Mythic+ Affix Guide — Updated for Dragonflight Season 4
Affixes exist to make Mythic+ dungeons more interesting, rather than simply increasing damage and health requirements, by introducing dungeon-wide abilities that slow your group's progress through the instance.
Mythic+ Affixes
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 to them from week to week.
New Affixes in Dragonflight
Incorporeal
 Incorporeal will have a chance to spawn during combat, up to a maximum of
2 copies. The copies or copy, will be present for 20 sec casting
 Destabilize, if the cast goes through, it will reduce your damage and
healing by 50%. How to counter them?
- You can use interrupt or stun effects to stop the cast from finishing.
 - The "copies" fall under no category, meaning that you can 
 Banish
them, 
 Blind them or any sort of hard crowd-control ability will
stop them from casting. - Even if they are in the middle of the pack, once they are crowd-controlled, they will stop casting until the duration of the CC persist or 20 sec are gone, in which case they will disappear.
 - Once you defeat all enemies you were in combat with, all "copies" will disappear.
 
Afflicted
Will have a chance to spawn up to 2 Afflicted Souls every couple
of seconds spend in combat. The Afflicted Souls will have only one
ability called 
 Afflicted Cry; if it goes through, it will reduce the
haste to all players by 100% for 10 sec. How to counter them?
- All Afflicted Souls have 
 Cursed Spirit, 
 Diseased Spirit
and 
 Poisoned Spirit debuffs, once you dispel one of them, they
will disappear. This means that classes that provide such dispel or have
multiple of them will be extremely valuable in Mythic+. - You can use direct healing to get rid of the Afflicted Souls.
Passive healing does NOT help you with healing the souls
(such as 
 Vampiric Embrace). - You can line-of-sight the 
 Afflicted Cry cast. - If you are further than 55 yards, you can out-range the 
 Afflicted Cry. 
Entangling
 Entangling is the easiest among the newly introduced affixes; all it does is every couple of seconds, there will be an Entangling plant spawn
under all party members, which will slow you by 30%. You have 8
seconds to move further than 10 yards to remove the affix; failing to do
so will stun you for 3 sec. Here are a few other ways to deal with
 Entangling.
- Movement-imparing immunity like 
 Blessing of Freedom will completely
neutralize the harmful effect of 
 Entangling. - Magical immunity will also neutralize the effect.
 
Fortified and Tyrannical
Every week, all Mythic+ Keys of level 2 or higher — in other words, every key — will be either "Fortified" or "Tyrannical." These two affixes alternate every week. 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.
Fortified
Having 
 Fortified present will increase the difficulty
of non-boss enemies by 30% and their Health by 20%. Pay attention to
the size of each pull to prevent your group from being overwhelmed by the extra
risk.
Tyrannical
 Tyrannical is an extremely dangerous affix, increasing the Health
of each boss by 30%. In addition, bosses will also deal
15% more damage in the weeks with this affix. All in all, make sure to save your
offensive and defensive cooldowns for the dungeon's boss fights when this affix
is present.
Other Affixes
 Afflicted, 
 Incorporeal, and 
 Entangling are
going to be part of the Level 5 Affixes.
Level 5 Affixes
Volcanic
 Volcanic acts as a ranged counterpart to the 
 Storming.
When in combat with an enemy, 
 Volcanic Plumes will occasionally appear
under players. Failing to move out of these plumes in time will deal a small
amount of damage and knock you up. This is one of the easiest affixes to play
with, but it can turn deadly if combined with any other dungeon mechanic. One
important note to keep in mind is that the more enemies you fight, the more
spawns of Volcanic Plume you will see! In addition, these plumes can only appear
under a player that is not in melee range of an enemy.
Storming
An affix originally introduced Shadowlands, 
 Storming is quite tough
for any melee players looking to play it. While present, tornadoes are created and spiral
outward from enemies when in combat. Coming into contact with these will cause
damage and knock you into the air. Similar to the 
 Explosive
affix, pulling large amounts of enemies at once will result in more of these
tornadoes spawning at once. If you are a ranged player, stay out of melee, and
you will have an easy time dealing with it. In addition, when the mobs are under
the influence of a stun, they will not spawn any tornadoes!
Level 10 Affixes
Bolstering
 Bolstering activates whenever an elite non-boss enemy dies,
increasing the damage of all nearby enemies by 20% stacking with each
death infinitely for 20 sec. The biggest change here is that the affix no longer
bolsters the Health of the mobs. This is a particularly troublesome affix for
PUG groups and notoriously known to be one of the hardest. One easy way to deal
with it is to watch the quantity of each pull. The more mobs you have, the
harder it becomes for them to die at the same time. Knowing when to stop using
AoE-damage abilities and focus more on priority-damage instead will also make
this affix easier to deal with.
Bursting
 Bursting is an affix that will potentially punish you for
defeating too many enemies at once. This affix causes most enemies to
apply a stack of 
 Burst to the entire party upon death. This effect stacks, and its duration is refreshed with each additional stack. However, rather
than dealing damage based on a player's maximum Health, it is a finite value
that scales with the keystone level and caps out at +15. In addition, Burst is
considered a magic debuff and can, therefore, be dispelled by any Healer
specialization. As a result, one of the most common strategies upon reaching
high stacks is to use a Priest's 
 Mass Dispel to remove all stacks of
Burst from the party at once.
Sanguine
The 
 Sanguine affix is one that emphasizes defeating enemies
all at once, as when most non-boss enemies are slain, a pool of 
 Sanguine Ichor
is left behind that will heal all enemies within it for 5% of their maximum Health per second.
These pools will last for 12 sec. In addition, a
player standing in this pool will take 15% of their maximum Health in damage per
second. One of the easiest ways to deal with this affix is by making use of knockback effects
such as 
 Thunderstorm, 
 Typhoon, and 
 Ring of Peace as soon as
an enemy's death creates a pool or the remaining mobs in a pull approach any
Sanguine Ichor.
Spiteful
 Spiteful is an affix that will catch you off guard if you are
not careful. Whenever a non-boss enemy dies, a Spiteful Shade will spawn and fixate a
random non-tank player. This is perhaps the hardest affix for players that play
in melee, as each Shade's melee attack hits incredibly hard and can quickly
prove lethal. However, their own Health gradually reduces over time through
 All-Consuming Spite until the Shade eventually dies on its own. As such,
a common strategy is to use crowd-control abilities to slow them down or to drag
remaining enemies away from the Shades that have spawned.
Raging
 Raging will no longer increase the damage of non-boss-enemies
once they fall under 30% health but instead make them immune to crowd-control effects.
It is highly recommended to have an 
Enrage Dispel in your party in the form of
a Hunter's 
 Tranquilizing Shot, A Druid's 
 Soothe,
or a Rogue's 
 Shiv. Make sure to use your group's utilities to
help with survival.
Changelog
- 02 Jun. 2024: Typo changes.
 - 22 Apr. 2024: No further changes required for Season 4.
 - 19 Mar. 2024: No further changes required for 10.2.6 Patch.
 - 15 Jan. 2024: No further changes required for 10.2.5 Patch.
 - 05 Nov. 2023: Updated and Ready for 10.2. Patch.
 - 05 Sep. 2023: No further updates needed for 10.1.7 Patch.
 - 08 May 2023: Guide Overhauled for Dragonflight Season 2.
 - 13 Dec. 2022: Guide Overhauled for Dragonflight Season 1.
 - 27 Nov. 2022: Updated for Dragonflight Launch
 - 30 Oct. 2022: Added the most recent Thundering changes.
 - 25 Oct. 2022: Fully updated for Dragonflight Pre-patch.
 - 02 Aug. 2022: Fully updated for Season 4 and the new Shrouded seasonal affix.
 - 03 Mar. 2022: Bolstering affix received further nerfs.
 - 21 Feb. 2022: Fully updated for Season 3 of Shadowlands Mythic+.
 - 29 Oct. 2021: Updated for Patch 9.1.5, including the new Timewalking-only affix: Infernal.
 - 09 Jul. 2021: Fully updated for Season 2 of Shadowlands Mythic+.
 - 20 Jun. 2021: Necrotic nerfs reverted, mentioned Raging and Bolstering affix nerfs.
 - 18 Jun. 2021: Updated with several new abilities introduced to the Tormented Seasonal Affix; updated Necrotic and Storming affixes to reflect their massive changes.
 - 15 Jun. 2021: Added new Tormented Seasonal Affix.
 - 27 Apr. 2021: Updated the ways to skip Prideful affix.
 - 19 Apr. 2021: Guide Overhauled for Shadowlands Season 1.
 - 31 May 2020: Updated the description of Urg'roth's abilities slightly.
 - 10 May 2020: Updated the guide's descriptions and information about the Obelisk Mechanics of the Awakened Affix.
 - 16 Jan. 2019: Guide added.
 
This guide has been written by Petko, one of the top Mythic+ players of all time. He has accomplished several Rank 1 World & Europe Team and Solo seasonal rankings, with multiple classes over the span of multiple expansions. You can catch his daily streams on Twitch, and find many of his educational videos on YouTube and TikTok.
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