MDI Team Spotlight: The Pitu's Angels

With the Shadowlands Mythic Dungeon International (MDI) tournament currently in full swing, there has been a great deal of buzz throughout the Mythic+ community regarding its format and whether or not it is conducive towards its participants. We recently weighed the time investment in proportion to the prize pool and then gathered player perspectives on the recent MDI scheduling changes, all which uncovered many mixed feelings. One of the more cynical opinions on the matter came from Kilthus of newcomer team The Pitu’s Angels, expressing that one less day of Time Trials could have a negative impact on some of the less experienced MDI teams in the tournament such as his own.

Today, we get to know players Coshota, Eidryan, Kilthus, and Notgnomo of The Pitu’s Angels. As this is their team's first official foray into the MDI, they share their thoughts on what it's like competing against seasoned veterans, the Shadowlands MDI format, favored dungeons, and more!




Q: Let’s start at the beginning. What is your first name, main class, and how long have you been playing WoW? How long have you all been doing Mythic+?

Coshota: My name is Manuel and I'm 30 years old *sniff sniff*. I played mainly Restoration Druid and Outlaw Rogue in BFA, but I don’t have a main class. I just try to play around meta. I started to push Mythic+ in BFA Season 3, but I took it more seriously in the last season when we played in the BFA as MDI team “SYZYGY” with 2 members of Pitu’s Angels, Kilthus and Nightktipa.

Eidryan: My name is Adrian. I’m 27 years old and I live in a small town in Galicia, Spain. I started to play WoW Back in Cataclysm with a group of friends for fun, more on the casual side. It was in MoP when I started to play more on the high-end side of PvE. I started doing Mythic+ in Legion, but it was just another thing to do in the game. I didn't like keys as much in Legion as I did when BFA came out and, at this point Mythic+ is the only thing that keeps me playing the game.

Kilthus: My name is Carlos. I’m 25 years old and I live in Salamanca, Spain. I'm a robotics student and I also work as a deliveryman. I main a Balance Druid. I started to play WoW during TBC with my older brother. I was a casual player until Legion when I started to take the game seriously because of Mythic+ and this is the main reason why I keep playing this game. I love Mythic+. Outside of WoW, I like to go to the gym, listen to music, and go out with my friends.

Notgnomo: Hi, my name is Javier. I’m from Barcelona (Spain) and I recently graduated with a Telecommunication Engineering Degree. My main class has always been Warlock, which I started playing back then at the end of BC when I started my journey in the World of Warcraft. It wasn’t till a few years after around the end of WoTLK/Cataclysm when I started raiding and then at MoP, we got what we could call (in my opinion) the first version of Mythic+, which were the “Challenge Mode” dungeons. After a break, I came back for the Legion expansion and, with the new Mythic+ system, I started playing it around 7.3.2 till nowadays (with another break during BFA for my Erasmus semester). I could say that what attracts me about doing Mythic+, aside from all the laughs you have with your mates, is the feeling of pushing yourself to some limit and breaking it, which is also the reason I like to do sports like football and going to the gym.




Q: How long have you all been doing Mythic+ as a group? How did Pitu’s Angels first come together? How long did it take you to form good team synergy?

Coshota: We just played the first realm +15 of this season together, but we had another guy as a healer and Notgnomo was in the other group trying to get the first realm first +15, (we won of course). After that, our healer stopped playing and I swapped to Resto Shaman and Notgnomo started to play with us. However, we haven’t played much in retail together yet, just MDI. It all started as a meme in the community. I'm also known as Pitu, so everyone who played with me in BFA was called my angel, which is why we went with the name Pitu’s Angels because we liked it. We don't have a good synergy yet, which is one of our problems. We have the mechanics and I think that we are all good players, but we have other obligations outside of WoW and we don't have the mentality to “try-hard” the MDI.

Eidryan: The five of us have been playing together since the start of this expansion. We played some keys here and there during BFA, but never as an official team. Actually, our team name was from a meme when Coshota a.k.a. “Pitu” was playing keys during BFA. The players who played with him were called “The Pitu’s Angels”, so we just went under that name. Our first big appearance was in the Spanish tournament “Bloodlust Mythic Tournament” that we won. I think we are still forming our team synergy. We are still new as a group and didn't play for that long together.

Kilthus: I have been playing with Coshota/Pitu since late Legion/early BFA when he started to get interested in Mythic+. In BFA, I met the other guys and we started to play some random push keys sporadically just for fun. At the start of this expansion we decided to play as an “official” team for pushing keys and for MDI time trials. The name comes from a meme of the wow spanish community. Anyone who plays with Pitu was called Pitu’s angel so we decided to go with “The Pitu’s Angels” as the team name. Our first tournament as Pitu’s Angels was the “Blood Mythic Tournament'', a spanish M+ tournament, It was a hard competition but we managed to win it. Coshota, Night and I also played season 3 MDI of BFA under a different team name. We just played one Cup because it was a really hard format and we didn't have enough time to practice so we decided to drop it out.

Notgnomo: To be honest, we haven’t been doing Mythic+ together for very long...maybe just a couple of weeks before the first MDI Cup of Shadowlands, although we already knew each other from a long time ago in BFA. After the Realm First +15 race (which they won since my team depleted one key for 3s the first day of Mythic+), they spoke to me and we thought about competing in the MDI tournament. About the team’s name, the Pitu’s Angels, it was mainly a meme in the Spanish WoW community with one of the members of the team, Coshota. We thought it would be funny to bring the meme to a new level! About synergy, we still have a lot of room for improvement since we haven’t been playing for months or years like other teams.




Q: How does your group handle kick/CC assignments and callouts? Are all of your runs scripted?

Coshota: All I can say is that it's an adventure. In retail, usually me and Eidryan do the callouts, but in MDI, we just pray hard.

Eidryan: To be honest, in the Time Trials, this is more on the free-for-all side. We just get to the dungeon, press W key, and start crushing the pulls. When it comes to the actual Cup matches, everyone calls what they are doing. We try to make them as scripted as we can, but we need to work on that a little bit. I think we can do a better job than we are doing right now.

Kilthus: In Time Trials, we just say “I kick cross”, “I kick skull”, “I CC this guy” and we keep it in mind for the rest of the runs. In official runs or Cup runs, we are much more communicative and everyone calls out what he is going to do or we make little reminders like “Notgnomo, don't forget to use your Dragon Breath.” Personally, I think this is an aspect that we have to improve upon to become a much better team. We try to make our runs as scripted as we can, but we need to work a little bit on that too.

Notgnomo: Normally, we use marks and call for kicks. We all just call self kicks and all try to be communicative about healing cds, personals, and when we have damage CDs. During MDI, we basically (sometimes) call it all out on Discord. After a few runs, we just have it all memorized and there is no need to call everything out.




Q: Can you give us a glimpse into how you build your strats for routes and composition? How much does what the other teams do influence your decisions, and how much do you play to your own team’s strengths?

Coshota: We always do our strats and routes, but when we see other teams, we try to work with both and get the optimal route. About composition, we started playing comfort picks, but we actually just play meta comps and we will play meta comps until we stop playing this competition.

Eidryan: In the first Time Trials, it was our tank Night who brought out the routes for the dungeons and we just went with them. I think we did a good job trying to guess what the big teams would do and we had our routes made in a safer way. To be honest, after we saw the runs of the top teams in the first Cup, we just tried to emulate them as much as we could in the second Time Trials and Cup. We are not very experienced in this type of competition, so we just try to do what the top teams do, though sometimes we need to adapt some pulls to make them safer and more consistent for us.

Notgnomo: In the first MDI Cup, we did think about our routes and try to design an optimal route. But ever since the 2nd MDI Cup, we just see Echo’s route and maybe change a few details. In a few keys, we made an improved version of a live key push route due to lack of time to practice (since we have work and other IRL things going on too).




Q: In our recent article discussing Blizzard’s revisions to the MDI format, Kilthus shared with us that the changes were actually more detrimental to the time investment issue, since less time hurts newer, less experienced teams. What challenges have you had in being a new MDI team so far?

Coshota: Our tank is an old man who needs to stop playing every 1 hour. Furthermore, we have 2 men who have to go to work, 2 others who have to study, so we don’t all have the same schedule. It’s difficult for our team to compete with people who play this game for a living.

Eidryan: One of the problems we have is the time we can put for practice. I myself go to school every day during the week, and Kilthus and Night have work to attend, which ends up taking away a whole day of practice sometimes. Having to reduce our schedule to 1 day of Time Trials sometimes has put us behind, but overall I think this is a good change for the rest of the teams. The time investment with the prize pool was not in harmony, so they had to reduce the time needed or they should maybe add more to the prize pool. Having less experience in the MDI also is a big factor. We still have so much to learn and we try to improve as much as we can from Cup to Cup.

Kilthus: As I said, we are an inexperienced new team and we have jobs or studies to attend, so we can’t stay practicing full time. Some days we didn't play on the whole day because a team member couldn't log in at all. That is a big handicap and perhaps the biggest trouble for us.

Notgnomo: About that, I do not fully agree. It’s true that in our case playing at MDI benefits us since we get more team synergy aside from experience in this format (which most teams already have), but also we kind of benefit a bit since many days we aren’t able to play the entire day anyway due to team members’ work or studies.




Q: If you could make revisions to the current MDI format, what would you do and why?

Coshota: It’s necessary to swap one of two: the prize pool or the time needed for training and play. Two weeks for winning 100 dollars it's not worth it, I mean.

Eidryan: One of the options could be adding more prize pools to each Cup, which could be a short term fix. However, I would prefer if they reduced Time Trials to 3 days, and Cups back to 2 days. Probably separating again EU and NA regions could be a good idea too.

Kilthus: I would separate NA from EU again. Also, I would increase the prize pool. The relation between the hours you need to invest and the money you can win is pretty sad.

Notgnomo: First of all, I would probably reduce the amount of Time Trial keys to 2 instead of 3, then would also reduce the Time Trial days to 3 (or 4) days: Friday, Saturday and Sunday (and half day of Thursday or Monday depending on key announcement time).

About regions, it’s true that merging EU, US and OCE together is more entertaining to the viewer, but Blizzard should also merge all 3 regions rewards to provide an incentive to the teams to invest such a high amount of hours to compete. Right now, aside from some unusual cases, the prize money for first and second place will probably always be taken by Echo and Perplexed, which are the only 2 prizes that give a considerable amount of money. Most newcomer teams will normally fight for top 4-8 places, and those prizes are low. In my opinion, that’s the main reason why many teams quit the competition since they get more (and with less stress) streaming live keys than competing in the MDI.




Q: In both the Global Cups #1 and #2, you were first matched up against veteran team Perplexed in the Upper Bracket, and then faced off against PI ME in the lower bracket. What are some valuable things you learned from playing both of these teams two different Cups in a row? Is there anything you want to do differently if you get another chance to play against either of them?

Coshota: Perplexed are monsters, but you don't need to play versus them to know it. About PI ME, we are sure that we can win against them, but the nerves and sometimes timers or luck can play against us, such as the Halls of Atonement bug or the timer from the first boss in Mists of Tirna Scithe.

Eidryan: We just learned that, even if you are a top team, mistakes can happen, and we saw that against PI ME when we won a map in the first Cup against them in The Necrotic Wake. So I think we just need to improve our maps, make them more consistent, and if our rival makes a mistake, take advantage of that even more.

Kilthus: We learned that every team make mistakes, so if we improve our gameplay a bit, we can win against any team. We just need to make our runs cleaner and more consistent.

Notgnomo: In our Cup preparations, we mostly invested time preparing for the Lower Bracket since, as I have said, we had to optimize our time and didn’t had enough time to practice all 6 keys extensively. We lost quite clearly to Perplexed, but vs. PI ME, in my opinion, we were quite close on most maps but we made more mistakes compared to them. Also, there were some RNG issues that were kind of unfortunate (like in Mist of Tirna Scithe when the first boss’s spell order ended up casting fear or in Halls of Atonement when the first boss’s beam animations got bugged).




Q: If there was no meta and all classes were created equally, what composition would you love to run in the MDI and why?

Coshota: Demon Hunter tank has nice control and movement. Holy Paladin just for doing DPS like an animal. For DPS, casters, because my melee classes take crazy amounts of damage, (especially the monkey of my Death Knight). It doesn’t matter if the Death Knight is played by Night or Kilthus...both monkeys.

Eidryan: Hmm, to be honest, I don’t care about the comp as long as a Windwalker is in it, smiley face.

Kilthus: My dream comp would be:

• Death Knight tank (Maxgrip PogChamp)
  
• Disc priest (PI Dispenser)
  
• Feral Druid (it was my favorite spec when I started to play Druid)
  
• Survival Hunter (Can use BL for my Feral and it is a funny spec :D)
  
• WW Monk (To make Eidryanz happy)

Notgnomo: I would probably run a 4 DPS and Prot Paladin comp for the memes and also more killing speed, but if I had to choose a normal composition it would be:

• Warlock (since it’s my main)
  
• Warrior Fury/Arms (to just see it in an MDI tournament)
  
• Hunter Survival (for the memes)
  
• Priest Discipline (I want to have my “simPI”)
  
• Blood Death Knight (Mass grip feels so good)

Q: What were some of the most intense moments in your games? Are there any clips/timestamps you’d love to highlight?

Eidryan: The most intense moment was in The Necrotic Wake against PI ME in the first match of the Lower Brack #1 Cup. After killing the second boss, we had to do The Necropolis snap that we saw Golden Guardians do the day before. In our practice runs, we only tried that 2 times and we failed hard both times, so we went on the match day without passing that point in the dungeon and, when we managed to do it on the match, oooh s**t it was a relief.



Kilthus: The most intense moment was in The Necrotic Wake against PI ME when we won the 1st map. We managed to complete The Necropolis snap. We had only practiced it twice and we wiped it both times, so It was really satisfying to complete it in the actual match. We made it really clean. Also, it was very funny to watch how we got the achievement for completing the full dungeon when we won the map :D

Also, a really hard moment for me was the next map, Halls of Atonement. We were ahead we were about to kill the 1st boss, but it got bugged and we got insta-killed in the intermission. We asked for a remake, but Blizzard denied it. After that, I was like full “mentalboom” and I started playing very badly.

Notgnomo: Probably one of the most insane moments on MDI would be when we did the Necrotic Wake snap. We had previously done it a couple of times in practice, but on some, it didn't end up well, so we kind of hoped that it would go well on the oficial run…and it did!




Q: Which dungeon has been the hardest to prepare for in the MDI for you so far and why? Which dungeon has been your favorite?

Coshota: De Other Side was the hardest dungeon. It’s so long with so many hard parts, and both times it had Tyrannical with Bolstering one time and Explosive with the other. My favourite was probably Halls of Atonement, but the experience of the bug destroyed my illusion, so now I’m not sure what key I can call my favourite.

Eidryan: For me personally, I would say De Other Side was the hardest for us. We had a lot of trouble doing the first part consistently. We were getting crushed by the first boss a lot of the runs and had trouble killing all the platform adds on the last boss. I think my favourite so far is Halls of Atonement. I like big pulls and I like the overall design of the dungeon.

Kilthus: De Other Side was a really hard dungeon for us and we struggled a lot there. We did a lot of runs and we were full “mental boom”. We started to go through the entire dungeon without even saying a single word on the whole run. It was pretty bad for us. My favourite dungeon is Halls of Atonement. I like the design of this dungeon, since it’s an open dungeon where you can take multiple pathings and you can make really big pulls.

Notgnomo: I think De Other Side has been the one I dislike the most due to the long runs and my favourite would be Halls of Atonement since you get to see a lot of numbers!




Q: Lastly, what do you hope for your team in the future? What are your overarching goals in the game both as a team and as individual players?

Coshota: I want to try hard in this competition. I'm not sure if it will be with this team or with other mates, but I'll try no matter what.

Kilthus: Our goal for this MDI is to make it to the top 5-6 in one of the Cups. We can try to aim for a top 4 spot. We will need to practice and improve a lot, but I think we will be able to make it.

Notgnomo: In the short term, we want to try to get around top 4-6 in some MDI Cup. In the long term, my main goal is to have fun since it’s a game, so the most important aspect of the team for me aside from pushing would be a good environment between all the members. Also I have to say that, in the Spanish community, most of the players already know each other, so in general, we have a really good community!

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About the Authors

Related News

• The Future of the MDI: Is it at Risk?
  
• MDI Scheduling Changes Address Player Concerns

Links

• Find Pitu’s Angels on Raider.IO
  
• Find Pitu’s Angel’s on Twitter
  
  
• Find Coshota on Raider.IO
  
• Follow Coshota on Twitch
  
• Follow Coshota on Twitter
  
  
• Find Eidryan on Raider.IO
  
• Follow Eidryan on Twitch
  
• Follow Eidryan on Twitter
  
  
• Find Kilthus on Raider.IO
  
• Follow Kilthus on Twitch
  
• Follow Kilthus on Twitter
  
  
• Find Notgnomo on Raider.IO
  
• Follow Notgnomo on Twitch
  
• Follow Notgnomo on Twitter
  
  
• Find Nightktipa on Raider.IO