobs. This is a particularly troublesome affix for PUG groups and notoriously known to be one of the hardest. One easy way to deal with it is to watch the quantity of each pull. The more mobs you have, the harder it becomes for them to die at the same time. Knowing when to stop using AoE-damage abilities and focus more on priority-damage instead will also make this affix easier to deal with.
Bursting
Bursting is an affix that will potentially punish you for defeating too many enemies at once. This affix causes most enemies to apply a stack of Burst to the entire party upon death. This effect stacks, and its duration is refreshed with each additional stack. However, rather than dealing damage based on a player's maximum Health, it is a finite value that scales with the keystone level and caps out at +15. In addition, Burst is considered a magic debuff and can, therefore, be dispelled by any Healer specialization. As a result, one of the most common strategies upon reaching high stacks is to use a Priest's Mass Dispel to remove all stacks of Burst from the party at once.
Sanguine
The Sanguine affix is one that emphasizes defeating enemies all at once, as when most non-boss enemies are slain, a pool of Sanguine Ichor is left behind that will heal all enemies within it for 5% of their maximum Health per second. These pools will last for 12 sec. In addition, a player standing in this pool will take 15% of their maximum Health in damage per second. One of the easiest ways to deal with this affix is by making use of knockback effects such as Thunderstorm, Typhoon, and Ring of Peace as soon as an enemy's death creates a pool or the remaining mobs in a pull approach any Sanguine Ichor.
Spiteful
Spiteful is an affix that will catch you off guard if you are not careful. Whenever a non-boss enemy dies, a Spiteful Shade will spawn and fixate a random non-tank player. This is perhaps the hardest affix for players that play in melee, as each Shade's melee attack hits incredibly hard and can quickly prove lethal. However, their own Health gradually reduces over time through All-Consuming Spite until the Shade eventually dies on its own. As such, a common strategy is to use crowd-control abilities to slow them down or to drag remaining enemies away from the Shades that have spawned.
Raging
Raging will no longer increase the damage of non-boss-enemies once they fall under 30% health but instead make them immune to crowd-control effects. It is highly recommended to have an Enrage Dispel in your party in the form of a Hunter's Tranquilizing Shot, A Druid's Soothe, or a Rogue's Shiv. Make sure to use your group's utilities to help with survival.
Changelog
- 02 Jun. 2024: Typo changes.
- 22 Apr. 2024: No further changes required for Season 4.
- 19 Mar. 2024: No further changes required for 10.2.6 Patch.
- 15 Jan. 2024: No further changes required for 10.2.5 Patch.
- 05 Nov. 2023: Updated and Ready for 10.2. Patch.
- 05 Sep. 2023: No further updates needed for 10.1.7 Patch.
- 08 May 2023: Guide Overhauled for Dragonflight Season 2.
- 13 Dec. 2022: Guide Overhauled for Dragonflight Season 1.
- 27 Nov. 2022: Updated for Dragonflight Launch
- 30 Oct. 2022: Added the most recent Thundering changes.
- 25 Oct. 2022: Fully updated for Dragonflight Pre-patch.
- 02 Aug. 2022: Fully updated for Season 4 and the new Shrouded seasonal affix.
- 03 Mar. 2022: Bolstering affix received further nerfs.
- 21 Feb. 2022: Fully updated for Season 3 of Shadowlands Mythic+.
- 29 Oct. 2021: Updated for Patch 9.1.5, including the new Timewalking-only affix: Infernal.
- 09 Jul. 2021: Fully updated for Season 2 of Shadowlands Mythic+.
- 20 Jun. 2021: Necrotic nerfs reverted, mentioned Raging and Bolstering affix nerfs.
- 18 Jun. 2021: Updated with several new abilities introduced to the Tormented Seasonal Affix; updated Necrotic and Storming affixes to reflect their massive changes.
- 15 Jun. 2021: Added new Tormented Seasonal Affix.
- 27 Apr. 2021: Updated the ways to skip Prideful affix.
- 19 Apr. 2021: Guide Overhauled for Shadowlands Season 1.
- 31 May 2020: Updated the description of Urg'roth's abilities slightly.
- 10 May 2020: Updated the guide's descriptions and information about the Obelisk Mechanics of the Awakened Affix.
- 16 Jan. 2019: Guide added.
This guide has been written by Petko, one of the top Mythic players of all time. He has accomplished several Europe- and World #1 Team and Solo Seasonal rankings with multiple specialization and classes. Moreover, he competes in the MDI and streams his runs live on Twitch, and shares his personal opinions on YouTube and Twitter.
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