It’s a new season of Mythic Plus, so we have a special edition of The Weekly Route to help prepare you for dungeons in this brave new world.

So what exactly has changed about Mythic Plus?

Edit: This article was updated to reflect a hotfix to Reaping's interaction with Fortified and Bolstering - spirits now have the same health regardless of those affixes.

• Difficulty has gone up by about 3 keystone levels, so a +10 this season is about as hard as a +13 was last season.
• Rewards from the end of the dungeon have gone up by 30 item levels. However, for this week only, end-of-dungeon rewards are capped at item level 385.
• Rewards from the weekly chest have also gone up by 30 item levels, starting with next week’s chest, so to earn the best possible reward you need to complete a +10 this week.
• There is a new affix active in dungeons at keystone levels 10 and higher, Reaping!

This Weekly Route will focus entirely on preparing you to deal with the Reaping affix. Here’s exactly how it works:

• Whenever you kill an enemy, their spirit will spawn above their corpse, untargetable, and with half the base health of that enemy - BEFORE modifications like Fortified, AFTER modifications from Keystone Level. At every 20% interval on the enemy forces tracker, all spirits will become targetable, hostile, and aggro on to you, regardless of where in the dungeon they are. They will not aggro any other enemies as they run to you, however!
• There are three different types of spirit.
  • Most enemies spawn a Risen Soul, which only does melee attacks, but these attacks do stack a nasty dispellable DoT.
  • Some enemies, generally those that either have a ranged autoattack or are spellcasters, instead spawn Tormented Souls, which cast Grave Bolt, which is interruptible and takes 5 seconds to cast, but deals 25% of the target’s maximum health in damage if it goes off.
  • Mini-bosses and other large enemies, often those that are immune to most crowd control, leave behind a Lost Soul when they die. These enemies are the ones you’ll need to pay the most attention to, as you’ll have to dodge both the Shadow Smash they cast while alive, and the Expel Soul that triggers when they die.
• Most affixes do not interact with Reaping - in fact, there are some surprisingly favorable interactions. For instance, Sanguine pools do not heal Reaping souls, and they do not Rage or Bolster or even spawn Explosives.
• Each enemy only ever spawns one spirit, so normally each Reaping wave will only contain 20% of enemy forces worth of spirits. However, if you wipe to or find a way to reset (Shadowmeld, anyone?) a Reaping wave, those spirits will return to their corpses and remain hostile. They will sit there with a very large aggro radius, and if another Reaping wave is triggered, they will instantly aggro on to your group once again.

So what does Reaping mean for your strategy? Scroll down to find our theory for how to attack each dungeon, but first let’s cover some general strategic implications.

Since spirits are worth 0 enemy forces, and do not need to be killed to complete the dungeon, you can kill the final boss of a dungeon, and then get to 100% enemy forces, and by so doing you can avoid having to deal with the final Reaping wave. This is generally doable in most dungeons, although if you’re trying to execute this strategy you will need to be very careful to not accidentally pull extra enemies throughout the dungeon, as this will cause you to trigger the 100% wave before killing the last boss.

You will need to figure out when you want to trigger each wave of Reaping enemies, based on your group’s composition and what sort of damage you’re best at dealing. There may even be circumstances where Bloodlust is best used on a Reaping wave, such as if you plan to trigger one in the middle of a pull and your group is full of DPS that benefit from Haste in AoE situations.

Be mindful of where you kill enemies - since the spirits anchor to their corpses, you may want to try to kill all enemies from any given Reaping wave close to each other, so that you don’t have to wait for spirits to get to you from halfway across the map. If you’re instead trying to use deaths or Shadowmelds to avoid dealing with Reaping waves altogether, you need to be sure to drop those corpses away from anywhere you still need to visit in the dungeon.





If you’re interested in importing the images below into your Mythic Dungeon Tools addon, just click the Copy Route link for any dungeon to copy a string that you can paste it into the the "Import" window of your MDT to get the route for yourself! The Routes below are starting points, designed to help you begin thinking about Reaping - so rather than separating each pull, they instead show you which enemies might be grouped into which Reaping wave.

Atal'Dazar [back to top]

The best way to kill the final piece of trash after Yazma dies involves a Death Knight: have them take control of a Reanimated Honor Guard and maintain control of it throughout the dungeon, dropping it only after Yazma dies. The kicker is that Reanimated Honor Guards leave behind Lost Souls, the most problematic spirits, so you will have also removed a potent threat from the table. If you do not have access to this, you can still attempt to do something similar by saving a Skyscreamer from the middle platform until after Yazma - you can even get in combat with it as you travel to her, and then just keep it CC’d until the fight is over or almost over.

In Season One, many teams had success in this dungeon with wildly different routes. The Reaping waves we’ve highlighted here are ones you’ll encounter if you decide to kill a full 20% worth of enemy forces on the left-hand side of the dungeon, but this is generally done only to provide enough count to allow you to skip the packs before Vol’Kaal. We suspect this strategy will remain dominant at the top of the metagame, due to the difficulty of those packs and the fact that they will now also spawn the most problematic spirits. If your group is planning to kill those enemies, then you will of course encounter a different set of Reaping waves than the one shown below!

Read more on Atal’Dazar Dungeon Abilities.

Freehold [back to top]

Freehold is such a large dungeon that you may well be able to get away with skipping some of the Reaping waves, even ones before the 100% wave - especially if your group is Alliance. Here’s how you might do it: Trigger the first Reaping wave (the one circled in Green), then book it across the bridge. Now the whole group Shadowmelds or does something like Vanish or Feign Death. Even though those spirits have a large aggro radius, you’re now far enough away that you will not pull them, nor do you ever have to go back to that part of the dungeon unless you die before updating your graveyard with the next boss. Even though those spirits will aggro to you with every future Reaping wave, your threat dropping abilities will be off cooldown with each new wave and useable again to continue to avoid having to deal with them.

This is also a dungeon where you will find it easy to trigger the final Reaping wave after killing Harlan Sweete, by grabbing a pack that contains an Irontide Ravager after the fight and letting their Painful Motivation finish off the last few points of enemy forces that you need.

Be wary of triggering Reaping Waves from enemies that died very far from each other in this dungeon - you may waste a lot of time waiting for them to all group up. If you realize you’re going to do this, consider pulling a few non-spirit enemies to kill with the nearby spirits while the far away ones travel to you.

Read more on Freehold Dungeon Abilities.

Kings' Rest [back to top]

Kings’ Rest is another dungeon where you can use a Death Knight to take control of an Undead enemy from the final part of the dungeon and save it to finish your enemy forces requirement after fighting King Dazar. If you don’t have access to that, however, there doesn’t appear to be another easy way to delay the final Reaping wave, so you may have to deal with all five of them.

Another problem in Kings’ Rest is that, regardless of how much you kill or skip at the start of the dungeon, the second Reaping wave will spawn in the middle of the burial chamber gauntlet after The Golden Serpent, so you will have to deal with spirits from the kings and queens you’ve already slain at the same time as the next gauntlet wave spawns.

Read more on Kings’ Rest Dungeon Abilities.

Shrine of the Storm [back to top]

Shrine of the Storm is full of tiny enemies like Animated Droplets that will spawn even tinier spirits, so much of the danger of each Reaping Wave can be quickly handled with some burst AoE. It’s also a dungeon where many Season One routes would leave very disjointed Reaping Waves, with spirits trickling in from afar. The waves outlined below make a few adjustments to standard pulls in order to trigger Reaping waves that are more compact.

It’s very easy to trigger the final Reaping wave after killing Vol’zith the Whisperer - just don’t pull the Abyssal Eels that you need to fill the enemy forces bar until the fight is over or almost over!

Read more on Shrine of the Storm Dungeon Abilities.

Siege of Boralus [back to top]

If Ashvane Spotters weren’t already your best friend from Season One, they will be soon! These enemies cast Sighted Artillery, which will cause a series of circles to spawn underneath a party member’s feet. Cannon blasts then rain down on these locations, damaging both you and enemies, including Reaping spirits. The route sketched out below plans to skip some of the trash at the very start of the instance using something like Shroud to cause only one Reaping wave to spawn before you get access to a Spotter. We’re only providing Horde pathing, but the basic idea should be very similar for Alliance. The idea is for the 40%, 60%, and 80% waves to be killed with the help of the Spotter, and then you can even keep one alive and use it to help kill tentacles during the Viq’goth encounter, then finish it afterwards to avoid the final Reaping wave.

Read more on Siege of Boralus Dungeon Abilities.

Temple of Sethraliss [back to top]

Standard Temple of Sethraliss routes will cause many of the Reaping waves to be disjointed, with enemies from the same wave often dying hundreds of yards away from each other. The dungeon, however, offers a nice solution to the inefficiency - there’s always a small pull that you can do while you’re waiting for the spirits to get to you and group up. One bizarre effect you’ll find is that a Reaping wave can spawn when you deposit the Eyes of Sethraliss into the skull, as that act awards enemy forces.

If you follow the strategy of our Season One Expert routes, you’ll find that the 100% Reaping wave is a problem that has already been solved by skipping the enemies on the bridge before the final boss and then pulling them while empowered at the end of that encounter.

Read more on Temple of Sethraliss Dungeon Abilities.

The MOTHERLODE!! [back to top]

The Reaping waves mapped out below would result from using a route similar to the Expert routes featured in this series last season. This entails spending a great deal of time in the area before the first boss and capitalizing on the high enemy forces given by Mechanized Peacekeepers. One upside to this strategy rather than a more standard route is that all of the first four Reaping waves will be spawn in a much more compact area than if you were to pull enemies from the whole dungeon. However, this strategy may not be worthwhile, you may instead want to kill different enemies to deal with more favorable types of spirits.

Earning the final points of enemy forces after killing Mogul Razdunk is possible but not trivial - the fastest way to do so would involve getting to 1 count shy of completion and then quickly blowing up a Crawler Mine after the boss fight is done, but this will fall apart if your count isn’t perfect, or if you kill an extra Crawler Mine while either fighting or skipping the enemies in that area.

Read more on The MOTHERLODE!! Dungeon Abilities.

The Underrot [back to top]

If you want to trigger the first wave of Reaping before fighting the first boss, you’ll have to either deal with a Befouled Spirit pull, or kill the patrols from both bridges. Instead of doing this, we’ve elected to put forward a plan that spawns the first wave from the Fetid Maggot pull directly after the first boss, but you will need to wait for the enemies to get to you from the start of the dungeon - perhaps fighting some Living Rots in the interim.

At first glance it would appear impossible to delay the final Reaping wave until after the Unbound Abomination encounter, but we have a strategy for how to do so. Begin by sapping, imprisoning, or avoiding altogether the first Maggot at the start of the dungeon. The tunnel to the last boss will still become accessible after killing the final Faceless Corruptors, but it won’t turn you into a ball of light, so you’ll need something like an Avalanche Elixir to drop down to the room. After killing the last boss, speak to the friendly NPC that spawns to teleport back to the front of the dungeon, where you can then kill that maggot and fill your enemy forces bar.

Read more on The Underrot Dungeon Abilities.

Tol Dagor [back to top]

Tol Dagor is even more about Heavy Cannons than it was in Season One - these cannons also damage Reaping spirits, so the strategy of racing to them as quickly as possible is likely to dominate among high-end groups. Below, we’ve featured a plan that spawns two Reaping waves before making it to the cannons and using them to handle the rest, but it’s possible that this can be taken to an even more extreme point, with only one Reaping wave spawned before the cannons are online.

This is a dungeon where full-Shadowmeld Alliance groups may find easy value by temporarily Shadowmelding the first wave(s) and then dealing with them later with the cannons when they aggro alongisde future waves. It’s also fairly easy to delay the final Reaping wave by skipping the Wardens before Overseer Korgus using Vanish or a death skip, but you may find that to not be worth your time since there is also a cannon available nearby.

Read more on Tol Dagor Dungeon Abilities.

Waycrest Manor [back to top]

Our outline for Reaping waves in this dungeon was designed assuming the top left door is open, but it’s likely that you’ll encounter similar Reaping waves, just in a different order, if one of the right doors is open instead. As this is a dungeon where Witches can spawn and take you by surprise, and different paths are active in different runs, you may find yourself in a position where a Reaping wave threatens to spawn at an inopportune time, such as in the middle of a hard pull. If that happens, put the skills you developed during Bolstering weeks to work and avoid crossing the wave threshold until everything is ready to be killed quickly.

You’ll also want to be sure you have a nice space to fight each Reaping wave. Try not to get caught in a corridor, as you’ll have a harder time dodging or kiting - aim to fight each wave in one of the large rooms like the Hunting Lodge, the Courtyard, the Banquet Hall, or the Ballroom.

Use a death or Shroud or a threat reset ability to skip the Gloom Horrors before Gorak Tul and then double back and kill them afterwards if you want to trigger the final Reaping wave after the timer stops,

Read more on Waycrest Manor Dungeon Abilities.