Team Spotlight: Ambition

Today, we are excited to shine a light on Mythic+ Team Ambition, home of Asuna, Ellesmere, Heftyjuggz, Jpc, and Nerf. Comprised of several well-known MDI and Mythic+ veterans, Ambition has been slamming the leaderboards this season—currently holding the world’s top key: a timed +26 Necrotic Wake as well as several other records so far.


So what is the secret to their success? Check out this exclusive interview to find out!

“Keep trying to learn from every key you do. Even if it was the most clean run possible, don't ever stop trying to grow and become a better player every chance you get.” —Heftyjuggz

Q: Let’s start at the beginning. What is your first (real) name, main class, and how long have you been playing WoW? How long have you all been doing Mythic+ specifically and what else do you like to do outside of the game?

Asuna: My name is Billy. I am 25 years old and I play a Mage currently in WoW. I have been playing the game since the start of Burning Crusade. As soon as Mythic+ came out back in Legion was when I hard main-swapped to Mage. Since then, I have been playing it nonstop. WoW becomes a lot more fun when you enjoy playing your class, I promise. Outside of WoW, my physical hobby was never to play sports or work out, but to skateboard! It’s something I have done all my life.

Ellesmere: My name is Kendall. I am a Holy Paladin main and have been playing WoW since a few months before Burning Crusade release. I mained Priest for many years until Legion came out, at which point I main-swapped to Paladin and haven’t looked back since. Outside of WoW, my biggest passion in life has always been music. I’ve played violin since I was 4 years old and love writing music for film/tv/games. I’m very passionate about everything I do and each day I try to bring as much positivity to the people in my life as possible.

Heftyjuggz: Hey, my name is Shane aka Onezy. I’m 25 years old and from New York. I currently play Balance Druid and have been pushing Mythic+ since BFA season two. I’m a competitive person and love pushing end game content in WoW. Outside of the game, I love sports and you can usually catch me on a hike or playing basketball in my free time!

Jpc: My name is James and I’m 24 years old. I main Rogue, but also currently play Death Knight for my guild. I have been playing the game since the end of Burning Crusade. I was never really involved in the high Mythic+ scene until Shadowlands, but I’ve enjoyed every minute of it so far. It’s extremely rewarding to time World First keys. Outside of WoW, I really like going to the gym and playing soccer. I have three younger brothers that are all in college now, but I love spending time with them whenever they’re home.

Nerf: My name is Tin and I play a Demon Hunter. I’ve been playing WoW since Vanilla and have been tanking in WoW since Burning Crusade. I started doing Mythic+ since it came out in Legion with my brother where we only pugged keys because we didn’t have a consistent group. I started to take Mythic+ more seriously in BFA where I also competed in MDI with Method NA. Outside of WoW, most of my time is spent with my 8 month old baby girl.




Q: When watching your group do cutting-edge level keys, it’s clear how coordinated you are, even down to the details of using your engineering belts on specific pulls. How long have you been doing Mythic+ as a group and how long did it take you to form synergy?

Asuna: I have known Nerf the longest in the group since about early Season 1 of BFA. We had similar scores and I was looking for tanks, so I reached out to him in a Discord DM to play/add each other and that's literally it. I met Ellesmere around the same time through mutual friends, so I have known them for a couple years now. I met JPC on the Beta of Shadowlands because he was pumping hard and was super knowledgeable. Hefty was someone I did not meet until Nerf recruited a boomkin to push with, but it did not take long to gain synergy at all. I have played with Nerf and Elle in prior push seasons, so I have always had proper synergy and communication with them. I did not start playing with JPC and Hefty till this expansion, but it never took long to gain synergy when they always play properly themselves.

Ellesmere: Group synergy and communication is the most important thing when pushing keys with a team. It’s important that you not only get along well, but that you are all equally invested and dedicated to whatever goal you want to accomplish as a team. I’ve known Billy and Nerf the longest as we’ve been playing together since Seasons 3/4 of BFA. Although JPC and Hefty both started playing with us recently, they’ve both fit in like gloves as they’re very communicative and have that same passion and drive to be the best in the world.

Heftyjuggz: I just started playing with everyone in the group this season and I don’t think it took long at all to gain synergy from the team as a whole. We all had a goal in mind to be one of the best Mythic+ groups this season, and even when the streams are off, everyone is putting in work to make sure we can come back stronger the next day.

Jpc: Well, I first met Billy doing Mythic+ on Beta. It was always a good time whenever we played. When I heard his team was holding “tryouts” for a Rogue, I had to get my foot in the door, so I kept DM’ing Billy to get me in for some keys for a few days, and the rest was history! It didn’t take long at all for us to mesh and work well together, especially since the core of the team (Elle, Nerf, and Billy) have been playing together for so long.

Nerf: I first started playing with Billy (Asuna) in BFA Season 1, but we didn’t consistently play together until BFA Season 4 when I also started playing with Ellesmere. Ellesmere was a big fan of mine at the time and was trying to convince me that Holy Paladin was the best, so I gave him a chance. I started playing with Hefty in Shadowlands Season 1 when I was looking for a moonkin and he was recommended to me by Dabnel, a guildie of mine and the Windwalker Monk we ran with at the start of Shadowlands. JPC reached out to us about a month ago when he heard we were looking for a rogue saying he was a big fan. I watched several of his streams during beta and the main thing I took away was that he is passionate about Mythic+ and trying to be the best more than most people. That’s a good trait to have in a teammate, so I gave him a tryout for our team. As a team, we’ve only been playing together for about a month. The past push week (Bursting/Volcanic) was only our third “push week” together. Team synergy is mostly about communication, to which the team has been very good about so we haven’t run into huge issues.




Q: Can you give us a glimpse into how you build your strats for routes and class/covenant composition?

Asuna: To be completely honest, as what most top competitors would do in most games, we try to adapt what we think the best comp is depending on what other top players are doing. In our case, we noticed that the top Chinese teams were using Boomkin when we weren’t, so we decided to try it out.

For our routes, Nerf is the main route maker with pretty much each of us pitching in information if we feel like we can be more efficient with healing or damage cds. JPC is incredibly good friends with the really good Chinese push groups, so he is always able to study their routes. One thing is I never really look at a route and plan my CDs around it. Most of the time timings for your CDs are ever changing depending on the key level if you have deaths, or are faster, etc. It is something I try to decide on the fly.

Ellesmere: Similar to any other competitive games, we study what other top players are doing and how different classes/specs are performing and then try things out ourselves. Early in the season we played Hunter/Windwalker Monk/Mage DPS comp which was very strong but we found weaknesses, specifically that hunter was very squishy, tank damage was extreme so kiting was high which meant mobs being grouped was more difficult (which lose us a lot of damage), and we were lacking some rogue utility that would allow us to build better routes (specifically shroud). We solved these issues by swapping Hunter for Boomy which was infinitely more tanky and provided us a real battle res, damage that could be sustained regardless of mob grouping, and Typhoon/Ursol’s Vortex/Trees for tank kiting & survivability.

As for routes, Nerf generally creates the baseline routes and then we tweak them based on DPS/healing cooldowns and what we feel would be better for group damage or survivability. We also often study the chinese and EU routes to see if there are any ideas we could use to improve our routes.

Heftyjuggz: I would have to say Nerf and Elle probably spend the most time building the routes for our team and making sure we are being as efficient as possible. Outside of key pushing hours, we all spend a lot of time watching VOD’s of what we can change as a team or just as individuals when it comes to each key. Having the time to practice dungeons with a consistent group helps a lot when it comes to management of cooldowns/utility throughout the week.

Jpc: What Billy said. Also, we spend a lot of time outside of doing keys throwing out cool new ideas we randomly think of for route improvements; usually, after a little back-and-forth on different takes of how we could implement a new strategy, we come up with a final iteration that’s really effective.

Nerf: Covenant composition is pretty much locked in based on what classes we have. We knew we wanted to play with VDH/Paladin/Mage/Moonkin/Rogue. Prior to Patch 9.0.5, Necrolord was not good for any of those classes and it was also the least impactful covenant for dungeon bonuses so we went without a Necrolord. Mage and Moonkin were best as Night Fae and Rogue performed better as Kyrian so those covenants were locked in. VDH and Hpal could both be Kyrian or Venthyr, but since we’ve been playing with Venthyr Paladin from the start, we decided to continue with that.

For building routes, the main thing to consider this season is the Prideful affix. What bosses/trash do we think we need Pride for? What cooldowns will we have to kill the Manifestation of Pride? Which ones should we skip? Secondly, we have to plan around a Venthyr Paladin. Ashen Hallow is a huge cooldown when available, but when it is on cooldown, we know we’ll run into some problems if we do back-to-back pulls with big healing-per-second requirements (e.g. pulling a Rancid Gasbag that will then spawn a Manifestation of Pride). Lastly, what mobs are time inefficient and should we avoid (e.g. Gargons in Halls of Atonement, Nevermore in Theater of Pain, Squad Leaders in Spires of Ascension)? We also draw inspiration for routes/pulls based on what some of the other teams are doing or if we see something in the MDI (e.g. pulling some of the Shackled Souls into the Kul’tharok boss fight in Theater of Pain).




Q: As Nerf touched upon above, it’s become a convention this season to skip Prides to speed up dungeon key time. Did you guys start doing this after seeing it in the MDI? What are some tips and tricks to effectively skipping Prides that may not be obvious to newer key pushers?

Asuna: I could be wrong, but I do not think we adapted this until we saw it in the MDI. Like I said earlier, we always look to adapt what top players are doing successfully, and this was one. Something to remember about prides is that they do not gain truesight instantly and you do not need any speed increase when you invis pot. Simply spawn the Manifestation of Pride, combat will drop, spam invis potion, hold W in a straight direction away from the prideful, and you should be clean every time.

However, when you have affixes like Grievous or Bursting, it gets a bit tricky. With Grievous, you can still do it if the Grievous bleed is being absorbed. For example, I am a Mage, so my mage barrier works. For Bursting, if you spam your invis potion at the very last second of the Bursting tick (less than .5 seconds on the bursting duration) you can cleanly invis pot. One of the many reasons we went dwarf on the big bursting push week was to dispel ourselves and make the success rate of skipping Prideful with invis pot higher.

Ellesmere: Prides are a huge time waste in really high keys as not only do they force you to use healing or dps cooldowns on them, but they also just take up 40-60 seconds of the timer without giving you any trash %. Early on in the season, this realization led us to try and do the last boss before triggering the final Pride in as many dungeons as possible to at least skip one pride. Once we saw people skipping Prides in the MDI, we realized you could skip them simply with an invis pot, so we began using this strat in as many places as possible during high keys.

Heftyjuggz: I think the first example of this was in the MDI when everyone was using Shadowmeld to skip the Prideful. Once the hotfix came in for that Shadowmeld skip, we started theorycrafting on what other ways might work for skipping Pride. Invis potion started to become the go-to way to skip Prideful and we use it in pretty much all of our routes. For newer key pushers, I would suggest making sure your whole group is stacked ontop of eachother for when pride is about to spawn since it has a ⅕ chance to spawn on a certain player in the party. Then, simply hit W and walk away from pride while hitting your invis pot simultaneously.

Jpc: I believe we first started doing this when we saw it in MDI. As far as contributing to a Pride skip as a Rogue, I would always recommend “preparing” the mob. What I mean by this is saving a 5 combo point Kidney Shot for when the mob is low HP, that way it ensures a smooth kill and facilitates the skip for the rest of the team. While you may lose a little bit of damage in opting for a Kidney Shot over a normal finisher, the amount of time you save by successfully skipping the Prideful will always outweigh your personal damage. Additionally, this becomes even more important when you plan to skip a Prideful on a mob that applies any DoT’s that could break the Invisibility Potion.

Nerf: We became aware of using invisibility potions to skip Prides after seeing it in the MDI. We immediately knew we had to start implementing that into our routes because of the resources, time, and cooldowns needed to kill a Pride. Of course, there are still certain boss fights where you want to have Pride (e.g. Hakkar) to meet certain DPS checks and timings.

To effectively skip Prides, it is ideal to have the last mob in your pull spawn the Pride to avoid any issues with “bolster” killing mobs. It is easier to control DPS to kill a single mob than to kill 2 or more at the same time, especially with certain affixes such as Grievous/Bursting/Spiteful. If you plan on skipping Prides, try to prepare your route with that in mind.

“It’s important to recognize how you failed as a team. Perhaps someone missed an interrupt or someone died to a mechanic. Failure is okay as long as you learned something from it.” —Nerf

Q: When you deplete a key, how do you determine when to run it back as a lower level and how do you manage your time effectively for keys each push week (given the unforgiving nature of depleting a key)? How do you handle failure as a team?

Asuna: We definitely try to find the solution as a team. We look at other people, we look at ourselves, and we try to see what we are doing wrong individually and as a team and what specific ability order we can press to make it easier on ourselves. For example we failed a high theater early on in the season, and Ellesmere sat there studying on stream for hours what healing cooldown order he and the group can use to make it way more safe.

Ellesmere: Every failure should be an opportunity to learn and grow as a team. Every mistake you make should be something you study and figure out a way to not make that mistake again. After every key, failed or succeeded, I go back in the VoD to check every death and what we could have done to prevent it. The most important thing after a key gets depleted is to not tilt or get angry. Mistakes happen and rather than being pissed about it, learn from it so you don’t make that mistake next time.

Heftyjuggz: When it comes to depleting a key, we all hold ourselves responsible for what could be done better. When a pull goes wrong or a key goes bad there is always someone stepping up saying “I could’ve done this better” or “I can make a change here that can fix our situation”. Being able to take accountability and stride into making the next key much better is probably one of our strengths as a group. We all love to be efficient and we all want to push ourselves so we can be the best teammates for our group.

Jpc: Failing a key is difficult, but I think the most important thing is to always take something positive away from it. This helps both the team’s mentality and your future performance in the dungeon. Every time you deplete a key, you want to return to the dungeon knowing exactly what made you fail previously and how that can be avoided. Eventually, after you deplete enough keys, you learn all the potential ways to fail it and how to avoid them. Even when we’re successful in a given key, we regularly take note of certain things like, “Okay, let’s try and NEVER do that again.” That’s a regular thing in our group.

Nerf: It depends. For example, if you are trying to time a +20 Sanguine Depths key and the run has made a turn for the worse halfway through the dungeon, you now want to consider whether to keep going or not. If you are confident with timing a +19 Sanguine Depths with a few mistakes, it is beneficial to run it back on +19 so that you can get a new +20 key that you know cannot be Sanguine Depths if you hate that key. Now if you are near the end of the dungeon and the key is depleted, you may want to just finish the dungeon to get a new +19 key because of the time already invested into the dungeon. It is also worth considering what day it is...you don’t want to be running back-to-back Sanguine Depths on the last night.

It’s important to recognize how you failed as a team. Perhaps someone missed an interrupt or someone died to a mechanic. Failure is okay as long as you learned something from it. If someone on the team missed an interrupt or died to a mechanic, you can guarantee we’ll be discussing why that happened and how we can prevent it from happening again. Perhaps they need a WeakAura or to emphasize the ability so they are more aware of it. It is important to have that discussion but wait until after the dungeon. Be confident enough about yourself to accept criticism and give criticism to your teammates.




Q: Are all of you happy with the classes you’re maining? If not, what would be your ideal class to main if they were “viable” in the highest keys?

Asuna: Nerf is a FOTM (flavor-of-the-month) tank reroller, Ellesmere and JPC are die-hard to their classes, and I think Hefty just plays whatever because he said he used to main a DH? For me I have always played Mage and the class has remained in the meta for a comfortably long time. I would not pick any other class, however if Mage was nerfed to be as bad as BFA boomkin, I would look to play other casters.

Ellesmere: I am very happy as Holy Paladin. Early in the season a lot of people, including my own team, told me Holy Paladin was going to be trap and that I had to reroll Resto Shaman. I actually leveled and geared a Shaman in preparation for this and, although I actually enjoy it quite a lot, I’m happy I was able to stay Holy Paladin, as that’s definitely the spec I’m most passionate about.

Heftyjuggz: I am sort of a FOTM player and will always gravitate towards whatever is the most powerful. During Shadowlands beta, I played a lot of Balance Druid and saw all the value it was bringing into the new expansion and had a good feeling it would be my main focus for the first season. I always want to be the best I can be for the team, so if that means re-rolling onto a new class, I would do it in a heartbeat in order to make our team stronger.

Jpc: I’m definitely a die-hard Rogue. Thankfully, due to its insane utility in Mythic+, I don’t really see Rogue fading from the high Mythic+ meta for the foreseeable future. However, if Rogue were extremely bad, I would look to play another class if it meant I could still play the game at a high level. For example, I have an alt Death Knight that I will probably play in prog in Patch 9.1, but, I definitely am a Rogue at heart.

Nerf: I’m happy so long as I am pushing the highest keys and going for world firsts/rank 1. I’m not invested enough in a single class to stick to that one class at the cost of pushing the highest keys or being a liability to my team. My goal is to push the highest keys, so I’m going to play whatever class it takes to do that.




Q: Given the most recent patch changes and looking towards Season 2, are there any specs/covenant combinations that you could see becoming particularly powerful or that you’ve got your eyes on?

Asuna: Frost Mage is looking really promising! Arcane as well. The thing about Mage is that every spec is strong. I think it is easily the most well-rounded class when you count all specs. Venthyr Frost Mage though could be very very good!

Ellesmere: I know Nerf has his eyes on Prot Warrior because of the new charge legendary, so that’s definitely something we’ll be testing and gearing up over the next month.

Heftyjuggz: I’ve got my eyes on that Necrolord Prot Warrior dropping banners for me and the boys! Also Elemental Shaman stocks are rising. They are a very fun class to play and I would enjoy seeing them be powerful again.

Jpc: Although I think Necrolord Outlaw will be meta for the remainder of Season 1, I’m really interested to see how Venthyr Assassination Rogue will perform in 9.1. I think in some of the large-pull dungeons, like De Other Side and Sanguine Depths, Assassination could be really strong as its poisons and bleeds are uncapped. Assassination also brings some really unique utility in its ability to poison swap with the Master Poisoner talent. It could also be really strong in a dungeon like Theater of Pain, which is a single-target heavy dungeon where Assassination excels relative to Outlaw.

Nerf: I’m interested in the tankiness of a Prot Warrior with the new Reprisal legendary rework. I’m currently preparing one for Season 2 in case it is good.




Q: Now that players in China are able to record runs through our Raider.IO desktop Client, we’re seeing a lot more top keys timed by groups in China on the leaderboards this expansion. Have you ever looked at some of the DouYu streams to see what competitors are doing in keys? How much does what the other teams do influence your strats if at all?

Asuna: I made an account there! But I have no idea how to look at VoDs, so I am never able to really absorb the information easily. I wish I could though! We are always looking to adapt an insane strategy if we find others are successful with it. The Chinese teams log their runs on Warcraftlogs, so you can actually mimic it pretty hard if you want.

Ellesmere: We frequently watch, study and talk with the Chinese teams. They’re extremely talented and have some really great strats. It’s important to always watch your competitors and learn whatever you can from them.

Heftyjuggz: The Chinese teams are always great to look at because they seem to be trying new stuff out everytime we turn on their streams. I would say we all have watched DouYu streams a little bit as a team, but JPC takes the cake on that one. That man will watch their streams all night and try to talk with them every chance he gets. It’s for sure a big help, as it will give us an open mind on how other teams are looking at certain keys that we might want to adapt in and make changes to.

Jpc: I am good friends with a lot of the top Chinese players from Beta. I was teammates with Anuo and Qingxin for the Beta KSM Showcase. I spend a lot of time researching BFC and Skyline, the top two Mythic+ teams in China (currently Rank 1 and 3 in the world, respectively). I also spend a lot of time analyzing Yeluo’s (小红手叶落) logs. In my opinion, he’s the best Rogue in the world. I also talk to them almost every day via Discord. We do copy some of their innovative strategies as a team, however, a lot of the time I would say they’re actually the ones asking me about my team’s routes.

Nerf: I’ve been able to catch a couple of the Chinese team streams, but it’s rare due to the time difference. JPC is our main Chinese correspondent as he has an open line of communication with them from when he played with them during the beta. If they do something really good, then we’ll try to incorporate that into our routes/strats. I think the more important thing when looking at other teams is understanding the why/how rather than what. A lot of teams will blindly copy what another team is doing without understanding why/how and then the route doesn’t work out for them.




Q: This past push week, we saw your team faction transfer to Alliance and then back to Horde. What was the impetus behind this decision and was it particularly beneficial?

Asuna: Dwarf is good for many reasons, the main two being that it makes our Prideful skip have a WAY higher success rate and it also lets us self-dispel a bunch of various debuffs. Namely the ones in Plaguefall where we feel the last boss is the only hurdle. There are other benefits as well that I could name, but those two specifically were the most impactful to our decision.

Ellesmere: Dwarf racial is crazy strong for a lot of reasons. In high keys especially, being able to mitigate the damage from certain boss mechanics is very powerful, but also for handling Bursting. It also allowed us to skip Pridefuls more easily that week (we used it to clear off bursting stacks so we could invis pot). All in all I think it was a fun experiment going Alliance for a few days and playing with Stoneform, but I don’t see us doing that again this season.

Heftyjuggz: We realized how powerful dwarf Stoneform would be this week for a couple factors. We know we could consistently skip Prideful in our routes by being able to Stoneform the Bursting off of 3 of our players and cleansing another. This gave us more consistent play in our routes because we only had to worry about 1 person having to invis at the very last second of Bursting, which isn’t always the easiest thing. In very high keys, there are a lot of mechanics that can be ignored (last boss of Plaguefall being an example) with the dwarf Stoneform and we knew it would give us the best advantage when it came to pushing the highest possible keys available.

Jpc: It was definitely beneficial for the reason my teammates have mentioned; however, I do feel like we left a little bit of IO on the table. I’m really proud of how good my team has become at some of our stronger keys, but it would have been awesome if we managed to time some of the keys I know that we’re capable of (like 26 Halls and 27 Plaguefall). In the end, I think it was really fun to change factions for the week, and even though we didn’t do all the keys we wanted to, it will just be that much more rewarding when we finally manage to time them.

Nerf: We rolled a +27 Plaguefall key early on in the week and felt we would need the dwarf racial, Stoneform, as a way to survive the last boss. Playing a DH, I personally had no benefit in going Alliance because using Shadowmeld would drop my threat and kill my team. Playing with a Paladin also meant we couldn’t do any Night Elf Shadowmeld skips (though that is arguably less impactful this expansion than the previous). I had no intention of going Alliance, so I told Twitch chat if I got 50 gifted subs I would agree to switch and the rest is history.




Q: Clips! What are some of the highlights of your key pushes this season that you’d like us to highlight in this article?

Asuna: This clip isn’t a key push, but it is me blinking off the edge during a raid and my officer laughing at me.

And then here’s another of me doing it again in an actual key :)




Ellesmere: Me hating Awakening when it doesn’t proc.

An example of a cool strat we use in Plaguefall:




Heftyjuggz: This is a really funny clip for me because the boss basically melts like butter while the whole team is freaking out about the 1 phase on the first boss of a +23 Mist hahah (Thank you rng gods)



Jpc: This clip is just my friendly reminder to everyone that everybody makes mistakes :)



Nerf: Here is the story of why we decided to go Alliance and then almost didn’t go Alliance because JPC accidentally bought a Race Change instead of a Faction Change:






Q: If you could add your own Mythic+ affix to the game, what would it be?

Asuna: When you kill a mob it duplicates into 2 smaller mobs. More AoE???

Ellesmere: I would create an affix that would delete Tyrannical and Fortified. Okay but seriously, I would love to see an affix system that’s not all just awful things. It would be fun if half the affixes were negative but the other half were positive. Having every affix be negative isn’t very fun in my opinion.

Heftyjuggz: Bring back Reaping but make them all frenzied Moonkin ghosts :)

Jpc: Not Tyrannical ;)

Nerf: I’d like to see more beneficial affixes similar to Prideful. Maybe like a kill-chain affix where if you killed 10 mobs within 10s of the first mob dying you received a powerful buff.




Q: What are your overarching goals in the game both as a team and as individual players? Where do you see live Mythic+ keys going as an esport (or where would you like to see it go?)

Asuna: As a team, our goal is to try and be the top. As an individual player, I just want to feel like I am pushing myself hard and impressing people. In terms of live Mythic+ keys, it is hard to see an esport future for it. This might be asking too much (hopefully it's not though), but I do beg that Blizzard would kind of clean up/update their leaderboard format, in-game and on their website.

Ellesmere: I think our goals as a team and mine as an individual are in perfect sync, we all want to be the best in the world. As much as I would love to see high keys progress into an esport similar to MDI, I’m not sure what type of format would even make that possible. I think a good starting point for Mythic+ pushing would be to get an in game leaderboard system similar to pvp (rankings, titles, etc).

Heftyjuggz: My goal is to be the best player I can be for the team and always trying to overcome the hardest content the game has to offer! I love raiding and Mythic+, so being able to push both of them to the best of my ability is extremely fun and always exciting when there are new raids/dungeons that need to be slammed.

Jpc: As a team, our goal is to try and be #1 in the world! As an individual player, I aspire to be the best Rogue in the game and continue to push the skill ceiling for all rogues higher. I want my teammates and viewers to know that I am extracting every single bit of value out of my class as possible.

I’d really like to see Rank 1 PvP style titles added to Mythic+. Blizzard might think Mythic+ is just a minigame and not true end-game content, but I think if you look at what PvE players are spending their time doing after progression is over, a substantial portion of playtime is spent in Mythic+. I mean, millions of keys are done every season; it’s crazy to me that the only reward is a mount for the Keystone Master achievement.

Nerf: Personally, my goal is to push the highest keys and get rank 1 on the leaderboards. As far as live keys go, I would just like seasonal rewards similar to Gladiator/Rank1 titles for PvP.

“A lot of people often just look at DPS and question why Rogues are even brought to keys in the first place, but that completely misses the point. You want to be a team-centric, control player first and a damage dealer second.” —Jpc

Q: Many of you are long-time high key veterans that we’ve seen on top of the Mythic+ leaderboards throughout the last few expansions. What are some of the most important aspects of successful key pushing that may not be obvious to aspiring players?

Asuna: The most important aspect is always looking at yourself to figure out what you can do better. Here is an example. If I Dragon’s Breath for damage, but a disrupt is needed for a dangerous cast and someone else is called to stop it and they miss it, I would say part of that is my fault because I should just use Dragon's Breath for a backup disrupt. Being highly critical of yourself is something I have always had even if it is the smallest thing and I feel that this has helped me improve a bit over the years.

Ellesmere: Definitely the most important thing is learning from mistakes and not tilting. It’s easy to get frustrated when someone makes a mistake and messes a key up, but sometimes that has to happen once so it doesn’t happen again. If you let yourself get too angry/mad, it will mess up your keys for the rest of the day…we’ve all been there before. If you want to be better in Mythic+, make sure every time something goes wrong, you go back after the key and figure out what happened and what you as a team could do to fix it for next time.

Heftyjuggz: Keep trying to learn from every key you do. Even if it was the most clean run possible, don't ever stop trying to grow and become a better player every chance you get. There is usually always something that could be done better and it's good to keep an open mind on all the utility your group and yourself can bring to a key. Being critical of yourself can go a long way when it comes to growing as a player and always trying to get as much practice in as you can on things you want to learn.

Jpc: I think the biggest thing for aspiring Rogues that want to push high keys is understanding that it’s okay and completely normal to be at the bottom of the damage meter. Rogue is a really niche role in Mythic+. A lot of people often just look at DPS and question why Rogues are even brought to keys in the first place, but that completely misses the point. You want to be a team-centric, control player first and a damage dealer second. Of course damage matters, especially at the highest level, but your primary focus as you aim to improve at Mythic+ should be on your ability to facilitate difficult pulls and empower your teammates to get the most out of their class kits. At the end of the day, it’s the team’s success that is the most important, and Rogue plays a key part in making that happen.

Nerf: Networking. While the game has added a lot to prevent the need to be social (LFD/LFR), Mythic+ still requires a premade group. If you want to push keys it has a lot to do with who you know, playing well, and making friends. Having a good attitude goes a long way. Be nice to your tanks :)

Communication is important in being successful at pushing keys. Be vocal with your cooldowns/interrupts. Take initiative to lead a group when there isn’t a clear leader. It is important to have a shotcaller for the group. You do not have to do it all alone, but it is important that you communicate and identify who needs to make what calls during the dungeon.

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