The mythic+ content in World of Warcraft: Shadowlands makes up a great amount of the endgame content. Providing an endless number of uncapped challenges, rather than the once-a-week raid tiers, many players gravitate towards Mythic+.
The main feature of this content is the Affix system, which provides a weekly set of rotating challenges. These affixes heavily change the dungeon, making the challenge more difficult as well as forcing new strategies to deal with the changes.
Shadowlands has seen a number of affixes return from previous content, as well as a few more being added in. This week, for example, is made up entirely of affixes that have been active in the Mythic+ system for a while, save for the new seasonal Prideful affix for keys +10 and higher.
Next week will be the same situation, with Tyrannical, Raging, and Explosive being the first three affixes. Prideful will, of course, remain the fourth affix, as it will be doing for the entirety of Season 1.
Explosive was a massive headache back in 8.3, with many players going so far as to avoid dungeons when the affix was active. The explosives spawned by the affix were responsible for many a wipe, especially in group-finder groups where communication was less frequent.
Explosive causes small orbs to spawn that gradually get larger and larger. In order for these to go away, players must switch to target them and destroy them. Failing to do so causes them to explode for heavy group-wide damage.
Many also spawn at once, meaning that a few seconds of inattention can be all it takes to wipe a group. Even the best healer can’t do much if four explosives go off at once and take the entire group down to 0% simultaneously, so it’s up to DPS to make sure they’re being taken care of.
Thankfully, the affix has been adjusted and heavily nerfed leading into the Shadowlands expansion. They’ll now spawn farther away from enemies, eliminating the issue of not being able to see or target one due to them being stuck untargetable under larger mobs.
They’ll also now play a sound when defeated rather than simply fading away in silence as they had been before. This will make sure that players know they’ve been taken care of so that they can switch back to their primary target quicker.
While they have been nerfed, they’re still a massive challenge. Left unattended, they’ll explode for half of the party’s maximum health, so it only takes two to spell disaster. Make sure that you’re paying attention to handle the explosives in time!
