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With each new season of Mythic+ dungeons, we take time during the development and testing of the content update to consider how M+ affixes have been working, design and implement new affixes, adjust dungeons where necessary, and add new dungeons.
M+ is played by a diverse range of players, so we try to make sure our feedback sources are just as diverse, to maximize our chances that we’ll spot pain points, knowing that different types of players have different experiences in M+. We look at data and statistics, forum posts, streams, and of course, we play a great number of keys ourselves at various levels and discuss our own experiences internally.
A major focus in these efforts is always how different weeks “feel” for players. An example of this was the adjustment to Ingra Maloch in Season 2. Player feedback was aligned with our own experiences that the penalty for missing a burst damage check felt overly punishing and made the dungeon less fun, and we didn’t want to wait too long to dial in the fun.
That said, a sense of mastery is a very important part of Mythic+, and changes that invalidate player strategies or otherwise involve relearning aspects of the game can have a negative effect on that. With that in mind, we prefer to make those types of changes at the start of a new season. For example, we felt that there was too much stress on tanks in Shadowlands Season 1, so going into Season 2 we sought to address that with our approach to the Tormented affix as well as changes to existing affixes.
For Season 3, our experiences again aligned with player feedback, and:
- We’ve made adjustments to the affix rotation to break up Necrotic and Sanguine, as this combination could overburden tanks.
- We’ve also made a change to the duration of the Necrotic affix to afford tanks more control over their ability to reset stacks.
As always, thanks to everyone who tested M+ dungeons on the Eternity’s End PTR with us, especially those who reported bugs and submitted thoughtful feedback. You made a positive impact on Season 3 and our future efforts in M+.