Mythic+ Affix Guide — Updated for BfA Season 4 Awakened Affix

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 from week to week.

Every "Season" in World of Warcraft, there will be a Seasonal Affix in Mythic+ that applies to all Mythic+ dungeons done within that Season on +10 and above. Along with Fortified and Tyrannical, this is the most impactful Affix and will shape the way you play in Mythic+ keys for the whole season.

For more information on how Seasons and other Mythic+ systems function, check out our main Mythic+ Overview page below.

The Seasonal Affix for Season 4 of BfA (which coincides with Patch 8.3) is called Awakened. It works as follows.

Throughout the dungeon, there will be four Obelisks that spawn. When you interact with an obelisk while you are out of combat, it will send you to a special realm, where a Lieutenant will spawn and attack the group. When this Lieutenant is defeated, a portal will appear in its corpse, which will send players who use it back to the normal realm.

• The realm looks just like the dungeon that you are doing, but there are no mobs.
• While inside, you are completely invisible to any mobs outside.
• By killing the Lieutenant at a particular location within N'Zoth's Realm, you can spawn the portal anywhere in the dungeon, and thereby choose where you want to exit N'Zoth's realm.
• Put simply, this Affix and portal mechanic acts as a way for the group to skip parts of the dungeon.
• The portals are permanent, and they work both ways — allowing you to both exit and enter N'Zoth's realm at any time when out of combat.
• The realm is "shared" between all Obelisks. This means that if you are inside N'Zoth's realm and another party member activates a new Obelisk elsewhere in the dungeon, you will be in the same realm as that Lieutenant and the player who activated it.

In any dungeon, there are 4 different Obelisks that spawn. They each spawn a different Lieutenant mob, but otherwise they all function the same.

When a Lieutenant is killed, a portal will spawn on its corpse as mentioned before. Additionally, the Obelisk that sent you into N'Zoth's realm will become a portal as well. This makes it easy to get back to where you were if you wipe.

Obelisks cannot be clicked while you are in combat.

Any Obelisks that you do not interact with and "defeat" by killing the Lieutenant inside of them will cause their respective Lieutenant to spawn with the last boss of the dungeon, becoming an unavoidable part of the last boss. If they are engaged with the last boss, they will not use the Armies of N'Zoth ability. In other words, they will not spawn any adds, but they will still use their own abilities.

On top of the abilities for each Lieutenant that we list below, they will all cast Armies of N'Zoth if they are engaged at its Obelisk. This ability will spawn a set of adds with unique abilities for each Lieutenant.

Obelisk Lieutenants can be pulled to the last boss within N'Zoth's realm. If you do this, it will cause the Lieutenant to become a permanent part of the last boss encounter in the dungeon. It will not cast Armies of N'Zoth if it is engaged with the last boss. If you decide after one attempt that doing the last boss with a Lieutenant is too difficult, you can simply go back and activate the Obelisk in the middle of the dungeon and get rid of it this way.

Obelisk Lieutenants do not scale with Fortified or Tyrannical, but they do scale with the key level of the dungeon.

Voidweaver Mal'thir is a caster Lieutenant with two abilities.

• Crippling Pestilence is a 3-second cast that targets a random player. It does moderate damage, and applies a curable Disease debuff that reduces the player's movement speed by 70% for 8 seconds.
• Lingering Doubt is a 3-second cast that targets a random player. It does moderate damage, and applies a dispellable Curse that reduces the player's casting speed by 70% for 8 seconds.
• This Lieutenant's Armies of N'Zoth will spawn five Explosive Scarab adds. These adds can be tanked and do low damage, but they will eventually cast Volatile Rupture for 4 seconds, which causes them to explode for moderate damage to all players within 15 yards. Getting hit by this explosion also applies a Poison debuff that deals moderate damage over 6 seconds.

Samh'rek, Beckoner of Chaos uses just a single ability while he is alive.

• Cascading Terror affects 3 random players with a dispellable Magic debuff. Its duration can vary. While affected by the debuff, you will have a circle around you. If the debuff expires or is dispelled, everyone within this circle, including the person with the debuff, will be feared for 3 seconds.
• This Lieutenant's Armies of N'Zoth will spawn five Ravenous Fleshfiend adds. They will melee their tank for moderate damage, and they will regularly cast Tear Flesh on them, which is a stacking Bleed DoT that does heavy damage.

Blood of the Corruptor uses just a single ability while it is alive.

• Defiled Ground will continuously cause void zones to appear beneath the feet of two random group members each cast. Standing in the void zone it leaves will do damage every second.
• This Lieutenant's Armies of N'Zoth will spawn five Mindrend Tentacle adds. They will channel Mind Flay on a random target, which deals low damage over time and slows players by 65%. It can be interrupted, and the Tentacles can also be stunned.

Urg'roth, Breaker of Heroes alternates between using two abilities.

• Spirit Breaker deals heavy damage to Urg'roth's current target, causes them (usually the tank) to take 100% increased damage for 8 seconds.
• Dark Fury is a 3-second cast that deals heavy Shadow damage to anyone in the circle around Urg'roth.
• This Lieutenant's Armies of N'Zoth will spawn numerous Malicious Growth adds. These adds do not move or attack, but they will grow an area of effect around them that slows all players by 65% and does a bit of damage. By killing the Growths, this effect will disappear. They only have a small amount of health and can be quickly AoE'd down, although the most common strategy is to quickly run away from the Lieutenant's spawn point before the adds appear and fully grow.

Every week, all Mythic+ Keys will be either "Fortified" or "Tyrannical". These two affixes alternate every week. Tyrannical makes bosses much more difficult, while Fortified makes non-boss enemies like trash and other mobs more difficult. 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.

• Tyrannical: Increases boss health by 40%, and increases the damage done of bosses and all of their abilities by 15%.
• Fortified: Increases the health of all non-boss mobs by 20%, and increases the damage done of them and all of their abilities by 30%.

These affixes start coming up on Mythic+4 keys and above.

• Bolstering causes enemies to buff other active enemies' health and damage by 20% when they are killed. This prevents almost all forms of pulling trash with bosses, and it encourages you to try and bring all packs down at roughly the same time. There is a 30-yard maximum range on this effect.
• Raging causes all trash enemies to gain 100% increased damage until they are killed from when they reach 30% health. This can be Soothed or dispelled by Druids and Hunters using Soothe for Druids and Hunter pet abilities like Soothing Waters.
• Sanguine causes trash mobs to leave behind pools of blood when they die that do damage to players, while healing other trash mobs.
• Teeming will significantly increase the amount of mobs in the dungeon, and it will also cause each mob to count less towards the Dungeon's Enemy Forces counter. This makes trash packs more difficult, and forces you to do more of them to complete the Mythic+.
• Bursting will affect all players with a stacking debuff whenever a mob dies. This debuff lasts for 4 seconds and deals 3.5% of your maximum health in damage every second (a total of 14% of maximum health per stack over 4 seconds). This encourages you to stagger killing enemies when possible. You will often hear other players say to not "extend" the Bursting debuff. This means that you want to avoid killing an enemy when you have a Burst debuff that is just about to expire, as that will add a stack and refresh the debuff.

These affixes start coming up on Mythic+7 keys and above.

• Necrotic is an Affix that causes all melee hits (primarily on the tank) to stack the Necrotic Wound debuff on them. Necrotic reduces their healing taken by 2% per stack. It lasts for 9 seconds. Good tanks will be able to "reset" their debuff by avoiding any melee hits for 9 seconds, usually by kiting and slowing mobs with the help of the group, and using their mobility abilities as well as they can.
• Skittish causes tanks to generate much less threat/aggro, and they will lose it easily if the DPS players in the group are not careful. Hunters and Rogues can make things easier by using Misdirection and Tricks of the Trade to temporarily redirect their threat to the tank.
• Volcanic will cause enemies to periodically spawn under your feet. After a second, they will explode and deal 40% of your maximum health in damage. Dodging them is easy, but remember that more will spawn in bigger packs, and multiple Volcanics can overlap and unexpectedly one-shot you.
• Explosive will cause enemies to periodically spawn Explosive orb adds. These adds have a very low amount of health and will do a 6-second cast that deals 50% of everyone's maximum health in damage if it gets to finish before the Explosive is killed. The Explosives cannot be targeted or hit by AoE effects, and must be deliberately targeted and killed with a single-target ability (usually a one-shot). On big pulls, it is very easy to get overwhelmed by Explosives and wipe, making this one of the most difficult Affixes.
• Quaking will cause everyone to gain a debuff roughly every 20 seconds. It will create a circle around every player for around 2 seconds. When it expires, it will deal heavy damage to all nearby players and interrupt their spells. This happens all the time, even when out of combat. You want to spread out and not be casting whenever the Quaking goes out.
• Grievous will apply a debuff to you if your health dips below 90%. It is an infinite DoT that will increase in damage constantly. It will only fall off when you are healed above 90% health. The debuff caps at 4 stacks, but it should ideally be removed by the Healer much sooner.