All 3 of the new affixes seem to make it so that if you build your comp and take specific talents to counter the affix, it trivializes it:
The new explosive is just pain…
Edit #1 (12:39 PM PST): Explosive health was just nerfed by 30%.
Afflicted
Afflicted spawns an Afflicted Soul with ALL the debuffs Cursed Spirit, Poisoned Spirit, Diseased Spirit on it. On a +10, this Afflicted Soul has about 80k health. On a +15, this Afflicted Soul has about 124k health. If any of the debuffs are removed, or the Soul is healed to full, the Soul despawns. However, you only have 10 seconds to dispel or heal each one as they cast Afflicted Cry. If you fail, your haste is reduced for 10 seconds. However, the cast can be Line-of-Sighted or outranged (60 yards).
The spawn rate of Afflicted seems based on the number of mobs in a pull and can spawn multiple at a time. From testing, for the largest of pulls (15+ mobs), we got a maximum 3 to spawn at a time, with one spawning shortly after. For smaller pulls (3 targets), usually 2 spawned at a time with a chance of 1 or 3. For bosses, we only got 1 to spawn at a time.
There currently seems to be a bug where if you let the cast of Afflicted Cry go off, the Afflicted mobs stop spawning. This is probably unintended.
Entangling
Entangling periodically gets summoned directly under your feet and gives you the Entangled buff, slowing you by 50% and forcing you to snap the vine by walking 10 yards. However, unlike the quests that have this vine snapping mechanic, these vines can be removed by root breaking effects such as Blessing of Freedom and Druid’s Shapeshift. This affix probably won’t be too bad to deal with most of the time, but the random 50% slow could absolutely kill you occasionally on a boss fight, or slow your tank during a pivotal pull. Entangling currently summons on the entire party at the same time and unsure if there’s a pattern or not for it.
The main issue with Entangling currently is its UX. It is near impossible to notice without a weakaura. Currently, there is a debuff, a root gets placed under your feet and a quiet sound is played and it’s really hard to notice in the middle of combat. I would personally like to see a loud noise or voice-line play when it’s summoned and maybe even a big icon over players heads to let everyone know that Entangling has happened. Otherwise, this affix is just going to be Air Horn or Gunshot Weakaura required.
Incorporeal
Incorporeal summons an Incorporeal being for 20 seconds around the mobs (not in the pack). They have the mob type of everything: Beasts, Humanoid, Undead, Dragonkin, Demon, Abberations, etc. For 20 seconds, they will spam cast Destabilize, an 8 second interruptable cast. If they are kicked, they will immediately cast again. However, as these mobs are considered all types, they can be hard CC’ed as well by niche abilities including Hibernate, Turn Evil and Banish
Similar to Afflicted, the spawn rate of these seems based on the number of mobs in a pull and multiple can be active a time. The most we had active on a large pull (15+ mobs), we had 4 with 2 spawning followed closely by 2 after. Assuming every class takes their Hard CC in their talent tree, this affix doesn’t actually seem too bad and even if you have most of your players take hard CC talents, you can just single stop (stun, kick, blind, etc) stray ones.
Explosive Revamp
The Explosive revamp has turned it probably into the worst affix of the bunch. On a +15 they had 298k426k health and on a +20 they had 480k687k health. That’s a lot of damage to be sinking into an explosion orb.
However, the spawn rate of them was barely slowed down. You probably won’t see more than 2 Explosive Orbs at a time, but this still means you can spawn 2 Explosive Orbs at a time with a combined 1.3 million HP on a +20 and only 8 seconds to do it. They can also chain spawn, once one dies, the next one just spawn and at that point you’re still playing Whack-A-Mole with explosive orbs, just one big explosive orb at a time. As such, currently it seems like the best way to deal with explosive is to just ignore it and heal through the damage or LoS it and killing the pack quicker so the Explosives just stop spawning. This explosive rework is currently a problem in my opinion, I don’t want to be playing Whack-a-Mole one Big Explosive Orb or 10 Small Explosive Orbs. If Explosive was significantly less frequent (~20 seconds like Quaking), then I think one big Explosive Orb could work.
Watch the below clip to see the new Explosives on a +15 where we don’t hit them because we’re not sure how to keep up with the spawns, and watch them chain summon with 426k health each.
