Incorporeal
Up first is Incorporeal, which is an affix all about controlling Incorporeal adds that spawn while you’re in combat. The spawn rate of these is quite nasty, with up to four showing up at once, and each one lasts for 20 seconds and requires a kick or a CC before they finish an 8 second cast, which they will re-cast. This means that each one effectively requires at least 3 interrupts or CC effects, and they’re immune to AoE CCs, so if there are more than one or two active at a time it can get very overwhelming.
Afflicted
Afflicted is a lot less overwhelming, with a more lenient spawn rate and mobs that require fewer globals each to handle – these ones are Friendly instead of hostile, and they have a 10 second cast and need to be either full healed or poison/curse/disease dispelled. Even if two are out at once, one dispel and then two healing globals is usually enough to solve this affix.
Entangling
Another nice thing about Incorporeal and Afflicted is the visual clarity, which you can see for yourself in this post – these mobs are big and have extremely noticeable spawn animations. Entangling, on the other hand, is a bit tougher to see as it’s dark green and brown and a pretty small effect – this affix isn’t too difficult to deal with as long as you do notice it, however, as you just need to move 10 yards away (while slowed by 50%) within 8 seconds to avoid a 3 second stun. As it stands right now, a WeakAura will be very helpful to avoid missing this during hectic pulls.
Explosive
Explosive is also being reworked to have much more health, and spawn slightly less often. This change has already been somewhat walked back, with a 30% health nerf from the initial number that launched at the start of this weekend’s M+ testing, but it still feels very high, with explosives spawning every few seconds still and each requiring about 5 dps globals to die (though, as before, some specs are great and some are terrible at this job). As it stands, the affix will likely be a healer affix, though a healer affix on the healing side rather than the damage side, as so much damage will be lost if players swap to these orbs, prolonging pulls and causing even more orbs to spawn. This seems likely to change further but if it does not it’ll be a huge step back.
Dratnos and Tettles also highlighted a cool post on the WoW subreddit that proposed some changes to these affixes to preserve their identities and solve a lot of the complaints that have arisen. What do you think about the affixes so far, and what changes would you make?
