Welcome back to our Dragonflight Mythic+ Affixes page!

Mythic+ of Dragonflight Season 4 is upon us! Read on for descriptions, tips, and useful resources to help you conquer Season 4 of Dragonflight Mythic+.

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Table of Contents

TACTICS:

Fortified is one of the two affixes that alternates weekly. To put it simply, Fortified empowers the trash mobs throughout the dungeon with 20% more health. Additionally, most of the trash mobs will do 30% more damage, but there are a few exceptions where the damage multiplier is reduced for specific enemy forces.

When playing keys during a Fortified week, players are encouraged to build a group composition and talents that favor AOE damage output and crowd control (CC). However, remember that empowered trash mobs also mean that single-target damage output is also valuable for certain trash mobs with higher health pools and dangerous abilities as well as bosses.

During Fortified weeks, many Mythic+ groups tend to line up their Bloodlust timings on the most challenging trash pulls rather than bosses. However, it is sometimes worth saving Bloodlust for the hardest bosses in each dungeon – even on Fortified weeks.

USEFUL RESOURCES:

Simming your character on Raidbots for Mythic+ can feel a bit daunting and even confusing. However, one of the simplest ways you can do this is to run 2 separate Sims with “Top Gear” to assess whether your gear and talents are suitable for AoE or single-target damage. For example, first, you can run a Patchwerk sim for 1 boss, 4 minutes. Then, you can open another tab and sim on Patchwerk for 5 (or more) targets for 1 minute. Although you will want to adjust these numbers based on what level keys you are doing or how many mobs may be in each pull, this can be a helpful starting point towards understanding whether your gear and talents are set up well for running Mythic+ on a Fortified week to do more AOE damage.

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TACTICS:

Every week alternates between Fortified and Tyrannical. Unlike Fortified, which empowers trash mobs, Tyrannical modifies the difficulty of boss encounters, increasing each boss’s health pool and the damage dealt to players.

Saving cooldowns for bosses, especially the most difficult ones, is vital for success on Tyrannical weeks.

It can also be helpful to adjust your talent and/or gear setup to be more focused on single-target damage than on Fortified weeks. However, keep in mind that you will need to kill the trash quickly in order to time higher level keystones, and the extra time you are forced to spend on bosses on Tyrannical weeks may force you to pull more trash at once throughout the rest of the dungeon to save time. Finding a balance between single-target and AOE damage is just as important for Tyrannical as it is for Fortified.

USEFUL RESOURCES:

Similarly to Fortified, simming your character on Raidbots on Patchwerk for both single-target encounters and multiple targets for AOE can help you understand how to adjust your gear for Tyrannical weeks since the balance may shift in favor of single-target output depending on the needs of your group composition or the level of keys you are aiming to push.

TACTICS:

Afflicted is one of the newest affixes in the Mythic+ cycle, emerging for the first time in Dragonflight Season 2. What’s unique about Afflicted is that it periodically spawns Afflicted Souls approximately every 30 seconds. The amount of Afflicted Souls that spawn at each interval is random, but they can only spawn in groups of 1, 2, or none at all if you’re lucky. In other words, Afflicted has a 30-second internal cooldown (ICD) that has a chance to be entirely skipped, similar to how Quaking functioned in previous expansions and seasons.

These Afflicted Souls cast an uninterruptible Afflicted Cry that reduces players’ haste by 100% for 10 seconds. While this may seem awful at first glance, the cast can be avoided if players successfully line-of-sight the cast. Although the cast can be technically outranged, it is likely unrealistic to outrange a 60 yard cast.

More importantly, Afflicted Souls can come with three “afflictions” that can be removed by dispelling them or healing them to full health. In doing so, the Afflicted Souls will despawn:

• Cursed Spirit - Curse Dispel (Druid, Mage, Shaman, Evoker)
  
• Poisoned Spirit - Poison Dispel (Druid, Evoker, Monk, Paladin, Shaman)
  
• Diseased Spirit - Disease Dispel (Monk, Paladin, Priest, Evoker)

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TACTICS:

Entangled is another affix that spawns periodically on a timer in combat like the other Level 5+ affixes.

Thankfully, moving 10 yards from the vine that spawns beneath you will snap it, but your movement speed will be reduced by 30% until you break free of your roots.

The vines can also be broken by shapeshifting forms (Druid), Blessing of Freedom (Paladin), and Tiger’s Lust (Monk). Additionally, spells such as Vanish work to break the rooting mechanic completely as well. However, failing to break the vines will result in a 3 second stun, so make sure to time your movement well if you are forced to move!

Keep in mind that Entangling can be a bit burdensome for casters, or even somewhat dangerous if Entangling occurs during a difficult mechanic that must be quickly dodged. However, Entangling is a pretty simple affix to work around, so just make sure to break your roots and you are good to go!

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TACTICS:

The Incorporeal affix periodically summons 1 or 2 enemies on a 45-second timer, but a spawn wave may also be skipped from time to time.

The Incorporeal enemies require a degree of interaction from players to be managed effectively. In contrast to Afflicted, which requires dispels or healing to the Afflicted Souls to despawn them, the Incorporeal beings remain present for 20 seconds before despawning and their Destablize cast must be stopped with any single-target crowd control (CC) ability. If a Destabilize cast goes off, all players within 100 yards will have their damage and healing reduced by a whopping 50% for 10 seconds.

It is important to note that AOE CC abilities are not effective against Incorporeal beings – only single-target CC abilities will suffice. For example, this means that abilities such as Kidney Shot, Blind, Turn Evil, Shackle Undead, Paralysis, Hibernate, etc. will all work. Additionally, Incorporeal beings count as every type of monster, so all forms of single-target CC will work on them regardless of any mob-type restrictions.

It is also worth noting that there is somewhat of an advantage for classes whose single-target CCs have no cooldown. This way, CCs such as Hibernate, Cyclone, Polymorph, etc. can lock down an Incorporeal being for the entire duration of its spawn.

The Incorporeals' Destabilize cast is interruptible, but the interrupt won’t incur any lockout on future casts. Therefore, the moment the first 8 second cast is stopped, the next cast will begin. Interrupts are still an option if single-target CC abilities are not available, but Incorporeal beings will require 3 interrupts in a row each before despawning.

The tricky part about Incorporeal is that you may need to use your stuns to handle challenging enemy forces (particularly on a Fortified week), so if Incorporeal beings spawn during a pull and there are no available single-target stuns or interrupts, your group could be in trouble.

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TACTICS:

Similarly to Volcanic, the number of tornadoes that will spawn from Storming scales up when you fight more enemies at once.

Whenever an enemy spawns one of these tornadoes, the first warning will be a gray swirl, which will then turn into a gray tornado that will spiral around its spawn point. It will travel outwards in a spiral, and if you get hit by one, you’ll be knocked back and take damage. However, when a player gets hit by a tornado, that tornado will de-spawn.

Although Storming is not a particularly menacing affix at first glance, the tornadoes can be a little difficult to keep track of once they have spawned, and can lead to some dangerous scenarios where movement and positioning must be precise. The best defense against Storming is movement away from where tornadoes are. This will often look similar to how tanks move when Sanguine pools are dropping – continuous movement away from the areas that just became dangerous. Tornadoes spiral movement is predictable, especially for veterans of the first room in Kings’ Rest during BFA, so learning how they move can make it feasible to stay near them.

Alternatively, there may be times where a tank must keep the positioning of a mob precise or stationary. In these cases, it can sometimes be helpful for another player to “soak” a nearby tornado to ensure that the tank can stay planted.

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TACTICS:

In combat, each enemy will randomly spawn volcanoes underneath players that will turn into Volcanic Plumes after 2 seconds. If players get hit by a Volcanic Plume as the volcano erupts, they will take damage equivalent to 20% of their maximum health and be knocked up into the air.

In general, melee players don’t need to think much about the Volcanic affix, as the volcanoes only spawn under targets who aren’t in melee range of the enemy that’s spawning them. However, if you’re in melee range of several enemies but there’s another far away enemy that’s in combat with you, you could have a volcano appear under you when that enemy spawns one. A volcano can also spawn in melee range if a far-away enemy is CC’d but still in combat with you.

Ranged players must watch their feet and move whenever volcanoes spawn near them. However, the volcanoes don’t always spawn directly under your feet, so sometimes it’s safe to stay put. If you are a caster, it’s almost never efficient to get hit by a volcano to finish a cast, since you’ll lose more damage uptime from the airtime of being knocked upwards than you would have from moving away from the volcano before it erupts.

TACTICS:

When a non-boss enemy dies during a Bolstering week, it will apply one stack of the Bolster buff to every other enemy that is in combat within 30 yards, empowering these enemies to do 20% more damage for 20 seconds. Bolster is a buff that stacks additively, so an enemy with five stacks of Bolster will deal 100% increased damage until each of the Bolster stacks fall off one by one.

Some enemies, such as specifically-coded “very small” enemies (and most enemies that are spawned or summoned from other enemies) will not apply stacks of Bolster to other mobs when they die. However, these small enemies will still receive Bolster stacks from other dying enemies. Additionally, some enemies, such as bosses and affix-related mobs such as Spiteful, will neither give nor receive stacks of Bolster.

During Bolstering weeks, be careful to exercise patience and control. Avoid unintentionally adding extra enemies later into a pull, or starting the next pull before all the enemies in the previous one are dead. However, despite the dangers of chain-pulling during a Bolstering week, it is no longer inefficient due to the recent change to Bolstering, which removed the 20% additional health component to Bolster stacks.

Although Bolstering reduces the safety of pulling trash into bosses, it is still possible for coordinated groups to do so if your tank and/or healer have defensive cooldowns ready to live against these empowered mobs in addition to a boss.

The default strategy against the Bolstering affix is damage prioritization. It is wise to apply damage to each enemy proportional to its health, such that all the enemies die around the same time. This is easier said than done, especially when the health pools of the enemies in a pull are very different from one another. Building a group composition that has a nice balance of AOE damage and single-target damage is imperative on Bolstering weeks to ensure that the highest-health enemies are focused down first to bring all enemy health in line.

Another strategy is to use CC to separate enemies with different amounts of health from each other. You can also make use of the 30 yard range on Bolstering to avoid stacks being applied, though this often requires a degree of finesse and is likely a damage loss overall. Tanks can also kite or simply wait out the Bolster stacks.

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TACTICS:

Whenever an enemy is killed, all players get a stack of Burst that deals shadow damage over 4 seconds. The amount of damage that Bursting stacks do scale with the keystone level rather than a player’s maximum health. However, past keystones level 15 and up, Bursting damage no longer scales.

Although Bursting is a notorious “healer” affix, there is some good news. The Burst debuff is magical, which means that it can be dispelled! Priests are especially valuable on Bursting weeks since they can Mass Dispel everyone’s Bursting stacks off every 2 minutes, and Mistweaver Monks can use Revival to instantly clear all Bursting stacks once every 3 minutes. Additionally, Preservation Evokers can use Stasis to trigger a sequence of 4 magic dispels in a row, but it requires a bit of preparation. When the Preservation Evoker pops Stasis, they must cast their dispel on 3 different targets who do not have the debuff yet since the dispel will not go on cooldown until it actually dispels a debuff. Essentially, these actions “save” the dispel on those 3 targets, so when the Evoker pops Stasis one more time, the three targets that were pre-dispelled will be instantly dispelled. Furthermore, the Evoker can still dispel a 4th target after Stasis is used since their dispel will not be on cooldown.

Several classes have spells that can fully immune the stacks and damage from Bursting:

• Classes with full immunities include Rogues (Cloak of Shadows), Paladins (Divine Shield and Blessing of Spellwarding), Hunters (Aspect of the Turtle), and Mages (Ice Block).
  
• Death Knights can use Anti-Magic Shell just before Bursting stacks are applied to prevent their application.
  
• Monks (Diffuse Magic) and Dwarves (Stoneform) can get rid of Bursting stacks after they are applied.

The most straightforward approach to Bursting is for the tank to avoid pulling too many low-health enemies at once to prevent an unhealable amount of stacks from being applied to players.

In groups with more coordination, synchronizing the deaths of enemies to avoid too many stacks of Bursting is an effective way to make pulls safer. Many stacks of Bursting applied all at the same time is much easier to handle with healing cooldowns and personals than when several stacks get continually extended by enemies dying in a staggered fashion.

If you want to pull an amount of enemies that would represent a lethal amount of Bursting stacks, staggering your group's damage is the way to go – kill a few enemies, then stop damage briefly to let the Bursting stacks fall off, and kill the remaining enemies. This can be tricky to coordinate and is much harder for damage-over-time (DoT) based classes, but the reward is well worth it when everyone makes it out alive.

Finally, strategies that revolve around acquiring and then trivializing massive stacks of Bursting are popular among top Mythic+ groups. Tools that make this possible are big healing cooldowns, careful and coordinated damage output, personal defensives, immunities, and/or AoE magic dispels.

USEFUL RESOURCES:

• Saxayone’s Bursting Weakaura

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TACTICS:

Raging is a straightforward affix that makes enemies more deadly when they reach low health since they can no longer be CC’d to stop dangerous casts. This Enrage effect will remain even if the enemy is later healed above 30% health, and it will be reapplied if an enemy stays alive long enough.

Several classes can remove Enrage effects from mobs, such as Druids with Soothe, Evokers with Overawe + Oppressing Roar, Hunters with Tranquilizing Shot, and Rogues with Shiv.

Although several classes can “soothe” Enrage effects off of enemy targets, tanks and healers should still watch out for times when Enraged enemies will have deadly abilities that can no longer be CC’d during the duration of the Enrage. In particularly dangerous trash pulls, it can be important to focus certain enemies down so that they don’t all reach low health at the same time.

USEFUL RESOURCES:

• If you use the Plater addon, there are a variety of scripts available on Wago to change the color of enemy nameplates when they Enrage.
  
• There are also numerous Plater scripts/settings and WeakAuras

that can add a larger buff icon to enemies nameplates to increase the visibility of the Enrage effect.

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TACTICS:

Most enemies will drop Sanguine pools when they die. Some smaller (lower-health) enemies do not. These pools last for 12 seconds and heal enemies for 5% of their maximum health per second, while damaging players for 15% of their maximum health per second as Shadow damage. Sanguine stacks up to five, so if enemies are standing in five or more Sanguine pools they’ll heal for 25% of their maximum health per second.

Sanguine is primarily handled by the tank, who must keep enemies moving as they begin to die to avoid any healing on the remaining enemies. The other members of the group can help by using displacement effects such as knockbacks or grips, and by avoiding any stuns or heavy slows as enemies reach low health.

From a strategic perspective, pulling enemies and fighting them in places where you don’t mind dropping Sanguine pools is a great idea, as it can be very annoying if you drop Sanguine where you then intend to fight a boss or pull the next pack.

USEFUL RESOURCES:

• classxox’s Sanguine Ichor Heal WeakAura will alert you if enemies are healing from Sanguine.

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TACTICS:

Most enemies (generally the same set of enemies that drop Sanguine or apply Bolstering or Bursting) spawn Spiteful Shades when they die. These enemies have a sizable health pool, but they lose 8% of their health every second, meaning they die in 13 seconds if you don’t sink any damage into them. When one spawns, it fixates a random (non-tank) member of your group and chases them. If it reaches them, it’ll begin meleeing them for tremendous amounts of damage, though the damage that the Spiteful Shades deal was reduced by 10% in Dragonflight Season 2, and the damage that they deal no longer scales past keystone level 20.

This affix is very easy to handle when it fixates upon ranged players, as they can simply kite the Shades without too much difficulty. On the other hand, melee players may need to lose damage uptime in order to avoid getting killed. Some specs can pop defensives to completely negate the incoming melees, such as Die by the Sword or Evasion, but these abilities have long cooldowns and can’t be used for every Shade.

Spiteful Shades can be CC’d, so knockback effects, slows, and stuns are very effective to hold them off until they run out of steam.

USEFUL RESOURCES:

• There are numerous WeakAuras and Plater scripts available on Wago that can help you see when you are targeted by a Spiteful Shade.

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