This article and the Routes within have been updated to account for changes to the game and new strategies that have emerged since the last time these affixes were active.

This week’s affixes are: Tyrannical, Bolstering, Grievous and Reaping.

These affixes are not easy - Bolstering, even by itself slows down how quickly you can pull the trash throughout the dungeon. There are some spots where you’ll have to use a great deal of finesse if you want to pull faster than one pack at a time, and there are some dungeons like Siege of Boralus and Shrine of the Storm where even one pack at a time will present a serious Bolstering challenge. Grievous will increase the difficulty of the trash pulls, especially those that pulse group-wide damage, but it will also combine with Tyrannical to make some easy bosses into difficult ones, and some already difficult bosses into truly monumental challenges.

Grievous is also one of the few affixes that interacts with Reaping - if your health drops below 90% while fighting a Reaping wave, you will begin to stack the DoT. This is a noticeable increase in the difficulty of the affix, especially when it comes to the damage output on the tank, and when there are large sets of casters that continually blast random members of your party into Grievous range.





For each dungeon, there are two different Mythic Dungeon Tools (MDT) routes available – a “Basic” route and an “Expert” route. The Basic routes follow a few restrictions: they don’t feature massive pulls, they don’t require special class abilities like Shroud of Concealment to facilitate skipping mobs, and they don’t require the use of death skips. They also don’t require you to leave anything crowd controlled for too long.

The expert routes, by contrast, often call for advanced pulls and skips. Sometimes, these skips require specific classes like Death Knight, Demon Hunter, or Rogue - but often they can be done by many different group compositions, just in slightly different ways. Every skip in these routes features a full explanation if you mouse over the corresponding number.

If you’re a coordinated team, you should start with the Expert routes and remove pulls/skips that you can’t do. If you need help making any such for your team's strengths and weaknesses, ask me when I'm streaming or get in touch with me using any of the contact info in my RaiderIO Profile!

Click on the COPY MDT IMPORT STRING button and you’ll be able to paste that string into the the "Import" window of your Mythic Dungeon Tools addon and get the route for yourself! Each of these routes contains annotations about how to do each pull and which enemies to crowd control, where to Bloodlust, etc. The annotations and drawings make these routes take a few minutes to Share using MDT’s in-game share function, so consider clearing them before sharing with your group-mates!

Atal'Dazar [back to top]

Atal’Dazar is one of the best dungeons to run on Tyrannical weeks, due to the relative ease of the bosses and the fact that two of the four of them cause damage to themselves, reducing the impact that Tyrannical has on the length of those fights. Vol’Kaal does get noticeably more difficult with Grievous active, and is well worth using your second Bloodlust on, rather than saving it for a big trash pull as we often recommend, even on Tyrannical weeks.

Bolstering is primarily a problem in pulls including Toxic Saurids and Skyscreamers - the Saurids have dramatically less health and are liable to die quickly and bolster the Skyscreamers by quite a lot. If this happens, don’t panic - the Skyscreamers themselves aren’t huge threats and even with a few stacks of Bolstering they should represent merely a delay rather than a wipe. You can prevent this from happening with focused damage, disciplined holding of AoE abilities, or by CCing Skyscreamers and killing Saurids outside of Bolstering range. Another important thing to keep in mind on Bolstering weeks is that Gilded Priestesses can be killed pretty much any time by standing in a pool of blood while they cast on you - but you don’t actually want to do this at the first opportunity, as this will add a stack of Bolstering to the other enemies. Instead, you should wait until the pack is close to death and then finish off the Priestesses with everything else.

As the metagame has shifted away from Death Knights, our Expert routes no longer plan to take control of an undead enemy and kill it after Yazma to avoid the final Reaping wave, but this strategy is still excellent if you have access to it!

Read more on Atal’Dazar Dungeon Abilities.

Freehold [back to top]

This is a challenging week for Freehold. Tyrannical Eudora and Kragg hit hard enough normally, but with the addition of Grievous you’ll need to be very careful to dodge all of the avoidable damage in order to not fall behind on stacks of Grievous. Harlan is also a pain with Grievous active, as many of his abilities will do moderate damage to the entire group.

Luckily, the trash in the dungeon is fairly harmless, the Reaping waves are generally easy to deal with, and the crew that you’ll join this week will remove the Cutwater Harpooners from the equation. Bolstering is also not a huge problem in here, as there are no pulls where you’re forced to fight enemies with disparate health totals simultaneously.

Read more on Freehold Dungeon Abilities.

Kings' Rest [back to top]

King’s Rest is very very challening this week - Bolstering is not the problem, but Grievous and Tyrannical will combine to create absurd healing requirements on almost all of the boss encounters. Be sure to have Bloodlust ready for these fights, and have all of your offensive and defensive cooldowns ready on pull as well. Even with flawless execution, don’t expect this keystone to be doable this week on anywhere near the level that you can do most other keys.

Like in Atal’dazar, our Expert route used to plan for a Death Knight to take control of an undead enemy and kill it after King Dazar to avoid the final Reaping wave. We now no longer assume your group has access to this, but it remains a powerful strategy if you do, and you should rework the Route to use it.

Read more on Kings’ Rest Dungeon Abilities.

Shrine of the Storm [back to top]

As of patch 8.1.5, Animated Droplets no longer bolster on death, speeding up the first part of the dungeon a little. Despite this, Shrine is one of the least friendly dungeons this week. Many of the bosses are challenging on Tyrannical, particularly with Grievous active, and so many of the trash pulls are mini-boss style encounters where you’ll have to bend over backwards to avoid Bolstering challenging enemies with large amounts of health.

Our Expert route this week uses a strategy that is designed to allow you to skip not one, but two Reaping waves! The plan is to kill some trivial enemies to advance your Enemy Forces bar above the 80% threshold while executing a death-skip. This serves the dual purpose of skipping some particularly annoying enemies and also resetting the Reaping wave, which won’t be summoned when the next such wave is spawned because that doesn’t happen until after the timer stops.

Read more on Shrine of the Storm Dungeon Abilities.

Siege of Boralus [back to top]

As usual, our Siege of Boralus routes are based off the Horde pathing and will require some modification if you’re Alliance.

This is a good week to Bolster a Spotter to infinity and then use it to murder huge swathes of enemies and also tentacles during the final boss encounter. Though neither our Basic nor Expert routes are designed around that plan, know that it is likely the best way to time this keystone at high levels.

With or without a Spotter, this dungeon is very difficult to execute. You’ll need very tight technical play to avoid Bolstering the numerous higher-health enemies that are surrounded by lower-health cannon fodder. There are even multiple pulls with low, medium, and high health enemies that will disrupt any strategy you’d developed to handle Bolstering when there are only two different sizes of enemy.

Read more on Siege of Boralus Dungeon Abilities.

Temple of Sethraliss [back to top]

Tyrannical and Grievous are the two primary killers in here - with these affixes active, Galvazzt in particular will be one of the hardest checks in terms of pure output that you can find. If you can defeat the challenging bosses of this dungeon, the trash will fall over with ease and two of the five Reaping waves can be skipped without too much hassle by using a death-run while spawning the fourth Reaping wave.

Read more on Temple of Sethraliss Dungeon Abilities.

The MOTHERLODE!! [back to top]

This place is full of enemies with different amounts of health - some pulls feature as many as four dramatically different sizes among enemies. You will need to remain alert and coordinated throughout the entire dungeon to avoid a Bolstering nightmare, especially as many of the higher health enemies in here are ones with the most dangerous abilities to begin with. Our Expert route plans some ambitious uses of Crowd Control to help separate pulls into easily digested bites of similarly-sized enemies, but this can be as tricky to execute as simply assigning good priority damage, so your group may find that to be a better option if you have access to specs that can do so efficiently.

The bosses are luckily fairly easy, with Rixxa Fluxflame seeing the biggest increase in difficulty with the addition of Grievous. Even though it’s Tyrannical, don’t be afraid to lust trash - and even though it’s Grievous, don’t be afraid to pull Reaping on to bosses, especially if your lust is ready.

Read more on The MOTHERLODE!! Dungeon Abilities.

The Underrot [back to top]

Grievous will present a serious challenge while fighting Tyrannical Cragmaw and Sporecaller Zancha. Be sure to coordinate defensives during the high damage spikes as needed, and be careful to not outrange your healer during Cragmaw’s Tantrum. Bolstering is rarely problematic in here - the obviously problematic Underrot Tick pulls are all easily skippable.

Read more on The Underrot Dungeon Abilities.

Tol Dagor [back to top]

Very little will change about pathing in Tol Dagor for as long as cannons remain as powerful as they are. You will continue to pull as few enemies as possible in the lower levels of the prison, and then once you commandeer a cannon you’ll send your tank back into the dungeon to grab enemies to be mowed down. This requires a little more finesse on Bolstering week, as you’ll need to be careful to pull too much and have enemies trickle in to the line of fire, Bolstering the ones behind them. Tyrannical and Grievous are also no joke in this dungeon, especially during the Overseer Korgus encounter - be sure to save lust for this fight, and make an effort to have a battle rez or two stockpiled for it.

Read more on Tol Dagor Dungeon Abilities.

FIX?

Waycrest Manor [back to top]

In case you missed the good news, Devouring Maggots no longer Bolster when they die! That being said, while adventuring into Waycrest Manor this week, you’ll still feel the effects of all four affixes - there are many tough Bolstering pulls, and several bosses that are brutally difficult with Tyrannical and Grievous active. There are also a few spots where you’ll need to be careful and trigger Reaping waves in a controlled fashion so that you can handle them in open spaces rather than in confined hallways or near other enemies you don’t want to pull yet.

Read more on Waycrest Manor Dungeon Abilities.